The hate towards some of the devs

[kenn9530]

No. The devs are making the game they want to do and have done that for several years now completely disregarding feedback.
Customers are in their right to criticise the producers if they make a bad product.

Its only an opinion if you think its a bad product or not, if millions still play it then the devs are doing things right so customers can complain but they are not always right to.

[Marteen]

Are they really trying their best though?

[Swnem]

Its only an opinion if you think its a bad product or not, if millions still play it then the devs are doing things right so customers can complain but they are not always right to.

Millions no longer play it. One at best. That is the issue.

No, they should not listen to every schmuck around with their personal peeve. I mean things where a large number of players express their concerns.

[DeltrusDisc]

I was skipping the some of my favourite streamers during the night and I just couldn't believe some of the comments towards the devs, they are trying there best to get the game right, then theres the personal attacks towards some of the devs it's not on they don't deserve these kind of comments, they need to grow up, one day the Internet will change for the better and find these keyboard warriors and take action and to be honest I hope i'm around to see it happen

I'm sorry but I just don't believe you. I don't think these devs have the same love for the game as the devs of old - regardless of the fact many of them were sexual deviant, sexist assholes.

[Mojo03]

I was skipping the some of my favourite streamers during the night and I just couldn't believe some of the comments towards the devs, they are trying there best to get the game right, then theres the personal attacks towards some of the devs it's not on they don't deserve these kind of comments, they need to grow up, one day the Internet will change for the better and find these keyboard warriors and take action and to be honest I hope i'm around to see it happen

More likely they're trying their best to please their bosses while putting on the appearance that they are trying to please the community. The problem is they seem to have to please their bosses, while they don't really have to please the community, since so many seem to have Stockholm syndrome/deep emotional connections to the brand.

The real issue is their bosses who seem to want more for less and want predatory shit forced into all their games.

That doesn't seem like it will change until maybe (mayyyyybe) Microsoft takes over.

Even then I'm sure much of the trash upper management will find a way to weasel through the transition and keep their position.

Blizzard did a lot in the past, their relevance is fading, it's normal and it happens.

Time to move on to supporting new blood and better run studios.

[DeltrusDisc]

ALL devs are talented and passionate. They do not cease being that simply because they don't cater the game solely to you.

Oh come on. Didn't anyone ever tell you not to generalize?

All x are good or bad is never a good route to go down.

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More likely they're trying their best to please their bosses while putting on the appearance that they are trying to please the community. The problem is they seem to have to please their bosses, while they don't really have to please the community, since so many seem to have Stockholm syndrome/deep emotional connections to the brand.

The real issue is their bosses who seem to want more for less and want predatory shit forced into all their games.

That doesn't seem like it will change until maybe (mayyyyybe) Microsoft takes over.

Even then I'm sure much of the trash upper management will find a way to weasel through the transition and keep their position.

Blizzard did a lot in the past, their relevance is fading, it's normal and it happens.

Time to move on to supporting new blood and better run studios.

Or old blood who still can run a good studio?
*waves at Square Enix

[Mojo03]

Oh come on. Didn't anyone ever tell you not to generalize?

All x are good or bad is never a good route to go down.

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Or old blood who still can run a good studio?
*waves at Square Enix

Square Enix is more bad than good.

How many of their games totally flop? There has been what? 2 this year alone?

They're basically the Final Fantasy company at this point and those are not all hits either.

I wouldn't say they're a good example of a well run company

[DeltrusDisc]

Square Enix is more bad than good.

How many of their games totally flop? There has been what? 2 this year alone?

They're basically the Final Fantasy company at this point and those are not all hits either.

I wouldn't say they're a good example of a well run company

Oops. Well, oh well. I really only pay attention to 14.

But I also, just looking at their wide-history, consider them a very successful gaming company. No company will ever have all hits. Blizzard is only different in that everything they have chugged out in the past few years has been trash.

[exochaft]

I feel like people are making a mountain out of a molehill with these kinds of topics. Yeah, of course there will be some idiots who attack the devs or make fun of their appearance (how about we point a camera at their face instead?), etc. but they're a remarkably loud minority. These kinds of comments don't represent the majority of the playerbase at all. Not even half. Not even 10%.

Most of us are mature enough to voice our concerns with the expansion without attacking any of the devs. So my advice is to just ignore comments like these, ignore/block the person who said them, and move on. They're not worth even talking about.

Just wanted to echo this comment, because this the reality of the situation. Stance or position aside, the vocal people are almost always the minority when it comes to many things, whether it's gaming forums, social media, politics, etc. Most people don't want the spotlight or just don't have time to worry about such things, because believe it or not, there's TONS of other things to worry about in one's life (especially if things aren't going well).

When it comes to the forums for Blizz, even they have recognized that the vocal people are an extreme minority. Now, this doesn't necessarily mean that the opinions expressed by the minority cannot be reflective of the majority, but the extreme arguments/statements are pretty much exclusively the property of the extreme minority. People sending out death threats to devs or just random people on the internet they don't even know is not common nor something the majority of people even do... heck, it's not something even the majority of the minority of vocal people do.

This doesn't just extend to Blizz, this expands to all of social media, but somehow people are deluded into thinking that the most extreme stories are commonplace or representative of a systemic issue. This what generally gets peddled in news stories and articles, where there's supposedly a rash of "hateful/racist" Tweets or posts... but when you look at them, they're so small in number (and a lot of them can't even be called hateful/racist even if they are dumb) that it shouldn't be a story. When these stories get made, it's pretty much always a diversion or deflection from the real story surrounding the person, which is why you'll see these pop up all the time now.

Everyone, regardless of their position on anything who is even slightly in the public eye, will be the victim of people sending them nasty or dumb responses targeted at them. Heck, I've had some nasty PM/DMs from posting on this forum or Discord, but there's no way I think that's what the vast majority of people think. Even if the devs at Blizz were doing a great job and WoW was the most popular it has ever been, they would still get nasty/dumb mentions in posts or tweets. People being dumb and stupid is just what humans will do every now and then, it shouldn't be a big story or a shocking revelation.

[Magical Mudcrab]

It's not a tall claim to make. Your entire claim that they are not is based solely on the fact you do not like the game. Game designers are absolutely passionate. You liking the game is not a prerequisite for that to be.

Passionate? Sure, but there's a difference between being passionate and being competent or talented. If the developers were anything close to competent, there wouldn't be this high degree of friction between Blizzard and the players of their games that has been building over the last 4~ years, typically around Blizzard dismissing or condescending to players. Moreover, we don't even need to get into the weeds with this, as it's apparent that they're doing something wrong by their MAUs. We can see that MAUs for Blizzard going from 32M in Q2 2020 to 22M in Q1 2022, which is a significant drop of 10M MAUs in 8 quarters. For context, we can look at 37M in Q3 2018 (BfA release) to 32M in Q2 2020, which only sees a drop of 5M MAUs in 8 quarters. This means the decline in MAUs doubled between 2020 to 2022, compared to 2018 to 2020.

It's possible that the lawsuits are to blame for exacerbating the drop, but here's the issue: during that time, we saw Shadowlands, TBC Classic, and Diablo 2: Resurrected all released, and this period contained the COVID-19 pandemic. The release of three major titles (two expansions, one remaster) should have boosted their MAUs, and COVID-19 has been a golden age for games companies as more and more people began looking for forms of at-home entertainment. That Blizzard could not retain users during that time, and that they were already hemorrhaging users before the lawsuits were widespread (i.e.: 32M in Q2 2020, down to 26M in Q2 2021; lawsuits became big in Q3 and Q4 of 2021), shows they're failing somewhere.

[Chilela]

Oops. Well, oh well. I really only pay attention to 14.

But I also, just looking at their wide-history, consider them a very successful gaming company. No company will ever have all hits. Blizzard is only different in that everything they have chugged out in the past few years has been trash.

Well, even in recent years, Squeenix has had its fair share of duds. Balan Wonderworld is probably the biggest offender I can think of offhandedly, and The Quiet Man was a sizable flop, and from casual observation, Stranger of Paradise was clearly rushed. Though trash is a fairly subjective metric, and despite my less-than-stellar opinions of Blizzard in its current state, they can at least point to some degree of financial success. Shadowlands broke PC launch day sales records. Don't-You-Guys-Have-Phones simulator is looking to rake in handsome amounts of money from whales. Their last true dud was probably W3R, and before that, HotS.

[Mojo03]

Oops. Well, oh well. I really only pay attention to 14.

But I also, just looking at their wide-history, consider them a very successful gaming company. No company will ever have all hits. Blizzard is only different in that everything they have chugged out in the past few years has been trash.

14 is a pretty well run game, but there are a lot of head scratching things going on in that game too. Like releasing 2 races to the game and not allowing them to wear helmets still 4 years after they came out (with still no clear update for that coming)

They also make stupid amounts of money w/ a shop and sub + box sales, yet the game kinda runs and looks like shit still (they're working on a graphics update finally)

Well, Blizzard is only Blizzard in name now and ever since the CEO left a few years ago, it's now just Activision milking the IP's Blizzard spent years building.

The devs are kinda forced to do what Activision wants them to do, which seems to be to use every trick in the book to make as much money as possible off everything and prioritize that above all else.

[Schwert]

I have little patience or respect towards some of the devs.
I've had really positive interactions with a few of them, but you also have some - luckily, some of which no longer work for Blizzard - calling people leaving actual feedback angry wasps, or telling people who are highly invested in the genre that their opinion doesn't matter because they haven't shipped a game. (...meanwhile, some of the devs were hired because they were leaving that same feedback. Weird.)

The arrogance from some of them when they inherited the game is baffling. I don't believe it's all upper engagement causing issues either. They're not the ones telling people they'd rather you didn't play demonology, the Horde is waiting for you, it's a skill issue, ect ect.

Nobody can tell me that any of these people have the same passion as, say, Metzen.
Metzen apologized when there were retcons made to introduce Draenei.
Meanwhile, Void Elves and Vulpera were just plopped into the game and still don't really have any lore despite causing so much controversy, after Ion trolled the Alliance, and they let the whole faction rot for almost a decade.

[sam86]

"they are trying their best to get the game right"
what game exactly you playing?
They trying their best to milk us, give as little reward as possible, artificially extending sub times as long as possible
Or else why the f8ck they selling boosts on their own channels? in case u missed it 2nd in command in warcraft was streaming literally selling boosts for more tokens
Want what is best for game, remove tokens for start, don't give any edge that someone who has more cash can use over you, u'll say that means return chineese gold farmers, that's like saying that since ppl kill each other we should make it legal since being illegal isn't stopping crime
No, i'm fed with with it and everyone, i wanted to stay positive but i can't, i had hope but this exp intro crushed it, with how crap the new class/race combo of so much reused assets and not even care to show armor (just shoulder and cap, bleh)

[kenn9530]

Millions no longer play it. One at best. That is the issue.

No, they should not listen to every schmuck around with their personal peeve. I mean things where a large number of players express their concerns.

millions do still play it, you are very naive to think less than 2 million at the min dont still play.

[Luxeley]

Wow hasn't had 3 consecutive quarters of sub growth since the middle of WOTLK. The game once boasted 12 mil plus subs. Right here and now, I am 100% confident Blizzard would happily sign off on 5-6 mil subs for retail if they could, but they can't. The actual sub count is much lower. In the last 10 years WOW's sub count consistently trended downward. It's only logical to hold the devs accountable, especially when players gave appropriate feedback during various betas and Blizzard DID NOTHING. The perfect example of this is not opening up swapping between covenants without consequence. Every single WOW prognosticator out there said "it's a really bad move" and Blizzard did nothing about it for an entire year. It's one thing to say the devs do not deserve personal attacks for their bad moves, I agree, they certainly don't. But, they deserve a hell of a lot more criticism for their moves than they currently receive and they already do receive a lot.

[Swnem]

millions do still play it, you are very naive to think less than 2 million at the min dont still play.

You are very naive to think there are still 2 millions. Armory numbers and estimates from 3rd party sites put it at around 1-1.5m with classic included. So, unless Blizzard is willing to reveal official numbers that is what the evidence points to. Your 2 millions pulled out of the pocket are doubted upon.

[kenn9530]

You are very naive to think there are still 2 millions. Armory numbers and estimates from 3rd party sites put it at around 1-1.5m with classic included. So, unless Blizzard is willing to reveal official numbers that is what the evidence points to. Your 2 millions pulled out of the pocket are doubted upon.

You like to pull numbers out of your ass, the current number going around for 2022 is 4.8 million current subs, you dont have evidence stating WoW subs have dropped even below 4 million, let alone done to 1 million or less.

[MoanaLisa]

You mentioned three devs and not a single peep about John Hight, who's running this shitshow.

Impressive!

For the most part when Chilton ran the game no one much went after him either. He kept quiet, let others—Ghostcrawler mainly, Watcher later—do most if not all the talking and they, not he, took the abuse for it. Criticism of the game is one thing. Personal criticism of developers, the color of their hair, their supposed gender or sexual preferences, or any of that shit that's personally abusive should be shut down hard.

What appears from Blizzard is a collective effort. It's one of the problems of the game in my opinion that it's design by committee (and a large committee) at that in which original ideas and directions get snuffed out early on because they cannot gather a consensus opinion that everyone agrees to. That makes their decision-making "safer" in some ways but is not friendly to truly innovative ideas. It also means there's no personal vision driving the game but a collective consciousness which nearly always eliminates risky ideas and moves the design toward safer solutions.

That's why, in my opinion, the game always feels like there's rarely any kind of truly innovative design and that once design problems are resolved you end up with something which is principally moving deck chairs around.

It may be "standard internet stuff" to abuse and insult developers personally but there are people in executive positions on all sites that could very easily say "keep the focus on the game and leave the insults and abuse out of it." They don't because you know, page views, page hits. You see it everywhere on line and in the last few years it's prominently spilled out into the real world. The only real option is to retreat from all of it.

I have a personal bias which is to loathe the fight culture and attention-whoring that exists on some sites. It's not something that many sites are willing or have the courage to truly shut down.

[Karawaka]

Who do I blame when they spend an entire expansion balancing a class around a borrowed power system that everyone knows is going away at the end and then the class/spec isnt tuned properly after the power is taken away and its unplayable for the first half of the next expansion