To all the Bellulars, Asmogolds, Preaches, QoL'ers and Fans that want to Design WOW.

[OokOok]

Spot on...
And the funny/sad part is, that at Blizz they are looking for new design and similar jobs non stop, but not one of them sent their resume to Blizz... Or maybe they did and were rejected because, "NO GAME DESIGN EXPERIENCE".

Yet, people listen to this sheep dogs like they are all mighty lords of game design...

This is what happens when the loudest players who are the minority of the playerbase scream for equality and diversity. Blizzard hires based off race and gender and not the better resume, it's not a meme you see it all over NA/EU. We get shitty content and shitty games and shitty decision because someone was hired for a job their not qualified to do but got hired because they happen to not be white and don't have a dick

[Biggles Worth]

Spot on...
And the funny/sad part is, that at Blizz they are looking for new design and similar jobs non stop, but not one of them sent their resume to Blizz... Or maybe they did and were rejected because, "NO GAME DESIGN EXPERIENCE".

Yet, people listen to this sheep dogs like they are all mighty lords of game design...

We don't need to be game designers. We're players. We know what's fun and what is not fun. No one needs a degree or experience in game design to figure that one out.

[mbit]

This is what happens when the loudest players who are the minority of the playerbase scream for equality and diversity. Blizzard hires based off race and gender and not the better resume, it's not a meme you see it all over NA/EU. We get shitty content and shitty games and shitty decision because someone was hired for a job their not qualified to do but got hired because they happen to not be white and don't have a dick

Its not the players. They are in cali and are thus required to diversity hire by law but dick is no issue, just gotta claim trans and you get your diversity spot. One of their community guys is literally just a dude with a pink wig. All that aside that's not the problem. Everyone knows they pay shit. So they simply wont get anyone sane because sane people go where the money is and that's not blizz. I honestly feel sorry for the oldtimers who stuck out and still do their job well just as before. The artist team is still doing fine but its wasted on the current game design.

[Relapses]

This is what happens when the loudest players who are the minority of the playerbase scream for equality and diversity. Blizzard hires based off race and gender and not the better resume, it's not a meme you see it all over NA/EU. We get shitty content and shitty games and shitty decision because someone was hired for a job their not qualified to do but got hired because they happen to not be white and don't have a dick

I see a lot of weapons grade bad takes on this website, but I think this one takes the cake.

Yikes.

[arkanon]

We don't need to be game designers. We're players. We know what's fun and what is not fun. No one needs a degree or experience in game design to figure that one out.

People ALWAYS relate this argument to food and chefs - some suggesting you need to be a chef to have an opinion on food. This is obviously false. If i go to a restaurant, and order a meal, and i do not enjoy the meal, that is perfectly acceptable and normal. We might say "well it was quite cold and far too sweet for my liking" - this is great feedback, nothing wrong with that at all. The second problem is when people step forward and say "well thats not real feedback, because you havnt told the chef how to improve the meal".

This second part imo is the actual issue - its reasonable for us as players to provide feedback - I dont enjoy this content because its too quick / takes too long. I dont enjoy this content because it is too easy / hard. I dont enjoy this content because the rewards dont match the difficulty. This is what Blizzard, and the fans, should be asking for, and then it is up to Blizzard to come up with a solution to that.

Just like it is up to the chef to hear the feedback and think "we should change this meal so it doesn't go cold so fast, and look at reducing the sweetness a bit or trying to balance it out". Just like its Blizzards responsibility, not ours, to come up with solutions for the issues they have.

Obviously there is a small section of the community who simply shout "I hate this, make a better game!" just like some food "critics" would say "it was not a nice meal" and it is impossible for the chef, or Blizzard, to help in that situation.

[Relapses]

People ALWAYS relate this argument to food and chefs - some suggesting you need to be a chef to have an opinion on food. This is obviously false. If i go to a restaurant, and order a meal, and i do not enjoy the meal, that is perfectly acceptable and normal. We might say "well it was quite cold and far too sweet for my liking" - this is great feedback, nothing wrong with that at all. The second problem is when people step forward and say "well thats not real feedback, because you havnt told the chef how to improve the meal".

This second part imo is the actual issue - its reasonable for us as players to provide feedback - I dont enjoy this content because its too quick / takes too long. I dont enjoy this content because it is too easy / hard. I dont enjoy this content because the rewards dont match the difficulty. This is what Blizzard, and the fans, should be asking for, and then it is up to Blizzard to come up with a solution to that.

Just like it is up to the chef to hear the feedback and think "we should change this meal so it doesn't go cold so fast, and look at reducing the sweetness a bit or trying to balance it out". Just like its Blizzards responsibility, not ours, to come up with solutions for the issues they have.

Obviously there is a small section of the community who simply shout "I hate this, make a better game!" just like some food "critics" would say "it was not a nice meal" and it is impossible for the chef, or Blizzard, to help in that situation.

"Chef Blizzard, your food sucks and has sucked since 2010 but I continue to buy food from you because you're the only restaurant in town."

-constructive feedback in 2021

[KaPe]

I think a key thing a lot of 'complainers' lack is the kind of thinking where you follow the logic the entire way to see what would actually happen if they made certain changes. For example there might be a complaint about "They need to triple the droprate of gear" but then if Blizz did you might reach a point where gear feels useless and non rewarding because everyone has it.

Complaints about Shadowlands loot were valid - they gave us both the valor upgrade system and additional drops in raids. It doesn't matter if some people wanted triple the drop rate. You don't ignore entirety of feedback just because there are some extreme cases. It's developers job to go through it and decide what's worthwhile. Unfortunately, in recent years they decided it means "ignore it for months and then implement in the last major patch".

Besides, let's not pretend that there isn't well structured feedback that is eventually proven right by Blizzard. OP mentions Preach and he did name quite a few issues that were eventually fixed. Azerite gear, legiondaries, covenants. There's plenty other people like him, who provide quality feedback - and are ignored, just like any random "remove LFR/mythic raiding/give us free gear/fire Ion" level garbage posts. Neither you or devs should use extreme cases as an excuse to ignore proper feedback.

I see a lot of weapons grade bad takes on this website, but I think this one takes the cake.

Yikes.

It's especially laughable considering the recent lawsuit. Yeah, the SJWs have totally overtaken Blizzard

[mbit]

It's especially laughable considering the recent lawsuit. Yeah, the SJWs have totally overtaken Blizzard

Actually goes hand in hand. Loudest preachers tend to have most corpses in the closet. Don't mistake preaching with believing in the cause.

[arkanon]

"Chef Blizzard, your food sucks and has sucked since 2010 but I continue to buy food from you because you're the only restaurant in town."

-constructive feedback in 2021

What a wonderful strawman you have here, well done. That is in no way related to what I posted, and just shows your extreme bias and inability to form a constructive post. If you have nothing constructive to add, I have no interest responding beyond this. Read my post, and provide a counter argument, or feedback of ANY kind, maybe your own opinion even, otherwise we are done here.

I often wonder how low the playercount needs to get before people will accept that the game has been in serious decline for years, with current estimates putting the playerbase at roughly 10% of its peak.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Actually goes hand in hand. Loudest preachers tend to have most corpses in the closet. Don't mistake preaching with believing in the cause.

One of the key parts of the lawsuit is woman and minority's being passed over so no that really doesn't go hand in hand.

[Relapses]

Complaints about Shadowlands loot were valid - they gave us both the valor upgrade system and additional drops in raids. It doesn't matter if some people wanted triple the drop rate. You don't ignore entirety of feedback just because there are some extreme cases. It's developers job to go through it and decide what's worthwhile. Unfortunately, in recent years they decided it means "ignore it for months and then implement in the last major patch".

Besides, let's not pretend that there isn't well structured feedback that is eventually proven right by Blizzard. OP mentions Preach and he did name quite a few issues that were eventually fixed. Azerite gear, legiondaries, covenants. There's plenty other people like him, who provide quality feedback - and are ignored, just like any random "remove LFR/mythic raiding/give us free gear/fire Ion" level garbage posts. Neither you or devs should use extreme cases as an excuse to ignore proper feedback.

The thing that bothers me about WoW in particular is the revisionist nature players love to frame their arguments. Blizzard knew Covenants would be unpopular because feedback that they'd be polarizing existed. Therefore, once Blizzard relaxes the restrictions on them, all the people who gave feedback about Covenants were automatically right and Blizzard was automatically "ignoring feedback" by not doing it sooner. I think what's actually happening is a little bit more complex than that but to talk about it, you essentially have to look at this from the perspective of the "bad guys" at Blizzard (ie, the ones whose vision the expansion was following). Blizzard wanted people to experience Covenants (and the Covenant campaign) in a very specific way and had Covenants been hot swappable from the onset, this would have never been possible (or at least greatly diminished). Pointing this out isn't necessarily a defense of Covenants, however, it begs the question: Why did Blizzard think Covenants were a good idea to begin with? And I think that's really the root issue here. Covenants from their inception were simply not a very good idea to implement into a game like WoW. I think the real problem is that by the time Blizzard realized this, the idea had passed so many layers of development on the idea that backtracking would have severely set the entire project behind. So they did the next best thing: Doubled down on the design philosophy and hoped it'd all pan out in the end.

- - - Updated - - -

What a wonderful strawman you have here, well done. That is in no way related to what I posted, and just shows your extreme bias and inability to form a constructive post. If you have nothing constructive to add, I have no interest responding beyond this. Read my post, and provide a counter argument, or feedback of ANY kind, maybe your own opinion even, otherwise we are done here.

I often wonder how low the playercount needs to get before people will accept that the game has been in serious decline for years, with current estimates putting the playerbase at roughly 10% of its peak.

Brother I wasn't criticizing your post. It was just an extrapolation of the chef analogy you used. Calm down.

[KaPe]

The thing that bothers me about WoW in particular is the revisionist nature players love to frame their arguments. Blizzard knew Covenants would be unpopular because feedback that they'd be polarizing existed. Therefore, once Blizzard relaxes the restrictions on them, all the people who gave feedback about Covenants were automatically right and Blizzard was automatically "ignoring feedback" by not doing it sooner. I think what's actually happening is a little bit more complex than that but to talk about it, you essentially have to look at this from the perspective of the "bad guys" at Blizzard (ie, the ones whose vision the expansion was following). Blizzard wanted people to experience Covenants (and the Covenant campaign) in a very specific way and had Covenants been hot swappable from the onset, this would have never been possible (or at least greatly diminished). Pointing this out isn't necessarily a defense of Covenants, however, it begs the question: Why did Blizzard think Covenants were a good idea to begin with? And I think that's really the root issue here. Covenants from their inception were simply not a very good idea to implement into a game like WoW. I think the real problem is that by the time Blizzard realized this, the idea had passed so many layers of development on the idea that backtracking would have severely set the entire project behind. So they did the next best thing: Doubled down on the design philosophy and hoped it'd all pan out in the end.

I mean, their reasoning behind Covenants was pretty clear. "Immersion", "lore" and "meaningful RPG choices". The issue is that WoW was often about Rule of Cool/Gameplay First, with "lore" based choices rarely having impact on balance. Back in TBC, it was Aldor/Scryers - and you'd get slightly different enchants. WoD had a choice of garrison zone abilities. In Legion, DHs had a choice between two NPCs, which gave them different followers. BFA had its loyalist questline which was largely the same, with one extra scene at the end.

At no point we'd get a choice between actual player abilities and were told to pick 2 out of 8 - and have those actually influence the gameplay directly. That's a significant design shift, one they have not tried before. I assume that they wanted to attempt something new after BFA but... I guess they overestimated just how much people care about "lore" and if they are willing to tolerate sacrifices in gameplay. Or that players don't enjoy being limited in choices - including covenant restricted transmogs, mounts and the like. Or that having character power clash with "immersion" can be quite annoying - and that it's much more than the supposed 1% who cares about the former.

In a way, it reminds of something far more minor, that also made me feel like devs were "sticking to their guns" for far too long - Lighwell and Chakra. They were so stubborn about making big changes to these, that it was nearly obvious it was someone's "baby". Eventually (and it took several expansions) they killed one of those entirely (after actually making it decent'ish... what a waste) and the other was heavily reworked into Holy Words. Maybe it's a different thing entirely and the scale is far smaller, but to me it was the same sort of stubbornness of dev who has a vision and thinks they know better than everyone else - negative feedback be damned, we do it my way.

[ohwell]

most of them could actually care less about the game. they are just looking for more youtube/twitch money.

playerbase is the single worst thing about wow.

It's not even playerbase. It's those who visit forums and such. Half the people I play with in game have no idea about the complaints people make here and laugh at most of them.

- - - Updated - - -

Complaints about Shadowlands loot were valid - they gave us both the valor upgrade system and additional drops in raids. It doesn't matter if some people wanted triple the drop rate. You don't ignore entirety of feedback just because there are some extreme cases. It's developers job to go through it and decide what's worthwhile. Unfortunately, in recent years they decided it means "ignore it for months and then implement in the last major patch".

Besides, let's not pretend that there isn't well structured feedback that is eventually proven right by Blizzard. OP mentions Preach and he did name quite a few issues that were eventually fixed. Azerite gear, legiondaries, covenants. There's plenty other people like him, who provide quality feedback - and are ignored, just like any random "remove LFR/mythic raiding/give us free gear/fire Ion" level garbage posts. Neither you or devs should use extreme cases as an excuse to ignore proper feedback.
It's especially laughable considering the recent lawsuit. Yeah, the SJWs have totally overtaken Blizzard

What's more laughable is that you have no idea about the lawsuit and then claim they haven't taken over. They've been pretty much an overwhelming force for the past 8 years or so. But hey roll your eyes some more while denying they haven't pretty much turned into Google and the others at their offices and pretty much run it like Coke's "training video".

[Lorgar Aurelian]

What's more laughable is that you have no idea about the lawsuit and then claim they haven't taken over. They've been pretty much an overwhelming force for the past 8 years or so. But hey roll your eyes some more while denying they haven't pretty much turned into Google and the others at their offices and pretty much run it like Coke's "training video".

morhaime Left in 2018 and was supposedly not only ignoring Sexual harassments complaints but having people reprimanded for bringing them to him, Alex left in 2020 and is sighted in the lawsuit it self, a number of people have been only recently let go because of atleast lack of response at most active involvement.

The idea that social Justice types have been running the show with all of that in play is an absolute pipe dream.

[Kauko]

We don't need to be game designers. We're players. We know what's fun and what is not fun. No one needs a degree or experience in game design to figure that one out.

We are not and we don't have to be. Agree. BUT, this guys act like they know more than anyone. If you spread your ideas to thousands of people, you sure have to be someone that know how stuff is made. Just like amateurs spreading their fitness videos on youtube while having no education... and people listen to them like they are profesionals...

[Beet]

most of them could actually care less about the game. they are just looking for more youtube/twitch money.

playerbase is the single worst thing about wow.

You can’t actually believe that. When the game is less popular that means they get less views and subs which means less money. But I definitely agree the player base is a huge problem with WoW

- - - Updated - - -

"you have to be a chef to critique food"

Said it right before I could. I guess OP would be the type to goto a five star restaurant and get served a burnt steak but he would eat it anyways because after all he isn’t a five star chef so how can he complain?!

[Lolites]

We're players. We know what's fun and what is not fun.

we know whats fun FOR US, not for everybody... personaly i consider math fun, was always my favourite subject back at school, yet its almost universaly hated...

- - - Updated - - -

Said it right before I could. I guess OP would be the type to goto a five star restaurant and get served a burnt steak but he would eat it anyways because after all he isn’t a five star chef so how can he complain?!

that analogy is faulty, and i think people dont mind when someone complains about the "food"
i think people have more of an issue when someone who NEVER in his life cooked, goes to chef in five star restaurant with 20y of experience and tells him HOW to cook better, and how EVERYONE will love their cooking...

[Beet]

The best parts of World of Warcraft were designed by MMO fans who thought the EQ developers were idiots. Now we have World of Warcraft. Your analogy couldn't be more wrong.

Jeff Kaplan (Tigole) and many others were annoying, whiny forum nerds for EQ.

That’s actually a great point. Kaplan, Afrasiabi, and even Rob Pardo all played EQ hardcore and hated the developers. And lo and behold they were hired for WoW and helped make it the juggernaut it became.

- - - Updated - - -

we know whats fun FOR US, not for everybody... personaly i consider math fun, was always my favourite subject back at school, yet its almost universaly hated...

- - - Updated - - -



that analogy is faulty, and i think people dont mind when someone complains about the "food"
i think people have more of an issue when someone who NEVER in his life cooked, goes to chef in five star restaurant with 20y of experience and tells him HOW to cook better, and how EVERYONE will love their cooking...

It’s not faulty at all. You don’t need to know how to cook to tell the chef that he shouldn’t burn your food and maybe turn the temperature down. This is basically the appeal to authority fallacy.

[Lolites]

It’s not faulty at all. You don’t need to know how to cook to tell the chef that he shouldn’t burn your food and maybe turn the temperature down. This is basically the appeal to authority fallacy.

but thats not what people here do, they dont tell them "dont burn my food"
they go to chef and tell him "you have to add chocolate into the omelette, that will make it SOO MUCH BETTER FOR EVERYONE, also cook it in different pan, at different tempreture, for different amount of time, and use more salt (salt is present in most of the forum posts so thats a necesity) and 20 different spices"
and outcome might be ( MIGHT be) good for them ..and inedible for most of us

people take their list of things THEY WANT and claim that adding them, or changing them according to their own opinion would make game better for everyone, when in fact, if you check those "ideas" (for example on this forum), it would almost every time make the game worse for most people...

[Beet]

but thats not what people here do, they dont tell them "dont burn my food"
they go to chef and tell him "you have to add chocolate into the omelette, that will make it SOO MUCH BETTER FOR EVERYONE, also cook it in different pan, at different tempreture, for different amount of time, and use more salt (salt is present in most of the forum posts so thats a necesity) and 20 different spices"
and outcome might be ( MIGHT be) good for them ..and inedible for most of us

people take their list of things THEY WANT and claim that adding them, or changing them according to their own opinion would make game better for everyone, when in fact, if you check those "ideas" (for example on this forum), it would almost every time make the game worse for most people...

It’s funny you describe it like that yet over half the people here say those who complain offer no solutions whatsoever.

Let people voice their complaints and stop the appeal to authority crap. Once upon a time Blizzard actually listened to player feedback. Hell they used to discuss ideas for the future far ahead of time so we could engage in a conversation. I remember in vanilla they had an amazing webpage that showed things they were working on for the near future and things they were considering long term. They engaged with us on forums well before doing anything. To get a feeling for what players liked or may find problematic. It actually worked well which is why in my opinion every expansion until Cata was an improvement on the previous expansion. Then they decided hey fuck discussions around MoP.

Really you act like every player wants something vastly different. From what I’ve seen that isn’t the case at all. And honestly it doesn’t matter if they did. If most players are saying hey this mechanic sucks please change it because of “blank”, it doesn’t matter what their idea for a fix is. It tells Blizzard this is a problem and it’s up to them to figure out what to do better.