Venturebeat Interview with Ion Hazzikostas on WoW's Future

Introducing the World of Warcraft Community Council


Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Greetings, citizens of Azeroth –

The World of Warcraft community is second to none with the passion, love, and excitement you all show to the game. Player feedback impacts all aspects of the game, and with such a wide range of opinions, playstyles, and interests out there, gathering and understanding feedback is more important than ever.

To help further our efforts in this area, we’re introducing the WoW Community Council. This program will add another venue for communication between players and WoW developers. Our goal is to gather more detailed feedback on all aspects of World of Warcraft from players around the world with a wide range of backgrounds and interests.

Here’s how it works:
· Submissions are open to any player interested in taking part in the program.
· Once players are selected, they’ll be given the ability to post in a new discussion forum that is publicly visible to everyone.
o In this new forum, we’ll ask members to share their experiences and perspectives on anything in the game, and some topics may be started by Blizzard developers and community managers.
o Responses and updates from Blizzard will be posted there so they can easily be discussed by the entire community.
· A private discussion will also be setup for Council members to encourage direct interaction between members.
· Separate conversations between smaller groups of members and Blizzard developers will be encouraged to ensure players with differing perspectives are being heard.

These may take the form of live chats between Council members and WoW devs.

One of the key goals with this program is to encourage discussion with players from a wide variety of different playstyles. To help ensure this, part of the application process will involve sharing your areas of interest and expertise. Whether it’s cutting-edge raiding, playing alts, completing achievements, accessibility, or collecting transmog, we want to know your perspective and ensure you’re heard. Therefore, after one year in the program, we plan to unflag Council members and open the application again. All WoW players will be free to apply at that point.

Please note: this program is focused on sharing current and past game experiences; it will not provide access to unannounced game information.

If this sounds like something you’d like to participate in, here is the submission link:

https://forms.office.com/r/2BfVmv2d44

Please share this with any player who may be interested in this program and if you have any questions, please let us know.

Thanks for your time and feedback.

-The World of Warcraft Community Team
This article was originally published in forum thread: Introducing the World of Warcraft Community Council started by Stoy View original post
Comments 245 Comments
  1. Mendzia's Avatar
    Very good idea on paper... but probably 5-6 years too late...
    They can pick whatever they want... so nothing will probably change.
    From now the devs will now probably say 'we listened our council' after introducing another horrible idea.
    The community should vote for their representative at X issue instead and that could work.

    ... and WTF is this WoW YT channel with 50 subs and random Korean arena???
  1. EbaumsTipster's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Crixes1 View Post
    Yay, more ways for blizzard to ignore us. Lol..
    Why not apply?
  1. arkanon's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by GreenJesus View Post
    Isn't that what the existing forums are for? So is blizzard going to ignore those forums now?
    They fired their entire community team a couple years back, now they are asking for volunteers to do that same job, but for free. Think about it, its genius really - now whenever someone criticizes the community, they can just say "well you guys moderate and control it, its out of our hands!"
  1. exsanguinate's Avatar
    You wouldn't have to make such a circus if you just admitted your mistakes. "We screwed up, we'll do it better" and that's it. There is absolutely no need for such a filter. This is just another way to develop nonsense and dump feedback you don't want to hear.
  1. Gadzooks's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Syn20 View Post
    Fun fact - The video wasn't even uploaded to the official channel. The channel it's on has ~20 subscribers, and only 1 other video (some arena match from Asia).

    * slow clapping intensifies *
    Team 2 has this bizarre habit of never directly engaging with their customers. Which is why "solutions" like this council are needed in the first place. It's like a clown world cycle of failure. It's just another layer between the devs in their ivory towers...er, sorry, their "dojo", and the players. It's horseshit.

    The Players: "The devs don't listen to us. We talk until we're blue in the face, and nothing changes. We talk on the WoW Forums, the WoW Reddit, on YouTube, on MMO-Champions, and it's like they don't even know we exist, and Ion keeps telling us we just don't get it. The only way to get their attention is to throw larger and larger temper tantrums, or stop paying. And even then, they react to us with disdain."

    The Devs: "Let's make a curated forum that locks out everyone but people we approve of, and only allow posts we approve of, and we'll tell players there they just don't get it. What's that? Players who unsubbed? /spit."
  1. EbaumsTipster's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by GreenJesus View Post
    Isn't that what the existing forums are for? So is blizzard going to ignore those forums now? And isn't this basically "Community Managers", but without having to pay them?
    The WoW forums have proved themselves worthy of ignoring. They are dogshit and even worse than MMOC and Wowhead combined, really stupid fuckers on there.
  1. hulkgor's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Orby View Post
    I asked a question I didn't make a statement... You Blizzard stans are terrible to discuss anything subjective with, you are all so super defensive about the game now. Blizzard really does have a toxic community if people like you are all thats left.
    Terrible to discuss anything when you made a comment that i found funny? Toxic? Dude, take a deep breath, all will be fine.

    Toxic, lol.
  1. Saltysquidoon's Avatar
    Why is blizzard the only company on earth that has such a consistently hard time parsing feedback? Even when other devs actively choose to ignore feedback it's because they believe their path is better (insert 300 years meme).

    Only blizzard consistently pushes this narrative that feedback is this impossible legendary fish that only the greatest of fishermen using the most specialized tools can catch.
  1. oathy's Avatar
    Thing is they always had amazing feedback on the BETA forums.
    when you have 1,000's of people saying the same thing it might be time to listen.
    WOD/BFA/SL core issues that affected those expansions were ignored.

    GreenJesus is right.

    Ion always comes across as saying they listen to feedback but very little changes.
    they can add a million new mounts or transmogs if classes/specs are boring that's going
    to impact the entire game.
  1. Necomis's Avatar
    Blizz you're trying to hard.
  1. reznormuradin's Avatar
    I like that the bliz reps are overly representing women.
  1. Every Pwny's Avatar
    Why does this link to a youtube channel with 35 subscribers and one other chinese pvp video from 6 years ago?
  1. Jester Joe's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by arkanon View Post
    They fired their entire community team a couple years back, now they are asking for volunteers to do that same job, but for free. Think about it, its genius really - now whenever someone criticizes the community, they can just say "well you guys moderate and control it, its out of our hands!"
    Except there's nothing about moderation in this
  1. hulkgor's Avatar
    EVE Online have had such a council for over a decade (going on their 16th different council atm), the difference is, the council representatives are voted by the community, which is something i find kind of weird, since 'celebrities' or streamers will have an easier time getting there due to their influence.

    It might actually be interesting, depending on the people who get selected. It can easily turn into a blizzard fan fest, with no real criticism or arguments, which would be a shame.

    (And people, this is -not- recruiting moderators for the forums to work for free, geez)
  1. Yarathir's Avatar
    Guys, you had this thing from MoP to Legion, you proceeded to ignore it and eventually just condescend to it and attack it.

    So since you couldn't deal respectfully with that, I just assume that what you're looking for is a shill circle.

    https://twitter.com/magdalenadk/stat...529282?lang=en
  1. Clozer's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by EbaumsTipster View Post
    Why not apply?
    They already had this kind of forum. It was hidden from the public and the devs ignored or even attacked the people posting about issues. There is no reason to think that this won't be the same this time around.
  1. Villager720's Avatar
    This is certainly …one approach.
    I’d probably have tried some form of outreach that didn’t tacitly confirm the forums are a dead medium for feedback.
    But it’s their game and their crisis I guess.
  1. ReD-EyeD's Avatar
    So...

    Delegating communication with community to community itself. Classic Blizzard.
  1. Overlordd's Avatar
    Translation: we'll pick the biggest brown nosers, the yes-men, the largest bootlickers to form our council and to shield us from criticism.
  1. Log Cabin's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Jester Joe View Post
    Except there's nothing about moderation in this
    Community managers are not a part of the moderation team. This is something I actually know first hand.

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