The problem comes when all of the testing from people they ask to test their games goes ignored. Same with the beta and PTR - what is it for if it ultimately doesn’t end up fixing glaring problems like Corruptions at launch?
I see your point.
The only answer I have is there seem to be a lot of players who often wonder where the Blizzard blue responses are. They ask why isn’t Blizzard talking to us. They want communication.
Well this communication is happening but only in secret and if you are invited to it.
This is the reason some get upset. They can take it as a slap in the face.
source: was in the world 2nd guild in SoO
Mainly the theorycrafter and guidewriter communities
the players that go out of their way to almost full time job maintain communities like the DK one “Acherus” which Magdalena ran
or the Shaman community old ‘Sentry totem’ or the monk community ‘The peak of serenity’
i think the most current day example would be Ellesmere’s wingsisup.com
though that’s a lot less of a theory crafting site and more of a guide site written by one of the best players in the world
Those really relevant and invested in the community have gotten several nods from blizzard, if you look at Ordos the world boss from mop
his loot table is filled with nods to passionate community members
https://www.wowhead.com/item=105784/binkensteins-burnished-belt
Binkenstein was THE elemental shaman theory crafter for a LONG time i’m sure he was involved with this forum
https://www.wowhead.com/item=105807/magdalenas-murderous-crown
magdalena was a HUUUUGE dk theorycrafter and also the creator of the original twitter thread about the forums
tons more examples in there as well
tbh most top 10 world guilds have a pretty open line of communication with some level of blizzard
typically though skype groups back in my day
but at this point there’s probably discord servers
you cant genuinely think that your feedback is as coherent or as important as theirs right?
not meant in a demeaning way just that would be a pretty wild level of entitlement
You’re late, friend. The transmog set is the current outrage.
I agree I wish they could invite a level 46 warrior into the secret feedback forum I would love for them to listen to your feedback instead of theorycrafters and world first raiders.
What do they know right?
1 Like
damn, preach it fellow shaman.
2 Likes
I don’t really care as i understand what kind of player they were looking for. Many of these were people who played WoW way past the point of being a simple hobby, some of these people made this game their livelyhood.
I can perfectly live with the fact i’m not a special snowflake and that there’s far more talented and dedicated players than myself within the community.
Honestly, i’m more concerned about the reports from these players basically saying the whole endeavor was a huge waste of time, particularly due to one specific developer with dyed hairs being completely unable to take any kind of criticism whatsoever.
3 Likes
Honestly bring back Ghostcrawler 
3 Likes
You don’t know what you have until its gone 
He picked the game back up like last week, interesting to read his thoughts.
1 Like
this
is
so
important
this was a GREAT SUCCESS with xelnath the warlock lead designer in mop
(https://xelnath.com/) can read about his version of the forums which was an email chain with top tier warlocks
(one of which was in my guild at the time)
or Ghostcrawler (the original secret forum founder) who went to work for riot
(https://askghostcrawler.tumblr.com/archive)
he did a LOT of Q&A about wow development and a real in depth behind the scenes looks at a lot of the stuff most of the people on the forum think about without answers constantly
you have to dig though cause he does a lot of LoL Q&A also so finding the wow stuff esp the stuff from a few years ago takes some scrolling but it’s really interesting if you’re invested
this guy was an awful designer and an awful human being
hes NOTORIOUS for how creepy and weird he is in person at blizzcon type events
guy could NOT take any form of criticism and had a disgusting ego
it’s a blessing hes working on hearthstone now
he was the one behind the core legion and bfa class designs
2 Likes
didn’t link the specific post sorry
http://xelnath.com/2018/05/15/the-mop-warlock-what-you-knew-and-what-you-never-knew-you-missed/
1 Like
OOF. It hurts my soul every time I read this. He IS sorely missed by those of us that understood what he was trying to accomplish.
Even now, he recently came back to play the game and has been tweeting his experience leveling in pre-patch and already you can see he could address so many current issues differently. Riot was able to recognize what Blizzard couldn’t I suppose.
I miss the Dev. Watercoolers.
1 Like
I think its more a community thing considering how much the average “casual” hated him ever since he attempted to make heroic dungeons interesting again.
Riot is different because they know their audience and sorely cater to them, rather than just try to appeal to everyone and anyone under the sun to increase revenue like Blizzard did in the 2010s (they do seem to slowly backtrack on that now but… yeah its kinda late.).
At least i remember him saying something along these lines on Riot’s boards a few years back (without mentioning it as a reason he left Blizzard but wasn’t too hard to read between the lines).
This is an example of “feedback” that should have been ignored. This feed back is the reason all the ppm corruptions like stars, ev, td, gw, tentacle got knee-jerked nerfed, some straight into the ground.
All of the classes or specs that ppm were bis are now bottom tier. And players wonder why.
Meanwhile, the scaling corruptions went untouched and the those specs and classes scaled the rest of us into the ground.
cant find the direct quote but he did say something a long the lines of
"wow was difficult to design for because we had to keep in mind that somebodies grandmother could literally pick up the game and if we make it too complex it drives people away, with LoL we design the game twords players who strongly consider themselves “gamers” " or something
it wasn’t offensive or anything just that it was challenging creating something engaging when it could very well be something a very wide array of people are trying to play
He didn’t leave because casuals hated him. He embraced it, however frustrating it got at times. And I was there… it got ROUGH at times, especially at the end of Wrath and beginning of Cataclysm. To paraphrase, the understanding I have is he left because blizzard’s philosophy was to communicate less, vs his philosophy of interacting more.
And we can see that this was true. Riot knows their audience because they foster that interaction. Blizzard (as evidenced even more with this topic) adopted the closed doors policy it’s cemented over the years to what it is today.
I won’t try to explain why, because we really can only speculate… but I can say it has been to the detriment of everyone both players and developers.
1 Like
Yeah, i think we think of the same quote.
Honestly i can see why. Game developers are artists in their own rights, they have a vision for what they want to create and how to expand it.
Its extremely hard to create a game under some sort of democracy or majority rule without it ending up feeling very bland or tasteless, which is exactly what happened to WoW post-MoP.
Oh i know, i was there too. Wrath/Cata/MoP (until SoO) was when i was neck-deep into the game.
But that’s the thing, no he didn’t leave directly because of the player feedback, but obviously higher-ups at Blizzard weren’t a big fan of the kind of uproar his communication style caused within the community. Both are related in a way.
1 Like
So you think that blatantly broken Corruptions should have gone untouched, rather than have them scaled to the point they were roughly equal to the other ones? Including making sure the scaling ones weren’t too powerful this late?
Wow, how entitled of you.
Respectfully, your argument is also another example of players not knowing what they are talking about.
The problem with corruption was much more complex than that.
1 Like
With all the threads going on here, I’m not surprised at all.
The forums have kind of devolved into a new Wow Meta; if you’re subscribed, you can engage in another form of player interaction, and to some varying degree, abuse.
I think the biggest takeaway from that expose’ was that the Developer’s focus has changed from what the player’s want to what the Developers think will appeal to their shareholders.
Besides, the Devs are more active on Twitter than any forums, official or not.
personally, I’d love to see Bobby Kotick go on a psychotic rampage through the forums, trash talking anyone who dared to post pics of him with devil horns, or as Gallywix, and acting like an entitled rich kid.