Why wouldn’t you consider OSRS much of a good example? It’s one of the only examples where you have a very similar situation and their playerbase has always been extremely happy with Jagex compared to WoW -> Blizzard.
The point is not to change the actual direction of development, it’s to create a bridge between the development team and the user-base. The point is to create a sense of collaboration between the people spending a large % of their lives playing the game and the people who spend a large % of their lives creating the game.
It is that simple. Jagex has proven that it works. Nuff said.
Well, Blizzard does listen to the fan base quite a bit. Just look at all the changes made through Retail. And then we get Classic. But… Some people are never happy.
Giving the players the reigns is a bad idea due to everyone having their idea of the ideal game. Even if you ask for a 75% approval rating, that’s up to 25% people who could be disappointed. And if you keep doing that you eventually cut more and more people out until you’re in the same position as before.
Giving players the reigns works in MODS. It’s how things like dota are born. But for every dota there are a thousand other mediocre, half finished abominations.
This isn’t to say players don’t have good ideas, but rather that there needs to be a much smaller number of people who ‘approve’ things. This is why in game development you have leads. Because then you have someone who can quality control design ideas. And while you may think that the community will police itself on that, I differ and believe the community would be far more self destructive than helpful.
And no I don’t trust Blizzard to make good changes. I am just saying that you can’t trust the community either. I’ve seen some of the suggestions people make and I’ve seen some of them have a lot of approval rating. No thanks.
