I was reading the 'Information for the Masses' thread and one particular post about developer communication really got me thinking. Yes, we as players are not entitled to communicate directly to the game developers as much as we might like. It is rather frustrating to not even know if something you have issue with has even been noticed by the development team, and if it has been noticed if they agree, disagree, etc. Getting info is rather rare and getting feedback on issues players bring up is even rarer. It really makes you wonder seeing them do such a great job communicating through avenues such as Blizzcon but doing so poorly in regard to forum posts, not even having a couple dev posts every few weeks on each class forum/PvP forum, etc even with the large playerbase of WoW considered. Perhaps I'm personally spoiled, having played other games where a direct question, or at least a general issue would be addressed directly by a game dev.

I guess my general question is how do you feel with the overall level of communication both to and from the devs? And more specifically how much impact do you think our posts here on EJ have? Have you noticed any particular issues brought up here addressed directly? Is this forum seen as a vast minority of "1337" players that know too much for their own good, or does Tigole, Kalgan, etc. hop on the EJ forums looking for thoughts from knowledgeable players who aren't trying to directly petition (whine) as seen on the official forums.

What do ya think?

Considering that we know Tigole posts here from time to time, it would probably be insane to not assume that at least he reads these boards, whatever frequency it might be, and by extension, other developers as well.

EJ is a vast source of information regarding their game, and instead of just whining/bickering about things, people here tend to really go deep into whatever it is that they have their thoughts on -- it would just be crazy to ignore the data that gets presented here, and if I had to bet money, I'd bet that they don't. (ignore the data)

Also, there have been times where some bugs/exploits/problems/unintended-things were brought up here at EJ, and while some of these things (really bad memory, sorry, no specific example to share) might've been out there for a while, they sure got fixed/straightened out fast after being mentioned here -- yeah, they must read these boards, even if all they do is lurk around.

And get two hours of "Why do you hate <insert class> so much?" questions? For the life of me, I can't remember the name of the CM who finally lost it and posted what he really felt about the community when he was leaving/quit. There is a small, but incredible vocal part of the community who would hijack something like an IRC chat and just spam it with literally hundreds of thousands of questions about why Blizzard hates the Alliance/Horde, why they don't play the game, why they all suck, etc., etc.

This isn't saying I don't wish they would actually just post details about what they are doing, but if the past is anything to go by, it's just not worth their time.

As for Posting more, look at every post a Blue makes, and watch what follows it. 3 pages of "Firsts" followed by "Since you are hear, please answer <insert question that has nothing to do with the thread>", then comes all the threads from people who take the most negative view of anything said and somehow turn it into a personal vendeta. Devs would likely be better off never reading the WoW forums.

Tseric.

But they obviously thought it was worth the effort because they had one before and I was lucky enough to have a question answered (not the answer I asked but whatever) which some people might say was a waste but whatever.

Also, plenty of other MMO developers have chats all the time and they pretty much consider it their duty to their customers. But like I said, I would be happy if they had a more proactive approach to their own forums.

Edit: Also, they can easily pre-screen questions that get asked and not have to answer those that are obviously ridiculous. I bet you one question that would be asked (pertinent mind you) would be how does +Weapon Skill work with mobs +3 Levels higher then you.

I'm not saying it's a bad idea, but the reality is, WoW has 7 million subscribers. It's not realistic to expect the same level of interaction with Blizzard as their is with a game with a much smaller player base.

They can pre-screen questions, but if there are over 100,000 of them (just a WAG), are you sure they'll even see a Weapon Skill one? I'm quite positive that 95% of the questions will be things like "Why do you hate Shaman" followed by "Shaman are overpowered, what are you going to do to fix it", etc., etc. People who care about Weapon Skill are a very small percentage of the players who play this game.

I'm not trying to be negative, but just look at any blue post...now announce in advance that they'll be taking questions and watch it get a hundred times worse.

I think one of the best examples of communicating your thoughts to the players of the game you are making is Mark Rosewater's long-running series of weekly articles called "Making Magic" on Wizards of the Coast's website: Magicthegathering.com Column Archive

Of course that requires a certain flair for creative writing and I'm fairly sure that Maro spends a lot of time writing those.

I have no idea if Tigole has any talent in this direction, but I'm fairly sure he doesn't have time anyway .

Ahhh I dunno, I kinda like the big brother is watching approach, but this place would become overly swamped if people actively knew developers actually answered here.

Every time Tigole has graced us with his presence, we get a handful of retards that come make posts like "lawl, I no ur here, aswr my q plz, wut u gunno dew aboot shaman thx". EJ Mods are on top of it like always, but at the same time it would just attract a lot of non-sense and stupidity.

I already know that Blizzard developers pay attention to public fourms, class fourms, these fourms, FoH's fourms, and maybe even Nihilum/D&T fourms. I don't need them posting to let them know they're listening to the intelligent talk with the retard filter.

Ignorance is bliss. Keep me in the dark please.

As it so happens, Mr. Kaplan does have a knack for writing. I've always enjoyed his writing, both when he was updating Legacy of Steel's website (and was a little more vulgar) and when he was posting on Blizzard's and FoH's forums.

I do agree with you on that though, there does need to be some better information transfer. I'm not sure what exactly it would be, maybe just post once a month (or every 9 weeks as you suggest), and lock the post. Anything that involves a give and take (IRC, Regular Posts, etc.) probably isn't feasable.

Lets make a hypothetical situation:

Jeff Kaplan agrees to have some kind of "Primal News Transmute" of his own for the EJ forums.

It seems to me that the best course of action, as far as what to ask him, would be to let the Moderators of EJ handle the communication between the forums and Blizzard.

A lot of us trust their advice when it comes to the strategies and breaking the whole down into its individual parts, would we not trust them to represent our feelings to Blizzard?

We ask the questions here, they moderate the discussion and pass on what they feel is most pertinant once a month, Blizzard responds with an idea of what they are thinking, rinse, repeat.

I guess, I always thought that a role like this is what the CM's are supposed to do but rarely do I see it work out that way.

I've made various suggestions through my time playing wow on the general or suggestion forums and albeit just a couple, they have been implemented or at least addressed in some way. I've always hated that I spend a lot of time leveling enchanting and getting rare patterns, but I have to find someone else to enchant stuff for my alts and sometimes have to pay money to have the enchants done when I have the very same ones on my main. So I made a post explaining benefits of having BoE enchants that can be tradeable/AH'able a few weeks or so ago and I recently read that they are considering this for WotLK.

I also made a totem suggestion way back when about totems duration/mechanic being changed (so have many others I know), but I gave specific suggestions and although they weren't implemented exactly, they were compromised. It's possible that someone else posted these ideas before I did, but you know how the saying goes "There's strength in numbers."