Hi all,
Just really a question. What is the point of the community managers? No malicious intent, but I don’t see them interacting with the “community” apart from hosting scripted interviews and creating blue posts in the forums.
In my opinion, shouldn’t we have more than those in NA and have community managers across all the areas?! Also, I don’t see them representing the community.
What is the point of anything.
I didn’t think we would get existential so quickly. Deep.
Well, they’re not there to represent us like elected officials. They facilitate communication between the player base and the devs, and manage messaging.
It’s a corporate comms role more than a forum mod or player advocate job.
They cherry pick criticism and issues.
Ah, interesting. So communication between us and the devs whilst managing messaging?! I don’t see them doing that.
If that is the case than surely they should be called Communication Managers? Community Managers would denote that they actually spend time with the respective communities of the game.
For example, Community managers build, grow, and manage online communities for brands or organizations. They act as a bridge between the brand and its audience, fostering engagement, loyalty, and positive interactions. Their work includes monitoring online spaces, responding to feedback, creating content, and analyzing community engagement to improve communication strategies.
I personally don’t see them doing the above.
Mostly PR staff not just in the forum, they have to interacts with other communities likes wowhead or youtubers /streamers.
They are also play a part in the organization of events online and on-site.
Their job is wider than just be “posting on the forums”
I understand that but I think it goes to the root of the problem…communication. There is no communication between the game and the gamers.
My thought was that is what a Community Manager does. I would say they are more Comms and Liaison managers. Community is more than WoWHead and Streamers.
I don’t know if the community managers work better in the US forums, but mostly seems like the EU forums is just a place to scream into the void. I wouldn’t expect that any feedback given here gets back to the developers of the game sadly. It’s just a place for us to rant and chat.
Try the US forums… Blues don’t post here and in recent months its just copy and paste from their US posts lol.
Yeah. We are forgotten. I doubt any of the “community managers” read these forums. Saying that…I don’t think they read the NA forums.
Its not much better at the US side, whenever a blue posts in any given topic it gets immediately swarmed by other people who want to highlight their issues much akin to demonstrations in the real world that starts about one subject but suddenly becomes a dozen subjects.
If you want to have your feedback heard I recommend the dual-way: Create a topic and get many people to voice their opinion, respectfully and use the ingame suggestions panel. Some feedback was incorporated this way into the game, even when I was against it (such as the penalty for “leaving” PVP games).
I see your point, and for the most-part agree, but I feel they could do more to foster positive relationships with the community. As you noted, the forums can sometimes be a free-for-all environment. Maybe a bit more interaction and communication might help.
I agree 100% but they have severe limits imposed by PR on a higher role that tells them when and how they are allowed to interact.
Their main role is monitoring the wow forums, as well as being the “face” of blizzard in the forums.
From the wowwiki it seems their work is split into 2:
Generally they are not here to be posters, as any blue post they do is considered official blizzard stance, and must be approved. Due to the potential of backlash or wrong information communicated, such roles cannot act like regular posters.
Also it is normal for you to not understand their role, since most of their work is done inside blizzard, and you do not have any visual on that.
Because the publisher will not always instruct the developers to do what the players ask. They do what will bring them more money. The only player feedback they follow is the one that says “Give me more stuff to pay with real money”.
That’s a data analyst not a community manager.
I understand what a community manager is. I just don’t think it applies to what Blizzard have.
Data analyst will take the data and try to make sense of it. The community manager will be the one that helps creates the data, since you know, the forums do not provide quantitative data but qualitative. Data analyst come later when the qualitative data has been converted to quantitative.
I do not think it matters what you believe you understand about what a community manager is. What matters is what the job description says about what a community manager at blizzard does.
Hmmm…Okay. Oh, well.
Direct communication with customers is a delicate thing in a company as big as Blizzard.
Everything that is said has to be approved officially. So no that is not gonna happen.