My guess is they, being employees of Blizzard, are here for:
a) moderation;
b) try to spin things in a positive way when possible, and encourage what they view as positive attitudes - players saying how excited they are about this or that and whatnot, or simply posting cat or dog memes;
c) pass on feedback they think of as legitimate - as they can very well filter things, they aren’t stupid or anything, they can glean from the context that this or that opinion gains traction or not.
But essentially, they don’t work for us, they work for Blizzard, so they represent Blizzard’s angle and interests. It’s highly unlikely they even are allowed to post in a thread about game balance or game systems without getting fired the next day.
Blues have said they don’t do that. You are referred to the ingame bug or suggestion boxes.
They very rarely post, except in CS or TS, we can see that.
This in my opinion is their only real job here. I also think they have been told they cannot overturn a ban, no matter how mild or unneeded it was. I think this ban attitude change happened a while ago. It also seems like common sense has gone out of the window.
There are 2 topics that Blizz cannot ignore from forums.
1- Faction Imbalance
2- PvP vendors
But these can be solved only within Shadowlands, I don’t expect anything from BfA. It has been a terrible PvP expansion (look at the irony here) and also had a completely biased stuff until now. Dayum, even 15th anniversary event was in favour of Horde
So be patient they won’t solve anything on next patch.
Blues in the Customer Support forum say that because it’s not part of their job. Has any Community blue said that in General? As said upthread, one of the jobs of the Community team was to pass on stuff from here.
And what would those blues say ? Dev team does not give darn what a little blue thinks of PvP vendors. Blues can write to their weekly report “players asked this again” and that’s all. But what can they say in the topic ?
To quote our most recently departed CM - Aerythlea
I’ve always vowed to give back to the community as much as I could. While as a Community Manager the fruits of that labour often could not be shared, I have always been there – reading your forum posts, tweets, and reddit banter. Lurking in your discords. Watching your video content and streams. Always forwarding on your thoughts and feedback.
Well there exactly is the problem. I understand now that they can’t do much. Still it makes me very sad - seeing their replies to mount topics, but not a single “We read you guys, we passed the pvp vendor issue to the developers.” Is it too much? Even if nothing comes out of it, it’s a gesture.
But they’d be fired if they do, I suppose. Who knows what kind of restrictions they sign to be bound with. I’ve worked a bit in US corporation, but it wasn’t that huge as Blizzard and since we were a foreign office department, things weren’t too tight.
I want to believe they have done so. But we do not know (and they are not going to tell) what are the rules of engagement. I know some of the rules GMs in-game have (or had), but never learned what is that rulebook they have here. Blues are not as free as we are to chit chat and say things.
The mount and so on light-hearted topics allow them to use the chance to make themselves visible without the strict “rules of engagement” and show that they exist and are here without saying it out loud.
I doubt they’d be fired for saying they had passed on feedback but I think you are expecting too much of them, you want them to be be social media customer service with copy paste answers to every single thread on all the forums!
That isn’t what the forums are here for, they are for discussion and debate about everything to do with the game from serious issues to the lighthearted silly things.
Just go on twitter and see how annoying those copy paste “we hear you” answers get when every complaint gets the same.
They can’t get into a debate or discussion with you about it so they leave it well alone but let their presence be known in the silly topics.
Your anger/annoyance/feedback about pvp vendors will have/will be getting through to the devs though, it’s up to them to listen though.
I’m sure my name won’t be recognised by many here except for a few long time dwellers (Dottie, Jito, Ananda among others), but I’ve been here for a long time and I agree with you - not only been an MVP here since 2012 but also worked at Wowhead as one of the Managers. I was the front channel on social media as well as their email for support, a lot of moderation, ban appeals, feedback, bug reports, and the list goes on. Let’s just say I’ve dealt with a lot of crap, so I can definately relate to the feeling of leaning back and looking at it all from a “just one of the community” perspective. One of the things that kept me going was gathering all the positive things people said about the site and put it up on my account on Wowhead for the fellow staff to read, or to remind me of all the nice people out there I’ve/we’ve helped. Edit: Fixed a typo
Honestly even though I admittedly can’t always remember how to read your name, you are one of my favorite posters on the forums because you get to the point and don’t beat about the bush. Your points are also often well-reasoned, even if I might not always personally agree with them, and you’re constructive about them.
Even if you think you wouldn’t make a good MVP, I still find myself stopping to pay more attention to you when I see your icon and I often consider your views more carefully. Because I think they are coming from a place of logic.
When I was younger I took part of debate club-alike things. Where you have to fight with words and against words. I sometimes do go overboard online and forget that “argue against words, not person”, but often probably because someone has opened the door before.I.e. when someone tells “nothing else is expected from a Russian”, then I am only human too and slap back with same swing. It is a flaw and I am aware of it. Also I slip more the less coffee I have consumed.
Thing is for me different opinion is not ‘hate’ or ‘opinion against user’. In fact different opinion is against another opinion. I.e. me feeling there being either some Horde bias or not liking sylvanas does not mean I dislike Horde posters or cannot chit chat and make jokes with Sylvanas fans. For me ‘opinions in one topic’ do not carry on to different topic. Forums are place for discussion. For my statements I have my blog
