Rethinking Developer Disconnect from Community

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
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At one point I thought the Classic team was trustworthy to some degree. Many of their decisions leaned towards remaking Vanilla as it was. They were on a roll, minus no 1.5 AV of course.

Then came the latter news which was shuffled out quickly in random YouTuber videos or articles, not on the official forums.

  • Cross realm bgs
  • Sharding 2.0 (renamed layering)

These two bits of information dropped essentially the same day and at the same time as the news of beta and launch date. This was clearly purposeful to tone down community outcry over these two decisions.

The bigger problem…

While cross-realm bg’s can be argued for given that they were implimented a few months prior to TBC, AV 1.5 is probably nearly impossible for them to retrieve the data or something & put in the developer time, and layering can be argued necessary to handle launch…something has stuck out like a sore thumb to me.

Ion has stated that layering “doesn’t make sense” in phase 2 of the game. Most people rally around this pretending like it is redemptive of the entire abomination. Fact is — this system stinks and has no place in Classic WoW. It is totally antithetical to Classic.

Here is what I recently realized… Ion’s reasoning for removing it in Phase 2.

It wasn’t that people would abuse the layers or it would destroy world PvP. It wasn’t because it is the opposite of what the community wants necessarily. It is because a world with multiple world bosses doesn’t make sense.

The reason should be — people hate it. The reason should be — it is part of the reason people quit retail WoW in the first place.

They don’t realize this. If they do, they disagree with the community. Layering / Sharding 2.0 is being crammed down the communities throat as a necessary evil that will eventually fade away. Will it?

I am already seeing fanboy posts saying things like “its just beta” shifting to “its 2 months from release what do you expect them to do”.

The writing is on the wall. I am beginning to get nervous about Classic now. There is a real potential for Blizzard to destroy the launch by implimenting sharding 2.0. Ironically enough, they think it is necessary to save the launch. They are THAT disconnected. The players DO NOT want this.

Who does? The players who come to check out the fuss and plan never to stay only to move on. They want sharding 2.0. They are not your player base. They are not the ones you win with this abomination of a system. The Classic base HATES layering/shardin 2.0.

8 Weeks away essentially. It’s your move Blizzard. Be silent? Say nothing? Act like it will go away? Keep your community guessing? Keep abusing the community to sub up to play beta for 2 days, get a chance into beta? Give out beta invites to streamers to gain publicity for free?

Whoever is in charge of your public relations needs to be fired. I am serious. Whoever is in charge of your developer team needs to remove layering and find another solution that doesn’t involve this horrific abomination of game design that is totally antithetical to Classic WoW.

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See ya in August~!

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Entitlement makes us blind to the truth and the craving of the ways of old, the good ol’ days of queues, downtime, and terrible gameplay due to congestion.

Don’t demand change unless you have a good solution that works at scale.

Here’s an inspirational quote for you: “Be the change you wish to see in others!”

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Make a topic saying something nice about Blizzard, just once, without saying anything negative.

I dare ya!

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Go back to your fun server.

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It blows my mind how long of a post this guy can write that could be summed up in 1 sentence:
“I don’t agree with blizzard’s design philosophies and they should change it for me.”

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This is coming from someone who is indifferent to layering one way or the other: So the people that like it…screw them, right? Their input is less important than yours?

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Are you a player who has played beta?

Have you experienced or purposely exploited layering?

It’s only in game for about 6 months and then it’s gone. I doubt classic will be ruined because of 6 months of layering.

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“Just stop being poor” said the man to the beggar. “That’s the best solution”.

Do you have a better solution than just say “find another way”.

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Developers can be passionate about something.
But in the end it’s the higher ups that make the final decisions…the “suits”.

Been there, done that.

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Listening to what the community wanted and doing it, got us LFD. Unlike modern developers, old Blizzard used to listen to what the community wanted, and did what’s right for the game.

Your explanation tells me that Ion is a better developer than I gave him credit for, and not doing something “because it doesn’t make sense” is far far better than “Because a section of players are moaning”.

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Being right for the game means either making the game more fun to play, more satisfying, or in blizzard’s case, more money in their pocket. People hate layering because it goes against why they played original wow and makes the game less satisfying to play. Trying to argue that it’s somehow the right decision is just shilling for blizzard at this point.

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No True Scotsman Alert!

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You argue for a museum yet you support layering, makes zero sense. Try to be more consistent.

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People can pretend like they are perfectly ok with 2+hr long server ques and dcs that kick you back in que and unable to leave starting zones for hours up until they actually experience it. People taking off work etc and unable to play, yea no yall would freak out.

Was already a qq storm over stress test servers, no way majority will be ok with such a situation. Layering is just a necessary evil at the start unfortunately. Only thing anyone can hope for is they will take it away asap.

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“I’m right and everyone else is just a shill” is the rhetorical equivalent of farting in your own open mouth.

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I am.

And just like a museum, on opening day, you plan to manage the far larger but one off crowd.

I have the long term viability of the game for us players in mind. You just see “not vanilla!” and rage without being able to think past your own client.

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So you are part of the #changes crowd? Makes sense.

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Sadly, when they did the 800 layoffs while dazzling investors with their most profitable year ever, they got rid of a disproportionate number of people in community facing positions, like CM’s.

So what we are seeing now is largely a function of the fact that the firing has already happened and those that are left are just overwhelming trying to do the job that all those fired employees used to do in addition to their own.

/moo :cow:

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Every project gets a budget. They have to make the game work within that budget.

And that is out of the hands of the developers.