WoW has some of the worst developer communication I’ve ever seen from an MMO. You have games with a much smaller budget, like Warframe, for a prime example, that hold multiple weekly streams and have a strong presence throughout the game. Even MMO’s that are eastern and made for the eastern audience, like DFO and XIV, attempt to communicate and have somewhat of a dev presence with their western audience.
Remember the WoW Q&A’s held every few months, where the lead game developer answered every question like a lawyer in court? We don’t even have that anymore. No Activision CS reps, developers, or community managers post in the forums anymore. In the past, the case was the exact opposite. I befriended a GM that I met through WoW years ago, who I still talk to today because they were allowed to interact with and speak with players back then. It seems that the GM role doesn’t even exist anymore, and they instead do everything through tickets.
Why is this an issue? I quit the game very early on in BfA and skipped most of the expansion because of the string of dumb choices Activision made and their lack of responsibility to adequately explain themselves to the playerbase. Multiple players are complaining both in-game and on the forums about recent decisions made, such as the lack of world content, going back on what they said about race customization options, and the game time changes. It’s reminding me a lot on how BfA was handled early on and the mass exodus the game saw back then.
I understand that Activision is a publicly-traded company looking to maximize its profits, but do they not know that this takes away their profits through lost subs if anything? WoW has actual competition on the market now, with MMORPG’s like XIV only gaining popularity with each expansion, while the opposite feels true for WoW. Activision should behave accordingly. Each time a mass exodus happens, many players never return.
They quit back in Legion, because it was around that time when they changed how the GM role largely works. This would never be allowed today, I think the last time they could get away with this was MoP…
I don’t want the devs to waste time on this. I want them to spend their time on making the game better.
Besides, people who say “more communication” don’t want more communication, they want to hear WHAT THEY WANT TO HEAR from the developers. And then when they don’t, they go back on the warpath.
If the devs spend time explaining to you why the game is the way it is, if you don’t like the game the way it is, is that really going to make you feel better? Is it going to make you play more? No.
Because the community especially the community on the forums has the most petty people imaginable. If you like the game and post positive threads about it, you are flagged for trolling.
Blizzard has never had really good communication. They host Blizzcon once a year and that is really it for effort in communication. They tried “Q&A Sessions” but they never talked about real issues in the game. They have Twitter but are afraid to post on their own forums. They just aren’t interested in truly communicating with the customers or getting feedback.
You’ll notice this happens in most industries. Companies engage when their customer base is smaller. It’s customer relations - make the customer feel important and they will keep paying and maybe recruit some friends. Once they get big enough or have convinced enough people they “care”? This type of interaction gradually dies off.
Yep I agree 100% and it’s honestly just really saddening to see. WoW really is one of the best MMORPGs of all time but they’re letting that get to their heads. They will drive this amazing game into the ground and lose the community if they keep this crap up.
Listen to your players, communicate with your players, and don’t fix/change things that don’t bloody need to be changed it ain’t hard Blizz.
I actually quite like what FF14 does. We get a Producer’s Letter for every big patch that includes the trailer and the devs talking about the patch contents. It’s in Japanese (though the trailer is dubbed in multiple languages), but the slides they put up have English translations, so you can still understand what’s coming.
For the live stream where they announced the new expansion, they actually had an on site translator. Yoshi-P would speak in Japanese, and then we would be told what he said.
Blizzard seems to do the bare minimum. I don’t know if this is because they do not care, or if there is just so much red tape around the company that it’s hard for anyone to be productive or get a statement out.
