[UPDATED 8 JUNE] Introducing the Community Discords Program!

Community General Discussion
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I am sad that someone would find it to be non-important and off-topic. While a lot of it is just one guy responding or doing ego-defence - it was also a heavy pushback on the very opinion that ‘people dont understand, this isn’t bad for them, it is just legal language, the words does not mean what it literally state, it is voluntary to sign up for’ line of arguments. It was actually an ongoing argumentation against the contract and its principles itself that was going on above as a topic.

Being silent or denying the claims that the contract was not just a pro-blizz powermove is dishonest or outright wile in my opinion. Even the idea to downplay the contract itself and its contents should be pushed back on. Note: As I don’t expect anyone to read everything; we all blame the legal department for trying to do a fast one. Not the program’s own pro-pushers within WoW-blizzard team. As the whole contract is so far away from the spirit and goals of the program itself, it seems unfathomable that it could be anything but.

Everyone agreed that the program in its spirit or as an idea could be a neat, cool and good thing. That would never be object of the discussion. The topic became the contract, that dominated the whole debacle with its heavyhanded corporate grab for everything for nothing.

So I do recommend everyone to read the pro/con arguments. To check the wording of the contract that those who read it reacted at. That way they can decide if the contract was something to defend, or if it was something as an idea we should attack and dismantle with fervour.

In the end - it is the only way we can defend our community as a whole. We wanted to see the program come to fruition as the good it could be. No shackles of speech, no threats of legal action and this time it will come in a form that plays with two open hands. No cloak and dagger. This is kind of what the bluepost hinted at would happen, so let us pray that it will be so.

The admin of the server should not be held accountable as if he were a corporation with a legal team. In the end it is just a person doing his best good for his community. We should never allow the idea of pro-company censorship to be pushed (even if it is voluntary to sign up for) in our spheres of communication. Now those two points alone are someone and something worth protecting by being vocal and loud. Anyone not feeling this way - brushing the efforts off as offtopic banter, is what makes me sad.

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231

It’s a shame that you can’t just let it go.

I never said any of those things.

And you wonder why I correct people making up stuff.

Instead of having let this topic finally have got some feedback again you had to resort to more character assassination.

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This is where the conversation should carry on from…

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Here you are stating that people aren’t understanding what is meant.

At least this point no one makes up and maybe you should let it rest too, by now it sounds funny that you say that people make up things when you -said- them. And it can be insulting for those you say it over and over to that they just don’t understand the legal terms when they do.

Just stop that.

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234

Maybe if blizzard did more to attract players to these forums, then they would not be hiding away on discord servers. Then blizzard would not need to make such a program to try and infiltrate discord servers with legal binding contracts.

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Maybe, just maybe blizzard should have gotten off their (a bodily location too harrowing for prudes) and merged the forums as well as making it possible to transfer between the damn regions.

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Puny. Be the smart one and let it rest. You are not making any wins here by talking to brickwalls not listening to you. Just ignore them. And they should ignore you.

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Hello everyone!

I wanted to give you a quick update on the subject of the Community Discords Program legal agreement. The agreement is still being reviewed but we’re getting to the end of this process. Stay tuned for more updates!

We recognize that even after the necessary changes are made to the agreement, the document may still be unclear to some players due to the fact that it’s using “legal language”. We’re considering posting a Q&A to clarify what still remains a question / explain our intention behind certain point of the agreement. We would highly appreciate if you could continue using this thread to ask your question and request clarifications.

Thank you! And have a good weekend :blue_heart:

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Thanks for the update! I am curious about the changes of the contract.

A Q&A is a very good idea!

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Then why have you guys posted this topic if it is still under review?

I agree that merging the EU and US forums would improve things. People from EU servers would then feel more like their words would get heard. The most common thing people say here is that the Devs pay no attention to the EU forums.

It isn’t the contract that needs to be changed, it is the whole idea.

Is there even an official WoW discord? (Hosted by Blizzard themselves)
One discord server can subscribe to channels from another discord server.

So - to reach more players through discord - they could simply do something with that.

There is no need at all to try to infiltrate other servers with legal contracts of any kind.

But the ladies and germs at Blizzard don’t ever seem to be willing to admit when they had a bad idea.

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240

The QA will be undoubtedly necessary to answer the questions the community servers will have. Be it about the contract, the tools you want to install or the way Blizzard intends to interact within said community server. Especially after the first round made it unadvised for them to sign your contract and consider to join an otherwise most intriguing program idea at its core.

I highly recommend not to hold back at clear language, go overboard, both in the QA and in the contract itself in what blizzard will give and ask. Make sure it will be balanced for both parties (with weight on the signer), not a one-sided take for the company.

Hopefully this will be enough to rally popular opinion and regain some goodwill towards how the company will interact as a ‘partner’ in a possibly very one-sided relationship. This all for the goal of closer knitting the community and the blizzard team together in a non-hostile manner.

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Because the idea is that these existing central hubs of players where a ton of information, theorycrafting, expert knowledge and feedback is available, would be a great place to have actual blizzard representation and communication.

But they cannot risk giving that level of official approval without some form of legal coverage of the risk.

The goal here isn’t the contracts, the goal is official blizzard reps in major community discords.

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Okay, challenge accepted. If you visit someone else’s house, do you think it’s reasonable to first make them agree to your rules? If you move to another country, do you insist they should be the ones conforming to your laws? Blizzard is the party that wants into the Discord communities so where’s the part about Blizzard having to agree and listen to the servers’ rules, admins and community?

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Seems they can’t stop themselves I agree. Even now they keep coming back so I have to be the bigger person (again). It’s very hard when someone is spreading lies about you.

This is fantastic news!!

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A Q&A does sound great, but it becomes focused around explaining legal terms and another several page long legal contract, I think it would miss the mark again. Unless server hosts are getting actual pay or similar guaranteed rewards equaling the worth of pay, I don’t think this should be treated like a transaction with contracts and stuff.

Maybe an agreement on some -simple- terms like not spoiling upcoming content, being polite in the channels, not pestering the blizz folks joining the servers etc, with the consequences of breaking those rules being equally simple and low scale stuff. Like getting kicked from the discord, muted for a few days, banned from the game for awhile. Consequences that plays out on the platforms (Discord and in WoW), not in a legal court.

Because if there is even a shred of a chance that things end up in a court or with IRL authorities being brought in, or just fines and needing to pay actual money to repair mistakes, THAT will spook a LOT of people away from the program. And even if some do join it despite this, chances are the rest of the people that didn’t join will view them negativly for it.

It may become yet another of those situations where the community divides and one side starts calling the other sell-outs, just because one side accepted terms that the other found unacceptable.

That said, I think contracts could be something you could work -towards- as a goal. Say you join a server, hang out with folks, take some feedback or offer Q&As or post those Twitter sneak peaks like trailers or art directly into a discord channel. Small scale stuff that’ll be appreciated but won’t have huge consequences.

To get more involved you could host competitions like art ones, writing ones, or some other creative thing. Rewards don’t have to be fancy or big. Could be a random npc named after something, a post on some social media or the bnet launcher congratulating the winner and showing off their piece, or the discord hosts could give them a fancy role with a special color or something.

One could also host events together with the discord hosts. Anything from RP events to games in game like hide and seek (A fun one is to give a riddle hinting at a location, then first player to get there and /hug the hiding mod wins).

Little activities. If those work and are well recieved, up the stakes. More ambitious events. I’m talking charity streams, competitions with actual physical prices or coupons or game time. Things with more solid worth rather than just bragging rights.

Work your way up until it becomes feasible to do something that’d require a contract, like merch promotions, art commissions, advertising. Things where money is involved that actually NEEDS a contract to ensure all runs smoothly and fairly. And by the time you’ve worked up to that stage you’d have built trust between the Blizz reps and the Discord hosts, which would have folks a lot more willing and -trusting- to join a program where law might play a part.

Another idea people here brought up that might actually be easier or at least more trusted by the community:

Just make your own official discord.

Maybe several if you want to avoid bloating the server with too many channels, like a content one (maybe divided into raiding and dungeons? I don’t do content so someone else pls jump in with ideas there if you have any), a RP one (rp discords tend to make a LOT of channels so those are for sure good to have as their own little server). Could also divide them by region.

You could then link from the official discord to player run ones. A lot of the bigger RP servers does that. We got a channel called something like ‘other community discords’ and in it are links and short descriptions of other discords and what they are about. It’s a great way to find communities you might wanna join. Free advertising, good way to connect communities, and a nice way for community hosts to cooperate to host things on a larger scale.

Lastly, since this seems to be a platform Blizz isn’t too familiar with yet, starting on a smaller scale would probably be safer. Maybe make a new official thread for promoting community discords. Would be good for us players to find ones, but it’d also let you sneakily join just to check things out. If you like the discord you could then reach out to the mods of it and see if there could be some kinda cooperation. Just to test the waters.

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Hey!

Thanks for the update and the possibility of a QA. I’d like to ask one that is a bit broader but please bear with me so I can explain properly where I’m coming from. The question is:

What exactly do you require a legal agreement for?

I am asking this because, in my understanding, none of the benefits outlined so far would require it. In detail:

  • Listed as affiliated server
    This means listed on your webpage, that you have full control over no matter what. If you want to revoke it, you remove the link from your page. There is no contractual agreement needed.

  • Giveaways
    These are under your full control by default and you can start and stop handing out freebies at any time. Other giveaways you did in the past via influencers usually just had a simple list of basic rules attached. Something like a timeframe, tags you want included, platforms you are OK or not OK to host them on etc. - no legal agreement required. Even more so, I strongly assume that each giveaway via this program will have such a list of rules anyway, on top of the contract, considering that the current legal agreement does not outline any details on how giveaways are supposted to happen.

  • Dev Q/As
    Very similar to Giveaways. Doing this is at your discretion by default, and the contract does not outline any details on the technical side. I understand the requirement for a basic ruleset, what to expect, how questions are surfaced, how to moderate and so on. All of that can and most likely will be governed on a case by case basis, similar to the giveaways, and the legal agreement has no relevance for them.

  • Blizzard employees joining Discords
    Again a point that is fully inside your control no matter what. Those are public Discord servers, you can join or leave at a whim. I would understand if you ask for specific roles within the servers so that Blizz staff can be recognized similarly across servers. Entirely fair. Does that require a legal agreement though? I honestly cannot imagine it.

So… what is left that requires protection by a legally binding contract? That is my question for you.
Or put in a different way, what am I getting out of this legal agreement, that I could not get without the contract, if you were willing to provide it?

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246

This is a very good point…

But I think Blizzard have greatly misunderstood something about interacting with players.

Take for example the Green Posers on these forums… I see even in this topic a Green Poster has been arguing with another poster.

Well when you give special privileges to particular players - on any level - it causes a toxic feedback loop from/with the “under-privileged” players. Especially when one with extra privileges doesn’t agree with someone else’s idea - or poses as though they have some kind of extra authority. eg. “I know better than you because I have Green!”

Then there is the so called “Player Council” to consider too. I did apply to the council but for no known reason my application was not successful. But I applied to it because I want to scrutinise its very existence!

Taking the views from small handfuls of players, when seeking feedback for future developments and implementations is not a good thing. The Developers should use their Developer’s Intuition more, and rely less on what players say. Who is it that studied games development? Who is it that has a greater oversight of the game? Blizzard’s staff.

Reaching into smaller private communities for Developer/Player communications is overreaching.

As I said above, Blizzard should do more to drive people towards interacting on these forums. There was once a time you could come to these forums one day, and then visit again the next day, and never see the same poster twice. Back then there were so many players visiting the forums. But it is now dominated by a small group of regular posters, who tend to stick to the same narrative.

So called “Class Discord Servers”, likewise the Discord servers of Addon Creators, I find, have a strong biased set of moderators managing them. They do not often conform to the same policies and principles that the moderators of these forums are bound by. Therefore, you are often greeted by monotonous Trolls on them. If those Trolls are regulars of the particular discord, and have a good standing with the Server’s moderators, or if they are moderators, then their Trolling activities go unchecked, and they are not held to account by anyone.

Giving Discord Community Servers special privileges - bound by a contract or not, is only going to increase the toxic attitude between players.

I would ask Blizzard to strongly reconsider what they are doing here. For the good of the wider, mostly silent community. For those who have been pushed away from these forums by regular posters and over-privileged Greens. Also, for those who have further been pushed away from speaking in the WoW community by admin-abuse and bad management of the Private Community Discord servers!

Blizzard could host and maintain their own official Discord - and other Discord servers can simply subscribe to the channels from the Official WoW Discord. Then they can gather all the feedback they like and drive players towards these forums from there. Instead of granting privileges to particular groups.

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Heres one.

Why would / should we trust you?

Your opening legal stance was that you come in, get preferential treatment, are allowed to surveil everyone and threaten legal sanctions even after the agreement ended and give nothing concrete in return.

You got told to pound sand (thats a polite way of putting this).

Now you come back but you have a contrite look on your face and are wringing your hands… you’re still the same (forgive the term) creeps as a month ago. What changed? Why do you deserve trust? You’ve pretty much shown who you are.

Thanks for the update though.

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Thats like signing a contract with your ex bf/gf and expect it to go right

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Holy heck blizzard, you are sounding more villainous than the comic-book villains.

Appalling, horrific intentions in that legal agreement you offered.

The fact that you are even willing to put such a proposal forward speaks volumes of how monstrously low you have sunk.

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