Basically they stepped in and said “Hey, this is a forum where you’ll get a direct line of communication to the developers, and there will be discussions that take place about the game with developers here.”
And then people on GD took that bar and set it to this:
“They must respond to the majority of the threads. If they’re not the entire thing is a failure.”
Nevermind that the developers have jobs to do, that it’s the holiday season with Christmas around the corner, or that the CC forums haven’t even been active for 2 weeks, nah, none of that matters, they gotta post, post, post when WE (the people of GD) say, not when they want to.
You’ll note that the actual people on the CC aren’t really getting uppity, because they actually respect the privilege they’ve got.
The entire thing about the CC is that it’s a direct line between the CC members and the developers. No middle guy. Those developers also have jobs to do outside of the forums.
If all they were going to do is have community managers respond and take on feedback then they wouldn’t have bothered with the CC at all.
It’s important to note that whenever the CMs get some insight to a change, it comes from the Developers. So, this just makes it a bit easier and informal for the developer to make a response.
The forum hasn’t even been active for 2 weeks, it launched during the holiday season when there’s only a skeleton crew working on the game because most employees are on holidays celebrating with their families etc.
This post, post, post mentality from this forum is pure garbage.
After the holidays are over and work resumes in January, that’s when it will be a good time to monitor the CC forums, especially after they announce, for example, the next expansion which will likely happen in February or March.
They already stated that even though Blizzcon is cancelled that announcements of new titles would still be happening.
And they’ll need to announce something, since it’s very unlikely we’ll be getting a 9.3 (although if there was one it would be like the Timeless Isle patch from MoP. New zone, world and story content, no PvP season or raid).
And they’ve “answered” exactly 4 threads out of 60+.
And yes, THEY set that bar, not GD or anyone else.
They aren’t “engaging” any more than they do here in GD (or anywhere else on the forum), so exactly what is the purpose of this closed forum if they aren’t going to “discuss” anything?
Rather than replying to individual threads I’d appreciate regular blog posts that just addressed recent topics concerning the game. Maybe get specific, grab a thread from the council forums, and talk about it’s topic at length for a bit.
Regular blog posts/ Dev streams need to make a return. Not just getting 2-3 interviews whenever they want to promote or hype up a new or oncoming patch… The communication felt better in Legion than what we’ve seen recently. When’s the last time they did a Q&A or poll or something to engage? Because the decisions they’ve made in 9.0 and 9.1 specifically felt pretty darn out of touch with the community according to most players and they need to do something to fix that perceived disconnect.
Expecting a lot of engagement right now is foolish, most of the developers aren’t even in the office, they’re celebrating at home with their families. Normal work isn’t likely to resume until after January 10th.
They should have never opened the CC forums. We didn’t set any high expectations. Blizzard did. It doesn’t matter what time of the year it is, they will never communicate enough. This is a PR stunt.
If communication doesn’t improve after the holidays, and I am not expecting the extremely high levels you are, so my bar will be set to a reasonable level, but if it doesn’t happen, I will join in the criticism.
Despite what that ignorant troll you replied to claimed, I don’t ‘lick the boot’, I may not be as critical as some of the morons on this forum, but even I have my limits.
And make no mistake about my thoughts here, we absolutely need more communication. That’s honestly my hope for the CC forums, that it does become an avenue for more communication, given time. If it had launched 2 to 3 months ago, and this is all the communication we had, I’d be right there with you, criticising Blizzard, because there only being 4 posts from Blizzard staff after that length of time would be completely unacceptable.
But given that it is the holiday season, that it’s only a week away from Christmas, and that the forum itself has only been open for not even 2 weeks, I’m not jumping into the deep end of the criticism pool right now. That wouldn’t be fair.
Making a private Discord to “let other players get the ear of the developers” is not good. You only represent yourself, that’s why you were selected to the CC.
Making a Discord server that parades as exclusive access to a Blizzard-sanctioned community is a major, major legal issue.
The revocation of CC membership is almost certainly is not related to racist screenshots, but rather the image of a Council member parading as a representative AND THEN having you linked to these screenshots.
All in all, you risked making Blizzard look very, very bad. A discord you controlled have some serious issues which could be damaging to the program itself. It doesn’t matter if it’s a PR move, or a sham, or a good faith effort, or even a blind attempt at something different.
The discord server was a doomed idea and ya got burned by it.
28:45 – “I’ve basically been doing Blizzard’s job for them.” - This level of arrogance is baffling. Holy Christ. Definitely adding to the whole “CC is just a smaller GD” mentality. Blizzard is hiring, go get paid if you’re gonna do their jobs.
post from Carhagen.
