What exactly does blizzard learn from each expansion?

[Log Cabin]

Just because people give feedback doesn't make it right. The number of people who sit and claim "choreghast" and "amg we told you about this in the beta" are much smaller than it would seem.

Also, take the current example of the unlocks happening on the 2nd. People here and on MMOC are like "Oh a change that should have been that way from the start" which is completely ignorant and a badly supported argument. Listening to player feedback on that would have been ridiculous. This is the point they intended on doing most of this if not all of it because it makes sense in the lore.

Player feedback is typically garbage unless it's seemingly 90-100% on outlets like this.

I can't say I agree... I have been in most alpha's and betas. Blizzard is consistently warned of pit falls far in advanced and rarely if ever react. The most egregious example I can think of was in Cata. Shard of Woe was a trinket that they were warned about long in advance and they pushed it live anyways and even in the third tier it remained on of the best trinkets for mages with it allowing them to do three times the damage of other dps classes in the tier it went live in.

I don't really believe blizzard takes design feedback in alpha and beta just bug reports.

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People want new things, but not too different, or too many, as well, people don't want new things.

I think they want sensible things. Take League of legends. People want new champs and event modes but they fit within the scope of the game. What is wow at the end of the day?

A instance driven mmo. People want new dungeons and raids wow has never been about content outside of that beyond it being window dressing.

[FuxieDK]

They don't learn anything, that's why the game is dying, they haven't created a new ip in ages, and they are now irrelevant.

Hearthstone
Overwatch
Heroes of the Storm

That's not one, not two, but THREE IPs within the last decade.

[Lochton]

I think they want sensible things. Take League of legends. People want new champs and event modes but they fit within the scope of the game. What is wow at the end of the day?

A instance driven mmo. People want new dungeons and raids wow has never been about content outside of that beyond it being window dressing.

And that is quite the sad thing, that we are turning around raids and dungeons instead of developing the world in a healthy manner.

[Aleksej89]

game devs dont have the main say in designing blizzard games anymore.
its the management, the PR/HR and the finance departments who run it all, and not one of them have played a video game in their life.

wow is a boring slog because its all designed by people who only think in charts and graphs about what brings the highest $ for the lowest investment.

[Log Cabin]

And that is quite the sad thing, that we are turning around raids and dungeons instead of developing the world in a healthy manner.

I will bite. When has wow ever had compelling world content? The closest I can think of is mobs that dropped certain loot for crafting. While I do miss that we can't have that with how out of control botting is and blizzards lax position on it. I don't mean to put you on the spot but whenever I hear people talk about world content they start to either describe a different game or a game that as far as I can ascertain never existed.

[Lochton]

I will bite. When has wow ever had compelling world content? The closest I can think of is mobs that dropped certain loot for crafting. While I do miss that we can't have that with how out of control botting is and blizzards lax position on it. I don't mean to put you on the spot but whenever I hear people talk about world content they start to either describe a different game or a game that as far as I can ascertain never existed.

I take it you misread? For only some of the world content in each expansion has kept a good light but overall, not good at all, and it is something that they need to turn around to make a wider world instead of instanced content.

[Schizoide]

Suramar was pretty great. I also liked the dailies with story quests in 5.1.

[aceperson]

i learned that they don't learn. that's why i unsubbed and haven't played for 9 months. i would play wow again in a heartbeat if competent people were designing it though.

[Log Cabin]

I take it you misread? For only some of the world content in each expansion has kept a good light but overall, not good at all, and it is something that they need to turn around to make a wider world instead of instanced content.

I did thank you for clarifying. I don't think that is possible to do though unless they make the world instanced like islands. Players won't allow it to exist to put it bluntly. Take MoP, when they tried to add a challenging world boss players just started dog piling it till it broke the server and it stopped casting spells to kill it.

The best you can really do is make content that hits hard enough dps need to group up to do it but once again it isn't that the content is compelling or difficult it just simply can't be soloed.

[Malkiah]

Has anyone noticed that it doesn't seem to ever come from player feed back?

the problem here is that your entire thesis is predicated on the assumption that "what you think" and/or "what the MMO-C forums think" is the majority of player feedback.

the underlying premise that you're suggesting is that a company that makes a product which can be altered on the fly to cater to the customer base is receiving overwhelming feedback and then going "you know what? fuck these rubes, we don't need their input to make a product they want" - which i guess is fun and funny to pretend if it gives you a tickle, but if you stop and think about it for a second can you even comprehend how stupid that theory is?

my (very limited) experience with MMO development makes me inclined to think that what's actually happening is this:
*new feature is made*
10,000 people test it
800 people bother to give feedback
700 of those people say "this is fine" or "i don't get it" or "this quest tastes like grandma"
100 of those people go on the MMO-C forums and post about blizzard being a dead company and the devs hate you personally and are making the game this way out of spite, and may or may not bother giving feedback via the in-game tools to say what they don't like about the system or why they don't like it.
and then claim they are the majority opinion.

if something is in the game and stays in the game it's because it gets more positive reception than negative, this is just an indisputable fact about the nature of a game like wow where everything is custom made and everything is made specifically for the playerbase.
if something is shit on enough via in-game feedback, it will be removed or phased out.
and when i say "in-game feedback" i don't mean "bitching on the forums" - i mean their measuring tools see a lack of engagement with the thing in addition to in-game feedback.

i know it's not a warm comfy blanket of communal wanking, but the fact is that if you hate something in the game it's probably there because most people are fine with it, and no matter how self righteous you feel about your hatred for that thing you are not in the majority.

[Log Cabin]

the problem here is that your entire thesis is predicated on the assumption that "what you think" and/or "what the MMO-C forums think" is the majority of player feedback.

the underlying premise that you're suggesting is that a company that makes a product which can be altered on the fly to cater to the customer base is receiving overwhelming feedback and then going "you know what? fuck these rubes, we don't need their input to make a product they want" - which i guess is fun and funny to pretend if it gives you a tickle, but if you stop and think about it for a second can you even comprehend how stupid that theory is?

my (very limited) experience with MMO development makes me inclined to think that what's actually happening is this:
*new feature is made*
10,000 people test it
800 people bother to give feedback
700 of those people say "this is fine" or "i don't get it" or "this quest tastes like grandma"
100 of those people go on the MMO-C forums and post about blizzard being a dead company and the devs hate you personally and are making the game this way out of spite, and may or may not bother giving feedback via the in-game tools to say what they don't like about the system or why they don't like it.
and then claim they are the majority opinion.

if something is in the game and stays in the game it's because it gets more positive reception than negative, this is just an indisputable fact about the nature of a game like wow where everything is custom made and everything is made specifically for the playerbase.
if something is shit on enough via in-game feedback, it will be removed or phased out.
and when i say "in-game feedback" i don't mean "bitching on the forums" - i mean their measuring tools see a lack of engagement with the thing in addition to in-game feedback.

i know it's not a warm comfy blanket of communal wanking, but the fact is that if you hate something in the game it's probably there because most people are fine with it, and no matter how self righteous you feel about your hatred for that thing you are not in the majority.

I don't see value in any feedback that isn't from a CE raider, mythic 25+, or glad player. The vast majority of wow's playerbase don't comprehend the game enough to offer anything resembling useful feedback.

[Malkiah]

I don't see value in any feedback that isn't from a CE raider, mythic 25+, or glad player. The vast majority of wow's playerbase don't comprehend the game enough to offer anything resembling useful feedback.

which is in itself a rhetorical issue, because if 2% of the total playerbase is the only feedback you'll listen to, you're not dealing with the reality that if they don't like the state of the game, the game isn't for them.

[hulkgor]

Let's not consider for one second that there was a consensus in regards to what players liked, or didn't like, in previous expansions.

Also, player feedback for WoW is very, very poor, and should be ignored the vast majority of times, which actually harms the few times where it could have a positive impact on the game.

[Schizoide]

There has absolutely been solid consensus about many, many things. Pretty much everything I listed in my post earlier in the thread, in fact. Consensus doesn't imply everybody agrees, just that the majority do, and feel strongly enough that the developers take notice.

https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...1#post53441066

In pretty much all of those cases, beta feedback was consistently negative, and the devs didn't care. To them beta isn't for design feedback, it's just to load the servers. They largely don't listen to beta "testers", but once an expansion goes live they do listen when the playerbase reaches consensus about something like warfronts sucking, for example, and in conjunction with their objective metrics, that guides their design priorities for the next expansion.

There are rare exceptions when testers and the wider community band together and organize for one specific change. For example, I led the charge to remove the damage buff from Hunter's Mark in Shadowlands beta and was successful in getting the devs to notice. Luckily they agreed, and took it out.

[Log Cabin]

which is in itself a rhetorical issue, because if 2% of the total playerbase is the only feedback you'll listen to, you're not dealing with the reality that if they don't like the state of the game, the game isn't for them.

That isn't the reality of it though... the majority of people who play don't know how to play. That doesn't mean they can't feel bad design they just lack the tools and ability to express it.

[dope_danny]

That the standards for quality demanded by the players are always lower than they expect.

[VoidSeeker199X]

They learn how to suck even more money out of their costumers. That's about it. If you think they aren't making the game boring and spreading out patches on purpose you're fooled.

[Malkiah]

There has absolutely been solid consensus about many, many things. Pretty much everything I listed in my post earlier in the thread, in fact. Consensus doesn't imply everybody agrees, just that the majority do, and feel strongly enough that the developers take notice.

In pretty much all of those cases, beta feedback was consistently negative, and the devs didn't care.

the problem though is that this position assumes that "what you see on the forums" = "the feedback that blizzard is receiving" which simply isn't the case.
also, about 2/3rds of what you put as 'problems' in your list weren't things i would notice or care about whatsoever, so we're back once again to the issue of presuming that 'your issue' is 'everyone's issue.'

and mind you i'm not even saying that to slag your opinion or try to invalidate it - whatever you get out of the game is what you get out of it, there's no on-rails way to enforce fun.
i'm merely pointing out that perception is not necessarily reality.

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That isn't the reality of it though...

a fair point, because i certainly don't have the metrics that blizzard uses to measure player engagement or interest in a given system so it's not like i know either way.
but that's the thing, i claim to not know either way, as opposed to some who are claiming definitive knowledge of a complete unknowable.

the majority of people who play don't know how to play. That doesn't mean they can't feel bad design they just lack the tools and ability to express it.

which is fair, but a very different issue from "only feedback from 2% of the playerbase counts" which is what you said the first time was i was responding to.

[Schizoide]

That isn't the reality of it though... the majority of people who play don't know how to play. That doesn't mean they can't feel bad design they just lack the tools and ability to express it.

Blizzard has private forums for prominent theorycrafters and uberguild leaders. They famously ignore everything these people say. This is because they were Ghostcrawler's idea, and ever since he left the current people in charge of WoW either aren't interested in or privately disdain communicating with players, even the few elites picked to be in that privileged circle.

They also have a private Discord for streamers/influencers, but I don't care what those goofballs say, happy they're ignored.

@Malkiah: Forums are just one way to provide feedback, and a great way to organize it. Beta forums are where feedback is supposed to go. But of course they talk to friends, and read Twitter, and watch streamers too. As I noted, consensus doesn't mean everybody agrees, there's no hivemind. No doubt lots of people think Torghast is great-- but most players don't. So I wouldn't expect to see it in the next expansion.

[Malkiah]

They learn how to suck even more money out of their costumers. That's about it. If you think they aren't making the game boring and spreading out patches on purpose you're fooled.

so if we take this as read, just out of curiosity delving into your secret knowledge, what is the business model behind "make a shitty product nobody likes on purpose and purely out of spite in order to make money" and how does that work exactly?