Blizzard takes advantage of us way too much.

[october breeze]

You do realize you're rationalizing your preference for one large, faceless, homogenized corporate brand over another large, faceless, homogenized corporate brand, right?

You may call it preference, I call it trust. There must be mutual trust between consumers and companies. The keyword here is mutual!
Once the trust is gone, the company is pretty much done. Trust comes from many sources, but mostly from reputation. Blizz reputation is under question as of late, because of many questionable policies and decisions, specifically with the direction of the game.

So, in future, you will see more people like OP, and more threads poping up, questioning some stuff which seemed to be pretty obvious couple of years ago.
Don't bash the OP; he is the result of Acti-Blizz own doing.

[aceperson]

i WAS willing to give them free feedback. but they've made it clear they don't give a crap about our feedback unless a huge amount of people are yelling at them. so i'm going to save my time and just stop giving my unwanted feedback.

[MrLachyG]

I do apologize if this comes off as a bit of a rant but I do want to hear what you guys have to say I will try and keep it pretty level though.

As the most recent blue post is blizzard seeking our assistance in order to test their systems I think we should reflect on why we should or shouldn't give them FREE assistance.

I'm going to start off with; In no way shape or form am I willing to give them free help when I consistently feel used by them as an organization. They have been anything but transparent with shadow lands as of now, i mean WE DO NOT EVEN HAVE A PREPATCH DATE. It truly blows my mind that a company will come to the forums to request assistance despite having fed us lies about shadow lands from start to finish, the most glaring in this instance being that they said the SL prepatch was going to be a long one, now we are set for this to be the shortest to date.

On top of this, I do not understand (and really would like some insight from the people who have done this) why we would want to do it another example being. When they asked us for class feedback from the beta and the people who poured countless hours into play testing every aspect of their class was left waiting up to 4 months on a response. These wearnt just Class bad fix numbers responses either, they're where abilities and passives not even registering, sadly though it seems a lot of the bugs and class issues are still rampant effectively wasting all of those peoples time.

Why is it that we cannot at least receive something in game for effectively doing blizzards job for them by supplying them with a surplus of needed info with a days notice. The lack of communication is severely lacking if just out right non existent, as of now I do not intend on logging into the PTR tomorrow.

EDIT #1: This is a key point in why I think we shouldn't and I need to make it clear up here. Your information as a consumer is worth far more than your $15 a month to these companies. Whenever you help them knowingly or unknowingly you are putting them into a better position at no cost to create a new product and turn around to sell it to you at full price. Being the person who helps in the betas, or the stress tests, or whatever free work you do for blizzard should be incentivized for you. You are making them money, thats the cut and dry of it, every bit of data you give them for free helps them make more money. The amount in which they rely on us for free information I find really disgusting, I know some will call me entitled by real world example here:

-As a teen I used to go focus groups to "test" and give feed back on products from soda to toys, and it would only pay me like 40 bucks for the 2-3 hours i was there but it was enough for me to want to do it. All blizzard does is say "thanks for the help" in a forum post and goes dark on us for another month or two.

the last 2 expansions they have given us a prepatch date with only a few days notice. the end of pvp season notice has gone out already. the incentive for beta testers is that they get to see the content before anyone else. plus, and I don't know if you have noticed this, but this isn't just a Blizzard thing; almost every video game company out there does exactly the same thing.

edit: why did you make a 2nd thread after the first got locked? this isn't going to end well for you

[Mirishka]

As someone that has tested multiple expansions extensively and seen change implemented as a direct result of my feedback, I'm glad there are PTRs and beta realms. BFA's tone-deaf beta notwithstanding, these test realms are immensely useful for a number of reasons. And frankly anybody whining about them is just looking for something to whine about.

Not that I should be surprised by that on this forum.

- - - Updated - - -

the last 2 expansions they have given us a prepatch date with only a few days notice. the end of pvp season notice has gone out already. the incentive for beta testers is that they get to see the content before anyone else. plus, and I don't know if you have noticed this, but this isn't just a Blizzard thing; almost every video game company out there does exactly the same thing.

edit: why did you make a 2nd thread after the first got locked? this isn't going to end well for you

Because "my opinion is special and I really REALLY need people to see it!!!".

[Claymore]

The topic name is a bit clickbait-y but I appreciate the levelheadedness shown so far.

The problem is that Blizzard asks for “feedback”, when in reality it seems they’re only looking for praise. Any which I mean, they’ve proven over the years to completely disregard player feedback until AFTER things have gone live, and only when there is a HUGE outcry. They aren’t reacting to feedback at that point, but instead to a mob.

As far as the notion of providing “free feedback”, I think that’s something we would all readily offer, simply because clearly, everyone on this site cares about WoW to some extent. Even the folks who do nothing but bash on it, clearly cared enough at one point to sign up for a forum to talk about WoW.

It seems to me, Blizzard’s current leads on WoW just seem to live in their own little bubble, and don’t want to accept any sort of feedback or criticism, and I think it has contributed to a general feeling of players being utterly ignored.

[cparle87]

Stopped giving them feedback after the fiasco that was WoD. I provided some feedback and others provided copious amounts of well constructed feedback. It was ignored. This is a pattern that has been repeated xpac to xpac: players give meaningful feedback, Blizzard ignores it.

Too often Blizzard has ignored early, solid, meaningful, constructive feedback (and I am not talking about my own). Not worth my time . Now, when I get in a beta I merely check out things that interest me.

Did you ever consider that there was even more copious, even more well constructed feedback being given to them saying the exact opposite thing and they decided to go with that? Too many people conflate feedback not being implemented with not being listened to. Anyone claiming to speak for anyone besides themselves, let alone "a majority" or especially "the players" is simply speaking out of their rear. You can grab two people off the street and they won't be able to decide what condiment to put on their fries, let alone something with a million, million variable parts as a video game. Look at classic and the tribes all yelling that the patch that THEY want is the one true patch and anything else is "not real classic" or "a betrayal/slap in the face."

[Doffen]

Takes advantage of us...

Either you do it, or you don't. Blizzard ain't our shady friend that owe us anything. Its about a game you choose to participate. Or not.

I probably won't attend to stress test because of no time. I am sure blizzard will understand. Taking advantage would be that they would close my account or threathened to raise the sub fee if I don't do as they say. Unlike my friend Jim P. Imp. What you talk about is optional.

[shonist]

I see a lot of you saying that I sound like I am entitled to something? Do you folks not understand how valueable this information is for them? Like thousands and thousands of dollars would be spent trying to recreate the experience on their end when instead the go to the forums and ask you all to do it for them. In the digital age your data is worth far more than you guys seem to realize, and if a company wants to have access to it why should they get it for free?

because we want to give it for free? why i would do it for free otherwise?

- - - Updated - - -

The topic name is a bit clickbait-y but I appreciate the levelheadedness shown so far.

The problem is that Blizzard asks for “feedback”, when in reality it seems they’re only looking for praise. Any which I mean, they’ve proven over the years to completely disregard player feedback until AFTER things have gone live, and only when there is a HUGE outcry. They aren’t reacting to feedback at that point, but instead to a mob.

As far as the notion of providing “free feedback”, I think that’s something we would all readily offer, simply because clearly, everyone on this site cares about WoW to some extent. Even the folks who do nothing but bash on it, clearly cared enough at one point to sign up for a forum to talk about WoW.

It seems to me, Blizzard’s current leads on WoW just seem to live in their own little bubble, and don’t want to accept any sort of feedback or criticism, and I think it has contributed to a general feeling of players being utterly ignored.

thats quite "unfair", about taking feedback and making the changes to acommodate to it.

Theres multiple reasons for wich someone will hold into an idea instead of changing it to other's one idea... what if every wow players wants it to be a shooter-mmorpg?
the 100% of the playerbase...
maybe they dont like shooters and they'll rather just get another playerbase. of course this is exagerated, but i can see them looking at the big picture and seeing how the game maybe swings the opposite way of what "they" want every xpac just bc of the community.
Just like covenants, i dont like the system, its overcomplicated and restrictive for some weird rpg reasons that i couldnt care less, but in the end, its their game. if they want to bring to the world that idea, maybe thats what they sould do, and if it doesnt cather to me, it will probably cather to other person.
Look at simulators, a super niche type of entertainment, should they go arcade just bc those games would sell 1000000% more? Maybe they want and like to develop simulators, thats why they stick to it.

[darklogrus]

I hear ya, I hate gettin a ban because I abuse a game mechanic. I mean its not my job to test their product out and Its not my job to report every issue I find..

[Relapses]

You may call it preference, I call it trust. There must be mutual trust between consumers and companies. The keyword here is mutual!
Once the trust is gone, the company is pretty much done. Trust comes from many sources, but mostly from reputation. Blizz reputation is under question as of late, because of many questionable policies and decisions, specifically with the direction of the game.

So, in future, you will see more people like OP, and more threads poping up, questioning some stuff which seemed to be pretty obvious couple of years ago.
Don't bash the OP; he is the result of Acti-Blizz own doing.

I really don't understand what you mean by "trust." This is such an abstract concept that it's barely worth mentioning. If you think Blizzard should do {x} but they do {y}, does that mean they've lost "trust" even if the vast majority of players prefer {y} anyway? It's such a egocentric way of comparing things you don't like (losing trust) with things you do like (gaining trust). You're clearly jaded by Blizzard and that's understandable. But there really doesn't seem to be anything particularly saint-like about Squaresoft so I don't really understand your reasoning beyond simply preferring their brand of bullshit to Blizzard's. I fully admit it's possible that corporate greed and people who jack off to spreadsheets are eating Blizzard from the inside out... but they're still producing a product with a massive playerbase and it doesn't seem to be showing any signs that the game is going to be kicking the bucket anytime soon. Blizzard may lose "trust" -- as you call it -- with certain subsections of players (as has been the case since the game launched) but as long as there are many more waiting in the lurch it doesn't look like the future is nearly as bleak a picture as you're trying to paint.

[callipygoustp]

Did you ever consider that there was even more copious, even more well constructed feedback being given to them saying the exact opposite thing and they decided to go with that? Too many people conflate feedback not being implemented with not being listened to. Anyone claiming to speak for anyone besides themselves, let alone "a majority" or especially "the players" is simply speaking out of their rear. You can grab two people off the street and they won't be able to decide what condiment to put on their fries, let alone something with a million, million variable parts as a video game. Look at classic and the tribes all yelling that the patch that THEY want is the one true patch and anything else is "not real classic" or "a betrayal/slap in the face."

Having been VERY active in the testing, I know that there wasn't alternative copious feedback. There are actually plenty of examples of players giving feedback on obviously broken systems and Blizzard ignoring or denying that feedback... until months into release and then, essentially, admitting "oh yeah, you were right".

Seriously, this was your response to my comment; a fanboy response? Some of you truly leave me just shaking my head in disbelief.

[MrLachyG]

snip

you want another reason why they don't give us a prepatch date until a few days prior? let's say in this instance they announced back in mid September that the prepatch would be hitting on the 29th. then shit hits the fan for whatever reason and they have to push it back to the 3rd. if they did that, every fuckin idiot with a keyboard would be (figuratively) jumping up and down screaming "THEY LIED! THEY LIED! BLIZZARD SUCKS!!" - so they don't give a release date til they are 100% sure that it is ready to go

[exochaft]

Did you ever consider that there was even more copious, even more well constructed feedback being given to them saying the exact opposite thing and they decided to go with that? Too many people conflate feedback not being implemented with not being listened to. Anyone claiming to speak for anyone besides themselves, let alone "a majority" or especially "the players" is simply speaking out of their rear. You can grab two people off the street and they won't be able to decide what condiment to put on their fries, let alone something with a million, million variable parts as a video game. Look at classic and the tribes all yelling that the patch that THEY want is the one true patch and anything else is "not real classic" or "a betrayal/slap in the face."

Just to add onto this concept, another issue I see is people don't provide feedback that Blizz is looking for at that time. As a simple example, Blizz can ask for feedback on how a spec plays out and feels... and it's quite common to get feedback "spec doesn't do enough damage!!" or some variant, which isn't what Blizz is asking nor is it helpful feedback. A more complex example is Covenants, where Blizz has been asking for feedback on how to make the system work and help identifying outlier abilities/traits/etc... but the most common feedback from testers is "#pulltheripcord!" or "trash the system, it sucks!". The best type of feedback you can give is framing your points and critiques w/i the context of what Blizz is asking.

Now, this doesn't mean you can't offer feedback that you feel a class needs a damage buff or that you don't like Covenants. However, if you don't frame your response in a way that's constructive and/or relative to the feedback Blizz wants, don't be surprised if feedback isn't acknowledged. Furthermore, this can lead to Blizz thinking the core of the system is fine or functional. There's a reason why the general methodology to iterative testing on an alpha/beta for WoW is fix the core systems first, tune the numbers second: if you tune the numbers first, any issues with the core system will cause you to have to repeat tuning the numbers every time you change something. This also applies to more abstract systems, where numbers tuning is a waste of time until you can get the core system in a good place.

Sadly, many of the posts I've seen when it comes to feedback on the alpha/beta/PTRs over the years for WoW come from a place of emotion, not constructive criticisms with an explanation of the problems or issues. There's a time and place for "feely-craft" feedback, and Blizz will ask for it when appropriate. If you want to exact change, you need to have a good point that's good relative to what Blizz is looking for.

[deenman]

uhm....shadowlands has been the most transparent expansion to date...also complaning about a stress test...something that benefits players is a little odd...something smells trolly here

[CrawlFromThePit]

I do apologize if this comes off as a bit of a rant but I do want to hear what you guys have to say I will try and keep it pretty level though.

As the most recent blue post is blizzard seeking our assistance in order to test their systems I think we should reflect on why we should or shouldn't give them FREE assistance.

You don't wanna do it? Then don't.

I'm going to start off with; In no way shape or form am I willing to give them free help when I consistently feel used by them as an organization. They have been anything but transparent with shadow lands as of now, i mean WE DO NOT EVEN HAVE A PREPATCH DATE. It truly blows my mind that a company will come to the forums to request assistance despite having fed us lies about shadow lands from start to finish, the most glaring in this instance being that they said the SL prepatch was going to be a long one, now we are set for this to be the shortest to date.

That's not entirely true. They have been transparent on a lot of things. It's true that the no date on prepatch is shady but it's also not a case worth losing your shit over. The prepatch is essentially just a way to implement content more smoothly in the game instead of having everything shoved in on release day. Technically it could come out one week before the xpack and everything would be fine, they don't do that for the players, they never did, they disguise it with events but that's not the real purpose.

On top of this, I do not understand (and really would like some insight from the people who have done this) why we would want to do it another example being. When they asked us for class feedback from the beta and the people who poured countless hours into play testing every aspect of their class was left waiting up to 4 months on a response. These wearnt just Class bad fix numbers responses either, they're where abilities and passives not even registering, sadly though it seems a lot of the bugs and class issues are still rampant effectively wasting all of those peoples time.

While some of this is true, there is also some class issues that get fixed pretty quickly. You can focus on the bad only all day long if you want but realistically speaking there's also good things happening. As to why people would want to test stuff: a lot of people enjoy being part of the process. If you don't want to do it, that's fine, just refuse and move on to anything else with your day, you're also not supposed to be outraged by what other people want to do.

Why is it that we cannot at least receive something in game for effectively doing blizzards job for them by supplying them with a surplus of needed info with a days notice. The lack of communication is severely lacking if just out right non existent, as of now I do not intend on logging into the PTR tomorrow.

Because it's done on a voluntary basis, do you know what volunteering means? It's absolutely not true that communication is severely lacking, this is actually the most vocal blizzard has been in like 15 years, they talk a lot about what is being done and even did interviews with a lot of streamers/youtubers to talk to the community even more.

EDIT #1: This is a key point in why I think we shouldn't and I need to make it clear up here. Your information as a consumer is worth far more than your $15 a month to these companies. Whenever you help them knowingly or unknowingly you are putting them into a better position at no cost to create a new product and turn around to sell it to you at full price. Being the person who helps in the betas, or the stress tests, or whatever free work you do for blizzard should be incentivized for you. You are making them money, thats the cut and dry of it, every bit of data you give them for free helps them make more money. The amount in which they rely on us for free information I find really disgusting, I know some will call me entitled by real world example here:

-As a teen I used to go focus groups to "test" and give feed back on products from soda to toys, and it would only pay me like 40 bucks for the 2-3 hours i was there but it was enough for me to want to do it. All blizzard does is say "thanks for the help" in a forum post and goes dark on us for another month or two.

When you help finding issues it makes the game better, a better game is your reward.
You're not providing information to blizzard other than your gaming rig.
They are not forcing you to buy the game, you are free to not buy it and move on at any time. WoW is just a game, a game like the millions of games you don't play so why don't you put WoW in this category as well?
This is not entitlement, this is ignorance and borderline conspiracy theory.
That focus group offered you 40 bucks for 3 hours, you're free to take it or leave it. Blizzard offers you access to builds in advance to voice your opinion about the game or find bugs before it's released, you're free to take it or leave it.

Your whole post makes you sound like they put a gun to your head. If what they ask sounds like a bad deal in your little perspective then just don't do it and move on silently without whining. I never go on PTR, I don't give a shit, I don't talk about it, neither should you. They won't pay you cuz you cry.

[Tesshin83]

Stopped giving them feedback after the fiasco that was WoD. I provided some feedback and others provided copious amounts of well constructed feedback. It was ignored. This is a pattern that has been repeated xpac to xpac: players give meaningful feedback, Blizzard ignores it.

Too often Blizzard has ignored early, solid, meaningful, constructive feedback (and I am not talking about my own). Not worth my time . Now, when I get in a beta I merely check out things that interest me.

Ever consideren they came to the conclusion that they dont agree with your feedback?

[munkeyinorbit]

I see a lot of you saying that I sound like I am entitled to something? Do you folks not understand how valueable this information is for them? Like thousands and thousands of dollars would be spent trying to recreate the experience on their end when instead the go to the forums and ask you all to do it for them. In the digital age your data is worth far more than you guys seem to realize, and if a company wants to have access to it why should they get it for free?

No. You're wrong. You are entitled and have a abnormally high sense of importance of your self when you are just one drone of millions.

[callipygoustp]

Ever consideren they came to the conclusion that they dont agree with your feedback?

You think this is about my feedback? If so, re-read my posts.

[ClassicPeon]

Stopped giving them feedback after the fiasco that was WoD. I provided some feedback and others provided copious amounts of well constructed feedback. It was ignored. This is a pattern that has been repeated xpac to xpac: players give meaningful feedback, Blizzard ignores it.

Too often Blizzard has ignored early, solid, meaningful, constructive feedback (and I am not talking about my own). Not worth my time . Now, when I get in a beta I merely check out things that interest me.

One of the oddest things to me when it comes to feedback.

People think that them providing feedback should mean the game is then changed to reflect what their feedback says.

Thats not how it works bro :/

[callipygoustp]

People think that them providing feedback should mean the game is then changed to reflect what their feedback says.

Yep, plenty of people provide complete crap when it comes to feedback. As such, that kind of feedback should be ignored. But that's certainly not what I am talking about.

Thats not how it works bro :/

Of course not. Only an idiot would think so.