I didn’t know about all that, I just liked his analyses.
I am a bit disappointed in this whole scheme Blizzard is up to. If we thought the Forums were ignored before, well, I guess it is all but certain, now. Blizzard is making their own little subset of their chosen few so they can point to them and say they are communicating with some players… but then they will ignore the rest.
It is a bit disheartening. We all basically got a rung built above us. Or we got tossed into a trench, so that the Streamer Crowd can feel special.
Awesome.
This wasn’t directed to me, but it makes me want to comment.
If a Democrat is against the Electoral College, and finds it a horrible way to select a leader for a nation, he still has to go through it if he wants to be president.
If people want to cause change, or give their input, sometimes they have to work within a broken system to fix it.
I am not sure if I will apply. I haven’t gotten around to it, and I probably will space it.
I understand why someone would be against this new scheme, while wanting to be a part of it : all other voices will effectively be shut out.
Good luck to those who apply. May you do Blizzard’s work for them, and do it better.
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yeah i am tired how tied alliance story is with the horde. Horde needs horde only story lines alliance needs inner alliance stuff.
I am tired of the alliance be reactive.
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If the people on this “community council” are doing Blizzard’s work for them, shouldn’t they be getting paid by Blizzard?
I suppose that is between them and Blizzard.
It almost seems like a perpetual focus group that Blizzard hand picks. And sometimes focus groups get cash or gift cards. But if Players want to volunteer, that is that. Who knows? Maybe Blizz will give them goodies for participating.
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People in the community council might get honor points
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You might be right about that perpetual focus group. As long as it doesn’t become an echo chamber or fall prey to groupthink or moderator bias (which can lead to participants only sharing insights they feel will be perceived warmly by the facilitator, while avoiding sharing their true feelings for fear of ‘disappointing’ the person in charge), I think this community council/focus group could work.
There are advantages and disadvantages to focus groups. It would help their reaction-based goals on one hand. On the other hand, Just as the more active participants in a focus group can skew the results, so might the focus group itself not be representative of the wider target market.
The payment systems you’re suggesting would be fair.
You mean the ones in-game? Could work. Almost makes the community council like mini-GM’s.
I would participate just to get my voice heard after years of being part of a marginalized part of the playerbase. I don’t need perks, that is a perk for me.
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Luckily the fact that they are rotated out every year might help to keep people willing to talk truthfully.
It’s also something to note that Blizzard expects the Council forum to spark discussion everywhere else, so the Council itself seems more to be for the developers to have easier discussion rather then being the end-all-be-all for the conversation
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For most of my life I’ve done unpaid labor for many prestigious institutions. From universities, to NGOs, even divisions of the UN. Especially when it’s “diversity” or “internal improvement” type work. Getting a corporate entity to offer compensation for unpaid labor is about as difficult as learning how to phase through walls.
What usually happens in cases like Blizzard is that all the POC, Q/Ts, and some vocal Women are rounded up and “forced” to be on a committee with no additional compensation.
That committee is then tasked to analyze, name, and fix the problems the company has. With no additional compensation.
It is “forced” because if you don’t do it:
- You’re not a team player and they may fire/dismiss you
- You feel guilty for not making the space better for future people like you
- You feel you are abandoning the people who are agreeing to be sucked into it
So it’s a trap either way. And I am sure it’s already happening at Blizzard.
Here however, it appears they may be mitigating that by having some of that Unpaid Labor Burden land on the players.
So far from no additional compensation, as the employees are or will be dealing with, we are actually paying to do additional labor.
But behold the state of US labor laws and cultural labor norms.
But yes, given some employees were “compensated” for Crunch and etc with Honor Points and Play Time, perhaps the same will happen here.
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I completed the form but the more I think about it, the more I realize that Blizzard will almost certainly not allow someone like myself on this council.
I’ve been fairly critical of Blizzard’s story telling and while I could have better articulated some of those points and regret some of the other things I’ve said, the basic gist of what I was trying to say remains the same.
I want WoW to be better and Blizzard as a whole to be better and I think there are others here who are better suited to help accomplish that.
Assuming Blizzard is serious about this council thing of course.
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Blizzard has, or had, a rewards program for their employees which they called “Honor Points”, which could be used to earn various things such as in game items. There have been some controversy with the system because sometimes when employees worked overtime they’d be paid in Honor Points instead of money, and the same would happen in other similar situations.
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I don’t think I’ll apply, myself, but good luck to those who are.
If harsh critics are allowed as long as they can rein it in and be fair, then I should apply. Whether they’ll take me or not is another story, but it’s worth the effort.
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This whole attempt by Blizzard at feigning to cast an eye on their playerbase… ( this… gimmick, or scheme if you will) … it is foisted on us. What is there to do, but make the best of it? I have a lot of opinions, but the die is cast.
It stinks that Blizzard is basically acknowledging they will slice off any Player Feedback unless they belong to this… group. That is rough. But - they likey never listened, or bothered to care what we thought, anyway. So maybe it is good that they will be on the record in these “discussions”.
I don’t like the idea of Blizzard trading their Gamer currency for Labor in place of money. It is a nice bonus to add for people who want to participate in this scheme - but it shouldn’t replace actual pay for work on an industrial scale. And if Blizzard is showering their chosen with gifts and currency, that looks shady. As if they are buying off their token community representatives.
Yet - they should incentivize participation. And reward loyal customers.
I would be fine if this hand picked player opinion group received goodies for their effort. But I could see where the water gets murky.
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The problem with that is then they’d have address all the flaws in the Alliance story and even stir up some inner conflict. Its easier to just ignore the Alliance’s issues if they only come out of the woodwork as a reaction to the Horde. Why else do you think they’ve been ignoring the High King issues since Mists for example?
On hey, that describes a lot of my experience in the military.
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The Alliance victories are given outside of the game. They literally still have Tiragarde Keep.
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That too. Its one of several issues with the Alliance story. It was a big problem in Cataclysm as well, only the Horde was given any victory screentime.
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You still get the better victories.
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Doesn’t really matter to alliance players if we never get to see them and have to wait months or years for a book to tell us the alliance won something
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