Here’s why.
The updates made by a developer like Sigma are just off-the-cuff posts. Like I said, they’re a heads-up about upcoming changes in a future Alpha build – a patch note preview if you will.
Those posts don’t go through the official line of command, so to speak. He just posts them, because he happens to have a Blizzard forum profile and feels inclined to use it. A lot of other developers don’t have forum profiles, or aren’t inclined to use them.
Ultimately, the developers’ job doesn’t entail posting on the forums. If they do, like Sigma sometimes does, it’s through their own volition, not out of obligation.
So why doesn’t a developer like Sigma post on the EU forums?
Well for one thing, he’d need a separate Blizzard forum profile for the EU forums.
On top of that, the EU forums consist of multiple forums. There’s the EU-EN forums here, and there’s the EU-DE, EU-FR, EU-RU, EU-ES, EU-IT… So just posting on the EU forums is rather complicated if you want to do it in its entirety, because as a community we’re spread out across different languages. That’s why some news and previews are sometimes a bit delayed compared to the US; they have to go through translation and localization before they can be posted to each EU sub-community at the same time.
And between the US and EU-EN, who are both English-speaking, it is rather natural that a developer would just dump information wherever it’s most convenient, as opposed to going out of their way to post somewhere else for no real reason.
I could sort of understand this criticism back when Ghostcrawler posted on the US forums, because he actually engaged in lengthy community discussion.
That was something the EU forums missed out on.
But Ghostcrawler is no more, so there’s nothing we’re missing out on of substance anymore in that regard.
As far as the EU forum itself is concerned, then Community Management does appear to be an area that Blizzard have devalued somewhat. If you go back to earlier expansions leading up to WoD, then we had four dedicated CMs for the EU-EN community alone. Then Blizzard sized that down to one. And since Aerythlea went elsewhere, we appear to have zero.
So that’s something that I think the EU community can be somewhat grumpy about, and rightfully so.
But the NA forums? Man, they’re the same. They’ve got less CMs as well, and they don’t have Ghostcrawler anymore either.
We’re in the same boat.
