So word has gotten out that Blizzard has been using a secret forum, and other lines of communication, for selective feedback from members of the community they feel will offer the most valuable feedback. Whether or not this was truly a secret is also a matter of discussion, but nevertheless the subject has now taken the spotlight.
Personally, I don’t think this is awful. I think the vast majority of players (including myself) do not have the expertise required to make large scale game design decisions. Hardcore players that have all the cooldowns and rotations memorized, the type of person with an encyclopedic knowledge of the game, would definitely offer better feedback for the developers than the mom world quester. This does not mean to ignore Mom the World Quester because she plays the game too. The game is for everyone, and content for the lesser skilled players is healthy for the game overall. In terms of the competitive aspect of WoW, Mythic content and high rating PvP, the feedback benefits greatly from being selective within reason.
This topic doesn’t seem to have an overbearing side. Usually with issues, the player seem to gang up all onto one side (usually against the devs unfortunately). I see voices from all kinds of perspectives, and I think we need to have some dialogue about it. But the root of the problem seems to stem form the shakiness of communication we get from Blizzard. While I am concerned about communication problems with and from Blizzard, I’m honestly glad to see that the developers contacted individual players directly even if it was in private.
These forums are useless and they should just close them because we’re abunch of hivemind, terrible feedback giving, screeching, idiotic, theorycrafting mass of plebs. We dont know anything about the game we want to play and we should shut up because the Devs are ascended god-like human beings, not even human actually… extra terrestrial if you will.
And we suk.
We should bow to our Blizzard overlords and should they ever engage with the community on these forums we should etch it into the hallmarks of history for they have graced us with their graceful presence and otherworldly knowledge.
In World of Warplanes I played with a clan that pretty much worked at dominating the game to the point where they said they want to scare everyone away. This same clan was the “secret forum” group as well that the devs listened to. All the advice given was directed at soul advantage to the clans ability to dominate. What’s even worse is most the people in the clan were in the region very close to the only US server for the game. 15 pings vs 100 on other players in a shooter game.
Long story short, is that was my experience with being on the inside community in a game. All feed back to devs was to get what the clan wanted to dominate more as if a 15 ping wasn’t enough… I was a west coast 100 ping.
Its elitism, pure and simple, and it will always exist because elitist trolls will ruin any attempts at open platforms because it is so easy to do. generally in a system with no fear involved, those who are most manipulative and exploitative will gain the advantage.
there are plenty of dark sides to human nature and anyone who lives long enough learns this. the unfortunate truth is that the worst of us thrive in environments which generate no fear. this is why we see in relatively “free” hubs of human creativity and success, such as hollywood, an eventual descent into narcissism, excess, and stupefying corruption while also a near complete loss of talent. sycophants infiltrate, and then take over. what makes this more complicated is also that many bad people do not know just how bad they are.
so why do i say elitism and how does it relate to all this? because the “royalty” mentality or thinking you are better than others, is one of the early steps down the path to indulging in one’s darker impulses.
no, we can’t have a free and open forum to discuss ideas among us all, because elitists will come in and troll it to death, poison the well, and make it impossible for decent folks to have a decent conversation. thus the only “reasonable” alternative is to have a more restricted, elitist forum for discussion, but this is and always will be a path toward corruption, disconnection from reality, and the loss of original greatness.
Source says, from someone who claimed to be in the secret feedback forum, that the forums began in MoP with the release of Throne of Thunder (5.2). The secret forums featured many WoW content creators, as well as passionate theorycrafters. Thought I’d inject this into the discussion. The people in the forums were hand selected and invited. I assume they were instructed to keep quiet about the forums, hence we are only now finding out about it. The roster for who has access to these forums has changed over the years, some being removed and some new people being added.
I’m willing to bet that most of the people on those forums don’t have as much power as they think they do. Blizzard can filter through feedback, and it doesn’t take much to spot someone abrasive and exclusionary.
I don’t like it only because it feels too much like selectively listening. For example, if they only invite “content creators” and people in high end guilds, they are only seeing a very limited opinion and, more often than not, an even more hivemind opinion than you would find polling the masses. So the issue with this in general is that you’re only getting half the story, but it’s being presented as if it’s the truth. It skews how the game is designed.
Now granted you DO need to filter feedback, since it’s all over the place. But if they are only soliciting feedback from specific groups who play specific ways (e.g. mythic raiding, high M+, arenas) they are only seeing the viewpoint of people who don’t care about anything other than those things.
