"Cynically negative" community cause of communication breakdown

[Nero Duskwind]

The official forums have always been like this. It's been a vat of cancer ever since its inception. Sounds like Ornyx is just tired of it.

Sounds like he's one shitpost away from pulling a Tseric.

[Deleted]

Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that any company does that these days? The idea of admitting defeat might hurt their sales. At least in their mind they think it does? Idk it seems to be a common trend.

It indeed seems to be a common trend everywhere from business to politics. Business at least fixes things eventually in order to retain customers. But politicians who have committed themselves to a lie are narcissistic bastards who keep lying more and more until the bitter end, because there are always voters who are either stupid or dishonest enough to share their lies and vote for them.

[Gigabear]

Sounds like he's one shitpost away from pulling a Tseric.

Hasn't posted since he responded to me, despite having a QA and loads of activity on the forums. I truly believe he is at the point where he thinks the community just wants to be acting the way it is, and there's nothing he can do about it. There is. I don't expect to be afforded the opportunity to have a frank discussion on the matter, but it would be pretty simple for me to explain what has me angry enough to post a thread like that.

[teddabear]

Did a google search. Most sites put wow as most played of 2017. One put it at second behind ESO.

Not sure if that claim is entirely accurate.

An important distinction is only 2 million of their subscribers are US and EU now. Back when they were up to 12 million that was all US and EU. The majority of WoW's subscribers are now in Asia.

Not only is that less people to play with but Asian subscribers pay less.

[thottstation]

In a thread about employees burning out and becoming snide due to being in one place to long, I have a nagging suspicion that some comments are meaner than they need to be.

And according to that [X Year Member] thing, they're being made by people who perhaps have been arguing on the MMO-champ forums for too long.

Ironic.

[Silver Forte]

This^

Blizzard devs are absolutely arrogant and lockdown any and all dissent. It has always been this way, they have a vision and almost never veer from it. People try and speak up and naturally out of frustration and devs take it personally and become further entrenched. Then towards the end of the expansion, they know full well they made a mistake and will then say crap like "in hindsight, this could have been improved" or "our reason was___, and we failed to communicate it better". They almost never say "we screwed up" or "we are sorry". They don't seem to learn. Their lap dog fanboys just enable them!

FFS, look at how legion was for alts and now we are going to get a steady stream of allied races and more alt spots and Ion just said BfA is going to be on par with legion for alts!!! It just boggles the mind how Blizz devs are so out of fucking touch. I don't believe they have a pulse on the community AT ALL. They stay in their bubble wrapped in Blizz culture and that is all they know or see.

Bullshit. Here's plenty of recent complaining that is just fine, as it usually is. People like you claim others live in a bubble but your type are the biggest hypocrites.

https://imgur.com/Dkir4n2

https://imgur.com/YmphUBo

https://imgur.com/BQ35Yny

https://imgur.com/2IrcqAn

[Kuntantee]

If you distance yourself from your customers you end up with Warlords of Draenor. If you listen to them you end up with MoP and Legions. You better listen to the people putting money in your pocket.

Who did they listen in tBC and WotLK?

[TheramoreIsTheBomb]

Who did they listen in tBC and WotLK?

The community because raiding was much easier to get into than TBC. WotLK as a whole was more casual because people were complaining "TBC is too hard!". That's where the "casual catering" [Which I do not use as an insult.] came in. Especially during 3.3

[HitRefresh]

Humans are humans.
Blizzard is aware that forum posters are cunts. It's also their job to ignore/mute people that are being cunts. That's them doing their jobs.

In other words, if you answer to cuntbags then it shows to others that if you're enough of a cuntbag you can get a response from Blizzard. That's why they tend to respond to well thought out, constructive posts.

[StationaryHawk]

My response is simply this: if a community manager does not wish to manage and participate with the community then they should immediately resign and find someone who is willing to try. If that is how they really feel, we will continue stuck in this limbo state indefinitely as long as they're around.

Might have been a decent response, if Ornyx had said "I don't see any reason why it would be in our best interest to actively engage with the community."

Blizzard CMs are not paid to be jackasses, they are paid to be community managers, their job is to manage community, not ignore it because someone said something rude.

It seems that they're also paid to filter out nonconstructive criticism.

[Terahertz]

I feel like that's primarily because a lot of constructive criticism has fallen on deaf ears which leads to people becoming frustrated. Furthermore it's also the people's perception that blizzard hasn't fixed what they perceive so obviously wrong which leads to frustration and losing faith in blizzard's capabilities (or rather, willingness).

It often feels like Blizzard just waltzes through updates/content/whatever while completely ignoring people's reactions to it.

[Osmeric]

"Our product is fine; it's the customers who are defective."

[Accendor]

An important distinction is only 2 million of their subscribers are US and EU now. Back when they were up to 12 million that was all US and EU. The majority of WoW's subscribers are now in Asia.

Not only is that less people to play with but Asian subscribers pay less.

where does this information come from? source please.

[Deleted]

This place is the same as the official forums, a bunch of entitled manbabies who wants Blizzard to do what they want, or else they ain't listening to "feedback".

They shouldn't, and won't listen to you, and they know it, because in the end, you'll still buy their game.

[lockybalboa]

If you notice, the Blizzard CMs often only reply to those nonsensical threads which announces someone's birthday and someone telling their cheesy life stories for example. They avoid those threads with valid and constructive concerns like the plague. Pretty spineless and unprofessional.

[TheramoreIsTheBomb]

If you notice, the Blizzard CMS often only reply to those nonsensical threads which announces someone's birthday and someone telling their cheesy life stories for example. They avoid or lock/delete those threads with valid and constructive concerns like the plague. Pretty spineless and unprofessional.

I agree but added something to your post.

[lockybalboa]

I agree but added something to your post.

Yep they often label threads that are critical of the game as nonconstructive and shut them down. Granted there are many QQ threads but there are tonnes of valid feedback as well which they perennially ignore, and that's what is making so many players bitter.

[Mellrod]

That attitude isn't a good one for a Community Manager, let alone Blizzard, to have.

But to be fair, as someone who's lurked official site, MMO-C, and the related youtube channels since late vanilla/early BC, the community (or at least the most vocal part of it - the ones actually making all the forum posts online) IS horribly toxic. Especially in MMO-C and Official forums. I'm certain Ghostcrawler can attest to that. It's a job that would give a 20 year old grey hairs in a week.

Does anyone remember what happened to Tseric? A CM who was trolled out of the forums, quitting because he couldn't take the harassment anymore? His bitter final messages to the community definitely comes to mind when thinking about Ornyx's post here.

When you can understand how a group of belligerent and angry posters can drive away people from this game with an uncrafted and improvisational campaign of misery and spin-doctoring, then perhaps, you can understand the decisions I make. Until you face mobs of psychology, you will not see my side.

Until you see some bright-eyed player coming onto the forums wanting to know what they should spec as this class, and see them shat on and driven away by petty and selfish people who are simply leveraging for game buffs, you will not understand.

You will not understand until you have to see it daily, for years...

Until you understand that many people will trod over you to get where they're going, or to get what they want.

Until you understand that so many people will agree, completely, 100% with a loud, vulgar and assertive individual, not because he is right, but because he is making a stand against "the Man"; to take no critical thought in what they say, but simply to hop on board.

Until you actually try to acknowledge those who do not speak on the forums, for whatever reason they have, you will not understand.

If you think an archaic business formula like "the customer is always right" works, you fail to understand customers, not a customer. It is a collective. No one person, even myself, is truly above the whole.

I simply have the unfortunate quality of being easily singled out.

Can't help it.
Posting impassionately, they say you don't care.
Posting nothing, they say you ignore.
Posting with passion, you incite trolls.
Posting fluff, you say nonsense.
Post with what facts you have, they whittle down with rationale.
There is no win.
There is only slow degradation.
Take note. It is the first and only time you'll see someone in my position make that position.
You can be me when I'm gone.

Really has me sympathizing more with the reps at Blizzard than the players. Especially knowing so many close friends who have similar problems while working highly stressful retail jobs. At the same time though, you can't really tame such a vocal mass of people. Especially where they're on the internet where the anonymity turns everyone into a complete asshole, causing debates and discussions to easily turn hostile 80-90% of the time. CMs did kinda sign up for this, but that doesnt shift blame off the community.

All the forum couch-devs that spit out their half-assed conjecture acting as though they know how the game development process works. All the whiners that will constantly look for trivial issues or non-issues that they can blow up into huge wildfire argument threads. While sometimes it may be justified to be so angrily vocal (threads about WoD's No Flying issue, or it's lack of content come to mind), a lot of forum complaints are just bred of ignorance, or just a sheer matter of opinion. Whether it be those same people you see playing doomsayer at the announcement of every expansion or whenever their class is nerfed, or that someone who calls the art team lazy because they don't like the way a tier of armor looks. Same old, same old.

TL;DR - The community is generally uninformed, spiteful, and overly cynical while having a preconceived notion of the development process. You can get radiation poisoning just from lurking on the forums too long. It brings memories of how stressful retail jobs are for the employees. On that note, I sympathize more with Blizzard.

[Volrog]

Sometimes I'd like to post a cynical comment as a user, just to see if I can trigger Blizzard.

Then again, if I were a community manager I'd just ignore that very same post.

On top of that, some people are uninformed, ignorant and too lazy to google the easiest questions, and at the same time they feel, they need to make a post about whatever they think their problem is.

Just to add an example. Blizzard tries out some new experimental Elemental Shaman stuff. Youtuber makes a video about how bad it feels with green quest gear. Next day I see three different threads on MMOC top trending about how Blizzard destroyed Elemental Shaman for BfA.

It's one thing to give feedback but so many threads are just useless bitching.

It was truly the worst iteration of ele shaman I have ever seen though. Ele shaman on legion is fine for the most part. Their only weakness is the RNG in their single target damage. Fix that and we got a golden spec. They took away their mobility talent which is still very odd since they are the most immobile ranged. It felt like they changed ele for the sake of just change and it was god awful.

[Gigabear]

Does anyone remember what happened to Tseric? A CM who was trolled out of the forums, quitting because he couldn't take the harassment anymore? His bitter final messages to the community definitely comes to mind when thinking about Ornyx's post here.

Yes I remember it well. His post wasn't just a sad commentary on the state of toxicity on the forums. It was also...a blueprint.