If Blizzard retaliated?

[Headtaker]

Ok, I'm going to address the overshadowing point this post is really stemming from. Blizzard Addresses the customer base as best suits their profit. If you all were masochists, they would belittle you and send people to your house daily to beat you if it made them more money. They are an Activision company, and our out to make money like any subsidiary, and have been. This is evident in several ways.

1st: the constant unbalance of the game in regards to class to class. This is to their advantage, and keeps the game in a constant perpetual evolutionary state, and the customer base along for the ride. It is entirely possible, and a lot easier than they maintain, to basically balance all pve damage and healing and mitigation within a percent or two, if not closer. Go ask a math professor, it's really all just numbers.

2nd: Addressing the public in ways which delude and make vague upon any progress, variance from balance, or conceived differences to apparent normality or sense.
They use misdirection and delaying tactics, as any service provider or large organization that deploys subterfuge as a means for occupying the masses. Basically, it's look at this hand and occupy yourselves, while we do what we want with this other hand.

3rd: They give us features we want, while changing the game to open up it's potential profit base. Yes, this has really been happening. It will always happen. People have cried about houses in mmo's, and after years, poof, we get garrisons, basically not a house but a whole damn village of our own. I myself called for a boosting system that was purchasable after you have at least one toon to max level for years now, just because grinding an alt was just tiresome anymore. I'm sure I wasn't alone in this thought. And poof, look what they implemented. This one WILL make them a lot of money, and they know it. Dungeon/Raidfinder not only added a convenience to the player base, it made it even easier to be casual. Opening up the game to casuals was a major point of development since Wrath. Garrisons will (by current descriptions) further this point and goal, making it so gatherables, crafting, and apparently even gear, can be done while offline.

Welcome to the world of misdirection known as Casuals of Moneycraft. Don't worry, they will always put in hard enough content with low enough drop rates to keep the Hardcore players, and listen to some of the more sensible suggestions on the forums, especially when they translate into a higher profit margin. You want your suggestion to be implemented? Ok, figure a way to tie it to higher profits, and bam...

[Tenjen]

they're company with, according to all the haters, millions of dollars lying around.

don't get them too mad, or maybe some of that money will be "invested" in a letter with your photo and location (tracked through your IP Address) put in the pocket of merciless merciless men.

[Deleted]

WE WOULD RAID THEIR HEADQUARTERS AND STAND OUTSIDE WITH TORCHES. or something

[Tharkkun]

It's what they've done for 8 years, except hiding behind a facade of politeness so whenever someone does lash out at them it makes them look like victims, and they never answer because they know their arguments are garbage.

If Activblizzard did lash out at me in the way you're saying the last thing I'd do is apologize, because they'd be buried under a mountain of their own hypocrisy before they'd have time to answer the first reply.

They talk to us like idiots, because they're afraid to open a real channel of communication which companies like Red5 have with their customers.

Those guys take shit every day 10x harder than WoW developers do and they still take the time to take even the most angry rants and actually try to address their points, whether they agree with them or not.

"This is what we feel is best" is their chief argument in every discussion, so you can't talk logic with them because it's all based on their subjective ideals.

I'd like to see them try to retaliate, I have dozens of screenshots of deleted threads addressing critical issues in the game which disappear after someone drops an f bomb but which mods use as an excuse to make the entire thread disappear.

Customer service 101. Assume your user is not a genius.

There's no business reason for Blizzard to lash out at it's customers directly. They will just ban you if you can't act like a sane human being. Problem solved.

[Grubjuice]

feeding trolls is never the right choice...

No company or person in their right mind would ever willingly escalate an argument with an idiot or a brat or a troll, the only thing you can hope to do is isolate, marginalize and silence them.

[MoanaLisa]

Oh, they won't likely go over-the-top rude and try and match the people that write to them. I wish they would sometimes though.

My very favorite moment of the last Blizzcon was when a panel was asked about vanilla servers and Brack just said "No." They really need to do more of that. He then tempered it with reasons like "you wouldn't really want to play on one" which was disappointing. Should have just said "No!" and left it at that.

[Smudge]

pretty sure GC did this at one point.

GC was regularly an abrasive asshat in his public comments. It was just his nature. It was generally directed to people who could be said to have "deserved it," but then again it is never appropriate for public, official comment to have that tone.

I assume Blizzard let him do it because either:

(1) He was the only person who wanted to comment publicly on the game mechanics/development (unlikely)
(2) He exercised some control over who got to comment publicly on the game mechanics/development, as in, just him (more likely)

On the one hand GC was just a member of a management team, but on the other he was an arrogant, obsessive, power-hungry snob too, who wore down a lot of reasonable people. I hear it is going well for him at Riot.

[MAXCAVALERA]

Jay wilson RETALIATED. PONEY LEVEL. got FIRED.

loool

[LookingGlass]

Want to know how Blizzard retaliates? They use silence.

[Frozenbeef]

If they were careful about how they worded things, we wouldn't have half the problems we do :O

Yes i see how "a faster release than mop" and "longest wait ever" can get mixed up : /

[SirPiken]

The secret to retaliation is to make the response funny to anyone else, save the person your hitting back. Pretty tricky to pull off though. It seems to happen a lot on twitter but maybe all the funny ones I've read were from fake twitter accounts.

[Tharkkun]

GC was regularly an abrasive asshat in his public comments. It was just his nature. It was generally directed to people who could be said to have "deserved it," but then again it is never appropriate for public, official comment to have that tone.

I assume Blizzard let him do it because either:

(1) He was the only person who wanted to comment publicly on the game mechanics/development (unlikely)
(2) He exercised some control over who got to comment publicly on the game mechanics/development, as in, just him (more likely)

On the one hand GC was just a member of a management team, but on the other he was an arrogant, obsessive, power-hungry snob too, who wore down a lot of reasonable people. I hear it is going well for him at Riot.

How does one wear down reasonable people when you're in charge of game development? Making unfavorable changes and nerfs? Explaining why? Communication with the public has dropped since he left and people will likely notice this *a lot* more once beta starts.

[Smudge]

How does one wear down reasonable people when you're in charge of game development? Making unfavorable changes and nerfs? Explaining why? Communication with the public has dropped since he left and people will likely notice this *a lot* more once beta starts.

If I were anyone other than a theorycrafter I would say that communication with the public, which might have decreased in frequency (although I doubt it), has greatly improved in quality and has hugely improved in diversity.

GC had a squelching/chilling effect on the Blizzard <-> WoW community dialogue.

And the way you wear down reasonable people is you are just more persistent and more "right," often by the least meritorious of technicalities.

[Haven]

They actually are saying that a lot, but in a very mild and subtle way. They never apologize for anything, they are just saying that everything is fine in the game until they admit something isn't fine - and that usually happens only after they have changed that.

[The One Percent]

Because a bitchy prick cunt asshole customer is still paying. In the end they win, no matter what minor victory the asshat thinks he gets by cussing out Blizzard reps on the forums. No need to stoop down to their level.

[Sunseeker]

They'd lose customers, and that's bad for business.

[Mormolyce]

pretty sure GC did this at one point.

He did from time to time, in as professional a way as you can.

I don't think they ever want to say "shut up, we're right" for two reasons:

1) They don't want us to shut up, even when we're being unreasonable they still need our feedback.

2) They never proceed from the assumption that they are right. They do what they think is best and change course if it doesn't work out.

- - - Updated - - -

Jay wilson RETALIATED. PONEY LEVEL. got FIRED.

loool

You know he's still working for Blizzard right? Isn't he on the WoW team now?

- - - Updated - - -

They talk to us like idiots, because they're afraid to open a real channel of communication which companies like Red5 have with their customers.

They don't, but some of us sure talk to them like idiots.

I don't know how anyone can look at the reams and reams of insight the devs (eg GC) gave us over the years through the forums, watercoolers and twitter and say they're not one of the most open and communicative studios in the business.

When I was a kid game companies were mysterious entities in the land of faeries and unicorns and games descended from heaven on clouds. They never talked to anyone about anything.

[Kaleredar]

GC was frank with people and a group of players hated him for it.

I say they need more guys like him.


I remember a thread asking for a 150 mount achievement (back before it was implemented.) One of the posters called Blizzard "dumb monkeys" for not putting in the achievement ASAP.

These are the kind of people blizz deals with.

[nekobaka]

They have done it before and even then players have taken what they said out of context and twisted it.

GC was frank with people and a group of players hated him for it.

Then you have those who bash the shit out of him or another developer and yet they will quote the loving shit out of some quotes favorably. Gotta love it when such posters claim they are not biased.

[Deleted]

They have done it before and even then players have taken what they said out of context and twisted it.

Then you have those who bash the shit out of him or another developer and yet they will quote the loving shit out of some quotes favorably. Gotta love it when such posters claim they are not biased.

That happens everytime Blizzard says something