So is the Wow community council dead?

[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...

- - - Updated - - -

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

beat me to it

[Polybius]

They should have got the opinions from the people who stopped playing.

That’s what most people working on WoW or defending WoW seem to forget: players that left aren’t subbed and can’t give their opinion on the official channel.

The message is clear, if you’re unsubbed your opinion doesn’t matter. It’s why I stopped bothering posting on the official forums.

[Lolites]

That’s what most people working on WoW or defending WoW seem to forget: players that left aren’t subbed and can’t give their opinion on the official channel.

thats not really true, you have to have battle net account - which as former wow player surely have - but you dont have to have gametime to post on official forums... so unless you deleted (is taht even possible?) your bnet account or lost the access to it and to the mail too you definitely can post on wow forums...
or did you mean something different than forum by "official channel"?

besides im sure that quite a lot of feedback from former players would be "i quit bcs i have 40y 3 kids and no goddamn freetime"

[Djuntas]

I dont even know what it is, and what its about, or where its happening...Guess its some feedback crap on official forums but I go never go there so lol.

[LordVargK]

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

Well that might be true, but that's just shitty analysis on Blizzards part then. Why bother doing a Beta if you can't get meaningful information out of it? Answer: Because Beta has been nothing but marketing starting with MoP, where the beta was included in the D3 preorder.

Blizzard could customize the Beta to force players to give feedback. For example the small "Did you experience any issues with this quest?" window under each quest should be a popup, that can't be ignored. The choices can be just yes or no, with no offering the OPTION of giving an explanation. You get about the same amount of explanations, but way more indications if something is wrong.

Feedback in the Beta should not be an option or be as easily ignored as it is now. Blizzard's Beta program is severly lacking. But again, imo the Betas are only for marketing purposes.

[netherflame]

It is made up of yes men. Even if Blizzard did listen to them, the council is primarily made up of hardcore players: raiders and pvpers. Casuals, the majority of WoW's audience, are not represented, much like how WoW's modern dev team is run by hardcore raiders turned devs. So the WoW playerbase will continue to be neglected.

If you think this then you haven't been to the community council forums, many of the posts are clearly posted by casuals who want things that GO DIRECTLY against what hardcore pve/pvp players would want.

[Echo of Soul]

If you think this then you haven't been to the community council forums, many of the posts are clearly posted by casuals who want things that GO DIRECTLY against what hardcore pve/pvp players would want.

Considering that the casual playerbase is far larger than the hardcore one maybe it's a good thing? It's the casuals who left, it's the casuals they need to win back. The casuals started leaving on mass back in January when they realized that Blizzard had denied them any meaningful gear progression this expansion.

[Arcreid]

People that actually believe in community council are literal goldfish.

If they want to actually gather community feedback they can just hire a CM that sums up what the community is saying.
It's like thinking attaching a phone to make a group title is the solution instead of just hiring an ingame moderator/warden.

Considering that the casual playerbase is far larger than the hardcore one maybe it's a good thing? It's the casuals who left, it's the casuals they need to win back. The casuals started leaving on mass back in January when they realized that Blizzard had denied them any meaningful gear progression this expansion.

Casual "meaningful" gear progression is not a thing, Shadowland has the best gearing path for casuals, you can get Normal Raid gear in 3 days back in 9.0, and you can get Heroic raid gear level from Korthia.

But none of it will ever be meaningful, because casual gear mean it will be owned by 99% of the playerbase anyway.
To find meaning in a casual gears, which is intended to be accessible for everyone is a fool's quest.

[Self Inflicted Wounds]

For every 1 non-raider/M+ key driver there's at least 3 Raiders/M+ players.

The council is largely made up of the same people that casual players feared would happen. Once again WoW devs deciding that only a certain type of content is what really drives players into playing the game.

Keep doing what the same thing and don't be confused when next expansion launch within 2 weeks you lost 60% of the new subs you gained.

Literally I can do a mock up of 3 people who would get selected by the council and it's exactly who you'd think got selected:


-----------------------------------------------
Hi--I'm Percius of Area 52. I am the GM and Raid Leader for team 1 of the guild Destiny's Mauraders. We're currently 10/10 Mythic SoD and we're working on getting our alts all to have CE. My main focuses are raiding, M+, and doing some collections. I wanted to take the time to point out our main concerns are the constant need to find players for raid teams, and to discuss the drop rates of certain items for certain classes. So far I belive 9.1.5 has been the best patch to date, and I'm so very grateful for Blizzard making an amazing game and asking me for feesback
-------------------------------------------------
Hello! I'm Allister of Ravenholdt. My focus has become more M+ although I am CE for raiding too with my guild Pelanor Fields. We've been in the WoW community for over 15 years. My concerns are the about the covenants, some PvP concerns, and I'd like to talk about the role damaging healers have in the Mythic Raiding scene. While I consider myself a casual now, as I don't race to finish Mythic ASAP, I still play with friends on a high level, and I'm looking forward to hearing feedback from all of you wonderful players!
----------------------------------------------------
Hi! I'm a Ving, a relatively new players, on Durotar. I have not been in WoW for very long now, but my guild and I did manage to get CE. I don't have a streaming channel, but we are around casual players. The concerns I've seen thus far have been around loot drop rates, and the inability to do Legion raids, I'm a mogger, and those are what I'm viewing as issues. I'm looking forward to meeting all of you!
----------------------------------------------------

These are just made up profiles, but from what I've read it's essentially those 3 people, add a high-end competitive PvP player, and one light Rper and you have the community council. Filled to the brim with Blizzard Yes people.

Even the last guy who claims to be "casual" somehow has CE.

Lol. Blizzard is so scared of casual players because it ruins their "git gud" mentality.

How many "casual" (what does this mean in the context you are using it?) players do you think are applying?

This is essentially a job, so why would Blizzard choose someone that has barely played, experienced everything the game can offer, etc over someone who has tried a little of everything?

It was obviously going to be yes men from the start, I'm just confused at what kind of players you think Blizzard should choose, and how many of those "casual" players are even applying. We had a guy in my guild that raided with us, and he got his dad into our guild. This was probably Wrath or something. His dad literally only fished and talked in guild chat. That was basically it. He wanted to be close to his son, liked video games enough, but wasn't interested in PVP or PVE content that much. Is that the type of player you want on the community council? I am not being a smart-ass, I am genuinely curious. That dad is the purest form of casual I can think of.

The three examples you listed covered a lot of different things in their "concerns" including things like collecting and transmog.

- - - Updated - - -

Writing off players as a raider and then automatically "yes people" is a pretty bad and binary way of looking at things, them having stepped foot in current raid content doesn't automatically make them hardcore raiders nor does it mean they agree with everything Blizzard does (the definition of "yes people"). Almost all describe a multi-faceted playstyle that isn't just raiding.

Opposed to what people said earlier in the thread (and what I was replying to), there are several that care about accessibility, multiple that care about roleplaying, multiple that care about collecting things, at least two that care about API/addon stuff all in all making it pretty representative, considering there are currently only ~30-40 members.

The issue is that Blizzard has a massive motive to only choose yes men - its not that all raiders are yes men.

[Marlamin]

The issue is that Blizzard has a massive motive to only choose yes men - its not that all raiders are yes men.

If their motive is to have a platform where everyone already agrees with them, no discussion would happen on the forums which in the end would only look bad for them as the "community council" experiment they wanted to have in the first place would be a failure on their part due to who they invited.

I'd say their motive is to invite people that don't agree with them and have feedback on how their specific playstyle could be improved, but are able to describe that in a constructive and respectful manner. Sadly that latter part is often mistaken for being a yes man these days, simply because people have gotten used to needing to read someone being upset/outraged for feedback to seem genuine.

If people trust me on my word, which I know is something that's frankly unlikely these days, I know for a fact there are people on the council that don't agree with choices Blizzard made and how that affected their playstyle (reading through some of the threads on the forum should also give you that idea). I obviously can't say that this is the case for everyone since I don't have an impression of every single member, but there's quite a few in there.

I personally don't agree with some choices they made/are making even though most of these (for me) relate to things outside of the game, but are still related to WoW nonetheless.

[Kokolums]

If th

I'd say their motive is to invite people that don't agree with them and have feedback on how their specific playstyle could be improved, but are able to describe that in a constructive manner.

I always thought the motive of creating the council was to try to appease shareholders and players. To be able to point to it say “things were bad before but we are fixing it now with this”. Actually listening to anything the council says? Nah. Theyve had tons of forums, discords etc to get feedback and it was ignored.

[Marlamin]

I always thought the motive of creating the council was to try to appease shareholders and players. To be able to point to it say “things were bad before but we are fixing it now with this”. Actually listening to anything the council says? Nah. Theyve had tons of forums, discords etc to get feedback and it was ignored.

If that ends up being the case, that will be pretty apparent in what kind of things end up actually getting discussed on the forum and whether or not any of it will have impact, which would only reflect badly on Blizzard.

I get that people feel like this is all being done in bad faith and it won't do anything, but if there is genuinely a chance this ends up improving anything in the slightest I'm not going to waste that chance purely on assumptions based on the past. I'm willing to put some energy into this, if that ends up being wasted it'll be a shame but I'd still have tried, which is good enough for me.

[oplawlz]

That’s what most people working on WoW or defending WoW seem to forget: players that left aren’t subbed and can’t give their opinion on the official channel.

The message is clear, if you’re unsubbed your opinion doesn’t matter. It’s why I stopped bothering posting on the official forums.

I actually got a pretty long and detailed survey from bliz about why I quit playing in shadowlands and what I did or did not enjoy, so they are at least gathering some info. Whether they are going to use that info to make the game better I couldn't say.

[exochaft]

If that ends up being the case, that will be pretty apparent in what kind of things end up actually getting discussed on the forum and whether or not any of it will have impact, which would only reflect badly on Blizzard.

I get that people feel like this is all being done in bad faith and it won't do anything, but if there is genuinely a chance this ends up improving anything in the slightest I'm not going to waste that chance purely on assumptions based on the past. I'm willing to put some energy into this, if that ends up being wasted it'll be a shame but I'd still have tried, which is good enough for me.

The "bad faith" part is based upon the past, as Blizz has done this before. It's not really a secret at this point that there's always been a similar "council" that exists beyond this one, just most people never knew it was there. Some of the streamers have talked about this, as well, as there's always been behind-the-scenes councils. This is just the first openly public one.

I've personally been part of the alpha and beta process for years for WoW, and I can confidently say that this council is likely to go nowhere beyond being a PR stunt. A lot of the major problems and issues that have popped up in the game have pretty much all been called out ahead of time in early alpha/beta stages, with the exception of system revamps late into beta/PTR phases or if there was no testing allowed. There has always been feedback from the highly prized people that get access to the internal communication system, but that doesn't mean Blizz listens or accepts the feedback... even if they ultimately end up changing it. This is one of the reasons I quit WoW: I was tired of seeing the blue posts that gaslight the players about fixes and changes (even some game-breaking exploits that got people banned on live servers) seemingly popping up out of nowhere, when the reality is that their supposedly "high priority" players in terms of feedback exposed such issues way earlier (as much as over a year earlier in some cases).

Is it possible for Blizz to turn a new leaf on this? It's possible, but not probable in my view. Blizz is still in the middle of the invite process for the current public council, so not much has been done. However, from their previous and current actions, nothing's really changed at Blizz to what would positively affect the game.

[Bakis]

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

For a game such as WoW that is basically 4-5 core features and the rest just bloat I would not agree that Alpha is a locked state of the game for major changes in the game.

BLZ are just stuborn and as usually ignoring the extremely early input from the pool of people outside the company that get super early access (including the various alphas) many of which also have either an irl acquaintance or an internet one with developers/BLZ internal forums to get information & offer input in return.
That Azerite got into the game as it did, how Legion lego rng, Shadowlands shit solution of covenants etc etc etc etc got into the game is only cos BLZ ignore input while still being in the time frame of having time to make it good or at least better.

Almost everything can be changed or at least tuned in WoW alpha.
Lets be real, WoW is 90% bloat mechanics/content that can be changed/scrapped/tweaked/altered/merged, you name it in alpha.

[Marlamin]

The "bad faith" part is based upon the past, as Blizz has done this before. It's not really a secret at this point that there's always been a similar "council" that exists beyond this one, just most people never knew it was there. Some of the streamers have talked about this, as well, as there's always been behind-the-scenes councils. This is just the first openly public one.

I've personally been part of the alpha and beta process for years for WoW, and I can confidently say that this council is likely to go nowhere beyond being a PR stunt. A lot of the major problems and issues that have popped up in the game have pretty much all been called out ahead of time in early alpha/beta stages, with the exception of system revamps late into beta/PTR phases or if there was no testing allowed. There has always been feedback from the highly prized people that get access to the internal communication system, but that doesn't mean Blizz listens or accepts the feedback... even if they ultimately end up changing it. This is one of the reasons I quit WoW: I was tired of seeing the blue posts that gaslight the players about fixes and changes (even some game-breaking exploits that got people banned on live servers) seemingly popping up out of nowhere, when the reality is that their supposedly "high priority" players in terms of feedback exposed such issues way earlier (as much as over a year earlier in some cases).

Is it possible for Blizz to turn a new leaf on this? It's possible, but not probable in my view. Blizz is still in the middle of the invite process for the current public council, so not much has been done. However, from their previous and current actions, nothing's really changed at Blizz to what would positively affect the game.

I frankly agree with everything you said here, I don't think it's very probable this will change much or anything, but I don't want to discard it up front either just in case it does. I have some hope left due to the fact if this goes badly, it'll go badly publicly compared to the previous "private" councils.

[kaminaris]

Is it possible for Blizz to turn a new leaf on this? It's possible, but not probable in my view. Blizz is still in the middle of the invite process for the current public council, so not much has been done. However, from their previous and current actions, nothing's really changed at Blizz to what would positively affect the game.

Yep, you can see this trend from pretty much every blue response to anything last couple years.

Wall of text of explanation that can be shortened up: yes we get your point but we don't agree.

Of course, player are not always correct, but it turns out blizzard isn't either and they absolutely will never admit it until shit happens.

[Rusken]

Frankly anyone who believed it to be at all useful or in any way beneficial to the community is either incredibly naïve or just plain stupid. The only people who really wanted to get on it are the Blizzard ass-kissers who believe they can do no wrong to the game and the hardcore haters who want to get on it just to troll. It's just a PR scheme so Blizzard can say "look we're listening to the community!" when in reality they're ignoring us just as much, if not more than they have in the last 6 years.

[kaminaris]

Frankly anyone who believed it to be at all useful or in any way beneficial to the community is either incredibly naïve or just plain stupid. The only people who really wanted to get on it are the Blizzard ass-kissers who believe they can do no wrong to the game and the hardcore haters who want to get on it just to troll. It's just a PR scheme so Blizzard can say "look we're listening to the community!" when in reality they're ignoring us just as much, if not more than they have in the last 6 years.

Thats not it, there are (and will be) plenty of people that don't agree with blizzard on council. But blizzard is going to ignore it regardless and say their PR curated responses.

[Kallisto]

If they want to actually gather community feedback they can just hire a CM that sums up what the community is saying.

If you want a CM to sum up what the community is saying, get ready for the CM to post 1000 contradictions a day since the community can't agree on a single thing. If you put 1000 WoW players in a room, expect 2000 different contradictions in ideas and no 2 players willing to compromise on anything and instead scream "Fuck you!" to everyone else essentially demanding Blizzard kick the other 999 players so they can get the perfect game.