Would probably help if the community put more effort into making itself reasonable to interact with. Even during WoW’s brightest days the CMs got skewered almost any time they came out, because no matter what someone is perceiving themselves as having gotten the short end of the stick. In that way, the larger state of the game is barely even relevant.
I get that gaming is a hobby that draws out the passion in people, but that’s no excuse for acting like adult children. The community can’t act all shocked that CMs lose their appetite for reaching out when their hands get bitten every time they do.
I don’t disagree about how toxic the community can be, but that would be like saying Police Officers shouldn’t go on patrol because criminals are mean to them.
I’m not asking anyone to VOLUNTEER to deal with the community, just that Community Manager is an important position for a massively multiplayer game, and someone should be PAID to do it.
He wasn’t fired. He stopped responding on the forums about the time he started showing up in Q&A videos with Ion (hence the Chosen One comment). I assume his position/role or duties shifted and we got CMs like Ornyx and Ythisens who were also more active than the 2 or 3 we have now.
I do think Lore did post in the beta section for BfA once or twice or something, but that’s the last I heard anything and they stopped doing Q&As so… /shrug.
I don’t dispute that, but it goes both ways and that doesn’t recognized nearly enough. The interactions with CMs seen frequently on the forums aren’t all that different from hell-patrons at restaurants blowing up at the waitress over every little thing and generally subjecting her to nonsense she’s probably not paid enough to deal with.
In GW2, there was a period of deafening radio silence. The only person talking was poor Gaile, and she took a lot of flack because she was the only company face the players saw.
Players try to communicate → Company silence → players get angry → more company silence because they don’t want to deal with the mob → just gets worse
I think that is what is happening now.
The only thing that breaks that chain is consistent communication, ala a Community Manager, peppered with semi-regular Dev appearances. The people feel listened to, trust is gained, and the temperature lowers.
That seems like a reasonable plan to me, but to make it sustainable I think the CMs and mods need a bit more leeway to utilize forum bans (both temp and permanent) in order to communicate that egregiously abusive behavior won’t be tolerated, and if people want to make their point they’ll need to be civil about it.
Ghostcrawler was hated by many, but not everyone. He was also respected by many, even some who hated him. The communication is missed.
Someone was asking why we never see ideas posted by dev. Of course they are brainstorming ideas about the current issues with the game. They don’t post them because a lot of people would take the ideas as promises. So they give silence. I would really like the occasional “we know x is a problem/concern, we are looking at it. Might not be addressed until the next major content patch.” Keep in mind, not all community concerns are actually problems from their point of view.
People have been complaining about the cms ‘interactions’ with the community since day 1. That’s what lead to a couple of them blowing up on the forums. Tseric is famous for his meltdown.
Keep dreaming. The man has all of the worst expacs in history under his oversight. His departure will be celebrated just like Holinka’s was. Shame the latter came back.
Everything he said was accurate and I deduced as much from this community in the few months I’ve been here. And when I say community I mean GD specifically because this place is a cesspool of puss-infested blisteringly toxic negativity towards anything WoW and Blizz.
If this forum didn’t have a skin on it or the CSS for the header and a call out to WoW/Blizz, I would think this was r/MMORPG or some other dark corner of the internet that absolutely hates WoW.
This part of what he says is 100% spot on:
Can’t help it.
Posting impassionately, they say you don’t care.
Posting nothing, they say you ignore.
Posting with passion, you incite trolls.
Posting fluff, you say nonsense.
Post with what facts you have, they whittle down with rationale.
There is no win.
There is only slow degradation.
Take note. It is the first and only time you’ll see someone in my position make that position.
You can be me when I’m gone.
Good for him that he quit and just threw the bird. This community isn’t worth the stress.