#100 - Oct. 23, 2014, 9:56 p.m.
The current devs just stone-wall you or worst block you if you "hurt their feelings" by criticising their work.
Well, if you're offering criticisms like you are here I'm not sure why anyone would block you. It's always good to hear things people like alongside things they don't like, and I'd say your list of 'don't likes' seems pretty reasonable, although I think we
could discuss and debate them a bit, which is awesome.
So anyway, I don't know who you are on Twitter, or who blocked you, and ... I'm not sure that particularly matters. I think what matters is that each of the employees that choose to be on Twitter, are really
choosing to be on Twitter. It's not a mandated function of their job. Us as CM's
should (and I think all do) have an account on Twitter, but there's no mandate (afaik) that even if we do have an account that we must go there to interact. Some of us like using it much more than others. On the WoW team specifically we're all pretty big fans, but that differs from person to person. Like the developers who
are on Twitter we enjoy it, but unlike the developers, direct community interaction on a grand scale is a bullet point on our job descriptions. They're there because they enjoy Twitter for the ease of feedback and one-to-one or small group interactions around the game they love working on and making. Out of the many hundreds of people that work on Blizzard games, really only a handful are on Twitter, and it's because they like Twitter and find it useful/entertaining/helpful, not because there's a mandate they be there as a form of feedback collection.
An aside: Each communication platform has strengths and weaknesses. Talking on the phone as a communication platform has strengths of instant information, but weaknesses of un-editable trains of thought, as well as no ability to read body language. The forums have strengths and weaknesses (some of them are the same thing). Tons of people can converge on a topic with long and well written posts and discuss it in a sequential manner with references to previous notes, but on a downside... tons of people can converge on a topic with long and well written posts. The asynchronous nature also allows everyone to effectively talk on top of each other, typing replies while any number of other people are also typing replies, which can create a really chaotic form of discussion. Forums are great for getting a huge cross section of conversations, but it's also extremely time consuming to do well. Twitter is great for 1-on-1 and small group discussions, and having more meaningful direct interactions--and the limited character count encourages really concise discussion points to be made (generally synchronously) back and forth. As a downside it has some really kind of 'hidden' rules about how to use it well, and it's a pretty poor tool to use to get any kind of meaningful cross-section of conversation from the playerbase at large. Also the character limit can at times just be a hindrance depending on the topic. Every communication platform has strengths and weaknesses. The forums are not the perfect feedback and communication tool. Neither is sending a letter through the post. Or talking on the phone. Or instant messengers. Or Reddit. Or Twitter. It's why we use all of these tools and more to ensure we get a well rounded look at what people are saying about the game, and work to be intelligent about how we get the most out of each tool by recognizing their strengths and weaknesses.
While I personally have somewhat thick skin and choose to hear people out pretty much regardless of how they give their feedback (my favorites are always the 'loaded question' statements like "So are you aware you've completely ruined the game or did you arrive there by total accident?" as if it's a valid piece of criticism) I don't believe that anyone deserves to be screamed at, or have harm threatened upon them, for
any reason--but least of all for something as inconsequential in the grand scheme of life as numbers in a video game. Going to less of an extreme though, not everyone has the same filters, and not everyone takes feedback in the same ways. I would not presume to tell anyone who chooses to be on Twitter what line they draw and where, but I think everyone regardless of experience, or skin-thickness, always has more to learn about humans, anonymity, and how to deal with the consequences of the combination of the two, as much as those same anonymous humans have to learn about how others perceive the words they type.
So, in short, we're all different, and are all going to choose our own levels of involvement and expectations for the ways we use it as a communication platform. In some cases simply communicating about what works best for each person, or relating what hasn't worked, can be a useful step to productive conversations in the future. If you ever have feedback to give on Twitter though you can always send it my way, or the way of any of the other CMs.
But ...
Obsession with raiding and PVP IMHO has made the classes bland. No one is allowed to have unique strengths and weakness anymore. The same can be said for gear, now it's most just stats and damage procs - all easy to model but frankly quite boring.
I think you might find some changes on that specifically in Warlords, and moving forward, as a general class design philosophical shift.
Then there is the story ... This hurt immersion so very bad. /smh
Well, ok, I'm not sure that particularly is very constructive feedback. XD
WoW's art style has also always been a bit of a sore point for me. Their blocky exaggerated RTS look - especially of their buildings and landmarks - really kills the sense of scale. Major immersion killer.
Yeah I think you actually kind of nailed the original intent of the art style. We started working on WoW back when work also started on Warcraft III, and a lot of the artistic goals (and you see this a lot more in old Alpha gameplay footage) was to effectively feel like you were playing at ground level in Warcraft III. A lot of the style of the game continues to this day, of being a unit on the ground in a--certainly more detailed and built out--Warcraft RTS. We've expanded on that and even moved quite a bit away from it over the years, but World of Warcraft art certainly is largely a product of the Warcraft III aesthetic, taken to a much, much grander scale. If you just don't like the art style though I'm not sure there's anything I can tell you. :)
