Why is it a smaller development team can take the time to write up a discussion about things they are Doing see https: //secure. runescape. com/m=news/a-message-to-our-community?oldschool=1 and yet Blizzard who keeps promising communication can’t communicate if their life depended on it. its insulting and borderline embarrassing. people want communication and yet there is none.
Blizzard communication is to the point where they are filtering out questions they know they can’t answer and only ones they want to answer, the Q&A was absolutely laughable, the twitter @warcraftdevs is a joke (why tweet them if they take 2 days to do anything and just ban people) but theyll answer your BURNING TRANSMOG QUESTIONS.
enough is enough please stop preaching about communicating better and actually do it. you’re being outstaged by a smaller team for crying out loud.
I think they’re on the double edge sword of being attacked (not saying this isn’t unfair) for silence, or taking a stance on issues and than being criticized greatly for why they took that stance, so they just pick easy softball questions. I’d rather them try to engage with the community and try to compromise rather than have their own Godly vision, but oh well.
Classic is one thing, its a niche audience and its not they have a reputation of preaching “we will do better at communicating” and never do. and classic has a specific group of people they need to appease/communicate with that are itching to comeback/help make it the experience they want/remember
Its not the lack of communication from them IMHO. Its the lack of acceptance and implementation of good player feedback.
When you say, Hey this is the way we are going to do this and the players say no we dont like it and the resulting communication is… Tough, we dont want to implement any of your advice and are digging our heals in.
WHats the player supposed to do when his/her desires are ignored?? We unsub in droves like we have been. Blizz still refuses to admit they were wrong and have doubled down with their refusal to implement the wanted changes.
People have said they hate RNG on top of RNG and what happens? Blizz says we will tweak it. Players say NO we want it removed as much as possible and replaced with a system where we can get what we need not what an algarythim says we can have.
People say they want pvp vendors back and the old gearing system back. BLizz says NOPE not ever gonna happen. Players stop doing pvp. Whos fault is that?
Players wanted less pruning and no azerite grinds. What happened? More pruning and more grinds for passive traits that arent worth the effort to get them. Players ignored again and they leave.
Players wanted flying without a huge grind. WHat happens? We get 2 pathfinders spaced out. WHat happens? Players leave because the grind isnt worth the gift of flying.
Players wanted new races without a rep grind. What happens? Exalted rep grinds are kept in game and players leave. The new races arent worth the effort to get them.
The list of issues is a long one and has been posted here a 1000 times. Bottom line is these developers havent listened to anything the players want and then they get upset when the players bail out of the game.
Another Hunter and I had to expose them ignoring an over-reported bug that went from Legion’s Alpha to 7.0 going live to get feedback for that Class. That should have never needed to happen, but I do not have faith in their ability to communicate unless you have a large enough following or play a Class that they play.
Okay Zoomkinz. Let’s say you are lead on the forums communications team. And let’s say you have 5 people to help you. You are given a specific set of rules for engagement by your boss. No spoilers, be nice, maintain a good image for the company. Now that’s a huge over simplistic version, I know.
Now go out there in that very toxic community with thousands of posts daily where they will rip you a new one just for typing in blue and make us proud.
Personally I don’t think they could pay me enough to do that job. How about you?
Best advice I can give would be to find topics that you like that seem popular and keep them alive. Don’t ever give up on them even if it takes years. Example could be pathfinder. Blizzard seems to be stuck on stupid with that subject, but that has never stopped people from trying. Maybe, just maybe one day we will have flying at the start of an expansion with no grind.
Because smaller developers haven’t yet had the chance to see their community tear apart every word their representatives say or type. The way that we all take their quotes out of context, apply them to subjects for which they were never intended, and otherwise abuse every tiny little thing they say make me think that if I were in their position… I would never speak at all. It’s just not worth it.
I do, he’s good but most of his content is about his personal twitch channel and popculture. There has been a few times where he’s said something that angers everyone, but it’s nothing to fire him over. The worst I’ve seen was a response to people trolling him. If you want to see bad interaction with a game company employee and their customers, look at how Jessica Price left GW2.
The designers should be encouraged / want to communicate more with players.
I think it speaks volumes when I see other designers from big companies/games answering questions liberally on Twitter, Reddit, etc. They’re willing to hear the feedback and have a discussion, even if some of the stuff they read is negative.
It seems that the WoW design team plugs their ears, screams “LALALA” and utterly refuses to communicate and have a discussion about their decisions. If they do, they have a CM relay their PR-printed response. It’s pathetic at this point, to be honest.
They need to improve their feedback culture internally, along with working on player trust with feedback externally.
I’m not quite ready to put him in the same category with that . . . person. But when your players are quite literally begging for some form of a communication and you say the things he does . . . I mean I’m not calling for him or anyone else to be fired, but he, along with Ion, are the face of Blizzard when it comes to WoW. When you’re in that position, you can’t make statements like he tends to do. He just comes off as astoundingly aloof at times.
The largest problem that they have is that they openly ignore several of the Class forums and at least one Class. Look at my post a couple above the one I’m quoting. For what happened to have happened, it meant that they ignored the Alpha Bug Forum, the Beta Bug Forum, the PTR Bug forum, and the Game’s Bug Forum on top of several other forums and even threads that they told us that they were watching.
Would be a heck of a lot easier if the designers communicated on their own volition, am I right? Like other games companies do, for instance. Designers are heavily seen on Reddit, Twitter, forums, etc.
Choking the CM’s and having them be the only ones allowed to give any kind of response is clearly not working, nor is it respectful to a community as longstanding as WoW.
I mean they don’t have to have a Q&A. Also, a smaller dev team can communicate easier because there are less people working on a given thing, so less people to try to get information from.
Most companies with large playerbases have their designers answer questions pertaining to whatever they’re working on.
An encounter designer will answer questions about dungeons, for example. Class designers about classes, etc. Even if they say “We will consider this and get back to you once we’ve had a discussion” is better than silence.
Companies legit have programs that train their employees to communicate effectively with their communities - not just the CM’s. Why can’t Blizzard do this too? Can they not afford it?
Yeah, he’s no Madam Price and I used her as an extreme because he’s that much unlike her. Who ever decided to make some forums, to use Blizzard’s own words, Peer Only, should have been fired and nobody else as that choice has done immeasurable harm to their product and their reputation. That aside, Lore personality may be rather aloof, or he is being cautious to not let something slip because he is likely to do it. Watcher should also be more willing to take on harder questions in the Q&As, especially in terms of Classes and Specializations as well as get more dialog on them. They already know that we hate RNG, AP Grinding, Content Gating, World Quests, and a lack of Flying and PvP Vendors.
A large part of the problem some has with Lore’s twitter is that he puts his employment up there but he tries to segregate his tweets from that of Blizzard’s. If he wants to be a separate from his place of employment, he shouldn’t post it up there.
I don’t see how anyone can defend Blizzard’s laughable substitutions for communication. These Q&A’s are an absolute joke. Pre-determined, cherry picked questions with generic, scripted PR answers delivered in a low energy monologue. Yeah… that’s really informative and riveting communication alright.
![:stuck_out_tongue:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/stuck_out_tongue.png?v=6" ":stuck_out_tongue:")
