Fanning the Flames of anger

Q u o t e:
I also think the quoted text is very hypocritical, as when reading the forum guidelines and the CoC that you had a loophole in which permanent bans can be handed out without warnings at all. This creates massive fear for many of friends and find this unhanded and abusable. Didn't have your copy /slice that person can't speak about the bugs the game, or find a way to fix up a problem he has getting into the game. Permanents is never a solution. But to the point at hand.

Players who make intelligent or insightful posts, even when they disagree with us, never get banned. People who call us stupid or call other player stupid or make threads about how terribly the designers do their jobs instead of discussing classes are the ones who get banned. It’s really not hard to figure out. We are very, very lenient.

Q u o t e:
Anybody who keeps getting ignored, laughed at, threatened, or straight out told to L2P for over 4 years while a dev team keeps making incompetent mistakes over incompetent mistakes, which have for the most part been predicted a long time before-head by the masses of PTR playing players and is still able to discuss in any rational manner is a saint.

If you need an example of the kind of thing that will get you banned, here is exhibit A. Did I learn anything about class balance or mechanics? No. Did other players? No. I would ask yourself those two questions before making a post.

Q u o t e:
Expanding on GC's own example, if you're running around the restaurant screaming about how terrible the food was, the manager would remove you, and the other customers will be very grateful.

They have been removed.

Q u o t e:
Its not about being unhappy. Its about having warned and warned and warned, not have been listened to and now paying the price for it.

It is an enduring myth that if we’d just do whatever the community wants that the game would be in a better state and everyone would be happy. What most players with this point of view are really saying is “Listen to me. I’m smart. Don’t listen to that guy. He’s a bad.” The burden is then on us to figure out who is smart or not. Sometimes we make changes that come about because of posts made by smart players. But if you want some kind of open source, community designed game, this ain’t it.

Q u o t e:
If this game makes you mad, cancel your account. If you're not mad enough to cancel but you want to vent your anger, either comply with the forum rules or go post on one of the many boards out there that are less strictly moderated.

Yes, please. Did you yell at your teacher or professor when they gave you homework you didn’t like? How did that work out for you?

Have you ever emailed a car manufacturer asking them to change the color of their cars? Did that work? Probably not. Does that mean the company doesn’t care very much about its customers and their opinions? Probably not.

Q u o t e:
People are unhappy that the developers REPEATEDLY ignore customer feedback

Not making a change you wanted is not the same as ignoring your feedback. Try and understand what the term “feedback” means. It does not mean you order up changes and get mad when those don't materialize.

Q u o t e:
I read your entire post, so read mine as well please. First of all, that quote is a line of thinking, not a statement of fact. The "Customer is always right" saying was meant to bring about an attitude for businesses to model their decision making around.

“The customer is always right” means you should listen to your customers. We do. It does not mean that all businesses are democracies governed by their customers. Nearly every company is run by a person or people empowered to make decisions for their company. If they’re smart, they listen to what their customers are saying. That does not mean they let the customers run the show. Try to understand that distinction and you’ll be happier here. If you can’t understand it, then please just do not post.

I’m trying to help some of you understand why the outcome here is not what you expected or wanted. We don’t want a forum full of players who are so outraged or offended that they say dumb things and get themselves banned. Just do us all a favor and don’t make those posts. They don’t accomplish anything except wasting time.

I'll leave this one open in the probably unrealistic hope that all the venom can be concentrated in one place and give the rest of the players trying to read these forums a break.

Q u o t e:
You never respond to players with intelligent posts, that's why people are angry. There are several threads going that provide reasonable suggestions - and we are left in the dark as to your thoughts about it. I know you don't have to respond, but when a situation like this comes up that is detrimental to our class in arena, what can you expect?

I respond to intelligent posts all the time. I do it every single day (that I'm not on my yacht). I do not and cannot respond to every single post. You and I are not in such tight mental contact that I know which threads are most important to you so that I can target those first. And even if I did, what about the other several hundred players who post here?

There is also ample evidence that when I post in a good thread, it can get derailed. Someone links to the blue quote from a WoW news site and decides that hey, if GC is paying attention here, maybe now is the time to bring up an unlrelated issue. It just makes more work for the moderators and frustrates the original contributors to the post.

Q u o t e:
edit: Locking every thread where people are expressing their opinion on the ridiculous way it was handled certainly doesn't help matters either. No one forces you to read those threads, and it's pretty obvious to everyone which ones they are. It almost seems like it makes you happy to "punish" us for being OP for one day or something, the way you consistently blame the community for moral failure after stuff like this.

This is not the "Air Your Greivances!" forum. This is a forum dedicated to WoW class design and balance. We're pretty clear about that. I try to read as many threads as I can in these forums. It's impossible to judge a thread just by its title and skip over it if I know it's going to be a rant. Besides, we clearly tell players not to rant in the first place, so we're not inclined to give them a pass just because they can't help themselves.

If a good thread just has a few inane posts, we might remove those. When that would take too much time, we lock the thread. The ability to keep threads in the right direction is ultimately in your hands. Just don't make bad posts. Problem solved. :)

Q u o t e:
If a player thinks that the game is designed wrong I'm not sure why that isn't valid criticism.

Even better, when a player discusses that design and says it's bad and suggests how it should be different, that's definitely valid criticism.

I mean, is the design of the game not up for discussion?

I think you misread my post. It's absolutely valid discussion. If it's not clear for some reason, see if you can detect the difference between these two posts:

Post One: I have concerns about Enhancement shaman dps. I am always low on meters and I feel that I understand the mechanics and gear choices pretty well. I have difficulty in certain types of fights. I don't get to use these specific talents as often as I'd like.

Post Two: I can't believe they nerfed shaman! There must not be anyone on the design staff who plays shamans. I bet they all play Hello Kitty Island Adventures because they are all bads. I bet they are mean to their pets too. I am so mad right now that I am going to write on my wall, possibly in blood, how much better I am at designing classes. I heard at Blizzcon that they said they have no idea what they're doing. My shaman used to do okay damage but then I got beat by some other guy. It must be the designers' fault. I am not bad, just mad.

Q u o t e:
I called Ghostcrawler out on this once before, and I have no hesitation in doing it again. Most of the posts that Ghostcrawler makes are very poor from a marketing standpoint. Take an outsider who's debating whether or not to start playing World of Warcraft. He comes and looks at the community forums and sees the developers throwing around things like "stop QQ'ing" and "enjoy your ban." The odds of that person purchasing and playing World of Warcraft slim down significantly. Personally, I've been shocked ever since Ghostcrawler did start this trend. I feel somewhat like he's "above" that job position... He shouldn't be playing forum moderator - he should be working hard at fixing my class! (Kidding! I love warlocks right now, but you get the idea).

I often think about the marketing thing from the other viewpoint. A new player comes to these forums (which I think is pretty unlikely to be honest, but whatever) and sees posters who can seemingly get away with the most unprofessional or down right rude posts. Most regulars here ignore it, which is fine, but it must send a strange message to this theoretical new player. Wow, what's going on here? They let players get away with anything. This is bedlam!

Q u o t e:
I've been a moderator on a somewhat large forum site (though no where near the scale of these forums), and learned that the best way to moderate is to do it silently. If people are QQ'ing, give them a warning privately. If you need to ban someone, the community doesn't need to know about it. The rules are there, and if you disobey them, you'll get banned. End of story. By posting things like "locking this and banning the poster because he QQ'd," you're inciting 10 more people to start whining about the same thing.

I'm not a moderator and I've never pretended to be. I hate having to mess with it at all to be brutally honest. I'm also a pretty busy guy. If you waste my time with a dumb, ranty post, there's a good chance I'm going to try and prevent you from wasting the time of any other poor soul who spends time in our forums. Posters aren't ever really going to hurt my feelings, but I do feel bad for players who are here just for a little information and have to deal with so much junk. The moderators end up banning a lot of people for various infractions. Every once in awhile we do the whole head on a pike thing as a warning that we do ban people who cross the line. I think the message gets out because the great majority of the banned folks are repeat offenders who keep trying to see what they can get away with until they are permanently banned.

I'm not here for customer service. Look to a different forum for that. Getting information from the community helps me to do my job. I am here mostly selfishly. If you don't have somewhat thick skin and can't get into a debate on class issues, this probably isn't a good forum for you. If you want, you can spend time in your class forums. I'll never bother you there. Those are for players to share information with other players.

Q u o t e:
It seems players can only type in a cold unemotional language when discussing changes or it violates the TOS. Clearly when one steps away from the this realm and starts to discuss any changes with a hint of emotion, anything he said before and after can simple be discredited as garbage.

Go back and read the post again that I pointed out as a bad post. You are being charitable when you define insults that have nothing to do with the classes themselves as colorful language. We understand the debates will sometimes get heated and that players can be passionate. I just don't buy into this whole concept of the posting community as scared stiff that they are going to inadvertently stray over a poorly demarcated line and face swift retribution. Please. Go look around for the kind of ridiculous posts that get made without players getting banned. Like I said, we're pretty lenient. If you really have trouble telling the difference between a good and bad post, then just lurk for awhile without making posts yourself. You'll still learn a lot.

Q u o t e:
Who are you to tell ME to not post on a forum I pay to support? Last time I checked posting privileges are only to paying customers. Now If I was posting malicious links, endless amounts of garbage posts, and insulting other players or the staff. I could understand you telling me to not post.

Sorry, this is our forum. Being a paying customer doesn't give you the right to do whatever you want in our forums any more than it gives you the right to try and break into our offices or try and hack our servers. We appreciate the support from all our players. But don't think that gives you a blank check to do whatever you want.

We want these forums to be a useful source of information to players. Despite much snickering when we launched the role forums, they are still around a couple of years later and many players participate here. We don't want the kind of Wild West / anything goes mentality that you seem to think comes along with a monthly subscription to drive those folks away.

Q u o t e:
Imagine being someone like me, who tend to lurk the forums looking for a semi-intelligent discussion but only to find nothing but 'nerf this', 'blizz sucks', 'buff me' , etc threads that are nothing more than people complaining with the vast majority of those threads offering nothing but a poorly-disguised diatribe at what they think the Developers are really thinking when they make changes to the game or why they made them. Stuff like that looks bad to someone who is generally disinterested in the inner nuances but would like to contribute to a worthy discussion once in a while. It would be nice if a bit more pruning were done in these forums, to be perfectly honest.

Read this. There are a lot of players like Shagrat and there could potentially be a lot more. Call me your worst name if you want. It won't get to me. But please don't do it here where you'll just chase away players who care about the actual topic. This is why we try to discourage bad posts.

Q u o t e:
GC, the poster you quoted there is obviously a kid, probably 13 or so. I fail to see what you accomplished by singling him out and embarrassing him.

Maybe it will discourage other posters from making similar mistakes?

I've known some pretty well-spoken thirteen year olds and I've known some people much older than me who behave in a pretty immature manner.

If you're going to post here, be professional. Even thirteen year olds know the proper way to treat their teachers or the people working that they encounter at retail outlets or restaurants. It's just here on the Internet where entitlement and anonymity get so ugly.

Q u o t e:
There are those angry posts, but there are alot more of the "Excuse me, we have been asking for a glass of water for 3 months now and still haven't got it" posts. Of course people will get angry when those posts are often ignored while troll posts get responses.

What I'm saying: I can't respond to every issue.

What you're hearing: I won't respond at first, but then eventually I'll respond.

Q u o t e:
GC...Just going to say it...

Stop feeding the trollz.

The trolls got out of control over the past couple of days. I'm trying to tank all of the didn't-listen / I-don't-understand-how-this-works / you're-bad posts in this one thread and trying to keep the adds from spilling out into the other threads where some poor players are still trying to hold intelligent discussions. If the trolls get attracted to this thread, great. Maybe the rest of the forum will be a little safer.

Q u o t e:
Have you ever emailed a car manufacturer asking them to change the color of their cars? Did that work? Probably not. Does that mean the company doesn’t care very much about its customers and their opinions? Probably not.

That's a horrible analogy. Car manufacturer's do listen to the colors their customers want. There's a reason all cars aren't black.

And before you disagree I spent 30+ years working for new car manufacturers.

Exactly my point. They *do* listen to their customers. They don't drop everything and make changes because a few irate customers demanded they offer a new color.

Q u o t e:
How many of Strawberry's ideas were implemented? zero.

That's a terribly bad metric. I respect the heck out of Strawberry's posts, and I suspect Strawberry knows that by now. However, if you come here with the expectation that you're going to get to see your ideas in the game, then you are going to be disappointed an awful lot.

Now, if you have consistently great ideas for Elemental or any other tree and you think you are much more capable than us at designing classes, then by all means send us your resume. :)

Q u o t e:
GC. I think the point everyone is trying to make is that yes we understand its your game and you guys do a good job. However sometimes the community (gotta give them some credit) can see a stinker on the horizon or points out something thats horribly out of whack.

Totally. The community is wrong sometimes too. You just tend to see fewer threads once a patch comes out and players see that their worst fears didn't really manifest.

Oh once in awhile someone may post that they were worried about X, but it turned out not to be a big deal, but those posters are often ignored or berated for being a brown noser. :)

Q u o t e:
GC, I don't think anyone wants to talk about class-balance today, to be honest. People want to know why they were ignored. Just throwing that out there, because I don't think you're in tune with what posters in this thread (and many others) are asking for.

Like I said, I'm trying to tank them all in this one thread because I'm pretty convinced there are a lot of posters who don't give a fig about why someone else was ignored and just want to get back to discussions of their class.

Q u o t e:
If you really hate posting here and from your tone I think you do,they why do you?

I don't hate posting here. I do hate posting about why players feel ignored or how we moderate our forums so often. On the other hand, players ask about it constantly so they must have some interest (heaven knows why).

I can't always respond to a class issue, because I haven't consulted with the rest of my team, or because we aren't sure it's a problem yet, or because we're discussing a solution and aren't ready to announce it yet or a host of other reasons. Posts like this on the other hand take very little time or thought. They're cheap, while carefully worded classes responses are expensive.

Q u o t e:
Love you GC

Love you too, um, Stabbah. Let's do lunch.

Q u o t e:
"A customer walks into my store, asks me politely why his gaming dice are not rolling in his favor and asks if i can make any improvements to the dice. I respond that I can not make the dice roll in your favor, and more than you can. I offer him some advice on how to make his gaming experience more enjoyable, such as rerolling 1's when rolling up stats for characters and what not. The customer walks away, armed with knowledge, if not a little happier."

An even better analogy would start: "One hundred customers all pile into the store at once...". :)

Q u o t e:
Let's play Hello Kitty Island Adventure, GC.

Nah. It's unbalanced.

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If we feel we have a problem, and come up with a possible solution to that problem we want your opinion on it, you are the lead Systems Designer, i'm sure you can put some brief input into a topic.

There are *a lot* of threads out here, and I have a job already. :)

I have tried a few times offering very brief answers in the hope of hitting more topics total, but I don't think that worked out very well. Players wanted to challenge some of our assumptions, dig a little deeper or ask a follow-up. You can't really blame them for any of that. Some of them felt insulted that they got such a "lame" answer.

I'll continue to try and come up with different ways of communicating better though.

Q u o t e:
Ok I have a question, and that's what it is...a question- not sarcasm, just honest curiosity because I consider myself moderately intelligent and if I had what I believed to be a good idea I might post here. My question is: how much of these posts on your forums do "you guys" read? I guess I'm being a punk asking for a response from a moderator of some kind, but having read a good deal of anti-blue poster propaganda on your own forums I would like either a confirmation or a denial of some of it.

Someone at Blizzard reads every single post. We have an obligation to do so, if just to remove the offensive or illegal ones.

I used to read every single post in the three role forums. The volume has steadily grown though, so I fall behind now when I am super busy, travelling for work or on vacation. Even in that case, other designers read the forums regularly and our community team reads everything. They are fantastic and will let us know of particularly good threads, or new concerns that get brought up. This is particularly true for our non-USA forums, because I just can't read every one of those languages. Rest assured if you say something, we will get the message.

If you are assuming we didn't read your post because it was so obviously awesome that clearly we would have responded has we read it, well I'll let you figure that one out on your own.

If you are assuming we didn't read a particular post because it is the kind of thing that should be locked or deleted, it's likely the moderators just haven't seen it yet, or else they were feeling particularly lenient. Leniency should not be interpreted as the policy is now "anything goes."

Q u o t e:
Just throwing this as an idea that might make things a bit easier. Have you thought about introducing Rank Up/Rank Down type of options of every post to make them bolder or to fade them away. That way your playbase could help you filter a big chunk of whatever is being posted.

Yeah, that works well for some forums and it's the kind of thing our community and web teams discuss sometimes. On the other hand, I see a lot of just terrible posts accusing us of larceny and kitten beating that then get a ton of "Yeah! You showed em, OP. Make them tell us why they hate our class!" I suspect in those cases, players would just give the thumbs up to anything that helped support their delusion that their class was discriminated against.

Players get so passionate about their characters (which is a *good* thing!) that they have trouble being objective about whether a post is actually good or not. Good posts are defined as those that support their preconceived notions or argue for buffs. Bad posts are those that argue their class is OP.

Q u o t e:
Incidentally, to briefly touch on the topic at hand:

I was a graduate teaching assistant during 8 quarters between 2004 and 2009. I can say from experience, with absolute authority, that:

(a) this happens more than you think.
(b) if the professor is a cupcake, yes, they will change the assignment.

If you think this doesn't happen, you haven't been in college.

Yeah, I just pwned your analogy. But I'm serious.

I was a professor in a past life. Yes, I would get rude students sometimes. They would be dealt with. I still managed to get good reviews.

Someone above mentioned the situation when you're in the mall or whatever and you see someone just tearing in to the poor clerk behind the counter for some real or imagined slight. Do you think to yourself "Yeah! Power to the people!" Or do you think to yourself "Oh, how embarrassing. That shopper looks like an idiot"?

Q u o t e:
If you've read some of the things GC has said lately and in the past, he is obviously annoyed by the tone of some people and has made thinly veiled threats that such tone would adversely affect the design of a particular class.

This is a myth. I'm sure it's a fun myth if you feel that you're the one being kicked down by the man, but it's still a myth.

If you're absurdly immature in your postings, we might very well ignore your post. That has nothing to do with how we design your class.

Q u o t e:
Which critical analysis can you point to affected a change in Blizz design?

It's all over the place. I even said in the Scourge Strike post stickied above that we took a look at Scourge Strike based on a number of presumably intelligent DK players making good points about its role compared to say Obliterate.

We made changes to Affliction and Shadow based on player concerns and smart analysis over scaling with haste.

We changed the hunter pet talent trees to remove the relatively boring ability for pets to avoid PvE AoE damage, gave that to pets for free, and added a talent that boosts pet dps.

We gave pets 100% of master's resilience.

Those are just a few things off the top of my head. There are probably dozens more just for this patch. We don't make a huge deal out of when and where players might have suggested something that changed our minds because players tend to mine that information in hopes of figuring out the magic key they can use in their argument that will get their change made. It doesn't work like that.

Q u o t e:
No they won't. Last Friday, the Ele shaman community erupted because 14 months worth of critical analysis and creative solutions amounted to worse than no changes, the community was outright dismissed. The Devs LIKE their vision, a vision completely at odds with the articulated vision of the community, so no amount of well articulated critical analysis was gonna change their minds. So no, what you're saying is patently false and you only have to look at last Friday to prove that.

At the end of the day, we're the designers. You can make feedback or suggestions as often as you want. If your expectation is that we have to make the changes you suggest, you're approaching this whole opportunity to communicate wrong, and you are likely to be disappointed a lot.

Q u o t e:
And it's not that they hate GC specifically, and he knows this. They hate people who tell them no.

I don't think anyone hates anyone over issues that when compared to the injustices of the real world are pretty trivial overall. It's a game. In the real world, people die or suffer for stupid and preventable reasons all the time. That is worth getting worked up over. WoW is not.

When some people think you don't hear them, they yell louder. Hyperbole is a popular tool on the Internet, and I certainly use it myself. It's a way of getting you voice heard over the roaring surf.

It also typically doesn't work. Our decisions are affected more by one really good argument, even if it doesn't come from a lot of players, and even if the players making the arguments aren't Gladiators or Tribute to Immortality players. But even in that case, you can't set up a situation where "If we just do X then Blizzard will do Y."

I promise we'll make informed decisions, and you guys can use this forum to help inform those decisions. That is the only way this deal is going to work.

Q u o t e:
Tell me what game is fun when a carrot is dangled in front of you only to have it taken away the moment you bit into it.

Then when you express your distaste for the carrot being dangled in front of you you are told to quit posting and if you continue to post about the carrot you will face disciplinary action.

This is another attempt to mischaracterize the situation. You will only face disciplinary action if you nerd rage, and most of you have been playing games and this one in particular to know the difference.

I still find it a bit silly that some players will use the "because you took my carrot away I am no longer responsible for my actions" argument seriously.

Q u o t e:
3. Most importantly, you'll have members of the 9 other classes reading the thread and evaluating the situation from their own outsider perspective. This is the largest group, and their opinions will have the biggest impact on the hypothetical community-driven forum filtering.

Not really though. Go pick a thread that has nothing to do with your class, because you'll probably approach that topic more objectively. If it's a relatively passionate topic, here is the kind of thing you'll probably see:

1) An original poster that A) makes some sense and makes a mature and intelligent post, or B) goes off caterwauling about how Blizzard never listens or hates their class or whatever.
2) Multiple pages of guys who play the same class or spec high-fiving the OP for nailing it. This happens regardless of A or B above.
3) Someone of another spec who comes in to disagree and gets chased out of the topic because "they don't understand" or "it's in their interest to see the enemy's class kept weak."
4) Some random well-wisher from another class who says "I don't play your class, but I agree you're weak," in an attempt to portray the entire community in solidarity about this issue.
5) A bunch of random /bumps in an attempt to keep the topic on the front page.

Ideally you'd see objective players giving the thread a thumb's down if it was the caterwauling, type B and a thumb's up if it was a solid argument, type A. But you don't get a lot of objective players in these threads. They aren't of nearly as much interest to folks who don't have a horse in that race. So you get the folks in number 2 still congratulating the initial troll for "nailing it," and a few number 3's who get shouted down.

Q u o t e:
And the fact that people believe all this whining and crying will change anything is ridiculous.

Maybe so, but I believe it serves a couple of points. I've done similar things almost every patch.

1) It gives you a taste for what the "I should be able to say anything I want" forum would actually look like. (Answer: not so nice.)

2) It gives the big-sense-of-entitlement crowd a chance to see that they annoy a lot of other players who disagree with them.

3) It might let them reflect on what the old-style forums with little developer interaction were like and whether they'd rather return to that. (Some legitimately do.)

4) It shows how little water some of these "GC says things just as nasty as the players do" arguments really hold.

5) It hopefully sucks the trolls out of some of the other threads, since the abhorrent treatment of the victimized classes only gets acknowledged by me in this one thread. The rest of the forum can hopefully get back to something more constructive. :)

Q u o t e:
Btw GC, I've been watching this post somewhat since last night and early EARLY this morning... and come to wake up this post is going on still.

You got some sleep right? If not, I suggest vacation time on your yacht before the holidays :P

You don't end up getting much sleep on the yacht. They crank up that margarita machine pretty early.

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Quote: GC, tBC class balance wasn't perfect, but no classes went rags-to-riches in a hotfix/patch. It seems like these days all buffs and nerfs nearly always overdone.

What changed in your testing/design methodology since tBC and can you go back to gradual changes?


I think you're confusing the fast pace of changes in LK with severe overstatement of the degree of the LK buffs and nerfs.

In other words, yes, changes come and go much faster now. But the changes are also extremely minor in comparison to past changes, because balance is extremely good compared to every previous time in the game. It used to be your class might do 20% less dps, but tough, you're waiting 6 months for a patch before that's going to change.

Yeah, I agree. While we *still* have a lot of work to do, class balance overall is in a pretty good place. It's fine to point out where we can still make it better. The rags-to-riches thing is overstated IMO, especially if you played classic and BC.

We make changes more quickly now, but players have been asking for rapid turnaround for years. We used to be so paranoid about the "rollercoaster effect" that if someone was overpowered, we'd let them be overpowered for a long time. If players had a bugged ability or a big liability, they knew they were probably stuck with it until the next major content patch. We've shifted our philosophy a little, so it doesn't surprise me that the "rollercoaster effect" posts have stepped up. As a rule of thumb though, it gets invoked more when someone's nerfed than when they're buffed. :)

Q u o t e:

No one is whining, if you read it with a calm mind and a less stereotypical attitude, you will find alot of people are here to debate. You can do that with a calm attitude right? If not I may be the the wrong universe again :|

Uh, some people are definitely whining. I won't offer any quotes, because some players feel it's inappropriate to single folks out, even as an example. Don't automatically define every argument here as healthy debate just because debate is taking place.

Q u o t e:
Very often you tend to define healthy argument by people agreeing with your Teh Vision and whining anything that is contrary to it.

Recent examples:

Shadow Priest Fiasco
Resil Will Fix It TrainWreck
Elemental Debacles

This is just going from top of my head and avoiding mentioning incidents that directly affect my class, so you can't claim I am biased.

GC, from where I stand WoW message boards walls are lined with reasonable and rational poster's heads on the pikes... their only offense it to disagree with you a lot.

I was trying to think of how to respond to your post since your reality and mine seem to differ so greatly. Then I noticed your "avoiding mentioning incidents that directly affect my class, so you can't claim I am biased," and immediately I thought: Ret. I'm not sure what the moral of that story is, except to say I was not disappointed. :)

Instead, I'll just offer again that if you go and randomly choose a handful of posts, I'd say chances are 80% that they will be some player disagreeing with us. The ones who agree have less motivation to post, and they get shouted down as brown-nosers anyway.

The people who disagree with us don't get banned for disagreeing. The people who resort to schoolyard name-calling to try and sharpen the dull edge of their argument get banned. That is what this entire thread is about:

1) Players think they are treated unfairly because we didn't make a change they wanted (or made a change they didn't want).
2) Players who think they weren't listened to or weren't consulted.
3) Players who think they should be able to say anything they want, no matter how off-color, offensive or unprofessional because they are paying customers.
4) A sub-set of group 3 above, who think I behave unprofessionally when I point out when or why we are banning someone.

Q u o t e:
Hey GC? You're part of a team that has made the greatest video game in the history of video games. Your contributions to that game, and to these forums, has been enormous. I expect that the personal cost of that contribution has been pretty high. I want to say that I hope you're taking enough time for yourself here, and meditating on how important forum issues really are, especially in contrast to the game.

Do you think your role on these forums is personally sustainable for you? If it isn't, what can you do to avoid reaching a breaking point?

On the first issue, it's really not that big a deal. You can't be a designer in this business for long if you're a frail lily prone to wilting at the slightest criticism. Players sometimes interpret my sarcasm as frustration or rage, but they give themselves too much credit. :)

On the second issue, it's sustainable for me indefinitely. I may get busier from time to time and post less. When the forums are at their most inane there may be less for me to comment on so I'll just lurk. It's also possible someone at Blizzard may someday decide it's doing more harm than good and ask me to stop. I don't think that's the case personally or I wouldn't keep doing it. Things are always a little hairier around patch day (including hotfixes) and then they chill somewhat.

Q u o t e:
@GC: Have you considered writing a blog instead of posting on these forums? You could point to any relevant discussions on the forums and it would save you from having to moderate and back and forth with trolls.

As hard as it might be to believe, I *like* the back and forth. It would be easy for us to spew our game design maxims from the top of a mountain. But I think actual posting gives me a chance to communicate with players in both directions. Even when we disagree that a change is necessary, at least I understand what and often why players are asking for one.

Q u o t e:
Quote" This does not make our job easier. When you make our job harder, we make changes more slowly. You actually have a lot of power here to help yourselves.

This is what I refer to as a "thinly veiled threat".

You're either misinterpreting what I said, or interpreting it correctly but assuming I was trying to sneak some kind of veiled nuance in there.

Let's say I have 5 minutes to surf the forums in between meetings or while the nice bartender is mixing up my martini. In an ideal scenario, I jot down three concerns that I want to take back to the design team to talk about. In a sadly more likely scenario, I spend all of that time reading about how your class is always ignored or a bunch of ranting about some poorly defined problem or presumed "stealth nerf." My scratching my head after reading your thread is not what you want. A bullet point on a meeting agenda is what you want. Make that as easy for us as possible and you make our jobs more efficient.

You really think any of us are going to willfully mess up or even drag our feet on changes to a multi-million dollar game just out of spite for your bad forum post? :)

Q u o t e:
Of course you're not going to have a lot of dissenting opinion propping up in those threads - anyone that tries to post a different point of view is immediately chastised and driven away, just like you said. It's not an attractive position to put yourself in, and it gives the people making the unfounded complaints a false sense of legitimacy. Everyone that's posting seems to agree with them, so they must be right!

Although, I could still vote a thread or a post down without responding to it. I think this would serve as a welcome reality check for the people that live on these forums, feeding off of conspiracy theories and ranting about class balance injustices at every opportunity. You're going to have a "crusader" (someone who worships every action Blizzard makes, probably to the point of being unhealthy) to balance out every troll (people who feel Blizzard can do no right). The rest of the votes - what actually determines if the thread/post goes positive or negative - would come from the larger segment of people visiting these forums that don't fall under either extreme.

Yeah, that's a fair point.

Q u o t e:
Oh, I see. Now we're counting the seconds it takes GC to identify a whine and move on, and we're adding that onto the time it takes for any "real work" to get done and class mechanic changes to get done. So, not only do the posts where there's nothing worthwhile being discussed slow down game development, so are the angry tirades slowing down the pace of software development getting done.

It makes sense that the time that GC chooses to spend in the forums directly translates into the amount of time it takes for development work to get done. Who knew that posts on a forum had that much impact on Blizz's schedule? Am I slowing down the development of the next expansion by posting this, thus causing GC to read it, and adding those seconds into the time it takes to finish it?

It's not the dev time that's at stake. You're right that our implementation and design time has almost nothing to do with time spent on the forums. For that reason, you would be wise to view the time we spend here as very precious, because it's the first thing that's going to go when we get buried. :(

If I were you, I would always try to keep in mind the signal to noise ratio on the forums. This is your chance to have your feedback read by the people who actually make the game. Do you want to waste that opportunity venting? Do you really think that's going to lead to positive change for you?

What you want (or what you *should* want) is for me to say: "Huh. He makes a really good point." That is more likely to happen if you do in fact make a good point and not spend your bandwidth ranting. The more ranting you do, the fewer "good points" I walk away from when I go back to do my actual job.

Q u o t e:
Would you agree with the statement that the increased accessibility of endgame gear/content to a wider base has contributed to the marked increase in the unfavorable type of forum posts in the past year?

Not in my experience. People complained before that the content wasn't accessible enough, and some people complained before that the content was too accessible even back then.

We have a tendency to look at the achievements of posters who decry how easy things are now (and yes, we look at their most accomplished character if they're posting on alt), and I'll bet you can guess what happens. "Oh, well I would do the content if it wasn't so easy, but because it's so easy, I'm not interested." Sure, buddy.

The best PvP or PvE players have always had the opportunity to get the best gear first. That hasn't changed, so a lot of those guys don't see any reason to complain.

Q u o t e:
I can hear the conversation now with your bartender lol--- " hey joe ( the bartenders name) you wont beleave what this mouth breather is saying about his toon and dam he is doing his best to try insult me also what do you think should i reply"

I prefer the term paste eater and lovely lady bartenders. On yachts.

Q u o t e:
Actually that particular thread has a lot of intelligent posts, and posts that are on topic.

Because we went out of our way to delete every single post that was not on topic, and there were many. :(

I even took the unusual step early on of saying please do not fill this thread with junk, and players still responded with whining threads or questioning why we would moderate so harshly. It took a lot of banning to make that one thread pretty good, and we just don't want to run a forum where our players are terrified of posting. The stick > carrot can work for some fansites, but it would be tough for us to pull off for a number of reasons.

Q u o t e:
problem with that is blizz won't admit mistakes "generally" till months down the line, and when they make one they like to play the stay the course stance till it derails hardcore.

This is pretty demonstrably false. I think players just like to tack on that because we are perceived as stubborn for not always altering course based on forum posts.

We make mistakes constantly, and we try to fix them as quickly and as elegantly as we can. It's not always as fast as some players would like, but we're getting faster overall without trying to violate our corporate philosophy of "when it's ready."

To all the "I was banned for disagreeing with you" folks, I am very skeptical.

We have a lot of moderators, and it's certainly possible someone made a mistake somewhere along the way. Whenever I have pursued one of these issues before, what invariably turned out to be the case was that the poster also said something pretty offensive or stupid (possibly even in another post) that didn't strike them as offensive or stupid. A good point + saying something stupid = a bad post, not a good one. We'll take the chance that we're going to lose some gem of insight that no other player ever had that is now lost because you had trouble communicating without foaming at the mouth. :)

I can't say beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are all wrong in the reasons you were banned. I'm not going through the trouble of looking them all up. However, whenever I have done so before, it wasn't for disagreeing with us. Even if you hold that in your heart of hearts to be the case, look around. Clearly we don't ban people just for disagreeing with us or I would be here talking to myself.

I'll also add again that recidivism is very high among banned posters. Many of the people we ban have long rap sheets. It really is a few trolls spoiling the fun for everyone. That all suggests that most know they are trolls and just keep doing it anyway until they get permabanned. :(

Q u o t e:
Why not just change the title of the thread for the OP, make mention that he's got an interesting idea, and then state you changed the title of the thread to remove the word "petition". Really, how difficult is it to try changing your approach to moderation for once?

We'd rather not reward players for violating the rules. He changed the topic of the thread in any case. Petitions are not a good idea. Maybe that will filter down to other players who consider starting one. They aren't super common, which suggests the message more or less gets out.

I'm sorry if you want every one of my posts to be an announcement of upcoming buffs or even hints of insight. That implies that when I see a garbage thread, I just have to skip over it instead of locking it. On the other hand, if you guys make fewer of them, then I won't have to worry about them either. :)

Q u o t e:
If the devs run some kind of model or iteration, could they at least share part of it so the math nerds at EJ can figure out the way you guys think? And on that note, just how much attention is paid to the theory crafting people at EJ who are doing all but making non linear time-dependent differential equations to model dps and fight flow.

Part of the fun of theorycrafting is actual theorycrafting. I'm not trying to be glib. Exposing every last nuance of the mechanics or even our intent takes away a lot of the sense of exploration and experimentation that has kept a site like EJ going for many years.

Q u o t e:
And now the really big oh no she didn't:

Do the devs really just have a very large disconnect with the community w/r/t class roles? If you don't have MS, you burst. If you can't do either, you better be good at CC. There's near unanimity in that UH DK's lack burst, their CC is lacking, and obviously have no MS, and to my eyes logical exasperation with such a low return form ScS on stacking diseases in an arena environment. What are DK's suppsoed to do when they need to be carried or are at most extra CC and extra hitpoints to get burned while the MS, healing and bursting classes shine?

It depends on the situation. Sometimes players develop a way they like to play the game that they either choose as a superior model to ours or assume it is ours. If things get really out of kilter to the extent where a lot of players are completely misunderstanding our intent, then I try to correct it. I don't want to get into specific class Q&A here because this is supposed to be a ranting and trolling thread, so I don't want to derail it.

Q u o t e:
And on a third note, um.. why not just flatly make a rule that skills work THIS WAY on mobs, and work THAT WAY on players and their pets?

For the same reason we don't want PvP and PvE to have totally different rule sets. Or have warriors and rogues follow totally different rule sets. Or have instances and the outdoor world use different rules. "Oh but that's different," you might say, but unless you have a lot of confidence that the distinction is intuitive to a vast majority of our players, we still consider that level of complexity and inconsistency a risk to having the widespread appeal that we are currently blessed with.

Q u o t e:
But when you push the "bring the player not the class mentality" and then have 2-3 classes DOMINATING representation every season...yeah, people are going to call your mission statement out as being full of s###..............because it is.

The "bring the player" philosophy applies only to PvE. It would be great to eventually get PvP to that point too, but it's a lot more work. Comp is enormously important to making an Arena team, and if we let you just bring any 3 players without regard for synergy, I fear we'd lose something. (And no, that does not mean we're happy with the low representation of some classes or specs. We just don't want to get to the point where it's irrelevant.)

Representation in PvE is pretty good overall. Personal preference probably drives character popularity more than anything (and yes that includes tanks).

Q u o t e:
However, if people were only flaming away and there were no substantive discussion threads, then I'd agree. You have a point. But you are responding to issues about style in this thread, and the very substantive thread entitled "A Reasonable Evaluation of 3.3 Scourge Strike" that is 20 pages long has none.

Do you want that thread to turn into this one?

Q u o t e:
It's hilarious that after 35+ pages people still preface their arguments, however well meaning and thought out with, insults, insinuations, and virtual hands slaps - all while wondering why GC ignores what they say.

:)

Q u o t e:
On the one hand, I like this feedback as well... but to be perfectly frank, this is exactly what the majority of the QQers in this thread are complaining about. Rather, the LACK of this back-n-forth is what they are complaining about.

It isn't so much that you post in threads which are insightful or bring well-thought-out ideas to the community... I think that it is a fair assessment to say that you do this. Rather, they are complaining that they have brought what they think are good ideas to these forums for the last <grain of time> and have never received anything along the lines of "this is a good/bad idea."

As much as this forum LOVES feedback along the lines of "this is a fair point" or "good idea, we'll look into it" et al, they also want to see "this idea is terrible and here's why..."

I don't think it is a stretch of the imagination to say "GC can't tell all the dumb people they're dumb," but it's probably worth mentioning that even SOME feedback to a large issue, regardless of the Devs' collective stance on the matter, would go a long way to quell the concerns of the whining masses.

I don't disagree that is a noble cause. But you are signing me up for a lot of posts there, and I have other stuff to do as well besides troll the forums.

Imagine I can make 10 substantive posts a day, which is probably on the high end. Now consider that many of these are complex issues that probably require 2-3 follow ups (and often it's many more). Would you be able to tell me the best threads to respond to?

Q u o t e:
I think you are doing way to much forum moderation these days, instead of class balancing TBH. Banning people left and right, regardless if they provide proof, screenshots, qaulity suggestions, concearns with any hint of emotions while at the same time other completely ignoring posts with well thought out input and data regarding SS.

Banning takes seconds and forum posting often takes minutes, especially if the issue isn't complex or the answer won't be horribly scrutinized. Class design takes hours if not days. Besides, I do most of my posting on my own time. You're not losing any development time because I post here.