The confusing nature of the WoW community

Community General Discussion
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As someone who considers himself a bit of an outsider looking in when coming to WoW, especially as having an MMO history that vastly pre-dates it’s release, always found it interesting watching the community here do its best to be their own pall bearers. The community as a whole, players, viewers and content creators.

By that, and in no defense of Blizzard because they deserve a bit of flaming, simply put, they can never win. Take the 9.1.5 changes.

“Just pull the ripcord already! Changes needed immediately, do it now!”

Blizzards pulls the cord, changes are done

“What the hell guys! Useless greedy company making these changes now because Bobby wants a new boat, more proof you hate the players”

Yes, they took a damn long to do it so they can go to hell if there is going to be anything remotely resembling praise but the reaction is just equally confusing, like, you moaned for it to happen as soon as possible, it happened, then you moan that it happened, it took a few days to see the usual ‘content creators’ suspects to pop up with the outrage videos and it just makes me sit back and be again, equally confused.

If and when this was done on other games I’ve played before touching WoW, most notably FF14, it was just a ‘thanks, please don’t do it again,’ and when they did it was done, the process was repeated, make this changes and we move on.

But it seems the WoW community has itself primed for outrage regardless of what is done. Blizzard don’t deserve an ounce of praise for anything, its been a mess, but then again I’m of the opinion that people aiming for forgiveness aren’t deserving of getting flamed as well, just a ‘fine, now get back to work and earning our trust back’.

Just a very confusing way of going about things.

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I want the game to die and im happy anyone quit because,

i preordered and they nerfed my healspec dead (pvp)

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Yes. It’s true.

Most of WoW players can’t think for themselves and they just copy what the YouTubers say.

YouTubers are constantly outraged because that brings views.

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Hadn’t they been caught in one of worst controversies in gaming history they wouldn’t have given us any of this stuff.
Yes it’s nice to finally get the thing everyone asked for.
But when it’s done after years of ignoring and abusing their players and employees simply because they got caught and everyone got fed up with their bullcrap it’s kind of hard to pat them on the back for it.

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Right… sure.

Or. People are angered that obvious faults and fixes aren´t implemented until the house is on fire. They obviously knew what was wrong all along.

Still, better late than never, but this behaviour needs to end.

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Blizzard can win extremely easily, the reason they get the reaction they get is they acknowledged people have been complaining about these things for a year and a half and they conveniently changes their mind every time they need some goodwill.

Blizzard will win in my books the day the go out and say “this is something we’re gonna try, we’ll monitor feedback and if everyone hates it in 3-4 months we will reconsider”, NOT 2 years later. Blizzard will win when they start taking action in the actual damn beta where virtually everything they’re fixing now were already issues. That’s when they’ll win, not when they flip the switch when it’s convenient for themselves.

Nothing confusing about the community at all, you win when your decision making is based on making the game better, not to save your own äss.

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The problem is, as it often is with humans; the devs are too proud to admit that their ideas are bad.

Theres always someone that has no business giving their input etc but they force it in there just to slap their name on something.

Think of it as the equivelant of hearing ”DJ KHALED” in a song that he hasnt done thing other than slap his name on.

Its people justifying their own job position by coming up with crap ideas and not wanting to admit they are bad because the person is too married to their opinions.

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It’s mostly because it seems to be like this every expansion now, they have all this stuff that should be changed BEFORE the game launches like in beta/alpha but they make it to live with Blizzard defending them and their reasons why ONLY for a patch basically a year later to finally make those changes. Then even then it doesn’t address everything, and you get sort of left in this limbo of wanting to be happy but knowing they keep intentionally doing this.

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I don’t think anyone is complaining about the changes . They’re all great changes. The thing is they’ve been doing this since Legion.
They introduce a broken system for the new expansion → players in the beta tell them it sucks a$$ → they don’t do anything about it until it’s way too late and the expansion already lost players.

It’s ridiculous. They ask the players for feedback and when 99% of the testers say something is bad they still ignore it because they’re too stubborn.
Then, over a year later they realize half the playerbase has left and maybe they
did do something wrong.
Just read their dev update and reasoning behind the covenant swapping change.
It makes no sense at all.

The changes are great but they DO NOT deserve praise OR forgiveness for them.
They make problems on purpose and when they fix them you thank them for it?
Really?

That Walking Dead scene comes to mind where Negan tells Rick :“ I just shoved my
c0ck down your throat and you thanked me for it“

It’s sad the community is so ignorant to Blizzards way of doing things.

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Problem is they do this all the time, every xpac
now everyone i convinced to start playing again quit alrdy and guild died
its too late to make the changes, blizz makes the best hype on new xpac but they never deliver untill later
next xpac maybe…

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they are just parroting their favorite youtuber/streamer. (silent majority doesn’t care about those)
some of them even claim that half of players left because 50% less normal and lfr kills by guilds.
shills are not smart.

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When aren’t people angered? Like… does it even matter anymore? lol

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The thing that I find so confusing about this community sometimes it that it seems for some this is not “just a game” and take this whole thing and the company that makes it a little too seriously for their own good.

Youtubers/streamers especially have this, it’s a job for them, it’s money and not just something they do for entertainment anymore. Preach literally played for years despite not enjoying it anymore and complaining non stop (his words not mine…) and at that point I’m just like “well you’re an idiot then” and that goes for everyone who continues to play while not enjoying it.

And that’s the thing that confuses me, you don’t HAVE to play - yet people act like they do somehow…

I don’t get it.

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To think that “half” the playerbase left because of conduit energy and stuff like that sounds a bit silly to me. It may have contributed in a relatively small measure, but these kinds of issues get incredibly overblown in our dedicated communities, while the vast majority of players don’t even interact with the system enough to reach the issue and know it’s there. Most WoW players play a couple months into the expansion, then forget about it until the next one. Especially when you do record numbers at launch, it should be expected that a good percentage of those people would leave shortly thereafter. The recent scandal and the dissatisfaction and negativity about the game must have contributed to that, but I’m willing to bet most people left simply because WoW appeals to a lot of casual players who have no interest in sticking around in the first place. When superdata reported a 40% player loss after launch, they also stated it was normal and expected.
To be clear, I’m not saying this to damage control or to dismiss those criticisms, but I doubt most people who left have ever done a 2+, have ever watched Preach or Asmon, and they probably don’t even really know what conduit energy is.
If you read Blizzard’s statement about conduit energy, it goes something like “while a minority of players who wanted to be optimal wasn’t happy with the system, the majority of players didn’t even interact with it”.
The real failure of the system is the second part.
They’re not changing it because the complaints finally reached them, they were always conscious of the complaints and the reasoning behind them, but as long as the majority of players was having fun with the system, it wouldn’t have mattered. They’re changing the system because most players didn’t even interact with it, they slotted conduits once and then forgot about them for the rest of the expansion. Which is quite the opposite problem than what the dedicated community is complaining about: instead of wanting more freedom in conduit swapping, most people are not interested in swapping them at all.

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My main issue is they still try and justify why they made the systems so restricted etc instead of just holding their hands up and saying ‘yeah we got this wrong (again), sorry guys. We wont be doing this again in future additions to the game. We have realised we need to pay much closer attention to player feedback going forward’ . I mean we had the game director Ions interview with Preach a few months ago doubling down on his commitment to these systems and restrictions. Its clear he does not know what he is doing and doesnt know how to 1. make a fun game and 2. repair the damage he has done to the game

Make no mistake about it had this lawsuit not happened and the mass exodus to FFXIV we wouldnt have got any of these things. Or sorry we would have got them in the final patch of the expansion as usual… its not good enough.

Ion needs removed from his position and a fresh set of eyes with no connection to WoW (especially modern WoW) needs put in there for a complete rethink of how they develop future expansions and patches. The first thing they need to do is design around creating player fun and forget about player metrics. Until he is removed do not expect any sweeping changes and look forward to the next borrowed powers and poorly implemented systems in 10.0.1

The amount of feedback they had and ignored because it didnt fit THEIR vision of THEIR game is there for all to see. Its the smugness of them ‘oh you think you know what you want but you don’t’

So no I do not feel like giving them a pat on the back, this was the minimal they could do - i.e. implement changes (begrudgingly if you read the blue post entirely) slightly earlier than we would have got them…whoopty doooooooooo

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This is most gamers. Gaming discussion is entirely dictated by youtuber opinions. I noticed it with my mates who bought Cyberpunk. On release they love it, 10-20 hours in “this game has bugs, but it is great!”, and then youtuber opinions started coming out, and my mates’ opinions changed to mirror influencers’.

The most perplexing bunch of gamers are those who think they genuinely dislike the game and don’t quit. I really don’t get that. I did quit during 8.0 and I didn’t come back until 8.2. The game simply wasn’t fun, I didn’t like it so I stopped playing. My issue wasn’t with azerite as much as it was with classes feeling boring.

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They don’t quit because they still enjoy it…

Complaining is just their hobby. And they are also encouraged to outrage by YouTubers.

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And yet, people continue to play. Sometimes things can get frustrated, but so is life. Life is not an Utopia. We can’t have everything we want.

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At this point, I don’t even know what they want because each week they come up with something new to complain about.

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i think that some of the outrage from the community at the response and changes was more the way they went about it, because it was clear from the very outset with the majority of players that the covenants being locked wouldnt work, as the restriction on players was way too heavy, but the wording of the response that was released by blizzard had them also trying to still justify the reasons for initially implementing the lock that they had, while also admitting it was a mistake,

i think thats the main reason that people are still upset, along with the fact that it took like 18 months longer than it should have done for these changes to be made,

so up to a point i get what you are trying to say in terms of the constant lose/lose situtations that blizzard are faced with but its also worth adding to it that the playerbase still has valid reasons to be angry, the way they go about showing that is just plain unnaceptable sometimes, but they do have reasons to be angry still

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