Opinion: Dedicated Players Owe the Community

[Akibaboy]

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.

This is the problem with being pro-consumer, not that the idea is inherently bad but it more often comes with an perceived elevation or status given to consumerism. Consumers tell themselves that they're the linchpin - "without my sub, WoW wouldn't exist". On an economic basis that is somewhat true, that the game will have less support and less content if it doesn't generate income for the people creating said game... but that sentiment fails on the basis of pure logic: A game can be made that no one plays, but you cannot play a game that no one makes. This constant bandwagonning around professional no-lifers who whine into a camera and are afforded the title "content creators" on their preferred platform, while ignoring actual creators (artists, designers, programmers, musicians, actors, writers, etc.) is a bit silly. The WoW "community" will always be 100% beholden to Blizzard because of the fact that Blizzard put in the effort and risk to create the game.

Your "stake" in the game is to keep paying for it. The tone of your statements is like someone renting a house trying to dictate to the landlord what percentage of the home they've earned ownership over because of the time, finances, and effort they've sunk into the property. The answer is 0% - if you stop paying, you stop partaking. Sure you can petition for some things to be fixed or made more amenable to increase the likelihood you'll stay, but at the end of the day they aren't going to turn the place upside down to keep you there because they've got millions to try and keep happy.

Critique and feedback for the game is absolutely fine... but the idea that "big names and big players have to take a role and step in for Blizzard" Sorry but no. I don't want an army of mad turbo nerds designing games by committee in between their "SERIOUSLY?! 14 Reasons why Blizzard is FAILING (Rant)" videos. Highly skilled players and voices are already scouted by Blizzard for their internal testing and design teams.

[Lochton]

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.

I owe ye nothing.

I already send in hundreds of feedback reports and bug reports yearly.

And I still play the game.

[Khallid]

Sure, one sec, let me just implement this suspicious piece of code into a copyrighted product. They sure as hell won't ban me or anything.

Blizzard didn't listen to feedback and they clearly rushed out the release of BfA. It isn't even possible to listen to feedback if you don't make time for it. The devs are regular people with a full work schedule. Feedback is probably not even in their schedule.

[Sencha]

I still don't understand why Legion is praised and not BfA. BfA is basically a reskinned Legion.

[ToxicFlame]

I still don't understand why Legion is praised and not BfA. BfA is basically a reskinned Legion.

because bfa does a lot less than legion and what bfa does, it does worse than legion.

[Marxman]

I still don't understand why Legion is praised and not BfA. BfA is basically a reskinned Legion.

BfA is all the bad parts of Legion, with all the good parts of Legion trimmed away.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

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.

Even if the game drops to 1m that’s 15mil a month atleast, there not gonna be pulling any plugs.

On topic. The “community” can suck a dick, the “community” has gone down hill way faster then the game it self and it won’t ever be turning back.

[Unholyground]

It is a catch 22 with a game as big as WoW has been, if too many people stop playing they would likely just Axe retail and stick with iterative servers, or just axe it all.

[Xath]

Even if the game drops to 1m that’s 15mil a month atleast, there not gonna be pulling any plugs.

On topic. The “community” can suck a dick, the “community” has gone down hill way faster then the game it self and it won’t ever be turning back.

At a mil a month it wouldn't be worth the assets it will take to create a new expac. People don't get how much money is spent on expac yes a bunch is spent on nonsense systems they throw away next expac but it's still spent.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

At a mil a month it wouldn't be worth the assets it will take to create a new expac. People don't get how much money is spent on expac yes a bunch is spent on nonsense systems they throw away next expac but it's still spent.

It’s 180 million a year at minimum they wouldn’t throw that away when they could say put out a lack luster expan every three years.