Contacting devs or community mangers?

[SaucyThighs]

I'm wondering if anyone has ever successfully been able to voice their opinion directly to a developer or even community manager, and have a discussion about game design. Maybe making a thoughtful post on the forums? I'm no public voice like Preach or Bellular but I'd like to put in my 2 cents in the most direct way and have a discussion. Maybe it'll have at least the teeniest ripple affect, you know?

Edit... I mean, duh. I'll just make a post on the forums whether a dev. reads it or not. If it's thoughtful and creates a discussion, maybe someone will see it.

[gobio]

I'm wondering if anyone has ever successfully been able to voice their opinion directly to a developer or even community manager, and have a discussion about game design. Maybe making a thoughtful post on the forums? I'm no public voice like Preach or Bellular but I'd like to put in my 2 cents in the most direct way and have a discussion. Maybe it'll have at least the teeniest ripple affect, you know?

Edit... I mean, duh. I'll just make a post on the forums whether a dev. reads it or not. If it's thoughtful and creates a discussion, maybe someone will see it.

I tried and never get to speak to any of the devs or managers.
But I know on multiple occasions, Karen (which is my Aunt), managed to speak to the manager immediately, I don't know how she did it though. I am always afraid to speak to her since I was a kid.

[SoulSoBreezy]

Make a good post and encourage discussion with fellow fans, that's basically the ticket in.

[deenman]

Pretty certain they actually read all posted feedback and tweets. They don't often reply in public forums, but if you have a track record of good feedback, they'll know who you are if you talk to them at Blizzcon. I'd advice creating a separate (short, to the point) post. One per topic. If you can fit in the math in the post, then do so, otherwise, put a link to your google sheet with the math. You have to be specific. Quite often they are not looking for feedback on "broad" issues (like "store mounts have destroyed the social fabric of the game"), they are looking for feedback for specific features ("ability xyz feels bad becayse zyx").

Getting involved in class discords is a great way to increase your visibility. Work your way up there and perhaps through Bay's show and/or Wowhead articles. Devs pay attention to those things.



Fairly certain those two are very low on the list of public voices Blizard is interested in talking to. Especially Bellular, because he doesn't actually have anything useful to say to a dev (Preach has gotten better in the last few years, ever since he split with Ghosty - I think he was probably on Blizzards "no-interviews, no-talk" blacklist before that).

If you want a good example of how a discussion with a dev looks like, check out Sloot's interview with Ion - the part about GCD changes. That's the kind of feedback they're looking for.

preach got banned,pretty sure they droped him to the bottom

[Razion]

Best bet at actually talking to one in any kind of reasonable non-creepy way where you can actually broach the subject you want and getting any kind of useful dialogue with a back-and-forth going is probably BlizzCon or the official WoW forums and to a much lesser extent maybe an in-game community event.

Especially as far as developers are concerned, they're probably very busy working on the game and may not have a lot of time available to talk except what interviews have been screened for them. What feedback they get I imagine to be filtered through other people who gather and report these kinds of findings to prevent things like low morale and burnout as a result of the consistent negativity that may otherwise be natural in that line of discovery and conversation.

Their job is to make entertainment, and keeping one's mind in a fun place could understandably be hard when people are constantly asking them about why a certain hot-button issue isn't getting addressed even though they've likely heard about the situation often enough. If you're ever in a position to ever actually have a kind of constructive conversation with someone in this kind of position, I'd imagine it would be very important not to echo conversations they may have had a hundred times over. And on the situation where you just want to share your thoughts and not necessarily have a conversation with a real back and forth, especially if you may not hear the things you want to, fan-sites probably aren't the best place to engage with devs or CMs, at least to an extent you may want, obviously. And has been stated, precise feedback is something they say they value more than vague feedback.

[TorAndre]

Pretty certain they actually read all posted feedback and tweets. They don't often reply in public forums, but if you have a track record of good feedback, they'll know who you are if you talk to them at Blizzcon. I'd advice creating a separate (short, to the point) post. One per topic. If you can fit in the math in the post, then do so, otherwise, put a link to your google sheet with the math. You have to be specific. Quite often they are not looking for feedback on "broad" issues (like "store mounts have destroyed the social fabric of the game"), they are looking for feedback for specific features ("ability xyz feels bad becayse zyx").

Getting involved in class discords is a great way to increase your visibility. Work your way up there and perhaps through Bay's show and/or Wowhead articles. Devs pay attention to those things.



Fairly certain those two are very low on the list of public voices Blizard is interested in talking to. Especially Bellular, because he doesn't actually have anything useful to say to a dev (Preach has gotten better in the last few years, ever since he split with Ghosty - I think he was probably on Blizzards "no-interviews, no-talk" blacklist before that).

If you want a good example of how a discussion with a dev looks like, check out Sloot's interview with Ion - the part about GCD changes. That's the kind of feedback they're looking for.

Good ideas. But they could also just ask me though what is best. And be done with that tiresome process.