So is the Wow community council dead?

[klaps_05]

in what world is going from 12 milion active players to a few thausand ''doing fine''?

Whats funny is blizz even blocked the API website that tracked in detail amount of covenants chosen at 60, which essentially gave you a ballpark of players alongside many other statistics. Community council is a nice PR move - blizz gets some "we are listening specifically to this forum section" rep, some andys get some clout, everyone gets to post their wish lists, win win all around.

[minteK917]

Guys, when we are in beta test clients before xpac. There is ways to report our findings and experience. They never listen to any of it, ever. What makes anyone think you arent wasting your time typing the feedback? You are, every single time. The only time the feedback is looked at, is after months of declines in a row. Before that your feedback cost money to read and analyzed, so it will not be.

[Utrrabbit]

Whats funny is blizz even blocked the API website that tracked in detail amount of covenants chosen at 60, which essentially gave you a ballpark of players alongside many other statistics. Community council is a nice PR move - blizz gets some "we are listening specifically to this forum section" rep, some andys get some clout, everyone gets to post their wish lists, win win all around.

A few thousand? Are you just slow on the upkeep. They currently have 18mil active wow subs.

[Miffinat0r]

Uhh wut? WoW never got above 12 mill during Wrath. From there it was a steady decline, then Blizz stopped publishing their numbers because we all saw how more and more players were leaving as time went on.

[rrayy]

Guys, when we are in beta test clients before xpac. There is ways to report our findings and experience. They never listen to any of it, ever. What makes anyone think you arent wasting your time typing the feedback? You are, every single time. The only time the feedback is looked at, is after months of declines in a row. Before that your feedback cost money to read and analyzed, so it will not be.

They listen to ALL of it. Not caving in to every complaint does not = not listening. It means they disagree.

[nvaelz]

Gated community council XD

u know what else is CC?
cancel culture and the community council is like a place for people that didn't get canceled until they get canceled only the superior beings of the community council may connect with the devs all the rest of the peasant wow forums are not worthy and shall remain outside the gates forever

they could hire one guy, did u guys know about that girl that wrote like a skyscraper of code for the moon landing? thats alot of information about 100000 more lines than all the years of wow feedback on the wow forums, maybe if the shareholders werent so greedy they could hire some girl like that to assimilate information and delete the drunk angry people messages etc

it takes like 1 day to go through 1 year of wow feedback on the "peasant" wow forums but it's apparently too hard for Blizzard they don't have such resources....

lets keep being confused about Why? the Community Council exists and forget about it

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Shame too as he seemed to be the only one who consistently had feedback about Blizz while the rest are just glorified yes people.

It's the worst when someone has an opinion I'm sympathetic towards but has very reprehensible attitudes toward so many.

Yes. I agree with you.

[Cosmic Janitor]

2. No Anonimous Profile

You can (and have to if you aren't from the US) use a US trial account as your forum represenation. So if you want to remain anonymous you can, many just use this for clout chasing and to advertise for their guilds, which is why they tell everyone who they are.

[Miffinat0r]

You can (and have to if you aren't from the US) use a US trial account as your forum represenation. So if you want to remain anonymous you can, many just use this for clout chasing and to advertise for their guilds, which is why they tell everyone who they are.

I will agree that I totally do get the vibe that a lot of the guild leaders who are posting there do kinda feel like they're chasing clout and bragging rights for their guild. That's just the vibe I got from it.

[MoanaLisa]

It's too early to know if it's going to work out or not. Bear in mind that the council is really for Blizzard, not for customers. It may fail totally, they may change their expectations for it. They might iterate on what it's supposed to do for them (the old Blizzard) or they may trash it at the first opportunity (the new Blizzard).

In any case the one-year terms for members are the right idea. One would presume that people were picked to represent the interests of the developers. We have a good idea about what those are already from the game. It's just dumb to think that this council has been created to change the direction of the game.

There's a law that is known as Sturgeon's Law. Roughly it goes that 90% of everything is crap. If the point of the council is to change that ratio by a couple of dozen percent then it may work out for them.

Whatever they say, the council is not for players, it's for them. What they do with what they get back from it might be interesting to watch although my bet would be that council recommendations will be implemented for stuff that's mostly around the margins, not the core of the game. With some notable exceptions 90% of this and every other thread on a game fan forum (including the official boards) belongs on the 90% side of the line. If I were a developer I would look for some way to change that.

[Luxeley]

If Blizzard needs to put together a "community council" to be in touch with the fans and provide input into what is fun and cool (which Blizzard does need), then Blizzard is doomed to fail or relish in mediocrity at best going forward. Putting together the community is a good PR move and a rather cheap way of not paying employees for customer relations. A big part of a Devs job is knowing what the fans love and knowing what is fun. This move as well as the last 2 xpacs clearly shows without a doubt Blizzard is not only lost, they don't speak the native language and don't have a roadmap to get where they should and need to be.

[Schizoide]

The council is of course "for them", to get quality actionable feedback filtered down by trusted outsiders, but Blizzard has had private forums with selected prominent players for over a decade and ignored them since GC took off. The difference is now they're public.

Anyway, if it leads to a better game it's ultimately "for us".

[Julmara]

damn if blizzard woudlt have laid off so many people maybe the players woudlt need to replace them

[Taylarswift]

yikers community council = dead. hundo p

[Aedruid]

That would be the worst possible choice. The majority of players who stopped playing are not going to return or care, and the small minority of players who do wait for that mythical expansion to bring the spark back are probably easily outnumbered by players who have stopped playing, but are still invested in hating the game.

At best you might get some good ideas, but mostly it would probably just be nostalgia pandering and players giving non-constructive feedback like fire all the devs, or remove levelling/open world and make raids twice as long.

Don't you think it would be better to find out why people are quitting rather than hone in on the smaller audience that sticks around?

[minteK917]

They listen to ALL of it. Not caving in to every complaint does not = not listening. It means they disagree.

They even ignore reported bugs for entire alpha and beta and launch expac with them. They dont read shit, unless they see the population drop in anomalous ways. I know to all you clowns you think they disagree and then backtrack when they finally do what you want 12 months later, but the truth is they finish their game and let it sit, they dont read shit and dont change shit unless theres problem months later and they have no other choices. The data gathering and analyzing required to make any Testing and community driven feedback cost too much manpower, all they do is the performativr side you think they give a shit.

[Murux]

Couple of fat rainbow people actually can do something? You make me laugh.

[Schizoide]

Oh, yes, the current generation of WoW designers largely ignored player feedback related to design, including alpha and beta testers. They viewed alpha/beta tests as useful for finding bugs and exploits, they were completely uninterested in anyone's opinion about anything else. Only overwhelming effort and player consensus had a chance of making them take notice.

I'm using the past tense because everybody deserves the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they're turning over a new leaf etc.

Doubt it, but maybe.

[Lolites]

They even ignore reported bugs for entire alpha and beta and launch expac with them.

here is how it most likely works (from personal experience with analysing feedback)

there is a bug, from 1000 players playing beta (for simplified numbers) 100 will encounter it, and MAYBE 10 will report it, bcs most people going into beta/ptr do it to see the content not to help
blizz see that only 10 people reported issue, they will think its rare and focus on issues they think are bigger
people (especialy those who seen the bug and didnt report it) will whine and complain about blizzard ignoring bugs

[MoanaLisa]

Oh, yes, the current generation of WoW designers largely ignored player feedback related to design, including alpha and beta testers. They viewed alpha/beta tests as useful for finding bugs and exploits, they were completely uninterested in anyone's opinion about anything else. Only overwhelming effort and player consensus had a chance of making them take notice.

I'm using the past tense because everybody deserves the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they're turning over a new leaf etc.

Doubt it, but maybe.

It sometimes happens anyway but alphas and betas are for identifying bugs, not redesign or removal of game features. Everyone seems to think that beta is where Blizzard should change the whole concept of their expansion based on feedback. It's not.

I do get it that they prioritize bugs and don't get to them all. Their QA process must be torturous with running down unintended consequences of fixing something. Never mind that entirely too many people are there just to play and were never going to report bugs to start with. Nonetheless, people saying they didn't like covenants and expecting Blizzard to remove them entirely don't understand what a beta is for.

[Lolites]

Oh, yes, the current generation of WoW designers largely ignored player feedback related to design, including alpha and beta testers.

a lot of people seems to not understand that point of beta is to make sure things work AS INTENDED, not as PLAYERS WANT THEM TO
they might change some things, but its definitely not point of the beta...

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It sometimes happens anyway but alphas and betas are for identifying bugs, not redesign or removal of game features.

beat me to it