Go ahead and attack my words but to think blizzard can’t change is even more naive. At least I have optimism for them to have capability to change and were already seeing some serious 180s over a lot of issues they already reverse course on majority of legion/BFA/Shadowlands type of systems and grinds and among other looked down upon type of stuff. And dragonflight showed no signs of these type of systems and or any sort of it from the early to late stage of alpha and to the early part of beta.
Listen man, I can see at a surface level that more than a few major points of contention have been omitted/included with Dragonflight, like the inclusion of talent trees and the exclusion of borrowed power. So yes, there are many community-requested things that are being done.
But just because they are doing the bare minimum does not mean that we need to let bygones be bygones and forgive and forget. You seem to not understand that this is not just a single mishap. They have, for roughly 6-7 years now, opted to not listen to player feedback during alphas and betas and ignore the warning signs about their game design.
Yes, we don’t have borrowed power anymore. But how long did it take for them to finally remove this even though it’s been a controversial mechanic since before BfA’s release?
We have talent trees back, but talent trees have been requested since their removal in MoP. Why now?
It’s simple: Because Blizzard saw the writing on the wall with their declining sub numbers and broke the “In case of emergency, break glass” container. This was not them listening. This was them scurrying to salvage whatever good will they had left with the playerbase, and you have fallen for it in nearly every way.
Them saying “we’re listening” means absolutely nothing. What is more important is whether or not they continue to show that. If in three years from now, Blizzard is still listening to player feedback, then yeah, I think you may have a point.
Until then, Blizzard should be lucky they even have our attention.
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So it actually starts around the time of Cata going into MoP. At first, they insisted they already were listening to player feedback:
https://twitter.com/ghostcrawler/status/280032566612987905?lang=bg - Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street, then lead systems designer of WoW, stating that “most of our changes are from feedback”. This was in 2012.
https://www.bluetracker.gg/wow/topic/us-en/14927213420-forums-are-useless-blizzard-doesnt-listen/ - There’s Bashiok saying something similar in 2014.
https://www.bluetracker.gg/wow/topic/gb-en/17612252760-purpose-of-feedback-questions/ - Here’s a post from Aerythlea though they’re quoting Brian Holinka who is a lead combat designer(looking up forum posts from older versions is messy).
This was in 2016 a lead designer telling people on the forums that Blizzard will do better about communication.
This has also been a common comment. The whole “We’ll discuss with community how we can better manage that experience for you.”(this is from the above post by Holinka) and talking about how they can do better and they’ll discuss how to do that.
Now part way through Shadowlands we see Ion talking about “We can always do better at listening to feedback. We can also do better at communicating that we’ve heard feedback” and it sounds a whole lot like what Holinka said half a decade ago.
It doesn’t help that Ion himself admitted they heard the feedback and just ignored it:
“The community said, hey, we think that conduit energy is going to be this frustrating system and it’s not going to have the effects that you hope it has. Our intent was similar to classic WoW respec costs, that it would be a friction that made you take these choices more seriously, but not ultimately lock you in permanently. In practice it ended up just being something that players chafed against. We heard that from them and should have changed our minds there sooner.”
Which the Ion quotes are from this interview: https://venturebeat.com/games/world-of-warcraft-director-ion-hazzikostas-talks-the-games-future-and-current-soul-searching/
I doubt most people think Blizzard can’t change.
Most people just aren’t gonna start rejoicing because Blizzard has begun to look like they’ve made an effort. People want to see something more concrete than that.
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So you’re trying to say is don’t listen and continue doing the same thing. And I didn’t say anything about forgiveness and I am actually hoping they finally learned their lesson and not try to be offensive towards the community as a whole. And listen more or atleast be neutral on every decision and make a compromise decision but most importantly learning the right lessons and not the wrong lessons from the past.
If you struggle with reading, then yes, this is exactly what I said.
If you don’t, then you’re being deliberately obtuse.
Part of the process in trusting someone again is to forgive them. If you’re not expecting us to forgive them, then how in the world can you expect us to trust them?
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How concrete are we talking about what else do your type of people want from them? I mean earning trust is a slow process yes I know that but still do give credit where its due.
Being all negative and stuff won’t improve the game.
If trust is damaged or worse, destroyed, it takes TIME and ACTION to rebuild it. What I hear of Dragon Flight has convinced me to give them a chance to earn my trust back. Just a chance. During Alpha and Beta testing, many things can change. I do worry they will change dragon gliding last minute into something no one likes. Maybe they will, maybe they won’t, but I can’t see the future. I will wait and see what they release with the expansion. There is nothing wrong with being cautious.
Blizzard isn’t a child. They are a multi-billion dollar corporation. I’m not going to give them a pat on the back for doing things that we’ve asked them for years to do.
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How old are you? Serious question… I mean you don’t have to answer, but I’d like a point of reference. I mean when I read your posting and logic you seem ‘rather young’.
Just to be clear I also hope that they have too, and that we start getting better expansions.
I hope every expansion is the best work they’ve ever done. I do not actively want to see Blizzard fail. I don’t take pleasure in Shadowlands being a bad expansion, or saying that it’s understandable people are cautious about Dragonflight.
There are even things I like about what I’m seeing with Dragonflight, so I’m not even gonna say that my expectation is that it’ll be all bad.
I’m just not gonna start shouting from the rooftops that Blizzard has changed yet.
The problem is that we’re still in the part of the cycle where we get handed a few things that make it look like they’re listening.
In BfA the azerite system was listening to player feedback about not liking the legendary and AP system in Legion and fixing the problems. In Shadowlands, conduits were listening to player feedback about choices not mattering.
Which we know how that turned out. They then ignored the feedback about the issues surrounding their solution, and had to scramble to band-aid it half way through the expansion.
That’s why I originally said we need more than like… half an expansion of this.
You write this because you do not think that we are currently seeing a repeated pattern that lead to the fiasco of Shadowlands following the fiasco of BFA.
People see the patterns, people recognize the patters, and people then realise that nothing of value was learned following previous fiascos, and that is the problem. If the devs refuse to learn from past mistakes, then there really is no hope.
Alpha looks promising, well, let me tell you one thing… so did the Shadowlands alpha… so did the BFA alpha. Only after launch did we realise, just how much feedback was actually ignored in both. And this is likely going to be a repeat of past scenarios.
Popular features are destroyed with the excuse: “But they did not have access to our full vision of the content at the time of the alpha” to which people should respond: “And so what? Your vision is clearly dumb and not fun, learn not to be so stuck up and look into what players actually find to be fun, develope around that instead.”
It is true… no amount of words will convince anyone - actions will though. And from what I understand, the current actions of blizzard is repeating Shadowlands.
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Reading the OP was a wild ride. Going from the title and then you hit the middle of the post and you realize their word vomit is just a “quit if you don’t like it thread” without realizing that is exactly what millions upon millions of players already did.
People lost trust in Blizzard for good reason, they have yet to be consistent in showing they listened and are making efforts to rebuild trust.
Even one of the top Microsoft guys shares this opinion, although in much more professional terms.
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I didn’t mean to say you should tell us personally, I was just trying to point out that people who own a small business are going to know their customers personally while the stock holders of Exxon , i.e. the owners, are not going to know everyone who fills up at an Exxon gas station.
As for Bill Gates, he doesn’t run Microsoft any more. Also his foundation is not giving away Microsoft stock holder money, he is giving away his own money.
I had to look that up. I knew that he stepped down but I thought that he still had a pretty large percentage of shares in the company. I know that he was using his own money to fund his foundation and that is why I used him as an example of a business owner that wasn’t trying to rob people. One might argue the quality of his products but not the quality of his character. I agree that there may be some dissociation in empathy when you design boards or councils or groups to act as the executive body but I still don’t believe that even large corporations are any more villainous than your average person. People do put themselves first, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t care about others.
They created and introduced a fun new mechanic for their new race and after everyone got excited for it Blizz ruined it in Beta. What’s to trust again?
This is an important posting to remember.
Ion Hazzikostas deliberately went against all of the communities’ request to squeeze out game time at the cost of player happiness and game quality. Compared to other MMOs, like FF14, WoW doesn’t look as much fun as we all want it to be, because they have more opportunities to develop their own endgame.
The reason for WoW’s stagnation is always to developed a fresh take on something which was never asked for. Look at the world quest finder from Legion. It was perfect but was intentionally ruined so you waste more time alone on idiotic quests and it hit rock bottom with Shadowlands where several quest steps are hidden from the player, so you get tricked in doing something you don’t want to do.
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I agree with you there. Corporations are not villainous. It’s not against the law to make a buck legally.
One thing to consider though. Ever listen to programs like we see on CNBC which are aimed toward stock holders? Ever hear anyone come on the show and remind people that when they buy stock they become owners of the corporation and have a responsibility toward their customers?
Or is the advice always aimed at how to buy a promising stock, see the stock go up and then sell to “take profits”?
Most stock holders of major corporations are hardily even aware that they own the company and almost never care what kind of corporate citizen their company might be.
owning a small business and being a cog in a large corporation are two completely different things, I know as i’ve done both things. owning a small business means looking your customers in the eye every day. Being a cog in a large corporation means your job is in jeopardy if you dont please investors who only see numbers on spreadsheets.
decisions in corporations are made based on formulas and the culture of the company, the general happiness of customers is rarely every even part of the equation unless numbers drop. and by numbers i mean profit.
The population of wow has seen a steady decline for a long time now, if they actually cared about the customer then design decisions would change, but they havent, theyve even doubled down saying they were pleased with their results time and time again. thats because despite the declining populations they make record profits because of their monetization driven decisions.
So once again stop defending a corporation that doesnt care about you.
I swear some of the people on this forum look like that sad dude who spends all his money at hooters every week because he thinks the waitress really wants to date him.
Corporations have to consider what the customers want or the customers will go elsewhere. If that happens revenue will decline and they will be forced to cut costs to keep those numbers on the spread sheet attractive to investors.
To an extent that can work but if you have a large complex set of products and/or services you can only cut so much before quality starts falling off and customers go elsewhere.
The best example of this in recent history would be American car companies. Take GM for an example. In the 1950s every guy wanted a 1957 Chevy but new management came along, cut costs to the bone to increase profits and quality went into a steady decline. Eventually GM went bankrupt.
On the other hand, some times it’s something else that causes the decline. For example, early in the 20th century there were Ice & Coal companies that would deliver door to door. It’s not at all clear they went out of business because of poor quality.