Long Boi, while important, is just the most recent case of Blizzard refusing to talk to the player base involving decision making.
Before I get into this, I’ll make an obvious disclaimer. I don’t speak for anyone else other than me. And I don’t contest this is Blizzard’s game. They can do everything and anything they want with it. It’s up to us what we do in response.
That said, I’m gonna discuss Long Boi quick, but know that isn’t the focus of this thread. It’s to establish context. The problem with Long Boi, in my opinion, is the way the announcement (which it wasn’t one) was handled. Yes, you can argue the removal of Long Boi makes no sense due to the previous gold sinks not being removed either, and I’m in total agreement, but that’s not the biggest issue.
Once again, we weren’t told something. We did not receive information directly from Blizzard first. That’s important. A feat of strength got datamined, some random forum goer (not diminishing him, just making a point) made a thread unsure of what it meant but thought he’d make it just in case, and then a Blue casually came in and confirmed it was gonna happen and then zero information was given beyond that. That feels terrible.
This has happened more than once. Legion world scaling? Same situation. Some random person felt like things were taking longer to kill, couldn’t figure out why, randomly tested things and found out by removing his gear that mob HP was going down and the world was suddenly scaling to him. The player base exploded because of this “undocumented change”.
The GCD change? Same deal. Not a word. Random beta tester goes on the beta to test some shenanigans and finds out Avenging Wrath is on the GCD. That guy filed a bug report originally, if I remember correctly, because nothing was said again and then we get confirmation this is happening with another philosophy discussion from Watcher about why it’s happening.
Notice a trend? We figure stuff out the hard way, then we’re told something, and then it gets abandoned again until the thing actually happens! Order of operations means something! We should be told this is happening, so we can digest, and understand, and then make an educated opinion.
Take the GCD example. If a forum thread was made involving the GCD ahead of time, where we were told what the plan was, and given the philosophical speech involving why from Watcher ahead of time? I can’t speak for other people, but I can say that I personally would go: “Well. Okay, I get it. I dunno if I’ll agree with it, but at least I’m told what the plan is, so I’m willing to give it an honest shot.”
PvP this expansion? Abandoned. Class balance outside of the MDI and Mythic Raiding? Abandoned. No words. No nothing. Left to sit here and wait with our thumbs twiddling. Major changes? Nothing said till we find out via datamining, and hope for confirmation.
Talk to your player base, please. The outrage and stuff? These shenanigans? While they’ll never fully go away, you can help mitigate them by actually talking to us.