Like so many forum heroes, I myself have been playing wow since day 1, so you can understand my entitlement is very high up there.
All joking aside though, I can honestly say that I feel like blizzards communication with players used to be “bad” but nowadays it literally doesn’t even exist.
GMs, Devs, and CM’s used to post on the forums from time to time just to be social, but when was the last time you saw that?
Also how long has Ion been working at Blizz and has a crisp like, 11 posts.
Why the absolutely deafening silence? And sure, this is about prepatch, but even looking beyond that - seriously where is literally any communication?
You kind of went with self-deprecating here, which I can appreciate. But even mentioning it is still kinda like you want credit for it.
That’s funny cause during most of this beta cycle all you saw was video after video of wow youtubers talking about how much more blizzard has listened this time around, specifically with class changes. Obviously people are gnashing teeth now cause no pre-patch but this is a “past two weeks” thing. I think you might be trying to objectively describe a subjective issue.
I mean, ok but how does game devs posting on the forums do anything for your enjoyment of the game? Wouldn’t you rather those people focus on making the game? Particularly right now when we’re so close to expac release?
Again, you’re conflating a new issue with an overall, and that seems weird considering the perception was a 180 just a month ago.
Compared to now, this forum used to be swimming with blue back in the day…
Hell didn’t they (like in the last year or two) hire some new forum blues to be more present?
/looks around
guess not.
I’m not a Blizzard insider so I don’t know. But I’m a “since 2004 player” and I’ve noticed the same thing. Here is my opinion (just an opinion):
Toxic players in the forums “burned” Blizzard too many times. Too many times some casual “we’re thinking about” comment by a dev was treated (by some players) as a solemn promise from Blizzard, sanctified and holy, written in the Book of Books…you get the idea. And when that “maybe” didn’t happen, the forums were full of “Blizzard lied” comments.
So Blizzard has learned that nothing should be said to these toxic players, unless it is a “cast-and-concrete, guaranteed to happen” event. And those events are pretty rare in the software world.
It’s my guess that the exact details of Shadowlands (all 1900 of them) are in a tremendous state of change for months and years. They change many times before Beta. They change again in Beta. Things are added. Things are removed.
What do you want? Details about things that don’t happen?
We are in the middle of a pandemic. And knowing Blizzard, most blue posts have to go through multiple levels of review before being posted. They also laid off many of their popular blue posters two years ago.
While not exactly the whole story, public forums are usually hyper-aggressive towards Blizzard Devs. Unfortunately, Blizzard gets heat no matter what they do, and some members of the public seem to hold personal grudges against the person.
It’s fine to criticize the company, but when you attack the hardworking devs, they don’t want to engage with the community.
The main reason you don’t see a lot of posts is because the Community team’s role is that. But like with many Community teams, there is a process to follow.
Regardless of the current silence, Blizzard has been way more responsive to feedback for Shadowlands. Trying to push a game from home doesn’t sound easy, and working in a tight schedule makes it even tougher.
I suspect the silence about pre-patch is mostly a matter of getting a release candidate sorted out. They had one earlier, but probably found something bad last minute and had to redo all the checks on a new build. From personal experience, getting to that finish line and then realizing you have another lap kinda hurts.