I don’t really understand the psychology of berating the Devs for doing what we asked them to do. Because the alternative isn’t that they listen faster, it’s that they don’t listen at all.
Like, if you want the devs to keep listening you gotta make them feel good about it. If you’re rude, they’re just going to tune you / us out. That’s how echo chambers form.
But they don’t listen at all. Those same changes they just made, were requested in detail over a year ago, and only now, when the company and game are in trouble, do they make those changes. What do you think happened over that year? They listened and decided to neither respond or change, insist that the grindy systems are right and best and we should all just get good at the little they want to restrict us to? They didn’t listen!
Being outraged is cool. Echo chambers are better.
The psychology of it is quite simple actually. Some players get a dopamine rush from loot drops and leveling up with flashes on the screen. Others get it from constantly being in a state of blind rage about the game. They don’t WANT Blizzard to make positive changes. They want them to keep screwing up to feed their hatred.
Lost Ark is months from releasing in the west.
New World hasn’t shown it will have the staying power of GW2, ESO or BDO let alone WoW.
Final Fantasy has been building it’s player base for over a decade even during Legion, people’s favorite recent expansion and during the insanely good sales of SL and Classic launches.
Millions of people still play WoW.
I am not in a personal relationship with Blizzard and don’t need them to care about my feelings just be entertained.
I enjoy playing WoW and some of the new stuff in 9.1.5 sounds like it will help me have fun.
That is enough for me to be satisfied with the product Blizz is selling me so I will play it and have fun.
I won’t be wasting my time worrying about if the game that is giving me enjoyment is doing it for “the right reasons”.
If you have fun playing WoW then play it. If you don’t then find a game that you will. Either way WoW will be here for years and years to come with new content and millions of players for those that enjoy the game.
no you’re right we should be on our knees thanking blizzard for adding what the community wanted and the feedback they’ve been given since beta even after they added it almost a year later, even after they’ve been doing this numerous times. We should keep thanking them for continuously doing the same thing not listening to the playerbase only to add what we wanted months and months later you’re absolutely right.
And as for my "credibility, this is coming from someone in moon guard. It’s irrelevant in this topic.
Wrong, arriving at the correct conclusion by mistake or being forced there isn’t a win. Because they are going to make these same mistakes again, they are going to design more terrible systems on purpose, put in more chores in the game. Then ignore players feed back for months if not years.
The next expansion is going to be bad because of this. Just like the last expansion was bad. If nothing really changes then this cycle will never be broken. Blizz has a lot of work to do, and their ideas on what a good game looks like is non existent right now.
There shouldn’t be a battle every expansion between the players and Devs. This isn’t a win and most of the player base sees that.
Funny to look at. It’s like there’s a little war going on in their heads.
Every Blizzard move is an insult, a subterfuge, a scandal in itself.
These people literally play the game just to chase forum clout by bashing the developers. Never happy with anything that occurs. It’s okay to be angry that the changes weren’t made sooner but Jesus the stuff we got coming in 9.1.5 will make the game so much more enjoyable. It isn’t perfect but will take what we can get.
At the end of the day, if you have fun with the game (like myself), play it and if you don’t quit.
As one of the “old timers” of wow. this isn’t a surprise, any company does the same thing if such a big event happens that shakes up the business.
WoW hasn’t been wow since Wrath (Legion was the exception and was good imho) Since Slactivision bought out Blizzard it is ALL about profit, nothing else. and thus they are in the predicament they are now.
Going forward don’t expect Blizzard to continue on this trend, if they do, i would be honestly surprised. this is just a token done on their side, nothing more.
Most players don’t agree with this anymore. That is why millions left. No one wants to be fed bread crumbs for years. No one wants to pay for a live Beta test of convoluted systems for years till the Devs realize everything they make is wrong.
9.1.5 isn’t going to be good and future expansions aren’t going to be good because the Devs don’t truly understand what they are doing wrong. How many expansions does this unneeded dance and battle have to take place where they release a terrible unfinished game that takes several patches to fix it.
So most of us don’t share your enthusiasm. It’s going to take more then a mini patch to win back the player trust in this game. When history tells us Blizz will take a big hot steaming 
on the players whenever they can get away with it.
Blizzard really needs to start to listen to the community better. The last several expansions have been like this. There was feedback in the beta and they did not listen and this is what we got. People kept telling them that is was not going to work and there systems were not going to work and people were so unhappy. I really hope that this a turning point for them.
They ARE listening - ok maybe more cause of recent things, but give it a chance, and please no more welfare mounts, they only give you temporary bliss…
“Most” players left. No one knows subscriber numbers, and there’s zero clue from anyone about what is left.
You and the same 10-12 circlejerks constantly crapping on the game =/= most. So please stop speaking for everyone. While you’re at it, just go play another game instead of trolling WoW forums all day with your negativity, same goes for all of the usual suspects.
This just isn’t true. It’s not like WoW Subs numbers are some hidden ancient mystery that can’t be unraveled. You can look at tons of Data to know how many players were playing and how most of the players have now left.
Everyone has already spoken. They don’t like SL or the Devs ignoring their players for a year. That is why most of the players left. That is why now Blizz is trying to get all their players back because their numbers are bad and SL experienced the largest player drop of any expansion. Which is the point of the thread. The changes are happening because Blizz is scared, not because they actually care if we enjoy the game.
From third party sites that don’t have access to the API, or from influencers like Bellular who alternate between sanity and making hate videos about the game. Otherwise, no we have zero clue how many subscribers there are.
I like how you believe the forums are some ideal community that includes the entire playerbase where everyone is telling you what they like/don’t like. The forums are a fraction of the entire playerbase.
You made the claim, show me proof other than whatever you keep spewing out of your rectum.
Lol, I’d be willing to wager WoD was worse than SL, and BFA had several bad cycles of player loss.
Conjecture on your part. You continue to speak like you’re some authority for a) what other players want or b) What the devs think or feel.
It’s almost like you have a history of trolling the forums with nonsense.
It’s not a claim though. It’s a fact that over 50% of the player base left and that is the reason now after a year we are getting changes. That SL is the biggest player drop of any expansion. You don’t want to listen though. Then made this long post in response where every point is wrong.
If you think we can’t figure out how many players we had and how many left you just aren’t paying attention or able to meaningfully discuss the topic. So I won’t waste my time with someone that isn’t qualified to discuss the topic.
Again read it.
If you don’t want to see what is going on you won’t. Have a good one but as I said, when you are able to discuss the topic I will. You just want to say the opposite. So good day.
Except we know factually that it wasn’t. Sigh…
Facts, this is a knee jerk reaction.
You have made ZERO effort to cite what claims you are making. You’re claiming 50% of the playerbase left, which is just conjecture from people like Bellular, who don’t really have any freaking clue either. Which is hilarious you keep parroting the same stuff he does.
Post your sources, or piss off. I know you don’t have them because the only people who know sub numbers, are Blizzard. The only information we have from official sources is the quarterly earnings reports which lump everything together in MAUs.
Wrong. People are not unhappy about the changes in 9.1.5.
The changes are awesome.
The problem is, a lot of this stuff, IS STUFF WE TOLD THEM MONTHS AGO.
Now, they have a valid point about the Covenants, we might not agree, but they have a point with that, with how your journey through SL was through the lens of a specific covenant and letting you hop covenants from the beginning would have ruined what they were trying to do there.
But… while they do admit that they should have listened with conduit energy sooner, they only spend one or two sentences with that, along with a WHOLE PARAGRAPH about the Covenants.
And… NOTHING AT ALL about why they refused to budge on the Maw Intro Skip for NINE MONTHS of the expansion being live.
Not a single word about why they refused to give us what we’ve been asking them for since launch. Especially when the implementation of such…
1). Has been done before in every expansion since WoD,
2). Is easy to implement,
3). Has no balance rammifications,
4). Cost the player nothing,
5). Is optional.
This is what makes it sound to me like their apologies are not very genuine.
Hey, people screw up, sure. But they keep making the same mistakes over and over again and going through this cycle of screwing up, apologizing, and then repeating it all over again with the next expansion.
“We listen to your feedback.” (not one single blue post in response to threads upvoted 500+ times)
“We listen to your feedback.” (no patches addressing it, etc.)
“We listen to your feedback. Here, we finally got around to doing it! Sorry we ignored you for the last year!”
-Next Expansion Launches-
“We value your feedback.” (proceeds to ignore the biggest topics of feedback during the entirety of PTR)
Here we go again…
The problem is… they aren’t learning. It’s one thing to screw up, admit it, apologize for it and do your best to fix it.
It’s something else entirely to show us that you learned something from it and do better next time.
The latter is where they fail, time and again. They don’t learn from it, and they only budge when there’s severe consequences (usually in subscriber count and bad PR) that force them to change their minds.