Right, so now that the proverbial cat´s out of the bag, and yeah I know there´s tons of threads about it and Magdalena DK´s twitter is famous, but what concerns me is that people still believe that blizzard actually reads this. The blues that used to say that blizzard actually cared about and read posts in here are from the same time back when the private forums were suposedly first created (and i say suposedly merely for lack of hard proof). What we have had ever since is an assigned community manager that puts up with us and posts every once in a long while. The very fact that the private forum and discord exist for them to receive inputs, and the @warcraftdevs twitter exists for them to release outputs is pretty telling.
Hopefully this encourages (or discourages) this or that type of behavior that we see a lot in here and i´d rather not mention, but:
- vote with your wallets, above all
- let that sink in, and maybe do your part for a better forum. Who knows, maybe one day they wont need a private forum anymore because this went back to being a civil and useful source of input. Heck even the eastern plaguelands healed, the forums can too.
- I see a lot of people saying “good, i wouldn´t listen to myself, either”. I disagree, and think that the game would be better off if they were in fact listening to all of us.
its meh for me, i don’t mind if devs listen or not
and besides if they did, we’d have 20 flavors of elf by now
Voting with your wallet only works if you tell them why you are leaving. Even then, it only works if one has enough players willing to walk with them.
And if you do unsub, you should do so with the knowledge that they may not care and you may just have to find another hobby for quite a while. That’s a hard one for many people I’m sure. When I unsub I have no expectations of Blizzard changing anything though. I just feel better about putting my money towards things I will enjoy more.
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We have had now 7 (that I know of) threads about this.
We did not need another.
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Blizzard has no obligation to listen to you. The customer is not always right – and they’re rarely right in matters as complicated and intricate as game design.
The likelihood is that a lot of information said both here and on other forums makes their way up to the developers at some point. But the reality is also pretty simple: Most of the feedback is useless.
There were always these sorts of private forums, by the way – the difference is just that, supposedly, Blizzard’s hosting it now instead of Elitist Jerks.
The problem is there’s no unified “us.” You have a dozen different positions on every issue. So if Blizzard is obligated to listen to ‘us,’ which ones do they choose?
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Well, theoretically, they still kind of are given it is Ion. 
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Ion, Hamlet, and a few others!
I don’t post here for Blizzard, I post for the friends I’ve made.
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Wow, I haven’t heard Hamlet in years… does he even still play?
Why are you using an acute as an apostrophe ?
And even after all these threads, I still remain convinced Magdelana is an entitled brat who cried and took his ball home because he didn’t get his way.
They’re a systems designer, and they’re actually the one who stirred up this whole controversy!
See these tweets:
https://twitter.com/HamletEJ/status/1316884212754968576?s=20
The responses they gave didn’t really seem particularly inflammatory to me, just kind of honest.
It’s true that there is a culture of talent conformity and it’s true that it’s hard to fight. I think their “solution” is really weak (just kind of giving up on unused talents) but I didn’t think their responses were rude.
Remember, this was not a customer service forum, but a friends and family forum where game design watercooler discussion takes place. I talk very differently to my coworkers than I do with the public. That doesn’t mean I don’t care, it just means that in medias res conversation at work is very different from what we ultimately land on. Frankly the posts in the screenshots seem sort of tame to me. All they said was “if we buff it, no one will use it unless it’s the best and at least right now the game works and is stable.” I don’t agree, but I see where they’re coming from.
I think you guys need to chill out.
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Yeah, that’s one of the things I can’t wrap my head around: The supposedly-rude blue posts were… fine?
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Oh wow, I missed that he even worked for Blizz. I must be under a rock. Makes sense as to why the last thing public I heard from him was about using spirit food/flasks instead of int ones being a bad idea and that was back in MoP.
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Yep, pretty much, Mag came off as entitled, the devs came off as pretty chill people who gave him the chance to express himself, and he threw a tantrum and game quit at the first sign they didn’t just bow to his will.
And he comes out with all this 3 years later, in an attempt to throw mud at the devs of a game he supposedly “doesn’t play”. Guy has issues.
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I’d say they still do care about the forums. It’s input like easier accessibility of essences and class input that were taken into account.
While they have done those ideas, there are a ton more bad ideas or just things people are putting out because they think it’s cool or just like something as a concept.
When a thread does gain momentum and stays that way for a long time they do usually have a blue post addressing it (e.g pulltheripcord).
We aren’t the customers anyway, we are the consumers. The customers are the ActiBlizz stockholders.
For the record: Having private forums does not preclude them also reading this one as well. I advise you to look up what a “focus group” is.
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My typical response to these sorts of comments is that people on these forums are way too narrowly focused on Blizzard, or Activison, or EA as some sort of aberration doing things wrong when they are, in fact, functioning like virtually every other corporation.
Make of that fact what you will, but I don’t find it particularly persuasive that Blizzard is beholden to Shareholders – it always was!