Good morning. I am taking the time this morning to share a concern I have about the level of communication and transparency in general around Blizzard’s ability to keep us in the loop. Overall, I would give Blizz a grade of “B” for the amount of effort given towards their roadmaps and sharing of future content to come. They are doing a good job but I strongly feel more can and should be shared.
I fully understand why Blizz needs to keep information close to their chest. Things change and they don’t want to commit to one direction and learn later that they need to side step and go a different direction. However, as much as they are trying to steer their ship, I (we) need to steer ours.
My concern is focused on the rapidly approaching launch of The War Within. I have committed time and money to pre-purchase the expansion and a beta key. I am actively playing all of the classes I am interested in (which is a lot) to whittle down my main and supporting alts. With the launch just weeks away, I feel that I am still in the lurch. I have yet to pick a main and the time I need on retail to get my main caught up is shrinking.
When asking for communication and transparency, I am looking at the reworks that have come and gone, vague comments from blue posts suggest changes are still happening but are not happening? Comments are being made about dev’s being happy where current specs are even though there are thousands of comments from qualified players highlighting obvious flaws? Some changes will come in patch 11.1? The list can go on. Some classes are getting all the attention (which is great) while others are getting hardly any attention; or the attention they are getting seems to be without regard to what the player base wants to see.
So, here I am, nearing the precipice. The last thing I want to do is take a leap of faith on a class only for blizz to finally make changes to it. What if I don’t like those changes? Or take a leap in hopes that blizz will eventually make changes to it. So play something that I almost like? Changes don’t come so now I reconsider my main halfway through season 1 or 2 and start all over? $15 a month is not a hefty price for subscribing. I get that’s not true for everyone. But to further my point, what is a hefty price for all of us is our time to play this game. We all are making the choice to play this game over doing something else in the world. And, as a person who has a lot of other things to do in the world, I want to make sure that the time I am committing to this experience is worth my time?
All of this to say, Blizzard needs to stop treating us like subscribers and start treating us like clients. We are paying them money and giving them all of the feedback they need to adjust the game to be a better player experience. Usually, companies have to pay big dollars to get that kind of feedback. What if instead of giving feedback, we simply unsubscribed and never shared why we decided to leave? The player base has been very communicative and transparent about their feelings towards the game. If Blizzard could simply provide a little more in their updates, in their intentions with class changes, that would go a long way.
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why are you in a hurry ?
I think you are confused , they have to do that for investors and you are not one
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Hey, I can help. Tell me what your content of choice is, what your goals for that content are, and what classes you are considering.
Not really. The pre-patch events always have a catch-up system to help people get their toons ready for the x-pack and by then the classes will be final. You will probably have at least 3 weeks to pick and gear a toon for TWW.
And based on what they’ve said, all 3 raids will be awakened at the same time once the pre-patch starts which will make gearing even faster.
The only thing you “need” to be caught up in time for TWW is being level 70…
Gear, professions, and rep, will not be necessary to walk right into TWW content.
I go through the same thing and have come to realize its just me thinking that finding the perfect spec will keep me from getting bored with the game. I’ll agonize over a main, pick something that I do legitimately enjoy, play hard (by my standards) for a month or so, and then start getting bored.
So I’ll blame the spec and look for something different that covers all the issues I made up as a reason for not enjoying the current one and then go through the same cycle again.
This time my hope is to try something that I can actually get into from a thematic roleplaying angle rather than just worrying about the spec mechanics or utility or tuning numbers. We’ll see how that goes lol.
Just going to put:
Continuing the discussion from Welcome! Please read–:
Not sure what you actually want in terms of communication.
The only thing I have got from skimming that text is you’re worried about what character to main in the upcoming expansion. Pick one? Things will change, of course they will, they always do.
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Nice big block of text, well done. Let’s break down a few things.
First of all, you are ranting to the wind. No designer reads the forums, they are for our entertainment and not communication with the gods.
Second of all, the threat to quit is empty. Citing the cost matters for nothing. Trying to say “you are working for me” doesn’t work anywhere, it is as bad as a student saying that to a teacher.
Third of all, a lot of players want to know in advance which will be “the one” in class design to top the charts and everyone rushes to play that special class. Watching the world first race is popular partially for that reason. But, in truth, the distance from the top to the bottom isn’t far, the game is balanced reallly well and gets continual balancing throughout an expansion, the game is well maintained.
But, I am with you in the frustration of not being able to give feedback. When Blizzard puts out a blue post saying “we heard your feedback” it is a lie, we have no path of communication except, as you suggest, quitting the game as the only way and that wouldn’t send any meaningful message.
So, here we are in the forums, where we go when we are not in game, possibly addicted – but this is for entertainment only.
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Here, I can help you with that. Activision Blizzard is a subsidiary of Microsoft corporation. Their goal is to make a profit so stock prices will go up to keep Microsoft stock holders happy.
They communicate with us the same way every entertainment company communicates, by releasing their product or service. They advertise to increase sales and subscriptions.
By the way, this is nothing novel or revolutionary. It’s what every other for profit company is doing as well.
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The answer to your question is “yes”, you might decide to switch mains in the middle of the season.
They have already set the precedent, during Dragonflight, for making massive class changes in the middle of the expansion (even adding a new spec). So, if you aren’t dead set on playing a particular class/spec, expect to want to play different things as the expansion progresses.
It won’t really matter because of Warbands making the most important things account wide and Warbound gear that you can send to your alts.
And there’s not really any preparation to do before launch either. If you really want to prepare, play Remix to quickly max out different classes or wait for the pre-patch even at the end of the month to earn the first batch of Warbound gear to send to all of your alts.
I understand the want for transparency and communication but I would not use this as the way to pick your main. Taking a leap of faith will be your best bet because you never know what changes they will make to a class in the name of balance in the first patch. You would be better served to have a few max levels of classes you are interested in waiting for TWW and switching if you feel the need. You can max level a character in ReMix in two - three hours.
No… it would be a awful experience for everyone invovled just like the experiment with the hidden forums talking directly to devs.
Players and developers don’t see the game the same way. Developers tend to have a grand vision and work towards it. While players want a fun and functional game. Its why you get talents like rune of power and momentum that are clunkly and terribly designed but linger forever. Its because its what someone " envisions" for a class.
Letting devs and players talk directly to each other would work out as well as releasing hundreds of badgers alongside hundreds of vipers inside of a packed preschool.
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They do communicate and they are transparent with their intentions. They have been actively communicating via many social channels and class or spec changes they are proactive on those parts. But, to say they’re not being anymore communicative is a straight up lie. Changes to classes and or spec takes time and to think they aren’t being proactive on those things is another lie.
They also have explicitly told us that certain classes or specs won’t be reiterated upon until future patches. Since, they already have a lot of things to deal with so yeah I get that they need to delay some specs or classes to future patches. But clearly, some of you like the OP have chosen to ignore all of those blatant cautions from the developers themselves. And chose to paint them as lazy or not being anymore proactive. Let me just tell you no matter how many more people they hire it won’t be enough against time okay. Time is running out for the expansion to launch especially with early access now part of the launch even more less time.
But, to blatantly ignore all of those facts that they have been implementing or standing their ground on changes or whatnot.
I was concerned using the targeted name drop. I was hoping that the overall context from my post would show Blizzard that I am not berating them or speaking poorly about their efforts. More so, I wanted to talk directly to them. As a player who’s been around since Burning Crusade, I was wanting to share a concern that I’ve seen year after year.
I’d give them a D-.
Lots of communities in this game get NO responses…
Blizzard called me last night and said you should level a human male paladin.
Damn. Truth hurts I guess.
Funny to think that the forums where players come to together to air concerns is equivalent to sending files to the trash bin.
I’m not threatening to quit. Nor am I going to so far as to say that they need to work for me. I would like, though, to be treated as if I was paying a customer. All of these other free to play games, yeah do your thing. Thanks for offering a free game to play.
I don’t want to be OP. I just want to know what’s going on with the classes I am interested in.
You are right and I’m glad that you said it. It expands to the entire entertainment industry. People sometimes think that there is some lofty goal to entertain and make the people happy or smarter; they whine about lack of originality or too many sequels – bottom line, it’s the money to be made.
You are, any claim otherwise is just delusional entitlement.
This game is always in a state of flux, that’s the reality. Some changes are known, some are not. There are a lot of reasons for both, which I don’t feel like spelling out for you. You agreed with this when signed up. It’s been that way for 20 years.