In Support of Ghostcrawler

#1 - Jan. 24, 2011, 8:34 p.m.

I think most of you are blowing this way out of proportion and need to suck it up and see it from his perspective, as he saw yours.

I agree with him completely, and i didn't get a "harsh or cruel" tone. I think most of you that are complaining came in during wotlk and got used to an easy game.

I came in, on my first account, the week of BC's release, and i had the greatest time i can remember in a video game. When wotlk was upcoming, i was excited. But after a few weeks, i was bored, and it was a rinse repeat even after the new instance releases. Nothing held up long as "challenging".

So yet again, i was excited about the release of Cata. Low and behold, there is actually challenging content. (Raids). I no longer consider ANY of the heroics challenging. If they are hard for you, good. That's how they were intended to be. You need a combination of gear + knowledgeable players in your party. If none of you know the fight, it's a great time to learn. Whether you shackle some attempts in, or you research the mechanics online. Hey, maybe ask in /gchat for tips!

Usually, all it takes is one person, no matter the role, to wipe the rest of the group completely. Whether it's a tank not holding aggro, not turning the boss an appropriate way. Or maybe its a dps who likes to stand in all of the damaging effects until he dies. Quite possibly, it's the healer who complains the whole time about how much healing sucks, yet continues to queue as a healer. Also, it's not about wasting mana topping everyone off. Read some of the fights who/when does damage go out. Do you really need to keep dps topped on baron ashbury in SFK?

I can queue randomly with no guildies, no friends, and finish every heroic i get in to. I give everyone the benefit of the doubt. I don't do gear checks, and i certainly don't /vote kick after a person messes up once. I understand that some people haven't had as much experience as i have in heroics, or maybe they have none at all. So i am patient, i'll explain what they need to do. Give them 3-4 solid attempts, and we usually come to the mutual agreement it's best for the group if they leave.

Of course you will come across a stubborn player who tells you he is going to wait for a vote kick and not drop because he doesn't want to take fault for his skill level. This is exactly the type of thread-ripper who is making the dev team look bad. The dev team has done a fantastic job with the expansion, minus the bugs which they will be fixing, and they should not be ashamed because a few players who were bottle-fed through wotlk can't chew the new meat.

Bashiok

Community Manager

#89 - Jan. 25, 2011, 1:46 a.m.

I agree, harsh tones in internet text is subjective. In other words, you can't prove he was being a meanie, you have just chosen to be offended.

If a person is having trouble in heroics, and GC says that success is dependent upon skill, strategy and cooperation, he is implicitly stating that as a potential factor in said person's issue. There's no subjectivity there. It's fairly well written for what it is, but it still boils down to "you fail because you are bad." PR disaster.

He could've made a simple fluff statement about how they were aware of the issue and would continue to evaluate honest and constructive feedback, then let the patch notes drop the next day with the couple of heroic nerfs some people were going off the wall over and have successfully played both sides and let each have a cookie. Instead he stuck his foot in it.

He was obviously being "matter of fact" with us, using our lingo as he has always done. Nothing wrong with that. I would rather someone speak to me honestly and openly rather than beating around the bush.

As is abundantly obvious, no one angry at GC appreciated it. No one who disagreed was going to. He put himself into a lose-lose situation. It's easy to call plays from the couch, but he shouldn't have put himself out there to begin with. You can't rationalize with impassioned anger, there was nothing to gain. Everyone who agreed, agrees. Everyone who disagreed, now has a post by GC with a flippant headline and a wall of text full of implications that they are (perhaps rightly so) undergeared, unorganized and uncooperative.

People can applaud him for "telling the truth" (which perhaps he did) all they want, the sum total is that all it did was make angry people angrier. It was unprofessional and poorly thought out.

Go be offended I guess, you seem hell-bent on it.

Again: at no point have I said I'm personally offended, but I certainly appreciate your concern. Have a lovely evening.

I think you make some very good points.

but it still boils down to "you fail because you are bad." PR disaster.

Well, it wasn't a disaster(!). I think it still held some helpful information for those looking for it. If you approach it as a forum poster who had been bringing such topics up, I think you went into it anticipating to react to it a certain way. If you're one of the millions of people who don't visit our forums, but do visit the front page, and play the game, your interpretation might have been different.

People can applaud him for "telling the truth" (which perhaps he did) all they want, the sum total is that all it did was make angry people angrier. It was unprofessional and poorly thought out.

I think that first sentence is probably pretty spot on in hindsight. I would disagree that it was unprofessional or poorly thought out, it's his (and our) job to converse with people and tell them how it is, how we expect it to be, see what they think, and talk about it after that point. It probably would have been unprofessional for someone whose job was not these things.

Bashiok

Community Manager

#128 - Jan. 25, 2011, 2:59 a.m.

This is getting rather nasty and people seem to be pleased with bickering back and forth. No one is going to be persuaded or convinced or taught a lesson here. This isn't helpful. Let's reconvene after 4.0.6.