Introducing the World of Warcraft Community Council

[MoanaLisa]

I could be wrong and be pleasantly surprised at this point I rather the runescape system of once you achieved a certain amount of things in game your allowed to vote for changes... for wow perhaps it could be three aotc or three duelist titles.

Leave out most raiders and casual PVP players completely. Never mind players who don’t raid or do PVP. That’s a non-starter. I don’t ever want players voting on design. It will end badly. The part of the game that needs the most attention is everything except raids, dungeons and PVP.

[ztkraptor]

LOL, last ditch effort, sorry the company is dying.

[MoanaLisa]

LOL, last ditch effort, sorry the company is dying.

We will find out more tomorrow I suppose.

[munkeyinorbit]

Encourage discussion? That has never been part of the problem. Ever. It's the devs ignoring it.

And, a curated forum where questions about certain topics won't show up is hardly a solution to anything going on. This idea, while lame to begin with, is dead with the gatekeeping and curation before it even starts.

I have a solution to your problems, Team 2:

LISTEN TO PLAYERS.

ACT ON IT.

DON'T BE STUBBORN ASSHOLES OVER THINGS PLAYERS DON'T LIKE.

I won't even invoice you.

"Listen to us DEVS"
"Ok, here's a forum in which people can share their exp..."
"NO. NOT LIKE THAT BLIZZARD. YOU NEVER LISTEN"

[Walkerbo]

Blizzard, the problem wasn't that you weren't getting decent feedback. It's that you weren't taking any notice of it. And now you want to give the impression of listening, but you'll still do whatever you want anyway. Will you delete gated flying from the game if that's what the majority of your hand-picked Council suggest? Like fuck you will.

This, so very much this

[Varitok]

Yeah, Im sure 100 streamers/content creators are going to really be the catalyst for proper WoW change. This is really bad.

- - - Updated - - -

"Listen to us DEVS"
"Ok, here's a forum in which people can share their exp..."
"NO. NOT LIKE THAT BLIZZARD. YOU NEVER LISTEN"

Except they aren't listening to anyone here or on the official forums. They are listening to their 100 handpicked influencers. This isn't an actual council as it is The League of Extraordinary Yes Men.

[Log Cabin]

Leave out most raiders and casual PVP players completely. Never mind players who don’t raid or do PVP. That’s a non-starter. I don’t ever want players voting on design. It will end badly. The part of the game that needs the most attention is everything except raids, dungeons and PVP.

Well yes that would be the point. The idea of designing a game around people who are not invested in it is sheer folly. You just end up making it call of duty.

[Gangresnake]

Reminder that there's ALREADY a private Blizz Forum with invite-only system set in place by people who are long gone from the company to discuss the complex matters of the game.
The current devs dont give a single shit about it, and sometimes even post in it to openly say they dont value that feedback. Magdalena spilled the beans about it during the BFA fiasco. There's screenshots and it's not pretty.

A month ago, the community that asked them not to mangle the game to make it more PC was thoroughly ignored and told that the devs are making "The game that they want".

So now they're making a big fuss about community feedback. I'm gonna need a little more than fancy words on a blue background before I actually believe it.

[Al Gorefiend]

What this sounds like to me is Blizzard funneling down the echo chamber into individuals who document the concerns of their respective communities, and engage Blizzard in a way they can realistically manage. So essentially, chamber of representatives.

[StillMcfuu]

This sounds like the beta forums, the ones they ignore. No thanks.

[Sorshen]

This sounds like the beta forums, the ones they ignore. No thanks.

It's the secret theorycrafting forums (but now not so secret) all over again. The ones that the newer devs mocked and then got themselves into this free fall. Some previous members praised the discussions during MoP (funny how community perception came around and MoP is regarded like the second? best expansion now) but they peaced out around the time of Legion.

[Derzorvadur]

"Listen to us DEVS"
"Ok, here's a forum in which people can share their exp..."
"NO. NOT LIKE THAT BLIZZARD. YOU NEVER LISTEN"

I get where you are coming from but you also have to acknowledge the context in which this Community Council is being created. The developers and what few community managers they have working for them have access to all the major platforms in which players routinely offer their feedback, not to mention how the lack of player retention in game over the years has gotten worse. The problem has always been their own ego or lack of caring beyond the dollar amount they generate.

So now amidst a " forced " change through legal action and the community finally pulling the trigger in large part by not actively playing we are to believe that a platform created by those same developers, with the " help " of hand picked players as the measuring stick in which they gauge feedback is supposed to be a way to help fix that?

Maybe it works out, that's great. But I feel like it is something that can easily become just lip service but at worse an echo chamber of their own making in order to show the community at large that they are doing what is mostly in line what players actually talk about.

I feel like if they just made community blue posts every 1-2 weeks like the Ghostcrawler style watercoolers and more Q&A streams each mother that just gave some insight on what the dev team is brainstorming or debating internally and allocating time to read the feedback on those types of posts it would do just as much and feel more authentic.

[Cosmic Janitor]

inb4 only picking members that are already neck deep in koticks whatever

Nah, this will be a repeat of the twitch thing they did 1-2 years ago. They will pick the weirdest most unstable people.

I fail to see what this is actually trying to achieve. The general opinion about the game is out there in various forms 5 people yelling at walls will have the same feedback as ignoring the written words of thousands of people. If your community managers can't figure out the general opinion of the playerbase and their concerns, even if just by popular votes or highly active message board topics, then I fail to see how a wow weirdo council is going to achieve it any better. I mean just have the intern that manages the company twitter account actually read a few of the replies and you already know all you need..

[EyelessCrow]

Lol how many times have they said they will listen to players? Look at where we are at. If you believe this you are incredibly naive.

[Kilpi]

And just like that, the fans swarmed back to Blizzard and all was well. Blizzard returned to form and announced multiple new games, amazing new content for their major IP's, and WoW returned to 10m+ players. /s

Yea, fuck them for even trying.

[loras]

Honestly the idea is less "listening to the crowd" and more "not having a coherent vision of their own", wherein both the "coherent" and "vision" part stand out in importance.

They are just repeating the parts, iterating them but stopping short of considering how they all fit together to make that world tick.

It's why Legion felt so right: They were rewriting from some coherent vision, class and specc identity and its place in the lore, and designed everything around that.
It neglected gameplay in favor of flavor, but if it's coherent it becomes easier to stomache.

Then in BfA stuff became more disjointed, with SL taking that to 11.
It's then that previously buried flaws become too bad to ignore.

So yeah, what they need is that RPG centered approach to the core gameplay systems again, this time with proper gameplay design so that we're not just rotating for the sake of rotating and pressing buttons for the sake of pressing buttons. Make it more reactive, more interactive, less predictable but not random! And do all this while respecting the lore of both characters and the broader world.

Then you work on the talent and gearing systems and alsomake those into a coherent whole.

And finally you add or do not add those additional varying layers like i.e. garisons, pet battles, mythic+, w/e.


If they just start listening to the crowd then as this thread demonstrates the game is certainly doomed.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Blizzard: Announces CC
Players: "You must be truly desperate to come to me for help"

Oh can we please make CC the official shorthand for it? I like the double entendre.

[Azerate]

Already applied, can't wait to make wow even better than it is now

[Cosmic Janitor]

The important question is WHO WILL REPRESENT MMO CHAMPION???

I think mmo-champion should start an election!

F*******e obviously. We must milk this for all the comedy value we can get.
Edit: Alternatively we can do the thing that always works in politics, we send them someone we want to get rid off by promoting them to a higher office somewhere else. We could nominate someone like our resident tinkler activists. Every other post would be "..but.. but tinker!!11".

[Devilyaki]

So streamers and what not…. That always works out.