The communication of the developers of WoW leaves much to be desired. The community managers have to deal with the frustration.
Several weeks ago, Blizzard announced that they want to work on communication with the players. While this works wonderfully for games like Overwatch or Heroes of the Storm, WoW fans often feel neglected in the official forums. There are often several weeks without any response to the biggest problems of the game, leading more and more players to feel that their feedback never reaches anyone.
Recently, community manager Josh Allen (“Lore”) stated that they want to improve for the future and have some new ideas for 2017.
However, this was evidently not enough for the players, as they began a rather long discussion with Ornyx (also a community manager) in the forum. After some direct insults and the ultimate argument “You are lying to us, you are not changing anything,” they decided to close the thread. However, this led to even more problems, as now they mocked the fact that “a discussion about communication was stifled,” thus validating the doubts of the players.
Ornyx again took the floor and stated that they are willing to engage in discussions, but several red lines had been crossed. Especially when users escalate with each other saying “Blizzard is lying to us,” there is hardly any possibility of returning to a decent discussion.
Another criticism from the players is that community managers are “just” community managers and do not understand the problems of the game at all. But that is not the case, Ornyx assured, as the entire community team consists of passionate players, and some of them are regularly in direct contact with the developers. Whenever they share information, it basically comes from the developers – Ornyx, Lore, and the other “Blues” in the forum are simply the mouthpieces.
For the future, they promise an improvement in communication. However, players should give these changes some time, as it is not something that can be accomplished “overnight.”
The developers are meanwhile contemplating a server with Perma-Death.
