Depends on who you are.
They’ve been reaching out to world first raiders personally since the start.
And the wow team was recently much more communicative, the community lashed out, they shut back up again, no one wants to deal with that negativity.
I seem to recall hearing a story about another game(or maybe it was WoW as well) where Devs thought it would be a good idea to talk to the people, but they found that the people upset were WAY more vocal than those who were content…
Based on the way the internet works with anonymity I wouldn’t want a job talking to the people.
They used to.
But the community treated them like utter garbage over every little change.
The community only has itself to blame, but in true internet sperg fashion they blame Blizz.
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Doesn’t help that blizzard also laid off the only CM that seemed willing to talk to the community lol.
Not that I mean any disrespect for the current ones, but they only engage when the dev team tells them to, may be company policy after the yak.
Any company that has good communication will stop the second their game becomes big, because the 1% of the community that is toxic as **** make up like 50% of the active forum posters, and the Devz quickly learn to just not talk anymore.
I feel wow devs send out the vibe they are above the community and knows what best for it unlike other games where the devs welcome and listen to the community, now with that said wow devs seem to hide away from the community due to the constant fire they are under about their decisions, though it is self inflicted with their attitudes towards the gamer, we have a nickname for people who try to tell people how to play in mechwarrior we call them mechdads, thinking they know whats best for you as players, kinda get that same vibe from the wow devs aka (WOW Dads).
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League of Legends is a free game. There’s absolutely no way that WoW has more players as a subscription service.
Especially when you consider that LoL is frequently #2 or #3 on Twitch.
So basically you’re commenting on something you don’t have any idea about. Cool.
I do wish WoW devs talked more. I especially wish they bounced future ideas off of us and got some initial feedback before they started spending time on things. Like have an interview showing off feature XYZ, and give people a week or so of talking, and then have an FAQ thread. Even curated. Just to get further questions, and get player view of things.
That they had a concise philosophy behind design decisions and could talk more. That’d be nice, to have some input before they go too far down a path, etc.
Mind you, that would have to come with a lot of moderation and people unafraid to swing that ban bat around. And players need to learn that feedback can be heard and disagreed with, and that stances can be changed without it being a lie.
I’m not sure how much that’d help at this point though. WoW’s winding down, and frankly a lot of people seem to enjoy looking for things to complain about at this point. So how much good could come out of any communication is questionable. Should probably give it a go though.
May be useful to know how well it works for the future.
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I do too.
But with this community, I can see why they are silent, this thread is a good example of it.
Yes, other MMOs have active communication between devs and players, often mediated by an effective community management team (like Elder Scrolls Online, for example). There’ll be regular official live streams, forum posts, “state of the game” videos, previews of upcoming content, etc etc.
WoW doesn’t really even HAVE a community management team any more, it would seem, and the last time we got anything like that was back in the days when Ion and Lore would do Q&As - which were years ago now.
These days, the apparent fact that “Blizzard doesn’t read the forums” gets tossed around like it was a badge of honour, letting us rabble fight amongst ourselves while the devs only pay attention to their little private-forum echo chamber.
And if there’s a big announcement to be made, is it made here, on their own forums? On their own web site, even? Or on their own YouTube or Twitch channels?
Nope - they’ll “do a series of interviews” to get their talking points out there with the appropriate amount of spin. A formula that famously backfired with the “no more flying ever” announcement… news players had been waiting impatiently for many months of the devs saying “we haven’t decided yet” to hear… an announcement made in an interview with Polygon.
The backlash to that alone should’ve been a big red warning sign that they’re getting it wrong. But here we are years later, and they’re still doing it.
If it’s the game I think you’re referring to, he’s appeared (as an NPC) in multiple anniversary quest chains, thanking the players for being around and on one occasion, taking everyone on a virtual tour through the dev studio 
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… You know there’s a reason we have phrases like “Gamers™”, “Gamer moment…”
Gaming communities are widely, almost UNIVERSALLY known for being angry sacks of hate, lmao.
That’s not to say it’s excusable - it gets to the level of personal threats quite often, which is abhorrent, but to say it’s just a Blizzard thing is … just being silly, honestly.
Even indie developers have to deal with the hate train.
Go watch the Ashes of Creation development videos on YouTube and it will have you crying that Blizzard doesn’t do something similar. They take questions, show off what’s being worked on, etc. If Blizzard did this one thing it would help ease a lot of frustration in the community I think. It’s fun watching the process of development unfold and hearing the ideas and thoughts of developers.
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The WoW dev teams used to interact a lot with players here, but during Cata they were replaced with PR flunkies and the cohesion between players and devs broke down. Then all the layoffs started in customer service and now we have the sterile environment that exists today. We talk. They don’t care. The game suffers.
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This is peak positive toxicity.
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A lot of this. I immediately thought of the Internet Historian’s YouTube video on No Man’s Sky. Very lengthy but a good watch none the less.
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Ive seen dev teams who dont speak english communicate more and better with their community than Blizzard.
In fact blizzard is the ONLY dev team ive ever encountered that seemed indifferent to player feedback, player emotions on the game, and generally the relationship so many other companies are desperate to forge.
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Go take a look at the presentations the devs of Eve Online show off at their annual conventions. The volume of internal data they share with the players will blow your mind.
It wasn’t always this bad either… back when the devs communicated with us on a regular basis there was a whole lot less negativity… but as the communication lessened, the negativity increased… it wasn’t even just that the devs communicated less often with us, but the quality of their communication decreased. It’s no mystery as to why there is so much negativity in this community…
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The fake outrage crowd wasn’t always a thing either. The last handful of years the fake outrage crowd reared its ugly and venomous head on nearly all aspects of life in this country.
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