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  1. #1
    Warchief Regalbeast's Avatar
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    Serious question: what evidence is there that Blizzard listens to forum posts?

    I've seen a lot of forum posts lately in which people bring up new ideas for WoD. I'm just curious, has Blizzard implemented things in the past into WoW that have specifically come from the forums? If so, what? If not, then why do people continue to bring up all these ideas and say things like "i'll get a petition going" or "hopefully a blue sees this".

    This is sincere, I'm very curious to know how much Blizzard listens to the community.

    Note: I'm talking about the battle.net forums and MMO-C.

  2. #2

  3. #3
    Plenty of ideas have come from discussion on the forums.

    Transmog is one of these things, if I remember right.

  4. #4
    Quote Originally Posted by Regalbeast View Post
    I've seen a lot of forum posts lately in which people bring up new ideas for WoD. I'm just curious, has Blizzard implemented things in the past into WoW that have specifically come from the forums? If so, what? If not, then why do people continue to bring up all these ideas and say things like "i'll get a petition going" or "hopefully a blue sees this".

    This is sincere, I'm very curious to know how much Blizzard listens to the community.

    Note: I'm talking about the battle.net forums and MMO-C.
    I know relics came from a forum thread on the shaman forum. Also, if you were around during the WLK beta, DK's were basically having a pow-wow with GC on a daily basis on what felt good and what didn't.

    Unfortunately monks didn't get the same amount of love, but eh.

  5. #5
    fan ideas factor heavily into things like classes and races that might get added. pandaren wouldnt even exist if fans didnt ask for them to be added to warcraft 3.

    fan feedback factors heavily into things like quality of life ui improvements, things like what kind of mounts and pets they might make, things like the lack of dailies in warlords is because of fan feedback.

    of course, this is still blizzards game so fan feedback still has to mesh with what they want, theres also things that factor into it like development time and how much time something would take, theres a long list of things blizzard and the fans have wanted that they want to do but they just havent gotten around to doing or just take a long time to get done.

    expansions are also planned ahead of time, once an expansion comes out the storyline in it and the content in it and its patches are all pretty much done or already locked down which is why alot of times it might seem like they dont start listening to feedback until the next expansion, its not that they werent listening but that changing plans halfway through would cause problems alot of the time or muddle focus.

    theres definitely aspects of the game where fan feedback is alot more important and wanted, id say the more fun something is or the more non gameplay breaking the more likely it is for blizzard to listen. if a bunch of people for instance say that a kangaroo mount would be awesome its alot more likely we would get a kangaroo mount then if everyone was like "buff all the classes!"
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  6. #6
    Warchief Regalbeast's Avatar
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    It's cool to see Blizz employees active in the forums, but looking over their posts for the past couple of months it's just strictly about account issues. Nothing to do with features or anything.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Gyyn View Post
    Plenty of ideas have come from discussion on the forums.

    Transmog is one of these things, if I remember right.
    Can anyone confirm this? Sounds like a loose statement

  7. #7
    Elemental Lord clevin's Avatar
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    AS others have noted, they DO listen.

    You're far more likely to get something noticed if you write it well and explain it rationally. Even then, they just can't implement every idea. There are too many and you have to prioritize and that's just counting the good ideas. Then there are the bad ideas and the ideas that, while they might be good, would contradict an even better idea.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Regalbeast View Post
    It's cool to see Blizz employees active in the forums, but looking over their posts for the past couple of months it's just strictly about account issues. Nothing to do with features or anything.

    - - - Updated - - -



    Can anyone confirm this? Sounds like a loose statement
    Oh now you want citations and links? Go dig for them yourself. It's not like anyone here has any special search powers. If you're interested, you can find the posts.

  8. #8
    Warchief Regalbeast's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by clevin View Post
    AS others have noted, they DO listen.

    You're far more likely to get something noticed if you write it well and explain it rationally. Even then, they just can't implement every idea. There are too many and you have to prioritize and that's just counting the good ideas. Then there are the bad ideas and the ideas that, while they might be good, would contradict an even better idea.

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    Oh now you want citations and links? Go dig for them yourself. It's not like anyone here has any special search powers. If you're interested, you can find the posts.
    Calm down please. I'm not trying to be difficult, just thought it sounded sort of made up. I've tried to do some research but I seriously can't find anything that says "Blizz implemented this idea from so and so poster or forum". Anyway, if you want to point me in the right direction or give some constructive comments then I would greatly appreciate it!

  9. #9
    I doubt this is your intention by why do so many people have zany theories/doubts with Blizzard. Literally what is there to gain by adding into a feature that's been implemented "the community has been very vocal about adding this"?

  10. #10
    I dont recall the thread tittle. I was part of a push back in Cata to have T11 to reward VP after T12 came out with the argument that from a casual stand point(time) it wasnt worth it to run T11 with a good chance of not getting anything when you could have instead used that time to do five mans for guaranteed rewards that are even better. One of the CMs responded with conveying the feed back with developers and them agreeing and in went the change. It wasnt a big thing, but was perhaps one of the fastest Blizzard changed something that wasnt a big need to fix. A fairly clear and constructive discussion was made on something that didnt have a big impact on other features or lengthy development resources while promoting Blizzards goals and received developer attention and quick turn around.

    It was perhaps at the time for Cata among the most constructive threads out there as well which was likely in part because those who usually go around to derail threads they dont like didnt derail the thread.

  11. #11
    The community brings things to their attention, ideas, suggestions, etc... They may help influence how they feel about an particular change, or how they design something going forward. But if by listen you mean do what the people on the forum say they should, they don't, nor should they. The game would be a steaming pile of crap if they just listened to the drivel on the forums. That doesn't mean good ideas and suggestions don't come out of the forum because they do and some even get implemented, but the information they get off the forums is just another form of input into their decision process, they don't base their decisions solely off of the forums.

  12. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by Regalbeast View Post
    Calm down please. I'm not trying to be difficult, just thought it sounded sort of made up. I've tried to do some research but I seriously can't find anything that says "Blizz implemented this idea from so and so poster or forum". Anyway, if you want to point me in the right direction or give some constructive comments then I would greatly appreciate it!
    of course they didn't take the idea for transmog specifically from one person on the forum it was multiple people posting a similar idea and blizzard read that as fans want this so we are going to implement it.Blizzard is never going to take a fan idea like that there are more than a few issues to deal with by going down that road but what they try to do is implement features that posters say would be a good idea while not hurting the game or costing too many resources.

  13. #13
    Warchief Regalbeast's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Destil View Post
    I doubt this is your intention by why do so many people have zany theories/doubts with Blizzard. Literally what is there to gain by adding into a feature that's been implemented "the community has been very vocal about adding this"?
    No, I think Blizzard is a great company. That's not my intention. My intention is more to educate myself but also to point out to people that keep posting things like "here is a poll for this feature that blizzard will implement if we get more than 500 responses" or something along those lines.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by nekobaka View Post
    I dont recall the thread tittle. I was part of a push back in Cata to have T11 to reward VP after T12 came out with the argument that from a casual stand point(time) it wasnt worth it to run T11 with a good chance of not getting anything when you could have instead used that time to do five mans for guaranteed rewards that are even better. One of the CMs responded with conveying the feed back with developers and them agreeing and in went the change. It wasnt a big thing, but was perhaps one of the fastest Blizzard changed something that wasnt a big need to fix. A fairly clear and constructive discussion was made on something that didnt have a big impact on other features or lengthy development resources while promoting Blizzards goals and received developer attention and quick turn around.

    It was perhaps at the time for Cata among the most constructive threads out there as well which was likely in part because those who usually go around to derail threads they dont like didnt derail the thread.
    Very cool, thanks for sharing!

  14. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by Xayl1 View Post
    of course they didn't take the idea for transmog specifically from one person on the forum it was multiple people posting a similar idea and blizzard read that as fans want this so we are going to implement it.Blizzard is never going to take a fan idea like that there are more than a few issues to deal with by going down that road but what they try to do is implement features that posters say would be a good idea while not hurting the game or costing too many resources.
    Transmog is not a great issue to show how much Blizzard pays attention to the forums. There are much better examples. What people on the forums wanted was an appearance tab, just like they have in most other MMORPGs these days. They certainly didn't want Blizzard to reinvent the wheel, especially when Blizzard's new wheel isn't even round and missing most of the spokes. Transmog is more of an example of not paying attention to what the people in all of the appearance tab threads were saying, than an example of listening.

  15. #15
    Cataclysm was practically the forum's expansion. All those zones people had been wanting, flying in Azeroth, update of old quests, raid finder like the dungeon finder, Horde vs Alliance story...

    People didn't LIKE it, but quite a lot of the stuff present in Cataclysm was requested or discussed a lot on the forums.

  16. #16
    I'm just curious, has Blizzard implemented things in the past into WoW that have specifically come from the forums?
    Transmog, smaller raid sizes/10 man raiding, bigger ulduar-sized raid tiers in this expansion, warlock green fire, I'm sure theres tonnes and tonnes more but thats just immediately off the top of my head. Sure they can't all be directed back to one particular person making one particular forum post, but they're all features that were requested by players and driven by player feedback.

    Even garrisons are the end result of years and years of players asking Blizz to find a way to do player housing.

    At the same time, they're under no obligation to implement any of the ideas people post at all, no matter how many responses a thread gets or how many votes in a poll. Its their game, and they have a far larger macro view of its current state and its future plans than any of the players possibly could, so they're going to make decisions based on those factors and not a forum poll at the end of the day. Theres always going to be the people who feel like its their right to have their ideas implemented in their way because they are the paying customer, but tbh those people are just a bit too full of their own self importance.
    Last edited by Zyranthian; 2013-12-12 at 06:54 AM.

  17. #17
    Quote Originally Posted by jbombard View Post
    Transmog is not a great issue to show how much Blizzard pays attention to the forums. There are much better examples. What people on the forums wanted was an appearance tab, just like they have in most other MMORPGs these days. They certainly didn't want Blizzard to reinvent the wheel, especially when Blizzard's new wheel isn't even round and missing most of the spokes. Transmog is more of an example of not paying attention to what the people in all of the appearance tab threads were saying, than an example of listening.
    I wasn't saying it is. I was just saying the OP wasn't going to find a post like that because blizzard doesn't work that way and what OP was replying to was about transmog.

  18. #18
    Warchief Regalbeast's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Soeroah View Post
    Cataclysm was practically the forum's expansion. All those zones people had been wanting, flying in Azeroth, update of old quests, raid finder like the dungeon finder, Horde vs Alliance story...

    People didn't LIKE it, but quite a lot of the stuff present in Cataclysm was requested or discussed a lot on the forums.
    While this is just your opinion, I do think that there is a problem with Blizz implementing features that are requested through forums and other sites. It's usually the vocal minority that actually goes on and expresses their opinions on the forums. Most of my WoW friends have either never heard of MMO-C or never post on it, including the official forums.

  19. #19
    Quote Originally Posted by Regalbeast View Post
    While this is just your opinion, I do think that there is a problem with Blizz implementing features that are requested through forums and other sites. It's usually the vocal minority that actually goes on and expresses their opinions on the forums. Most of my WoW friends have either never heard of MMO-C or never post on it, including the official forums.
    That doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad idea to listen and possibly implement certain things. Good ideas are still good ideas.

  20. #20
    Quote Originally Posted by notorious98 View Post
    That doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad idea to listen and possibly implement certain things. Good ideas are still good ideas.
    Indeed, however often what the community thinks is a good idea is only a good idea because they don't/can't see the big picture and only have a limited view of all the things that need to be considered. At the end of the day I am sure Blizzard reads things and use it as a form of input for their decision making process, it is simply one form of input among many that they have to consider.

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