@GC - Don't Go the Way of Tseric

Thank you for your sympathies.

I am out here because I want to be, because selfishly I like to see the feedback, and because I try to give something back in some small way to the community.

I am one of those 10-year veterans of the industry. I know what forums are like, and I'm not going to be personally offended by anything that goes in here. You just can't be a game designer for long if you have thin skin. Most of the players who are overly passionate do it for their love of the game. So while their actual text may be inane, inflammatory or cruel, their heart is usually in the right place. TLDR = I'm not going anywhere.

Usually when we delete a post or ban someone it is to try and maintain some modicum of a professional forum. We don't want to scare away intelligent posters who came here to discuss class balance and are less interested in POSTINGINALLCAPS.

We also don't mind the occasional off-topic thread, so long as it's a generally positive one, as these forums can be so negative at times.

We continue to strive to improve the communication process. I wish there weren't so many "GC look here" threads and I wish players weren't so quick to condemn us when we don't "address their concern." I know my posting here can sometimes be a distraction from player to player discussion. I do hope it does some good too.

As to the IGDA white paper, my take on it is like any industry there are good employers and bad employers. There are studios operating on a shoestring budget for the love of the product and there are managers who exploit their workers for personal gain. I have met very wealthy people and people who probably don't earn what they deserve. It's hard to condemn or deify an entire industry. It's a business.

My advice to you would be that it can be a great industry to be in. You meet very smart people from around the world. Your customers get excited about your product in a way that people who make toilet paper or green beans or printers or doors never get to experience. You get to play games, even at work. Just be careful where you go to work. It isn't worth sacrificing everything to make it. And as with any industry, the people who are just starting out, who are struggling and probably not compensated well, are the ones who may sound the most bitter.

I love what I do, and so do my co-workers. Blizzard is a fantastic place to work and fortunately it is not the only place in the industry that I would say that about. It will turn out to be the right industry for some of you, and one of you will be here in a few years trying to pen forums posts that sound calm and intelligent and making gin jokes.

Q u o t e:
I believe a lot of irritation on these boards would go away if you explained the motivation behind some of those concerns. I'm sure Ferals, Prot Pallies and even DKs (lol?) have concerns they want to see adressed.

I understand that, but I just don’t have that kind of bandwidth. Nobody here does.

(And before it gets asked, hiring 300 more people and attempting to keep them all up to date on our vision for the game is also not really tenable.)

What often happens is that a blue response to something like that ends up launching even more questions. WHY aren’t you changing it? What if you handled it this way instead? Is it something you might change in the future? What about this related issue that I wanted you to address that you didn't?

Even when we do try to go through those lengths, you’ll end up seeing new posts next week asking why there haven’t been any updates on the topic. Or the most frustrating – those that ask why you won’t ever address the topic that you wrote multiple pages on just recently.

I totally understand that the community is voracious for information. We’ll keep exploring different ways to get it to you. The answer will almost certainly not be several hundred “Ask GC” posts every week.

As I read further, a lot of other posters explained it pretty well too.

Q u o t e:
If you have concerns about a Microsoft product, you can pick up the phone, report the problem, and it will be fixed. If it isn't, they will keep the ticket open until it is fixed, provided that it is an actual problem.

You can't pick up the phone and call a Blizzard dev.

As a former Microsoft employee, I feel qualified to offer that A) you wouldn’t be talking to an actual developer, and B) we had plenty of complaints from players that felt like they weren’t listened to. Note that I’m not at all bashing Microsoft, nor inviting it, which is not an appropriate discussion for this thread. I have plenty of friends who still work there and I use Microsoft products (especially games) all the time.

Q u o t e:
We are fierce advocates for WoW and want it to be the best it can be. Could you really ask for more of a compliment?

Nope.