Of course these are my opinions and is in NO WAY about trashing WOW. I loved WOW. It will always be the game that I played the most and had the most fun from. Yet, here we are. These are my reasons why this game has imploded! I mean from tier 1 game to a complete train wreck…
Ego
This is what you get when a Company thinks of themselves very highly. So highly, that they you are all plebs and they the masters. How dare any of you think you have ideas! Sadly, this is common in all Companies. Absolute power corrupts absolutely…
White Knights
No, I don’t mean those that praise the game. I mean those that praise anything and everything they do no matter how bad the game is. You still see it now on these forums. You do more harm to this game more than anything. Every time I see a legit complaint thread it gets lost by white knights.
PVP
Ignored PVP and lost the most loyal group you had. Now you’re a joke in the MMO world. The balance of classes is like a 3rd grader did it… And he plays pally.
Systems
Talk about killing a game.
Us: “We don’t like it”…
Them: “We don’t care!.. Here’s more!”
This is why its our job (the consumer) to keep things we like honest and true. You should be hard on them. When I say hard on them I don’t mean being a jerk, I mean making sure they keep to the standard that made us like it. Call them out on the good AND bad.
Of the all the current drama, this is the only glimmer of hope for Blizzard. Their “prestige” as a developer is pretty much completely eroded at this point. Which we can only hope will translate into more receptive developers and an employer who treats employees fairly without relying on its reputation to undervalue them.
The people who make the decisions dont read feedback posts, they look at engagement data, so you can complain as much as you want that doing X is unfun if you still grind it thats all the decision makers see and its a success.
You have to understand that forums and even feedback threads are just 10-30 peoples opinions in a game played by 100k+ people and so they are always going to look at data to see what was successful.
Examples are obvious in things like azerite powers morphing to conduits (no one liked azerite powers but we needed to have them to play so engagement in the system was high hence we must have enjoyed it).
I think Blizzard could recover but because of the long string of issues,Blizzard would have to do something extreme to get that good faith back.
A good expansion with some good features isn’t going to win back players, okish PvP isn’t going to win back people, things like this will just keep less people from leaving. Nothing short of doing all that AND things like more autonomy from Activison (or a separation), major shakeup in design philosophy, and overall community interaction.
If it’s not that then very few will come back. Wrath Classic might save Blizzard somewhat to get to that point, but that’s still a couple years off and closer to Riots MMO. This isn’t even addressing the scandal going on.
Main point, big changes need to be made, and not just big changes in game.
I wish more forum people understood this. There will always be things people hate but there will always be people who love those same things. Usually people come to the forums to complain. Sure there will be "white “knights” defending but it is such a small percentage of the entire player base. Most people happily play the game and never go to the forums. Probably have their gripes but chug along and have their own fun.
I wish I knew how Blizzard determined what majority of people like vs dislike. Forums is one thing they can look at but they need data from the mass players who don’t post on forums.
As much as people on forums think they can fix the game in a week I think the game would be in a terrible spot if Blizz listened to all the negative posts.
Pretty spot on. I’ve never seen a company hate its customers as much as Blizzard. Horrible story writing, bad pvp system and lots of annoying random currencies in the game, the only good thing is raiding but the stuff you need to do to jump into raiding is just not fun. Korthia is not fun. I love the WoW universe but it’s a lazy, cheap company and it could’ve been much better. Like even Wrath could’ve been better. It’s just not worth the $15 a month. It’s the quality of a free MMO.
They like most people use engagement as the measure of success, so if you spend 30% of your week in Korthia that must be good desirable content.
If everyone does both assaults every week then assaults are good, if people kill the world boss every week it must be good.
It is a very simplified way to look at the silent majority but without introducing bias into the system its kind of hard to read the minds of people who dont provide feedback.
Examples of using bias to interpret data would be I think Korthia is bad content but needed for sockets etc, so I would instead of looking at time spent in Korthia (as that doesn’t support my narative) I would instead look at the number of people buying sockets or upgrading gear with research and say see people are just doing it to socket gear but they all hate the content.
Data is a terrible way to build a game (as it just tells you what you want to know).
I see no sign that they are getting closer to realizing that they are at fault, not their paying customers, not some nebulous catch-all “community”, not the casuals they seem to hate for buying their game and wanting to play it.
They need to design a game for the playerbase they have while they still have a playerbase.
I’d be curious to know what their data is telling them for Korthia. Some people will feel forced to do the content for their sockets to progress raids or whatnot. But how many people is that compared to the casuals, like me, who run Korthia for the pets, mounts, toys, rep and will eventually get the socket stuff but don’t really care about it? I do it for the cosmetics and whatever solo achievements I can earn?
I agree with Crug of Clan Crug, the Crugiest of all Crug Orcs!
But honestly I’m only sticking around because Sydney is in a major lockdown and nothing to do (thanks covid), but I’m giving Shadowlands till 9.2 to fix everything, if not sadly I’ll be moving onto greener pastures aswell.
I love WoW, but this really isn’t the game I fell in love with anymore. I think I held out this long really because of how much time I invested into this game.
Is this game salvageable?, yes it is. Will they do it?, Time will tell.
Well its data so it tells you what you want to know when you ask the question.
If want to say people are only there for the mounts, pets etc they will ask the question how many people have the pets and mounts.
If they want to generically say its an interesting daily activity they will track time spent in the zone.
If they want to say the catchup gear is good they will track how many characters have used them on main/alts (regardless of how short a time you had it equipped).
Data does not say anything by itself it is always interpreted through the bias of the investigator. It never lies but it always gives and inaccurate impression of the real world.
Too bad so sad. You’d think a game dev would take pride in his craft, but it’s obvious all they have working there anymore are hacks. This company is like a carpenter’s crew who build houses with roofs that leak.
It really angers me that they turned something amazing into a toxic workplace full of interns working for free under the thumbs of the likes of watcher and holinka.
It’s why I feel like a part of the problem by not quitting when I’m disappointed with the content they give us. Im data that’s telling them im still playing so I must be having a great time.
And that’s another thing I wonder about is that if these systems are being designed to make us spend more time in different content that they use to measure and brag about it being some sort of success? Like hey, our plan worked and players are spending more time doing this activity now!
Yeah because we have to do it to get the legendary or the soulbind or whatever else… lol
Sort of fits in with the idea that their ego is that big. That they don’t think we are not respecting THEIR work on the game design. Just like their argument for wanting flying gone.
Like maybe they want us to play it how they think we should.
I could be completely wrong but it’s so hard not to feel that way.
Externally, I think besides possibly the products they may produce. I don’t think we’ll see much difference.
Internally, I wouldn’t be surprised at a major overhaul of many of the teams. In terms of management and in general the work environment Blizzard seems to have created over the years.
