The most inaccurate thing said at times, and the most hurtful, is that the developers don’t care. The entire team cares passionately and are deeply rewarded by the joy of their players, and want to make everyone happy. If they’re unable to act on feedback, it’s often because they’re balancing the concerns and requests of a very diverse player base that has different goals, different motivations, and often directly conflicting desires. Doing the thing that person A requests could make the game worse for person B and vice versa because they play the game in different ways and want to experience the game in different ways. Mistakes happen, but they come from a place of positive and earnest good intent.
I find this insulting and hilarious to read. Why? Let’s look at this from this point of view:
The recent Drak’thyr mount drop drama and the fast hotfix with the increased drop rate only happened because you, the developers, oversaw the issue nobody could have seen coming with the guaranteed mount drops. You never intended to give the player base the higher drop rate chance until you say so, which is the problem with everything you do. For what reason was this held back? Just for another day, when some issues come up and you can drop a “Blizz listens”?
Same can be applied to the often requested white transmog unlock. You keep this behind the wraps for another stupid x.2.5 patch, so you don’t need to actually work on requests what people asking for. Yes, it’s no big secret at this point anymore. One feature per expansion. First it were more options (BfA), then it was separate shoulders (SL) and now it will be white transmog within Dragonflight. How about you guys will simply open up everything to the player base instead insulting our intelligence with “Blizzard does not care”?
The discouraged community about body mass scaling. We know that this is just a a little knob you can change on the fly and release a patch within a few hours of, because people have demonstrated this in the past in fan projects and how the armor transmog automatically fits to the models. How long are you going to hold back Forest Trolls-like body masses and thin Kul Tiran? For another lawsuit, when you need a quick win?
Speaking of the recent changes to the few mounts: Why can’t you implement a FF14-like drop chance for raids and items? Why do people need to grind the very same dungeon or raid endlessly without having ever increased chances? Don’t you want for the players to grind every part of the game, wouldn’t this not be nicer for everyone, instead just one thing?
FOMO-items, and the lack of acquire lore-based stuff because “prestige”. Don’t you guys like more money for development? Why can’t past items not only be available on the store or acquirable in the game through quests? You guys are sitting on +100 unreleased mount variations and colors and you haven’t done a great job in either updating older mounts (PVP mount design not available without the flag for regular race mounts), making stuff generally available or keeping up with the times. Why do players need to fight for every little inch when other MMOs do this kind of stuff better?
What about heritage armors and recolors? What about heritage weapons? What about subrace titles? Glyphes? And so on? The list could go on and on. We have seen with the recent Feldrake discussion that only a minority of players feel the need to gatekeep stuff - and after four days, they simply stopped discussion these issue, while the request for making Mage Tower stuff is still going on, which should be a telltale-sign on what people truly want and where bad game design choices have been made. The player base leaves and starts to play the game, you cannot simply gatekeep stuff for the older players, otherwise you will risk losing new blood for just being too late aka the “it’s your fault being born too late”-fallacy argument. This has to stop.
I’m sure the community would appreciate you developers more if you would actually play the game as it supposed to be: Fun, accessible, less restrictive, not an all-in game which allows taking breaks and of course, include everyone without gatekeeping requests for possible issues on the rise (lawsuits, developer inGame mistakes, only releasing “we listen”-stuff at predictable patches).
Blizz claims it listens but has to balance a bunch of concerns. You claim they don’t and your evidence is a bunch of niche issues which only a subset of the community cares about, or are relatively minor issues. Most people are not endlessly griding dungeons, or caring about grey transmogs, or any of this stuff. I’m sure lots of people would like some or all of this stuff if they had it, but they are much more concerned that their spec is in a really bad spot (Paladins) or that the dungeons and raids are fun to play. There is a simply massive list things that Blizz can do to improve the game, but they can only do so many things at the same time, and many of them take precedence just by nature (like releasing the upcoming expansion with all the features they promised). I think that there are some community issues with Blizzard, especially around how they communicate what they are focusing and prioritizing on, but this rant is just entirely missing the point of that interview.
Heres another one: transmogs. Why are they actively blocking things like Vile Fumigators Mask from being transmogged? Fun police, thats why.
Why are they locking teir 3 behind the BMAH? They could easily put old Naxx back and let people farm for the sets. Its fun and available for everyone. But they dont, why? Fun police, thats why.
Do they care? Sure. I get what Ion is saying and he’s said it before. But it’s kind of realizing someone has good intentions but misplaced. They simply do not understand or are disconnected from the actual issue… not reading the room… and ultimately the last bit is that developer ego which from what I’ve seen, is a real thing. ''You don’t know what is good for the game, I do! " ← NOT an actual quote.
Honey, I done blew Sour Patch Kids Extreme out of the water ages ago, with my bitterness and anger about this. And Imma keep doing it, just as I have been.
Not doing what you want them to do, doesn’t mean they don’t care.
Listening and agreeing with aren’t the same thing.
They don’t do half of what you’ve suggested, because most of them are terrible ideas for WoW. FFXIV and WoW, while they may both be MMORPGs, are two very different types of games with two very different goals.
We have developers posting on alts. You can easily spot them when they get offended, especially when it’s a random LV10 character who has only 1-2 posts. And while we cannot confirm anything, some people truly hang themselves up on the smallest things, which only a designer would care for. Absolutely not sus.
Everyone said covenants were a bad idea if you couldn’t insta switch on a dime. This was on REVEAL date. Then they released it anyway. They don’t listen.
Don’t get me started on mog restrictions. This is my number one gripe in the game. Is it that gamebreaking if we’re allowed to mog holiday items all year?
I think it’s important to separate not caring from not listening. They care, just not about what we as players do. Thus they don’t care one wit about our experience per se and don’t bother listening. But they do care about the game.
That said if they want us to stop saying they don’t care… they could start caring about our experience. Call me cynical but that isn’t happening in this lifetime.
Obviously not all ‘developers’ are equal. Generally when people talk about developers they are talking about the top-tier ‘decision makers’ the ones who decide what is allowed and isn’t allowed. Who decide what’s going to be allowed to be farmed from old raids and what’s going to be put into a BMAH where Blizzard can potentially make $ off someone spending millions of gold on it.
I think there are plenty of people who care about the game. Who care and hope the players actually enjoy the quest they developed, or the look of a item they designed.
But it’s a business and at the top of the food chain, the ones making the decisions it’s not the ‘enjoyment’ of the players that is paramount. It’s about $ and retainment and quotas and sometimes frustrating players intentionally is good for the business model.
This guy has tanked wow over three xpacs. Now we trust him with a fourth? His rng and Campaign and parasitic systems don’t work yet here we are going again Into DF. Why is he still in charge ?
" ← NOT an actual quote.
