Blizzard developers are out there
by Adam Holisky 
May 5th 2008 at 2:00PM
An interesting discussion went on in the Community Service forums yesterday concerning the role Blizzard developers play in those very forums. A poster was obviously attempting to troll and start some argument, asking if the Blizzard devs actually do read what people write or pay attention to the community at large. Kisirani, a Blizzard developer, responded that indeed they do.A few interesting things came from subsequent blue posts that help outline the roles of the developers and community managers. First, it is the job of the community managers (CMs as we call them) to do just what their title says: manage the community. This includes the forums and everything that goes on in there. Kisirani tells us that they regularly collect feedback and suggestions and pass them along to the developers. Kisirani makes it a point to say that they don't have enough time to read everything themselves, and if they were to read everything the game itself would not be developed – and again, this is where the community managers come into play.
Secondly, the developers can often not respond to community suggestions because if they used a suggestion they responded to, it would mean that they could easily become tangled up in a legal battle. An example. I go and suggest that all gnomes are magically turned into dingos. A developer posts that he agrees with me, and that they'll be implementing my suggestion in the next patch. Everyone in the world wants to play a dingo, and WoW subscriptions jump to around the 7 billion mark (the extra billion is from all the multiboxers). I now have grounds to sue Blizzard for making money off a suggestion I gave them. Whether or not this lawsuit would actually stand up in court is another topic. However, this light hearted example is why Blizzard developers often do not post. Another poster later stated (correctly) that this stance of not posting in suggestions topics is exactly what J. Michael Straczynski did "back in the good old" days of the internet when he regularly interacted with the fans of his TV show Babylon 5.
An interesting topic to note for those of us that are always looking for insights into the way that Blizzard operates. I think that often times people assume things are or are not happening behind the scenes just because they can't see them. And here is a case where things we don't see are definitely happening.
Filed under: Odds and ends, Blizzard
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
peaglemancer May 5th 2008 2:07PM
The people in that thread seemed to be largely ignoring the blue responses and instead continued with the most banal of arguments.
Treima May 5th 2008 2:20PM
Yup. Forums are working as intended. ;-)
Fugmug May 5th 2008 2:22PM
A MMORPG forum is a lot like a cat litter box that someone *might* have dropped a diamond into. You need someone to sift out all the turd in order to find the diamond. Trouble is, every cat dropping a turd in there thinks they are contributing a diamond.
MightyIdle May 5th 2008 2:30PM
Thanks Fugmug. I'm ordering groceries online while browsing Insider. I almost forgot the cat litter.
Bunkai May 5th 2008 2:36PM
I feel the exact same way about the meetings that I attend here at the office, Fugmug.
Blackhorn May 5th 2008 3:59PM
Fugmug wins.
If that's not an original quote, you owe it to us to reveal the true genius.
Silverrealm May 5th 2008 4:07PM
/cast vote "Quote of the week" fugmug!
Psychosis May 5th 2008 6:32PM
Seconded that vote!
Rob May 5th 2008 2:27PM
I think the goal of CMs is to show their presence. Blizz's customer support is pretty good I think. Every time I had a problem it got solved. However, the community support leaves much to be desired. Take the whole boar nerfing thing. First, patch 2.4 came out, and hunters report having aggro issues. A blue came and said they did some tests, and growl was unchanged. He then said that boar charge was a separate issue and would be looked at.
Hunters complained the methodology was bad, and we're still having aggro issues. Nothing else was done. Patch notes from 2.4.2 come, stating that pet growl stacks now with hunter AP. and people report from PTR that they can't see any effect whatsoever. And, boars are getting nerfed. Why, we wanted to know. Dead silence. No response. We have no idea.
So, currently we still have aggro issues, boars are nerfed, mana regen is also bad (since 2.4 changed the way mana regen is calculated), and that's all we know. So, overnight hunters have become decidedly a less fun class. Oh, and our arena representation still sucks. Thanks.
If we had even an occassional blue post on the hunter forums, that would be hugely helpful. All the things that are wrong with the class, all the suggestions, are completely ignored (or if they are read, they are not acted on or addressed. It would be nice for them to come and say "yes, we know we nerfed you, sorry, we did it for x and y and z reason".
mirilene May 5th 2008 2:42PM
I know changes without reasons can be frustrating, but they probably arent that hard to work out most of the time and if you think about it...there probably arent enough ours in the day for developers or CM's to spend on the forums justifying every single change they make to the people who want to know (for whatever reason). More than likely, the answer will never be good enough.
Manatank May 5th 2008 3:54PM
I keep hearing about how our mana regen was nerfed because of the change to spirit regen. Seeing as hunters have no abilities to allow spirit regen while casting changes to it should not have affected us at all. Unless of course you are stopping for the 5 second rule to take effect which would ruin your DPS. What am I missing here? I've noticed it feels like I run out of mana faster, but I'm always casting so I don't see how that change could be affecting me.
darian May 5th 2008 4:19PM
While DPSing, you should never be within the FSR. However, there are significant portions of time in any instance or while questing where you will not be in the FSR. For example:
Waiting for the tank to make the next pull.
While looting/gathering
Anytime you're incapacitated or otherwise need to stop DPS (when Moroes vanishes, Maiden's Repentence, running to the walls during Aran's Arcane Explosion etc.)
Those are noticeably short periods of time, but they do add up more than people realize.
If, however, you're experiencing heretofore unseen mana problems on fights where DPS is nearly constant, that's something I can't explain.
Dan May 5th 2008 5:30PM
I think that there is little or no checking of the class forums by blizz employees. A little while back some people did an experiment on the Paladin forums to see how often any blizzard employees checked in. Someone started a thread with an explicit gay "adult" theme (sorry, not going to get more specific then that), and this thread stayed up for two days before it was locked from reaching max post count, which happens automatically. So someone started a second thread with the same name part 2. It was up for at least several hours and still going strong, but I didn't check back so I don't know what happened with it.
So anyways, there were at least 3 days where no forum moderator (let alone a developer) was checking that particular forum.
Now in defense of blizzard, there is so much outright crap on there forums I can see why no one would want to deal with it or even read it, but still, no moderation at all for days at a time is somewhat ridiculous.
Ikarus May 5th 2008 5:52PM
I'm confused as to how the man regen change has adversely afftected hunters. If I understand correctly now our intel increase the mana regen per point of spirit. shouldn't we be getting better regen now than before?
Ikarus May 5th 2008 5:58PM
p.s. If I could spell I'd be dangerous. you get the idea :P
Shat May 5th 2008 2:29PM
the Guild Wars forums being the exception to this, Fugmug. Mythos to some extent, too.
John May 5th 2008 3:32PM
Couldn't they eliminate the "threat" of a potential lawsuit from using someone's suggestions simply by amending the forum rules to include something along the lines of: "By submitting your post you assign ownership of the contents of that post to Blizzard"?
darian May 5th 2008 4:21PM
They could, but people don't read the terms, and there have been successful cases in the past brought against companies sequestering away random clauses in their agreements.
Granted, the situations in question were rather different, but that there's a precedent would embolden some hot shot lawyer to try to earn himself some big bucks.
Dan May 6th 2008 4:53AM
I haven't checked, but I'm fairly sure there already is such a clause in there somewhere, it would be foolish of them to even *have* a suggestion forum without it. But even with such a clause they would not want to do anything that might encourage someone to think they have a chance at winning in court, merely going to court costs them money as well as brings possibly bad publicity, despite what the EULA and other agreements might say about it.
Krick May 5th 2008 4:43PM
BOB SLYDELL
So what you do is you take the specifications from the customers and
you bring them down to the software engineers?
TOM
That, that's right.
BOB PORTER
Well, then I gotta ask, then why can't the customers just take the
specifications directly to the software people, huh?
TOM
Well, uh, uh, uh, because, uh, engineers are not good at dealing with
customers.
BOB SLYDELL
You physically take the specs from the customer?
TOM
Well, no, my, my secretary does that, or, or the fax.
BOB SLYDELL
Ah.
BOB PORTER
Then you must physically bring them to the software people.
TOM
Well...no. Yeah, I mean, sometimes.
BOB SLYDELL
Well, what would you say… you do here?
TOM
Well, look, I already told you. I deal with the goddamn customers so
the engineers don't have to!! I have people skills!! I am good at
dealing with people!!! Can't you understand that?!? WHAT THE HELL IS
WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?!!!!!!!
...
Krick
http://www.tankadin.com