Do you really think Blizzard still cares about you; the player?

[Ringthane]

I really don't care if they do or not. I don't know that they ever did. You may think so, but that's just conjecture. As long as the game is fun I'll play it. That's all that matters to me.

[Queen of Hamsters]

Lol'd.

I've been a fan of this game for 13 years. Never, not once, did I ever sit around thinking that I am somehow special to the company and that they care about me as anything but a customer. They've treated me as a valued customer several times by granting me free game-time, reverting character services and paying back the cash, helping me swiftly when I had issues etc. That doesn't mean that I believe we've got some sort of sPeCiAl CoNneCtIon...

And yes, they do still care about me as a customer. That's why I vote with my wallet when I do not like what they're doing.

I do find it rather funny how the same people can on one hand claim that Blizzard only cares about money, and on the other claim that they don't give a rat's ass about player satisfaction... As if one doesn't come with the other, somehow. In aaaall other business, you need to give customers something they enjoy/find useful to keep customers/grow revenue by attracting new ones.

But not Blizzard, no. They've somehow figured out how to earn billions on making products nobody wants and enjoys...

Quite the disconnect.

[Chilela]

When they made WQs arguably harder and more tedious. WQs requiring multiple steps or just outright being vague where you have to look up wowhead what to do.

More tedious, yes, but the (gold) rewards are much better this time around, and Anima's largely cosmetic at this point. In terms of vagueness, once in a while quests just sorta end up like that.

When callings aren't automatically picked up. Forcing you to fly towards your covenant to first pick them up then fly back to whatever zone needs it.

A relatively minor inconvenience. Although now that you say that, at least the callings are more rewarding than emissaries have been in the past, since they all provide decent money, at the very least.

When AP, not Artifact power, not Azerite but Anima goes into your inventory instead of being a passive resource. Forcing you to go back once in a while to clear your bag space.

Once again, relatively minor inconvenience, and this is more an issue with Blizzard being stubborn on increasing bag size terribly much.

When Steve Danuser simply can not answer the latest question of Red Shirt guy on terms of Necromancy, telling him and us he's going to think about implemented, established lore in the future.
This guy single handidly destroyed so much lore and retcon a bunch of shit to the point people just got disinterested in the game as a whole.
Please tell me if we cut Draka, Kael'thas, Vash and other Azeroth characters, would the covenants even give you a feeling of an afterlife or another planet?

Lore in general's been a huge mess since, well, at least TBC. So meh.

When feedback from your carefully selected circlejerk on your self created hugbox on Twitter matters more than any valid feedback or criticism; no negativity in the dojo!

Mostly agree here. Either they're selective of what criticism they address (See: Blizz responding to that one girl complaining about people riding her in travel form without her consent instead of the mountains of people complaining about the boomy rotation in BFA beta), or they climb a few inches out of a pit that's several feet deep (See: Most iterations on failed systems)

So they implement all these created time wastes onto things from the last expansion

To be fair, time wasters are sorta part of the territory of MMOs. Though once again, not meaningfully addressing failed systems.

zones have gotten smaller and more cranked.

This is definitely an issue, zones do feel more overdesigned nowadays, instead of feeling more like parts of worlds. One of the things that I genuinely appreciate about earlier iterations about WoW.

We can not fly between zones, the maw and the capital.

Again, relatively minor annoyance, in the grand scheme of things (outside of the Maw, that one sorta stings).

I find it really disrespectful on top that we have to swallow a load of political virtueing on Twitter to see some talk about the game from the devs at all. They need way, way better communication.

Twitter just made everyone awful. There's a reason I don't really get wrapped up in the musings of people who work on this game, or are otherwise prominent figures within the community. I can at least excuse them using a personal social media account for non-professional reasons, but the level of anti-player antagonism is just silly sometimes.

That said, I do believe that Blizz, as a company, has cared little about players for a while now. For me, it's largely more things like blatantly slow-bleeding content to keep up player engagement, the pushing of microtransactions on top of a P2P game, and WoW tokens arguably making the game P2W due to the normalization of boost culture. I'm sure some of the people on the dev team genuinely care, but they're just a few cogs in a much larger machine.

WoW Classic could very well be the last genuine love letter from the company at this point.

[anon5123]

Imagine thinking that a multi billion dollar game dev "cares about you"

fucking lmao

[SunspotAnims]

Such a dumb question. Who cares? Cares about what? How are you even going to answer that for an entire studio that sells games. It ignores individual developers making the games and it disrespects players who'd rather have a more substantive dialogue about the games themselves.

"thEy cArE AboUT YoUR MonEY" Yeah no shit Sherlock, what are you gonna do about it? Play a game from someone that doesn't care about money? It is naive to see a game studio as your best friend but fortunately they don't have to be your best friend to make a game you like. If you don't like it, there are much more relevant topics to discuss than what they "care about".

[threads]

blizz's problem since bfa seems like they dont understand what fun content is anymore so they just make everything feel mandatory to force it on people. islands, warfronts, torghast, etc.

the world quest thing is probably the dumbest thing i've heard from a dev ever. "people spend most of their time traveling to wq instead of doing them so we made the wq take 5x longer". ok maybe it's time to improve traveling then and not have the game stuck in 2005 forever? every xpac seems to be a war on flying mounts too for some reason.

ff14 has quick travel and teleports all over the place and the world feels somehow more alive than wow still.

[Garymorilix]

Yes.

I am 100% certain that every single Blizzard employee is constantly thinking about me, personally.
I heard that they get very sad when they hear that I don't have time to play on a given day.
They think about me twice as hard then.

I can prove this mathematically.

[kaminaris]

Of course not, since early legion where they tested how much they can get away with timegates and farmgates to keep people hooked without giving actual content they only care about money of addicted people. With shadowlands being absolute pinnacle of it where also story is timegated.

[Archmage Alodi]

They don't even care about their employees lol

[CaptainV]

Well after the recent news im pretty confident blizzard really -doesnt- care about anyone, nevermind the player.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Always key to remember company’s aren’t your friends and they aren’t there employees friends all they care about is your more or work and will screw you over for it.

Individuals at the company’s might care but the company it self doesn’t it just wants gain from you one way or another.

[Soon-TM]

Well after the recent news im pretty confident blizzard really -doesnt- care about anyone, nevermind the player.

Do you mean the attorney's investigation concerning sexual harassment claims?

[Jastall]

I neither know nor care myself. Blizzard is a company making games I enjoy playing, they're not my friends and I require no attention or affection from them. Like any company, their first motive is profit, I've accepted that since I was 15 and I won't act the offended virgin that they try to maximize it, so long as my enjoyment isn't affected at least.

Anyway, bring seen as a company that "cares" means very little and can collapse overnight. Look at CDPR, the darling that made Witcher 3. You couldn't bring up that game without their fans going on and on about how different they are, how much they care, how gifted we are by their very existence. Then Cyberpunk's launch happens and reality comes crashing down; they're a company like any other staffed by humans like any others who made several mistakes. Suddenly you don't hear so much about how they "care".

[Bakis]

To a degree as an individual, I mean we sub or not but more so about (some) streamers and articles in gaming magazines.
Which is as it should be.

[Antherios]

Well, with the recent news I think they barely care about their employees .. why would they care about their players?

[MyWholeLifeIsThunder]

Babe, blizz only cares about the cash.

[deenman]

blizzard the company never cared about anyone,companies arent people

[Darkeon]

This is one of those threads that is pure gold.

On topic: lol, no.

[Kithelle]

I haven't thought they cared much about the player for years, the way they refused to admit WoD Demo was clunky and bad...they half way through the expansion Ion giving us a big screw you and wait till Legion. To the fact that he and others are big on raiding and they've basically ignored PvP for years...it's obviously a game for Ion and his pals, not really caring about what the players want.

[WowIsDead64]

When they made WQs arguably harder and more tedious. WQs requiring multiple steps or just outright being vague where you have to look up wowhead what to do.
When callings aren't automatically picked up. Forcing you to fly towards your covenant to first pick them up then fly back to whatever zone needs it.
When AP, not Artifact power, not Azerite but Anima goes into your inventory instead of being a passive resource. Forcing you to go back once in a while to clear your bag space.

When Steve Danuser simply can not answer the latest question of Red Shirt guy on terms of Necromancy, telling him and us he's going to think about implemented, established lore in the future.
This guy single handidly destroyed so much lore and retcon a bunch of shit to the point people just got disinterested in the game as a whole.
Please tell me if we cut Draka, Kael'thas, Vash and other Azeroth characters, would the covenants even give you a feeling of an afterlife or another planet?

When feedback from your carefully selected circlejerk on your self created hugbox on Twitter matters more than any valid feedback or criticism; no negativity in the dojo!
No but for real, they basically told themselves that the story being so disliked is a reaction of the playerbase going through deep emotions instead of thinking that the majority thinks it is garbage.

So they implement all these created time wastes onto things from the last expansion, zones have gotten smaller and more cranked. We can not fly between zones, the maw and the capital.
Blizzard and their devs continue to ignore the playerbase because their positive surroundings on Twitter matter more.

I find it really disrespectful on top that we have to swallow a load of political virtueing on Twitter to see some talk about the game from the devs at all. They need way, way better communication.

Blizzard call it "Classic is success - let's bring Classic crap to retail". Because, yeah, they think, that wasting lots of time in game = true MMO immersion. Like taking 15 minutes flight path from Orgrimmar to Tanaris just to actually start playing.

And overall, it has been told many times already. We were telling it since Cata.

You give in and allow devs to do bad things? Because uh it's just small change, overall game is still amazing. It's slippery slope, that will bring game to terrible state some day. To state, where devs will stop caring about players - only about financial survival of their game. Guys, who tell, that game will survive with just 1M subs, but good players, while keeping the same quality - are stupid. Cutting development costs as result of sub losses will inevitably affect overall quality of game. And some day devs will stop caring about their good reputation and start being cynical - they will start milking money from their game via all possible means.