My comment was more about the story always having attention to character arcs, themes, and scene structure.
Menphilia pray asking you to return to the waking sands was not always building that.
Which it does.
Which is opinion.
Iâm not surprised by this whatsoever tbh, and honestly I donât think itâs a bad idea.
Filler quests exist in MMOâs because sometime the player character needs exp. Visual novels donât have that problem inherently because the whole thing is just a story.
This is not surprising as my original MMO, The Matrix Online, had a similar explosion 13 years ago or so. We had a secret forum called âThe Champagne Roomâ and when the players found out it was ugly. LOL
It doesnât bother me one bit with WoW since the community is so large and GD is an absolute poopshow.
Next thing the community here will be surprised to find out is that the forums are moderated by fellow players not Blizzard employees. Lol
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The MVPs admitted they exist. Other players in the thread admitted they exist. Blizzard at this point in time will not admit they exist. So what do you want?
Except they make mistakes, and regularly.
Take for example the Revendreth Sinstones me and another wowpedia editor found and compiled during beta:
Faedraâs sinstone was about a night elf who died during the Burning of Teldrassil but ended up in Revendreth.
That was a lore continuity error.
It was not fixed for weeks.
Until one of the other wowpedia editors decided to DM Danuser about it cuz theyâre IRL friends.
And it was fixed literally overnight.
And we keep finding lore holes. And heâs unwilling to use that IRL connection regularly I think.
So then the game goes lives with continuity errors or inconsistencies, such as Stormsong Valley being settled both âthousands of years agoâ and also âby the previous Lord Stormsong who led them into the fertile valleyâ.
They need to give Lore people who take the lore in a pseudo professional capacity access to a feedback avenue.
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I mean, I would hope that they would do something like that. If they actually seriously listened to, and took direction from, whatâs going on in this place the game would be in shambles.
Any moderated private or restricted access forums are acceptable , reasonable , and even necessary to my thinking. These general access ones are flooded with useless posts that often serve little purpose at best.
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No, they are not. The Blizzard Forum Moderation team work out of the Austin, Texas office. They handle all the Blizzard forums for all games, mostly responding to flagged posts.
Blizzard does not have any unpaid labor because it violates CA laws. Even their interns are paid (and have transportation and housing paid for).
Any forum actions are handled by actual Blizzard employees.
I WISH I had forum powers. That would be nice at times.
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(Commentary): Iâm not saying I doubt you or them, just that taking someone at their word is not a source.
(Commentary): A web address. Screenshots of the forums and not snippets of talk in them. A Youtube video of someone browsing these secret forums. Something more substantial than someone saying, âOh yeah, they exist,â because I can just as easily say thereâs a Secret Forums for die-hard Alliance fans who get to decide the lore. Doesnât mean itâs real.
I think itâs a grand idea to get outside opinions by a sect of dedicated and knowledgeable people. This is an important tool when your creating a product and entertainment for the public at large. Hollywood does private screenings of movies, before release, to see how the audience will reactâŚ
However, where Hollywood and Blizz differed, in how they utilize that feed back. From the screen shots Iâve seen, Blizzard mocks, degrades, and ignores the advice of their private screeners. They have a holier than thou, âIâm developer and I know what I want to do and YOU had better do things that support what I to do.â (And letâs not pretend that developers donât have egos-I say this to the developers of Blizz and other businesses-Yall can become so good you think you know what we want better than we do. And! Sometimes your rightâŚbut only in the âa stopped clock is right twice a dayâ type of way). They are getting this mentality from Somewhere; typically upper management is what enforces employee mentality and this is the WRONG mentality to have.
If theyâre are going to invite people to spend time contributing to the game, they have to do one of two things. Pay them for their time, or listen to what they have to say.
That doesnât mean these private screeners are always going to be right. There are plenty of hollywood movies which were better Before the private viewing. Some times, your private screeners just happen to bad a poor batch and their recommendations were totally off the markâŚbut unlike hollywood, Blizzard has a pretty set group of people with the knowledge and skills available that makes them good at understanding what Blizz is trying to do and can provide good direction in how to make changes to get to that end goal.
So, whatâs the end goal then? Same as hollywood, make money by entertaining a large swath of the viewers. They do this by making the game fun, engaging, immersive, interesting and rewarding to put an extended amount of time in. Blizz wants the Marvel Audience, the dedicated fans who prebuy their tickets, who then buy another ticket, and then another, and then another. This is easier with a game in some ways because the audience isnât just passive in their consumption of the entertainment and Harder in that the audience has a wide swath of ideas of what will keep them actively engaged. But, again, with a massive world like WarcraftâŚthat means there are multie systems which different players will enjoy being actively engaged in-However! The core of the game must be a Marvel Level entertainment. That core is Class Play (how the classes actually operate in button pushing), Mechanics (how the world interacts with the Class) and the Story (why the Class Play and why the Mechanics are happening)âŚand, from screen shots, it looks like every single bit of Class Play and Mechanics their private screeners make recommendations on is being degenerated and knocked down by the Developers.
So, either pay these people for their time or take their recommendations serious. Blizz is where theyâre at because theyâre failing on Class Play and Mechanics and theyâre actively avoiding professional recommendations to improve those two areas. Because theyâre âdevelopersâ and they were right once in telling us we didnât want that.
This is the level of zen I wanna be at. UwU
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Do they wear robes in these secret forum meetings?
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I only say that because every other game has a volunteer player moderation team picked by the company. And when it gets out, itâs a total poopshow. Lol
If things are balanced at the highest level of play, it doesnât mean they are balanced.
Catering to the hardcore crowd doesnât necessarily mean good changes overall.
I donât give a 
about mythic parses or how certain talents and comps are broken in r1 arenas, these things donât affect me.
I can see this. I remember someone saying âWe need a Q&A hosted by someone from the community, where its just them and Ion sitting in lawn chairs for a few hours with maybe a couple beers.â Maybe not the beers, but a nice long honest conversation.
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This kind of thing is very basic deduction in terms of âfarmingâ ideas. So you have a few âselectâ people who then scour forums themselves, read and indulge in all kinds of mediums to bring it back to the secretive forums. Creativity or thinking outside the box, it encourages stealing ideas and using others at no cost to do so. This is basic âdog bringing the bone to the doorâ causality, where the creators get a free treasure trove of hunters going out trying to prove themselves.
Itâs quite clever, I like it. But I must say it doesnât encourage creative or inspired thinking when the best ideas are usually kept inside the minds of those who can see right through all of it, and easily so. Original, inspired and creative ideas are hard to come by in that kind of realm, the hunters collect as much as they can, prostrate themselves to a niche where ultimately the system is less about being daring and more about layers of manipulation that in the end are completely unnecessary when the truly creative people would happily offer up ideas if they were simply asked to do so with no smoke and mirrors antics behind the scenes.
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Iâm sure Blizzard feels theyâve made a lot of strides forward in communication for Shadowlands. But when you look at the systems and the insane layering of these systems, and what itâs going to do to the game it becomes quite obvious to the average Joe that a discussion needs to be had.
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I think many companies spend too much time thinking about the colours, the sounds, and the aesthetics of the game rather than simply just make the game itself. Blizzard was originally grown from Warhammer, Warrhammer was grown from Dungeons and Dragons, and D&D was grown from some weird chain letter mailing system discovered in the early 30s but has been used for centuries. No mention of Tolkien required, even though Warcraft does have many nods to Tolkiensâ writings. There are people who very creative, very powerful in terms of offering ideas and systems but Blizzard have chosen to ignore those people over the years because they have focused on profit and keeping people playing, rather than just make a game theyâd love to play themselves. There are many addicts, sure, but thereâs quite a few of us that simply love the game. Not the lore, the costumes or the money. Just the game and playing it, no matter what.
I feel that the more Blizzard moves away from bringing those kinds of people in, and they were those kinds of people themselves; the more they lose sight of what is good in gaming and what they love. Thus, they push away their own kind. Which is a tragic shame to see, as many love and adore the game, Iâd say more than a few of us donât want to see it fail or become some sad experiment at finding what makes people addicted to a game. Thereâs a fine line and Blizzard donât seem to mind dancing on it these past few expansions.