While I respect your view, I am surprised by it also to be honest. Unpublished polling means Blizzard couldn’t be held to account. For example, what if Blizzard polled the community about removing Archeology or not, and found that 90% of the playerbase wanted to keep it (personally, I find Archeology dead boring).
If Blizzard then removed it anyway, the community would have a valid basis, itself based on real data, to try and get Blizzard to change their stance.
I have answered blizzard surveys in the past. More than once. I dont think they should publish results though, pretty sure a lot of drama will happen.
They don’t even need to poll, they can pull the data for everything players do
Would be nice for blizz to publish that data and tell us what wow players do
Another great wedge issue. How many players actually do want player housing? How important would those players rate it? Even Blizzard doesn’t know, because they’ve never asked!
Publishing it also risks alienating the losing side of the poll.
“Should mythic+ reward better gear than raid?”, as an example. M+ exclusive players would likely vote yes, raid players would vote no. The losing team would likely be left feeling alienated, and Blizzard is likely to lose a lot of subs. This is obviously a bunk survey, but apply it to popular duvisive opinions right now. Time exclusive rewards vs not, open world ilvl vs mythic raid ilvl.
What I’m trying to say, in simple terms, is the losing team is going to feel unheard, and depending on the topic could lead to dropped subs.
An open internet poll that anyone could vote on all their level 10 alts, even those who they knew would troll it hard because they thought it would be funny to have mythic+ players do Grimrail Depot.
Sure that’s reliable.
Not every issue could be addressed that way though, for example the player housing one. Not only can people not participate in it right now, but they can’t rate how important they consider it to be.
Check the OP again - I’m talking about in-game polling. One account, one vote.
After players leave they are no longer generating data. But people who leave have important information that can prevent future waves of wow refugees from showing up on some other MMO’s teeming shores.
I understand you are. But the time for them to care is before planning for future development begins. And there is no indication that they care.
I can just imagine an intern designing a poll as you describe.
But they know what those players did before they left
I’d rather a world quester who has never done a battleground and quit the game not vote on a poll about pvp balancing. Similarly i have no place in voting on polls about cutting edge and hall of fame prog
Runescape often polls its players before changes and they even have polls require an account have a certain achievement to answer, which is really cool imo
I think it’s no less of a risk than they’re already taking by not doing the polling in the first place.
Take the issue you mentioned, should Mythic reward better than Raid - a good example for me, since I don’t do either any more, so have no skin in this particular game. If the published poll showed a huge majority in favour of one over the other (whichever that may be), then at least those on the “losing side” as you put it, would be able to console themselves with the knowledge that they got to have a say about it, they just got outvoted.
Alternately, if the poll were more evenly divided, then Blizzard would be able to point to that poll result as reasons for leaving the status quo in place.
I think that’s perfectly valid to. The polls could, in certain instances, require certain achievements or progress milestones to answer certain questions.
They don’t know why they left. They would need to want to produce a priority list of things that were bugging the heck out of people so they ended up leaving, so they could change those things.
That’s why they would need to do real research, not a packed poll like the one where everybody’s level 10 classic alts could vote on which dungeons key pushers would have to do.
Again, if the polling is done in-game and limited to one response per account, then your concerns about everyones level 10 alt getting a vote don’t apply.
Yes, people with multiple active accounts would get multiple votes, which isn’t quite exactly democratic, but I think, more or less impossible to avoid, and infrequent enough not to ruin the data.
Real research would entail providing the phone numbers of a great many randomly selected customers to a research company, which would call to find out their playing history, how much they play, etc. After identifying demographics, they could follow up by targeting different surveys to different demographics.
I honestly don’t think I’d feel that way. I prefer m+ to raid, but when my guild is subbed I generally do both. With that said, if the majority voted that m+ was too rewarding and they significantly reduced the reward structure, I think I’d probably just be done with the game. I don’t think they can risk alienating even minority populations and losing those subs.
And like I said earlier, I’m all for the polls, I’d love for them to toss out surveys and get more feedback, I just think publishing the results is a mistake.
I believe that would be covered by the polls and surveys, which were part of the OP.
You know what, that’s an entirely crappy, and completely unjustified post on your part.
I never once said my opinion counts more than anyone else’s, indeed, I’m advocating for polling so everyone’s opinion gets heard. How you came off with your attack is just completely off the wall.
My point is the wow community is so diverse. You cant make one group happy without upsetting another its kind of a catch 22. So hearing everyone is one thing. Making the changes they want is another. Chage A makes one group happy while said change upsets another.
Maybe I mis understood your op. For that I am sorry. So if just more surveys and outlets for people to share their opinions is what you want then I fully agree
and add a HIDE PANTS option
I agree that you can’t please everyone all of the time, and polls with mixed responses, or lacking sizable majorities probably then justify Blizzard retaining the status quo.
As for the other post, apology accepted, all is forgiven. 
So plan around making everybody equally unhappy? They seem to be doing a bang-up job at that now.