Are We Back At Pre-Shadowlands Communication Levels?

Community General Discussion
1

Hey everyone,

During Shadowlands, Blizzard was emphatic about fixing its communication problems it had with the community. We saw a temporary change happen: the occasional developer post would pop up (such as the Love Rocket thread), some blues occasionally responded to individual users outside of the CS/TS forums (this does still happen rarely, including recently to one of my own posts), and interviews with content creators ramped up (although I don’t personally count that - more on that later). The Community Council was also created. As of today, we have roadmaps, which is a good way to show us what the future of WoW looks like, and there are still interviews being done with content creators.

However, there is very little communication with the actual community itself. Holding interviews with streamers is, in my view, not communicating with the community. That’s engaging with someone who’s making money from having the interview, not the community. Being very quiet on the official forums is not engaging with the community either.

The Blues News posts are just summaries of the past week, although it can be a good “catch-up” for people who don’t keep up on WoW news, but it’s not someone engaging with the community. "This Week in WoW’ threads are insightful to an extent, but it’s a “here’s what’s coming up this week, with vague descriptions throughout at times” thing more than actually engaging with the community.

When I think of engaging with the community, I think of Community Managers dropping in regularly (not rarely) to address hot-button issues, provide insights, or just let the community know that Blizzard is aware of x thing and is working on it. Silence is deafening, especially when numerous players ask about x thing and don’t get a response for years, if at all. We’ve said that for years now.

I also do not buy the “if they posted more, people would just flame them more” defense. This is Blizzard’s own forum. They should communicate more and enforce their ToS against those who try to derail things, instead of punishing everyone else by communicating very rarely, if at all.

There’s also the Community Council. At this point, I feel like it may as well not exist. There is very, very little interaction on the CC forums between blues and the CC members. It also feels like the CC members themselves have given up. Here’s an example, where I’m looking at the most recent CC topics that could fit on my screen, showing a lack of Blizz icons and meager forum activity in general:

What we have currently, in my view, is a hands-off approach disguised as engagement with the community. It felt like there was a genuine attempt to make things better at one point, but it feels like communication has gone backwards once again.

It’s disappointing.

5 Likes
2

Well you seem to set goalposts for what is and isn’t communication with the community that doesn’t necessarily align with the companies definition for that and excludes activities that they are engaged in as part of their efforts to communicate with the community.

So that’s a big source of disconnect.

3

If you want to keep updated about things you have to read a forum where you aren’t allowed to post and read things from other people you didn’t vote for but they represent you regardless.

that seems democracy to me at its finest.

4

What? The Community Council represents us a “sample” of players to discuss issues…they don’t vote on anything and obviously, we didn’t vote for them.

Also, you are equally likely to find Blizzard posts in GD as you are in the Community Council forums.

1 Like
5

Allow me to clarify a little more, using recent examples.

For months now, the community has been screaming about the state of Zaralek. Overscaled rare mobs, solo-unfriendly gameplay, drop rates not increased, and the list goes on.

I may be mistaken, but I have yet to see a single blue post addressing any of those concerns. The only blue post regarding ZC that I saw was one where they made changes that effectively killed off the zone (weekly lockouts on rares, and not actually increasing the drop rates). There are posts in the CC and GD forums calling out the issues with ZC, yet…nothing. It’s just super-disappointing overall. This is one example.

1 Like
6

So your expectation is for Blizzard to respond to every complaint? That could take a while…and what if their response is “We are happy with the way it is.” Would that really make it any better?

1 Like
7

Hey, remember when we all wrote letters to Atari to fix the balance issues in Pong?

8

That is not what I said at all. Addressing a hot-button issue doesn’t require responding to every single person. They can at least address the topic as a whole though.

Yes. At least we would know we’re not being ignored.

9

i think there are a couple things working against this happening more:

  1. way too many people here consider “i didn’t get the answer i wanted” and “i didn’t get an answer” to be the exact same statement.
  2. way too many people here put their own interpretation on any offhand comment any blue makes and then trot it out years later as proof of BIG EVIL LIES AND CONSPIRACY. see the “bring the player, not the class” comment from more than a decade ago that people still think is the world’s greatest “gotcha”
1 Like
10

Blue posts can derail a thread faster than you can say Jack Robinson.

Suddenly, everyone wants to interject their main grievance. This is why it makes more sense on the council.

I’ve just resigned to the idea that communication is only a rare privilege and not a guarantee. Silence might be agreement or not. They love to play observer

:ocean: :dragon: :ocean: :dragon:

2 Likes
11

Everybody thinks their issue is a “hot-button issue.” What makes yours any more important than the hundreds of complaints that are posted on the forum daily?

Right now my hot-button issue is why doesn’t the Kalimdor Cup reward enough badges to buy everything on one toon? I demand immediate answers!

I wouldn’t complain if they communicated more, but I think you have unrealistic expectations.

2 Likes
12

are you sure? they addressed the love rocket drop rate and the whole thread is full of people whining that it’s still not good enough.

1 Like
13

It’s a little disingenious to say expecting a response to the state of ZC, which has garnered many, many complaints (including CC threads) is an “unrealistic expectation.” Especially from a multi-billion dollar entity. Community-wide issues should be addressed.

That wasn’t a “we’re happy with it,” that was “here’s our solution.” That’s not a valid comparison.

(On the note of the love rocket thread, if they don’t intend on doing anything else, they should have just shut the thread down and enforced their ToS where applicable).

1 Like
14

okay, so they addressed it, and it was deemed not good enough by the forums. same outcome.

2 Likes
15

But unlike other problems in the game, you actually got a blue post telling you that they intentionally changed the way ZC works.

So your “hot-button issue” has already received more communication than most identified on the forums.

But I guess one blue post wasn’t enough for you. Thus…

They even came back after the change and increased the drop rate from one of the rares based on a CC post…

16

You can have whatever opinion you want but this is the only way to effectively communicate with the community, at least in terms of specific topics

Otherwise they can only ever really do things like doing a poll to gague people’s interests and views on certain activities:

Sorry but with how us as a community/playerbase of Blizzard’s games interact with information provided … there’s no reason to have effective community communication of these forums
The reason Ghostcrawler quit after having lost his mind over how incredible toxic and persistently stupid folks were on these forums hasn’t changed

A few years back after Blizzard said that they wanted to communicate better and provide more clear information, they did that, and folks lost their minds at them for communicating information to them
Specifically when they release their charity pet and that legally they are required to have an upper limit to it, one that Blizzard has never reached, yet folks lost their mind

There’s plenty of other examples of this from over the years and they ain’t ever going to stop - as long as we as a community don’t stop, the silence will continue because its completely pointless to actually address people who choose ignorance over listening to what folks are actually saying

What we have is the remnants of when folks actually cared about these forums and wanted to post things that they cared about - not post memes and misuse terminology to be as edgy as possible without saying something explicitly enough that they get their rights to post on the forums suspended
Communication has gone backwards … because as a community we MAKE it go backwards - not everyone of course, and there’s plenty of nice, informative, and wholesome people on these forums; but that isn’t the norm

The only reason I suspect why the forums haven’t shut down is because the PR damage from doing that probably would cause real issues with the game, despite that these forums are completely devoid of usefulness as it is
When developers go looking for information, they go to content creators and streamers and not to these forums for a reason - think about that for a moment

Agreed, although we are disappointed in different areas (and people) I’m pretty sure

1 Like
17

Isn’t there also a discord server set up for CC and the devs? That forum isn’t the only way they communicate, it’s just the only one visible to the rest of the forum users.

Just because you don’t personally see the “Blues News” and all their incessant promotional announcement blogs about things a fraction of the playerbase might care for as valid, doesn’t mean those aren’t all methods of communication.

They do communicate more now than before, even if that communication isn’t what you want to see. The traditional “Blue post” from devs explaining things and having discussions might be a thing of the past, but most of the recent times their replies aren’t helpful anyway, or just announce some change nobody asked for – so should we even want to hear from them anymore?

18

Probably a pay off for wanting a slow company to dish out content faster.
That said, it was always going to be a thing done for sure regarding increased communication.

19

20

I think at this point I’m just going to wait for the 38th day of game time to come around on this 60-day slot so I get my RAF month, then delete this Bnet and never look back at the forums again.