Browsed a few topics not impressed

QQ is in the eye of the beholder. Often when a player says something like "A bunch of smart people told me this was a buff, but I logged on for 5 min and hit some target dummies in blue gear and didn't notice anything different so those guys are all absolutely wrong and Blizzard must buff me," then usually smart posters will correct them, sometimes gently and sometimes not so gently. There's nothing wrong with a thread like that. As long as players are to some extent campaigning for themselves to get buffed or others to get nerfed, the debates are going to be a little heated.

Now, if it's a thread by someone who is just venting against Blizzard or other players and there really isn't any debate going on and everyone is talking over themselves, we tend to lock them. If it's a thread with nothing but one class shouting about how they need buffs and shouting down any other class who comes in to disagree with them, then we might lock those or just ignore them. Again, there is no discussion there -- they are exactly like the class forums -- and discussion is what we really want to see.

Note: Coming in and saying "I'm a rogue and I approve of shaman buffs" doesn't mean you have now established cross-class consensus on the validity of a request. To some extent if there isn't a little back and forth, then nobody's assumptions are being challenged and the debate can't really evolve much.

I'm sure it's also true that our accessibility here is partially what has led to the culture of coming to the forums first to ask for buffs before some players even try to improve their dps (or whatever) through gear, talent, glyph or just L2P choices. But that is a price we're willing to pay to get the feedback and discussion we're looking for.

Trying to get the online community to engage in intelligent debate is a tall order. Overall, we're pretty happy with how the role forums have worked out. If you stumble on a really bad thread, do what I do and just move along.

Q u o t e:
I would say its a little of both. blizz covering up problems that arent easy to fix by saying working as intended....doesn't really insight confidence from the player base, especially if its your spec. and you can tell its buggy, and not working

For what it's worth, we don't do that.

When you think about it, we don't have a lot of motivation to lie and if you've been around these forums much, you'd know that we don't have a problem making un-sugarcoated decisions that cause outrage on the forums when we think those decisions are good for the game. If we're happy with the way something works, we'll say that. If something is a bug, we'll admit that too.

In the case of Shadow priests, we thought damage was a little low and made a very small adjustment. Many Shadow priests think their dps is still unacceptably low, but we don't agree. (That also doesn't mean we won't make changes in the future. We do change our minds.) Vanish failing is a bug, but it's a hard one to fix, and rogues are dominant in both PvE and PvP despite of it, so it's also not a "all hands on deck" problem either.

So there you have two cases of our not "covering up problems." My job is not to "incite confidence from the player base." Ultimately players will play WoW if they enjoy it and will stop playing if they don't. Some players come to these forums to express opinions and give feedback, and we are grateful for that because they do ultimately make the game better. But I'm not really out here "selling" anything. If you like WoW, keep playing it!

Q u o t e:
We were proven right, in no particular order on:

I think you're setting up your argument here to prove yourself right. Your list does not contain things that we agreed were out of whack, and there are plenty of things the community things Must Be Fixed Now, upon which we just disagree. When the community is convinced their spec is going to suck next patch and then that doesn't happen, the commotion dies down really quickly. There are other things that we want to fix, but know that an upcoming fix will solve or make irrelevant, or for which we aren't sure how we want to fix.

Regardless, we're not going to turn over the burden and responsibility of designing or balancing WoW to the community. That's not how Blizzard makes games. While we try to give you some insight into the design process, this is emphatically not an open source project in which we are all chipping in together. You're welcome to provide feedback. That's partially what this forum is for. If you're going to get mad every time we don't take your suggestions and implement them, then I suspect you're going to be mad a lot, in which case you're probably better off focusing more on the game and less on the forums.

Q u o t e:
What evidence is required for you to change your minds?

That's not the attitude in which you should approach these forums. Provide your feedback. Once you've done that, consider your job done. You need to get out of the habit of approaching this like a game where if you come up with the right solution or perfect strategy or BiS gear you can somehow solve the puzzle or win the encounter and get us to make the change you want made. We'll make the changes we think are appropriate for the game, and we'll use your feedback to help us make informed decisions. That's pretty much all there is to it.

P.S. I'm not particularly interested in turning this into a Shadow priest or rogue discussion. I used those two as examples of how we have no real motivation to lie to players.

Q u o t e:
Now it's your turn to prove why you feel this way.

No, that's not actually my job. If that's the kind of thing you're looking for, I can understand why you might get frustrated.

I understand how it can seem like a double standard where you feel you have an enormous mountain to climb to make your case, while we aren't obligated to do the same thing. That's simply because we're the ones empowered to make the call. I don't state that as a power trip deal, but I think sometimes players want to turn our approachability into this being a democracy. It's not.

We're not interested in developing under a system where we have to get community buy-off for our decisions. We don't think that will ultimately lead to a strong design. I don't mean for that to sound harsh. I'm just trying to steer you away from logic that ends up where we have to justify every decision we make or you can somehow get us to make the decisions you want if you just find the right knobs to turn.