"Players rarely argue for less convenience." - Ghostcrawler

[Deleted]

This has to be the most infuriating tweet I have ever seen from Ghostcrawler

Either the community managers are doing an atrocious job, or the designers are pretending complaints don't exist

I mean, players have been complaining about WoW being more and more casual-friendly since WoTLK, complaining about its accessibility and convenience. This story really begins with the implementation of LFD towards the end of WOTLK, then flying mounts in cataclysm, and finally LFR. Dozens of LFR threads are made weekly, how come players rarely argue for less convenience?

Angry special snowflakes spewing hate and bullshit into the forums don't quite represent the majority of the community. Not even a relevant minority.

[Deficineiron]

This can't be stated enough. People need to realize that Blizzard (and just about every online game company) have armies of statisticians and business analysts to pour through the data they collect. And they collect an obscene amount of data. I would argue that WoW, as the largest and most successful MMO over the last 'decade', probably has the best number crunchers than any other game.

I can guarantee that they have developed, altered, and fixed many things in the game purely from numerical feedback many, many more times than by actually reading someone's complaints. And as much as I hate it, they have likely determined that their rapid evolution of the cash shop is going to rake it in even more.

There's nothing they do that would purposefully hurt their revenue. Every major change is analyzed and projected so that they know relatively safely what is going to happen. This is not chance, this is not random. People are very predictable using various mathematical trends and formulas.

always worth noting that, when the true statement that blizzard has virtually unlimited data on how players play, etc is brought up, it is implied that blizzard is able to properly interpret this data in the context of how players will respond to proposed game changes being debated internally.

Blizzard, with all their ,decided cat. initial 85 content tuning would be at a certain level harder than wotlk, and then reversed it severely within months.

how seriously can anyone take their data-interpretation ability? this is only a fairly stark example, there might be other examples which internally show them certain decisions likely hurt them, but are too subtle in the overall sub-count curve to show. Perhaps someone wants to argue blizzard always gets it right because they have the data, and cat tuning example doesn't count for some special reason?

blizzard has so much data, but I strongly question their biases in interpreting it, towards both extremes. from what I read on glasshouse, the company is certainly not above internal politics informing various positions of names in teh company.

[Reclaimer]

Angry special snowflakes spewing hate and bullshit into the forums don't quite represent the majority of the community. Not even a relevant minority.

Couldn't say it better myself. This is Right on.

[Frogged]

Angry special snowflakes spewing hate and bullshit into the forums don't quite represent the majority of the community. Not even a relevant minority.

Anyone who uses the term 'special snowflake' when attacking someone rather than their ideas is one who is being prejudiced and holds the community back at large.

[cFortyfive]

Just because a large majority would be perfectly fine with a chest in your faction's capital containing all the loots and whatever you ever want doesn't mean it would be a good game afterwards.

[Darsithis]

always worth noting that, when the true statement that blizzard has virtually unlimited data on how players play, etc is brought up, it is implied that blizzard is able to properly interpret this data.

Blizzard, with all their ,decided cat. initial 85 content tuning would be at a certain level harder than wotlk, and then reversed it severely within months.

how seriously can anyone take their data-interpretation ability? this is only a fairly stark example, there might be other examples which internally show them certain decisions likely hurt them, but are too subtle in the overall sub-count curve to show. Perhaps someone wants to argue blizzard always gets it right because they have the data, and cat tuning example doesn't count for some special reason?

They were trying out something new. They don't make every decision based on data alone. Sometimes they make gambles that people will like a change that they just don't have data for.

[Deleted]

Anyone who uses the term 'special snowflake' when attacking someone rather than their ideas is one who is being prejudiced and holds the community back at large.

Same could be said for your generalization of those who use the term "special snowflake". There's been thousands of threads debating the term, on which I've elaborated on a few a times, hence I won't do so again. Plus, since when did people come up with a WoW version of Godwin's Law for "Special Snowflake"? Please.

[Normie]

I think what GC meant to say was "Players often argue for less convenience for other players."

[tornado shanks]

implying that Blizzard cares about what the neckbeards and ponies on mmo-c have to say about LFR?

[Robert3620]

The problem, as they've stated over and over again was the lack of an alternative. There are plenty of players who accept Hard Modes and raiding aren't for them and at that point they'd taken away 10N raiding as it was in ICC, and 5 man heroics as they'd known. These players had had their content taken away from them, and so the game wasn't for them anymore. They quit. In droves.

This is right and they took it even further this expansion. They wiped out the social and lower tier guilds. With those going many servers went as well. Now you got ghost town servers and only a handful of servers with anything close to a healthy raiding community. If you were to remove lfr, what would you have those people that are doing it now do? No new five mans, raids tuned tighter then ever means not a whole lot to do without lfr for a vast majority of the players.

[DrSteveBrule]

Same could be said for your generalization of those who use the term "special snowflake". There's been thousands of threads debating the term, on which I've elaborated on a few a times, hence I won't do so again. Plus, since when did people come up with a WoW version of Godwin's Law for "Special Snowflake"? Please.

"Special Snowflake" is equivalent of saying "YOU THINK YOU'RE BETTER THAN ME?"

Like a ghetto neighborhood where kids who try to acquire an education are harassed for it.

[Noorri]

always worth noting that, when the true statement that blizzard has virtually unlimited data on how players play, etc is brought up, it is implied that blizzard is able to properly interpret this data.

Blizzard, with all their ,decided cat. initial 85 content tuning would be at a certain level harder than wotlk, and then reversed it severely within months.

how seriously can anyone take their data-interpretation ability? this is only a fairly stark example, there might be other examples which internally show them certain decisions likely hurt them, but are too subtle in the overall sub-count curve to show. Perhaps someone wants to argue blizzard always gets it right because they have the data, and cat tuning example doesn't count for some special reason?

As far as I know the initial Cataclysm heroic dungeon tuning was because of forum complaints about the WotLK heroics beeing to easy. Maybe they learned the lesson to not listen to the vocal minority on the forums from that? Also Blizzard isn't perfect. They make mistakes like everyone else. The initial Cataclysm heroic dungeon and raid tuning was clearly a mistake in their eyes, and they changed it. Blizzard has made many mistakes over the years, but I'd say that still having 8 million or so subscribers after 9 years is pretty impressive and says something about their capabilities.

[velde046]

Personally I think alot of people hate what LFR has done to the game. at least 25% of real players would argue that I reckon.

THen why would everybody run LFR? If you don't like it then don't use it.... If there are enough people ignoring it then the LFR would be removed.... as it is now apparently a vast majority likes it...

[Darsithis]

THen why would everybody run LFR? If you don't like it then don't use it.... If there are enough people ignoring it then the LFR would be removed.... as it is now apparently a vast majority likes it...

And that comes back to data. Since LFR is still here, since Blizzard still champions it, clearly the data shows that people run it enough that it is worth it to Blizzard to keep it going. Since queues for LFR are also pretty darn short compared to the 50+ minute ToES queues, I'd say plenty of people are in LFR.

[Deleted]

"Special Snowflake" is equivalent of saying "YOU THINK YOU'RE BETTER THAN ME?"

Like a ghetto neighborhood where kids who try to acquire an education are harassed for it.

That's what special snowflakes tell themselves to feel better.

All the term implies is that it's target is a spoiled little brat who thinks grind should trump ability and effort.

[Deleted]

THen why would everybody run LFR? If you don't like it then don't use it.... If there are enough people ignoring it then the LFR would be removed.... as it is now apparently a vast majority likes it...

Isn't it obvious? It's the easy way to do it. Just because someone doesn't like something doesn't mean they have to boycott it. Besides the majority who doesn't like it doesn't care enough to change things anyway. they just have a threshold and once it's reached they move on to play something else.

- - - Updated - - -

That's what special snowflakes tell themselves to feel better.

All the term implies is that it's target is a spoiled little brat who thinks grind should trump ability and effort.

Why do you think only those who want to be "special snowflakes" want exclusive content and gear?

How about just having a meaningful reason to play the game? When I play single player games, I complete them, maybe do it again to try a different playstyle or another class and thats. MMOs are different, they need to keep players playing and just farming junk for no other reason than to farm junk doesnt quite cut it for some people..

[Aqua]

This has to be the most infuriating tweet I have ever seen from Ghostcrawler

Either the community managers are doing an atrocious job, or the designers are pretending complaints don't exist

I mean, players have been complaining about WoW being more and more casual-friendly since WoTLK, complaining about its accessibility and convenience. This story really begins with the implementation of LFD towards the end of WOTLK, then flying mounts in cataclysm, and finally LFR. Dozens of LFR threads are made weekly, how come players rarely argue for less convenience?

It's loud, but he's right. It's not the majority. Most are quite happy with the 'causal friendly' approach.

I don't AGREE, but I at least concede that from a percentage standpoint he's 100% right.

I know it's cool to decry Ghostcrawler as the source of all evils in and around WoW, but really the dude is just doing his job... but that job is a little based on generalizations from marketing types, and it's true for nearly every game company. It's driven by data, not true human reception all of the time. And the latter is really hard to guess. Hense... this is what we get, trial and error based on data points. Some of which can be skewed and tampered by the wrong factors, some of which are spot on.

I would argue that casual players while content, are fickle, they leave quicker and quicker with each time the bar is lowered, but they don't really seem to pin point why. And that is not a measurable factor in game difficulty/accessibility creation. It's a strange unexplored factor of 'the unknown'. Something about past expansions and the mystery of the unknown parts of the game kept them playing for a long time with relatively little content compared to the massive sweeps of it we see now every patch.

How do you measure and account for these seemingly endless amount of conditions and factors? The answer is... they try, but it's impossible.

[Frogged]

Same could be said for your generalization of those who use the term "special snowflake". There's been thousands of threads debating the term, on which I've elaborated on a few a times, hence I won't do so again. Plus, since when did people come up with a WoW version of Godwin's Law for "Special Snowflake"? Please.

It's not prejudice to call someone out for being prejudiced. I'm calling you out, and you're being prejudiced. The world would be a better place if people weren't prejudiced. I don't know how that's confusing.

In your description of special snowflake, you attributed the emotion of anger along with the idea that everything that person says is bullshit and hate. Those are assumptions which stem from prejudice.

In my description of you, I said you were being prejudiced. You are. No assumptions were made and I attributed nothing to you that you didn't demonstrate for yourself.

[Sierra85]

The world would be a better place if people weren't prejudiced.

I've thought about this before and i might have to disagree with you. If everything was perfect there would be no conflict. People thrive on conflict. Conflict makes things interesting. Challenging views make you think critically and that is a very important feature to have in life.

[Deleted]

It's not prejudice to call someone out for being prejudiced. I'm calling you out, and you're being prejudiced. The world would be a better place if people weren't prejudiced. I don't know how that's confusing.

You're not calling me out, you're defending an attitude, not a race, ethnicity or religion.

And circular arguments aren't fun. Special snowflakes blame "casuals" and whatnot all the time for all their ills (and wrongfully too) so, in the end, I'm the one calling you out?