You Opened your own can of worms...

#0 - Dec. 13, 2006, 5:44 p.m.

Your recent visit to the Priest forums, and subsequent disappearance, has had a very adverse effect on the Priest community as a whole. With your appearance, there was hope that some of the Community Managers would actually listen to some of our outstanding issues, and relay them effectively to the Developers to be looked over and possibly fixed. We've been trying for nigh onto two years to do this, being (fairly) reasonable in our discussions, opinions, and ideas. We've had this reasonableness returned with sub-par talents, no real scaling in our abilities, being forced to divide our talent points more than any other class to continue to be viable and our most useful(we're really the only class that is required to put at least 13 points into a single tree regardless of whatever else we want to do), and to essentially be passed over.

We've noticed, during our long stint, that the classes that make hte most noise, and complain the loudest or do the most rash things, get thier problems fixed. Warriors had a sit-in when thier pleas fell on deaf ears when they were 'fixed' before public release of World of Warcraft, and thier problems were fixed almost immediately.

We got an incredibly inferior Holy Nova with a long cooldown.

Mages complained constantly in the worst possible way, throwing fits, cancelling accounts, contaminating other forums, and basically making life miserable for everybody on all of these forums, and they got pretty much all of the wishes granted in thier last major review.

We got Lightwell.

A lot of us are starting to see that Blizzard simply won't respond to reason, patience, and constructive input, and a lot of the other Priests are starting to think that the mannerisms that have been used by other classes to get thier way are the only things that Blizzard responds to, and are gearing up to do the same.

We're not asking for the world(well, not most of us). There are a few priests out there that want to be the best healer and still have DPS to rival most pure casters, and to be perfectly honest, I think those people are silly. i don't want to be a walking tank capable of incredible healing, amazing survivability, and awesome DPS. If I wanted that, I would reroll a Paladin now.

What most of us want is a bit of survivability; heck, not even that. We want a reliable way to escape from people. Fear is not reliable, and hasn't been for a long time.

What most of us want is a set of talent trees that have real focuses, like the rest of the classes.

What most of us want are talents that work, and really make marked improvements in our ability to do our jobs, not senseless point sinks leading to nothing.

What most of us want are the capability to be just as viable outside of raids as we are in them, just like the rest of the classes.

What most of us want is a class that works just as well as the rest of the classes in the game. We don't want to be gods among men, but we would like to be men among men, instead of children that have to be accompanied.

And if serious consideration isn't given to our cries, I really worry about what the rest of the class will do. Personally, I'm too busy to go to any sit-ins or server crashes or cross-server Priest boycotts or mass refusals to heal. I honestly hope it doesn't come to that, really I do.

However, it's no longer up to me. It's up to you Tseric, Eyonix, Netharea, Drysc, Mr. Kaplan, Mr. Chilton, Mr. Pardo, Mr. Afrasiabi.

Or, it's up to the organized mob of Priests to do what other classes have successfully done in the past, and force your hand.

I really hope it doesn't come to that. From a personal point of view, I think actions like that do nothing more than breed contempt on both party's sides, but if they're the only thing that works, I can't blame them.

*Please don't post CM names, call out CMs, Blue or Blizzard in thread titles. Thanks- Nethaera

Nethaera

#22 - Dec. 13, 2006, 6:03 p.m.

Feedback continues to make its way to the rest of the team but at this point we can't promise any changes since we are coming up on the release of the expansion. We are at the end of the development cycle and working toward fixing bugs and making adjustments where needed. This does not mean 'Abandon all hope ye who read here' it just means that things aren't likely to be done as quickly as people think they should be and very likely will be addressed after the expansion releases.

Being that this is an MMORPG, things will continue to change as we feel they need to. That means if we take a look at one class or another and see things we feel would benefit the game and the class both, then we'll do them. We are just running short on time to do them right now.

We will continue to take feedback to the team if only so they are aware of the issues players are talking about most. Keep in mind though, just because we take feedback and ideas to them does not mean that things will occur how you might want them to. Sometimes the answer is going to be, "no".

Nethaera

#34 - Dec. 13, 2006, 6:12 p.m.

Q u o t e:

I love ya Nethaera but we all know what you are saying is re-roll a druid or pally because Bilzz doesnt care about the priest anymore...

No, that' s not what I'm saying at all. There are people happy with their priests and those that are unhappy. There will always be people that think something can be better 'if only' no matter what their class is. I'm sure there will be people that disagree with me too, but with all the negativity on the forums it can be often hard for the positive to come out of things and that makes things look far worse than they are. Am I saying people don't have valid complaints (or at least feel they do) ? No. I'm just saying that sometimes perspectives can be skewed. If someone tells you you're unhappy often enough, you might actually start belieiving it's true.

Nethaera

#89 - Dec. 13, 2006, 6:33 p.m.

We've given reasons for changes before and will continue to, but often the reasons are met with more and more questions and people not taking the reason at face value. We'd love to answer every question we can but we end up spending so much time in any one thread that others feel we aren't around to answer questions at all.

For example, I know we've all be posting as much as possible amid doing all of our other duties here, but I still see people posting saying they haven't seen a post "in months". These forums are huge, they move fast, there are a lot of things to address and sometimes those things mean a lot of time away from the forums doing other things and waiting to get answers that we can relay to you all.

It's a very busy time as you all know and I truly appreciate the people that take the time to write up their concerns in a constructive way so that we can take a look at them and respond when/if we are able to shed some light on things. Yes, it's true. We do appreciate the community and do want to not only continue to progress World of Warcraft, we also want it to continue to be fun for us and the community both.

I would say "have hope" as people have asked, but when I've done so I've had scrooges come out later to comment on it and make it seem as if I'm attempting to spread false promises. I'm simply saying that things can change if they are felt to be something that should be changed. That's it. No promises other than we will continue to read what you write and compile feedback for the rest of the team to use as they wish.

That's as close as I get this morning to putting my heart on my sleeve folks. ;) I don't need it broken today.

Nethaera

#144 - Dec. 13, 2006, 7:34 p.m.

Q u o t e:

What's sad about this Netaera is that many of the priests are long time players of our class. We've been here since the beginning, not recent power leveled toons. We suffered through early talent issues and always had "hope" that things would get better in the future and really looked forward to our talent review.

We were ganked in the 1.10 patch. We were ganked by that sad rep fangtooth who knew nothing of the class and posted worthless messages that proved more so how little he knew. He took our concerns to the dev's and came back wtih, "Priests are one tough cookie... you have fear... shield... "

What is it going to take for you forums mod's to realize that this is a class that is very close to losing a large portion of it's veteran players? When are you going to realize that if you made the game reliant on Priest healing but also took away the fun of playing the class with nerf's and substandard talent tree's and gear, that we would eventually say, F it, we're done!

Don't just sit there like a drone, actually spend some time reading our concerns and have the dev's give you a 60 priest geared and play it. Play the gimped tree's and play pvp, raid, etc... Then come back and post something that actually has value.

Please don't assume that no one here plays a priest let alone hasn't played since day one or even before day one. Please don't assume I 'sit like a drone' day in and day out. I can assure you, my days are very busy and not dronelike at all. We are not forum mods. We are Community Managers. While we do some moderation on the forums where we need to, it is not our sole duty.

I realize everyone thinks they are alone or misunderstood and that no one could possibly understand their viewpoint, but that is not true. Please realize that understanding a viewpoint and making change based on that viewpoint can be very different things. Give us a little credit for being invested in what we do, otherwise we wouldn't be here doing it.

Nethaera

#149 - Dec. 13, 2006, 7:37 p.m.

Q u o t e:
Nethaera, you are by far the most annoying CM on this forum.

Compliments will get you nowhere you smoothtalker.

Nethaera

#160 - Dec. 13, 2006, 7:46 p.m.

Please don't turn a discussion about the issues that Priests have concerns over into a comparison of CMs or about the honor change. If you have feedback on CM performance you can email:wowcmfeedback@blizzard.com for feedback on Community Team performance. Please note that while emails sent to this address will likely not receive a response, each one will be read and handled accordingly.

Also of note, people will like or dislike different CMs for different reasons. That is the benefit of having different personalities on the forums, to appeal to a variety of people.

This is also not the place to discuss other games. Disrupting the thread will result in post removals and even suspensions if need be. Be respectful of the OP and the concerns that have been voiced by other posters.