This may be an “old thing” but I recently watched a certain WOW Streamer who reacted to a video about some revelations about a secret WOW feedback forum that was being screen shotted and discussed by one of its members, probably under an alias name of course.
This video proved that Blizzard uses a secret feedback forum that has members who are “highly invested in the game”, whatever that means.
It also showed how the feedback on regular forums as well as any feedback that is in anyway insulting is basically ignored.
My first thought was that I understood why Blizzard would ignore feedback that was insulting… duh.
My second thought was wondering who gets these invites to have say so in the game as someone who has more invested than myself as a paying subscriber.
My final thought was one of sadness when it was revealed that even on the secret feedback forums the general mentality of Blizzard is they are going to do what they do and we players should conform to it and be happy. Basically the secret higher end people giving feedback are being ignored as well.
I’m curious to see what the thoughts are on this topic from the majority player base that post here or post on regular beta feedback forums.
How do you feel knowing there is a secret feedback forum that is inaccessible to you as a subscriber and that your feedback is probably being ignored here on the regular forums and maybe even so if you were actually invited to be a secret member?
The forum showed that there was little sway in the devs decisions from the other forum, which was the main problem, that they weren’t being taken seriously, resulting is huge problems going live.
There is nothing wrong with having that forum out of GDs scummy hands.
You know, maybe I’m just old, but this was how video games - hell, just product development in general - worked prior to the internet. Some dudes made something, and if you liked it, you bought it, otherwise you didn’t.
All of this attempted mediation on the part of the consumer disguised as “feedback”… jeez, I’d ignore it all, too.
Now that I know about it for sure, I am as indifferent as ever.
I don’t really care where Blizzard chooses to get their feedback from. I only care that they remain receptive and what feedback they do embrace improves the overall quality of the game.
I’m curious if all these people so upset and hurting over the super secret forums even know what they’re upset and hurt about. What if the feedback was something dumb like “remove Priest from the game”? I’m going extreme with the example but my question still stands. What feedback, specifically, are you upset about them ignoring?
GC seems to have been the brain child behind these forums. It lead to some really good tuning and design for classes in MoP and WoD. Then they stopped listening.
Blizzard wouldn’t have invited them if they didn’t initially value their feedback and testing.
So you’re saying that all their feedback is gold? They’re never wrong?
Edit: Just wanted to clarify… I’m not shilling for Blizzard. They might have ignored good feedback. The point I’m making is I’m not going to clutch my pearls and fan my vapors until I know what it is to panic about. So far you and the OP have just said vague things.
I would argue the forums in particular have a sort of availability bias.
Few players who are happy with the game are going to bother to log in to the fourms and say, “I’m enjoying things!”
On the other end, players who are frustrated are much more likely to log in to the forums to voice their frustration.
Am I saying that I think the game is perfect? Absolutely not. There are lots of design decisions I disagree with. I also realize that I can just play another game if I hate it so much, the devs are free to pursue whatever design decisions they prefer, and that on the net whole WoW is enjoyable. People on the forums catastrophize to a crazy extent.