I think it’s logical. The GD may serve it’s purpose in general sentiment, but when it comes to number-crunching, game design knowledge, or whatever toolkit people need to give proper game feedback, this isn’t the place. I’d imagine it’d be frustrating for people to put in effort to get their facts in order only to be buried under “BLIZZ IS KILLING THE GAME” posts.
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This is a very good point. It would be much easier for Blizzard to narrow down their inbox to productive discussion.
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The private forums is most exclusive club so naturally that’s where I belong, beta forums is my back up and general forums is my safety.
well i don’t think these things necessarily, or even usually, start out as nefarious. quite the opposite, they may appear to be the only reasonable alternative to a borderline useless public forum.
however any look at modern politics will demonstrate how easy it is to create huge gaps of perception between groups of people who ordinarily should be able to get along. once a “good” private forums get started most devs, i’d willing to bet, would be so grateful for solid feedback they would default to a mental state of thinking ANYTHING said on these forums is automatically higher quality.
bad ideas, like bad people, rarely jump out. they creep up. it happens slowly and rarely without consent in these sort of council-style environments. some bad idea generators can be seen as mavericks to begin with, shaking up a system that may appear to be getting too traditional or “stuck,” well anyway, that’s just one scenario i think there are countless ways an initially good system goes bad, open forums are just the easiest to destroy, because anyone can say anything at any time and there is usually not enough moderation vs the size of audience to keep it productive.
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WoW devs have been talking to high end players for a long time now.
A long time ago a dev asked for feedback from some of the top warlocks and they all collaborated to help design warlocks for MoP, which was arguably the best designed class this game ever saw, in a time when the game had very good class design all around
So i do think the selective feed back is very valuable. But at the end of the day, the wow devs have gotten too stubborn because of their egos to listen to the players, so i doubt we will ever see anything like MoP lock again
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Just the banter I need on a Monday morning. 
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l find the whole discussion silly. They’ve been doing this for a very long time, and it isn’t very secret.
I wish they’d make different design decision rather than obsess with making raiding great again, but it isn’t these forums that impacts that. They’ve already made those decisions.
I’m all for conspiracy theories but there is no secret. They don’t care or read most complaints.
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Hold on let me make a new tin foil hat
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I think this can be dismissed after having watched Preach’s interview with Ion. Blizzard respects Preach as a non-provocative content creator that has a wholesome passion for the game, as opposed to say Asmongold that commands a horde of twitch screamers. (I like Asmon tho don’t get me wrong. They’re just different.) And while the respect for Preach exists, Ion still simply disagreed with him in open dialogue.
Moreso, the problem the leaker of this secret forum revealed was that Blizzard isn’t taking the secret forum seriously anymore! So it was told that the secret forums used to foster productive discussion, but later proved ineffective as Blizzard design philosophy evolved. The developers, in the leakers words, became “more condescending”. You are well spoken btw, thank you for replying!
I agree. Also wasn’t the exposé about how Blizz has stopped listening to those forums? So I don’t think that things like these divide the community in a harmful way. There’s always going to be people who more dedicated and qualified to give specific types of feedback, and it’s nothing wrong.
Tbh a lot of things we see on the GD is based off opinion and emotions. Which can be valuable as well if Blizz knows how to track sentiment, but the average GD poster (including myself) just don’t have the mathematical or programming know-how to understand deeper aspects of class design for example.
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Or because their favorite streamer said it, which in such a case they’ve likely already heard it. 
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Neckbeards in this forum have a twisted view of what their role is in the consumer/developer relationship. They act as if their .50 cents is to hire Blizzard to craft them a game, and make suggested changes.
In fact it’s Blizzard’s game. They can have as many internal and external focus groups as they want. They develop their game. We either consume it or we do not consume it.
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This is known, they also use discord AFAIK. This isn’t exactly secret. The fact that there are forums for a select group has been known about forever. Based on what I’ve heard from those who have had access in the past they are mostly dead now and discord is used instead.
I personally think it would be fine for Blizz staff to communicate with whomever on issues with would help better/improve the game. Sadly they would probably communicate on these forums if it weren’t for the childish trolls whom twist posted issues into jokes or worse negative rants. Yes sometimes these are enjoyable to read but most often they take the post off topic. If Blizz seriously wants to solve a problems in a game AWESOME! Let them do it anyway that will improve our game, even if it’s in secret forums! 
Yes, and as any good business owner knows… you want to be ABSOLUTELY SURE that your customers know their opinion is worthless and they are just walking wallets as far as you are concerned!
In fact, if your customers have suggestions of what they would like to see in your product, call them dumb and tell them they don’t know what they want, thats the sure fire way to keep customers coming back!
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“Guys, did you know that the managers had a meeting with a client…AND THEY DIDN’T INVITE THE JANITORS?! How is such blatant elitism allowed?!”
That’s what some of you sound like right now.
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If I have to be honest I am not entirely sure how I feel about the secret forums existence. In some regards I am bothered it exists and do not like it’s existence, in other aspects I think it’s for the best if handled well.
For me it goes along these lines…
Cons
- Really takes the wind out of wanting to give feedback. If there is a secret forum where the top players/theorycrafters have access to and actual communication with the dev team then why bother giving feedback anywhere else? Their existence makes me question if Blizzard cares at all for any other groups feedback. It seriously makes me think given how the feedback given in the Shadowlands Shaman Feedback thread for Enhancement has been handled and the state it is now in… I know I have put in several passionate posts there, so have many others, but does it matter? Regardless of the answer, the existence of this elite secret forum leads me to question if it does or does not.
- I don’t like the idea of a secret, shadowy, almost Illuminati like group of players deciding what they think I enjoy as a player. Not only is this select few speaking for the many but its being done in secrecy so we have no actual idea what is going on over there. For classes/specs how much blame can be put on this secret group of players when a class feels bad? Who knows what they have suggested or put forth that none of us know about. That bothers me.
- Not having a real understanding of just how topics are formatted and what topics are covered. Does Blizzard ask them for opinions or do these poster’s take the initiative and just say what they want when they want? What all do these player’s have this stronger voice over? Class Design? PvP Content? PvE Content? Story? What topics are covered on these forums and just how much of an affect has it had on the game over the years. It’s one thing to say it was a success, offhandedly, in MoP but still its another to not know anything about this.
Pros
- The people in those forums, from my understanding, are among the more knowledgeable, passionate, and well spoken players of this game. They know what they are taking about and from what I have read from the tweets these people are both good and thorough as well as passionate. I know people seem to hate the “1%” in WoW but honestly I would rather have the actual best of the best having more say in things than someone who has no clue what they are doing.
- Someone at least has a direct line to Blizzard feedback. Even if the tweets that came out imply that said communication has become strained, the fact that said knowledgeable players can communicate with Blizzard is nice.
I would say that those points, for me, are the biggest thoughts on my mind and they are conflicting thoughts. I can look at the good in one hand and immediately connect it to the bad and vice versa. It’s hard to really make a judgement call on if I like or do not like such a thing when so much is unknown about the details of it, what the actual facts are, etc.
That is all before even considering what was mentioned in the tweets about Blizzard’s involvement past considering the pros and cons of the players involved.
Honestly at the end of the day Blizzard can do whatever they want with their game, be it good or bad. However, for me, there are pros and cons to this as well as far too many unknowns to consider. As a regular forum goer and someone who has given quite a bit of feedback be it alpha, beta, ptr, or general it really does take some of the passion and wind out of my sails…
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I’ve seen the secret forums and can say they are not active at all. Very few posts with very few replies.
The ones I saw were the MVP forum, the Feedback forum and the Guild Mentoring forum and I do have some screenshots. I don’t think I even looked at the Guild Mentoring one so I have no idea what that one is about.
Yeah, pretty much.
Also, this should be expected even from people that didn’t know. While they do want feedback from the masses about some things, they also want informed feedback when it comes to things like class design. And I think that’s fine, because I would too. As critical as I can be about this game I can’t be critical about this because it is just logical.
Also despite the idea that none of the devs play the game, they actually do and have guilds and friends that give them feedback too.
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Oh I agree with this tho. nod
Human nature.
But also Blizzard itself was in the same mental state I think. Lol
Not sure about now. Sometimes it feels like they are too… I dunno… volatile?