Here's the tldr version of the article for folks that are so inclined:


One of the most consistent and annoying things about the forums lately are people begging for blue responses. It's reached a near epidemic level with the greater visibility of Ghostcrawler and sites like WoW Insider, MMO-Champion, and World of Raids reporting on everything he says.

Most of this blue begging, as I've come to call it, used to occur in the General Forums; bugging for a Neth or Drysc response to everything. The begging then migrated over to the Customer Service Forums, asking for someone like Belfaire to respond (I admit I'm guilty of doing that once or twice, but hey, it worked out in the end). Now the begging is centered around the Role Forums, pleading for a Ghostcrawler response like the world is about to end if the blue beggar doesn't get one.

For most people this pathological need for blue gratification comes from the idea that unless they get a blue response, they think their ideas and contributions don't count. Take for example the story of Little Jimmy and the Ritual of Summoning (that'd make a helluva good horror movie title too, by the way).

Little Jimmy is the first person in the world to post that Ritual of Summoning has a cooldown, asking if this is an intentional change or not. A bunch of people reply saying it's a bug, but no blue response. Little Jimmy thinks Ghostcrawler must have not seen his post, so he bumps it and starts to blue beg.

What Little Jimmy doesn't know is that Ghostcrawler saw it right away and is already busy at work getting a fix going. But because Little Jimmy didn't get that coveted blue icon next to his post, he now feels as if his posting on the forums is worthless. Thus Little Jimmy enters the spiral or self doubt and low self esteem. Little Jimmy grows up to be Big Jimmy and uses these ill feelings to start a life of crime - one that will lead to him dying in an orange field while playing with his grandson. Ogooity boogity boo.

However if Little Jimmy had just listened to Ghostcrawler and even Nethaera when they say time and time again that a blue response to a post doesn't matter, he might have avoided his Godfather-like demise. Blizzard folks say time and time again that Ghostcrawler and his team read all the posts. They say time and time again that it's the discussion between players about the issues at hand that they're interested in, and not the magical blue gratification that comes about when they weigh in on the subject.

Little Jimmy, and every Jimmy like figure out there on the internet that posts on the forums, need to realize that hundreds of the thousands of people post there. Only a handful of people at Blizzard participate on their end and there is no way they can respond to everything. And furthermore, a single blue post on an issue will get propagated around the world as the latest news about this game 11.5 million people play – so they have to be selective in their posting.

So the long of the short of it is no – don't ever expect you'll get a blue response to your post on the official forums.

Tags: blue, blue-answer, blue-begging, blue-gratification, blue-response, customer-service-forums, drysc, general-forums, ghostcrawler, nethaera, response, role-forums

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Forums