Opinion: Dedicated Players Owe the Community

[Elestia]

I feel like serious players that enjoy WoW the most have the most to lose when something in the game isn't going right.

When something is going right - Blizz tends to 'build' off of that, iterating on positives. Not a terrible approach to have -- except this MUST include input from actual players. Legion had a lot of positives, yet as we can see in BfA, there's a significant lack of vision and planning.

You can attribute that failure to Blizzard doing it's own thing in an echo chamber, or not allowing opportunities for feedback, not taking the concerns of the players seriously. --We can't change any of that now.

My concern is that the people, the players, that really make things within the game develop, progress and become better -who invest a lot of time... things they were saying and what was said was missed and not communicated. Thereby, the vision of the game that got created... to a certain extent failed because it doesn't meet expectations, what's rewarding, what's fun, xyz reasons etc.


The discussion question is how to address this? People that have a serious stake in the game... will you do more? Does it even make sense to do so? There's always going to be people coming and going from the game... yet I feel at this point, big names and big players have to take a role and step in for Blizzard.

[Zincca]

Step in for Blizzard?

Blizzard has completely lost its touch with player base, and Activision is elbow-deep into Blizz right now.
Blizzard no longer listens to community, all the devs that actually cared about the game, but did NOT care about just boosting sales numbers have already left. Chris Metzan, Mike Morhaime being examples.
Right now, Activision is just milking WoW for what's it's worth, until the game is completely abandoned.
Literally no reason for famous players and streamers to step in, and save a sinking ship.

[aceperson]

i don't owe you jack. just because i find a game fun and you don't doesn't mean i have to go on some big strike for your sake.

[Yunaqt]

Well this is different.

"Yeah fuck you people who like this game. You owe the community!"

[Sting]

As a non stop day 1 player, I have exactly fuck all options to give feedback and have it heard. Forums? Ingame suggestion tool? Twitter? Don't make me laugh.
I played through the alpha and beta, gave a bunch of feedback (and I wasn't the only one) and it didn't do jack shit. Unpopular systems or changes like azerite 1.0 and GCD changes got pushed through anyway because they were tied to a deadline and eventually BFA was released as a rushed product.

If they wanted to listen, just send long term players a sort of survey like they did to unsubbing people (or was that fake? Haven't checked).

[PaladinBash]

I mean I love WoW and will keep playing it until it dies but I do see that as an inevitable outcome in the past few years. I had a great deal of fun for a good while in BFA and I imagine I'll have more in the new patch for a time. Same with whatever comes after. I do play it less than I used to and I enjoy it less than I used to as well. It's at the point where besides logging on to raid, I almost never play it for the past couple of years beyond new patches or expansions or whatever launching. I still like it or I wouldn't play it at all.

People like me aren't going to save the game. I'm too settled into the game gradually getting worse so I'll play it til it dies so I am neither bothered by doomsayers screeching it's going to die TODAY and THIS PATCH KILLS WOW but nor am I convinced any one change or feature is ever going to make me love the game like I used to.

[Volitar]

Lol. There were pages and pages of feedback on alpha and beta. Blizzard ignored it and didn't communicate anything to us during that time.

This shitstorm was brought on by them.

[Sansnom]

When something is going right - Blizz tends to 'build' off of that, iterating on positives. Not a terrible approach to have -- except this MUST include input from actual players. Legion had a lot of positives, yet as we can see in BfA, there's a significant lack of vision and planning.

Right. 10 different types of players giving 10 different feedbacks. What would you do?

You can attribute that failure to Blizzard doing it's own thing in an echo chamber, or not allowing opportunities for feedback, not taking the concerns of the players seriously. --We can't change any of that now.

We do not own the game. We have no say in it. They can listen but they do not have to take actions on whatever our own view might be.

My concern is that the people, the players, that really make things within the game develop, progress and become better -who invest a lot of time... things they were saying and what was said was missed and not communicated. Thereby, the vision of the game that got created... to a certain extent failed because it doesn't meet expectations, what's rewarding, what's fun, xyz reasons etc.

You need to provide some examples.

yet I feel at this point, big names and big players have to take a role and step in for Blizzard.

Big names? Big players? Why are they important? Step in for Blizzard? For what?

[Caerule]

I don't know. For being just a player, I've often found Blizzard to be quite receptive to my questions and suggestions. They've answered 8 over the years, 5 of which in Q&As.

I'm not saying more can't be done for them to get more input in there. There's a ton of areas I have advise to offer that'd never make it to their internal conversations. Though in part that's because they are dozens, and we are millions.

Echo chambers though, I think that's mostly in the WoW Community, not at Blizzard. We get too single-minded, issue-pushing and hateful to bring actually useful solutions to the table amidst the hatestorm. And yeah, we often tend to ignore it when there's plenty of people that do not share our opinion.

[Razzako]

A whole LOT of feedback was given and they did not listen...

[Silver-Fox]

Say what you want about BfA, whether you believe it is a good expansion or a bad one; that's up for everyone on their own to decide. But if I have one criticism for BfA it is that no other expansion has ever failed to sell me on what its core features are or is.

Warlords was all about the Garrison (for better or worse), Legion was about Artifact weapons and power (and RNG), BfA is about... Azerite? Warfronts? Warmode? Turtles?

[Mister Cheese]

When people who have played this game for years have given blizzard tons of feedback and they have listened to none of it? You say that those players owe them more? Rofl.

[VladimirM]

Turtles?

The turtle has reached the water.

[Zogarth]

When feedback is largely ignored, complaints from the start of beta make it to live, it takes half a year to fix even minor issues... i don't think the community can do anything. Blizzard stopped caring about what the players want, and now just do what they think is best for us. They care more about how much time we spend on something, than how fun that time was spending. They don't care about how you want to play, but about how they think you should play.

[Klingers]

Community: "Azerite Armor is horrible. Just horrible. The whole system is horrible."

Blizzard: "But we built the system."

Community: "But the system is broken. Not just broken, but boring, grindy and unsatisfying."

Blizzard: "But we built the system."

Community: "So, we're like... Stuck with it?"

Blizzard: "Of course. We built the system."

Blizzard doesn't listen. Blizzard doesn't learn. Blizzard is constantly a victim of their own sunk-cost fallacy and we have to suffer their bad ideas.

WoW has had a cancerous systems team dragging down great artists, world designers, quest designers, class designers and raid/dungeon designers since at least Mists of Pandaria. Bar-filling, time-gates, titanforging, legendary grinds, garrisons, tables, mission boards, randomised PVP rewards, island expeditions, AP... These clowns have tainted the work of some great talents and soured the community's enjoyment of what used to be our very own sandbox.

[Jastall]

Say what you want about BfA, whether you believe it is a good expansion or a bad one; that's up for everyone on their own to decide. But if I have one criticism for BfA it is that no other expansion has ever failed to sell me on what its core features are or is.

Warlords was all about the Garrison (for better or worse), Legion was about Artifact weapons and power (and RNG), BfA is about... Azerite? Warfronts? Warmode? Turtles?

Yeah, BfA's greatest failure is definitely in its lackluster new features. Hell I mostly still play thanks to Legion features like WQs and M+, plus raids of course which have always been in the game. Azerite, Islands and Warfronts have all been failures, the expansion's flagships have failed to sail in one way or another.

Doesn't help that it really seems that systems are already set in stone by the time we can get a good look at them, so any feedback can have limited impact because Blizzard simply cannot just "scrap Azerite armor" no matter what some people say. By beta it's sadly too late to do something like that without causing even more issues.

[Torto]

Blizzard stopped listening to the community a long time ago, it's not a bfa issue alone. What is notable is they have also stopped listening to content creators, streamers and other so called voices of the community that typically shill for them. With the exception of maybe Taliesan, all the youtubers are in agreement bfa is rubbish.

The only people Blizzard are listening to are their Activision overlords, which is evidenced in their excessive use of rng, grinding and dismissive attitude to complaints about most classes, professions and balancing.

It really is hard to see what long term players can do to exact change, other than unsubbing. But I honestly believe Activision would be just as happy to shut wow down rather than to cave into their customers.

[Xath]

i don't owe you jack. just because i find a game fun and you don't doesn't mean i have to go on some big strike for your sake.

It's more for your sake than his because if Numbers dip low enough Activision will pull the plug and we are starting to approach the point where at least creating new expansions every two years is becoming a losing gambit. Now the game would stay on in mait mode for a bit most definitely but new content would kind of dry up.

[Stormcall]

yet I feel at this point, big names and big players have to take a role and step in for Blizzard.

You mean like they do every fucking day on the forums? Cause that is literally the only thing they can do, how are they supposed to "take a role and step in" for a company they don't work for?

[Xath]

As a non stop day 1 player, I have exactly fuck all options to give feedback and have it heard. Forums? Ingame suggestion tool? Twitter? Don't make me laugh.
I played through the alpha and beta, gave a bunch of feedback (and I wasn't the only one) and it didn't do jack shit. Unpopular systems or changes like azerite 1.0 and GCD changes got pushed through anyway because they were tied to a deadline and eventually BFA was released as a rushed product.

If they wanted to listen, just send long term players a sort of survey like they did to unsubbing people (or was that fake? Haven't checked).

Hey just ask about what their favorite breakfast food is. They will reply to that then the gd crew will scream at people who point out that there are actual important threads they could give a reply to.