CM Interaction
TL;DR: Blizz, please talk to your players more.
I think this is valid and understandable, at least for me. I would like to respond to couple of things here, though - just to share some understanding of my personal goals on the team and the broaden the perspective you may have of what I do on a daily basis.
I think it's important to note that it's not my goal to keep my presence to a minimum, and, in fact, the opposite is my ultimate goal. I would love to see a world where I could muster responses to 50-75% of threads across the entirety of the World of Warcraft forums. I am not one to tread the fire and come back when things are already burnt down and in a state where they can't be repaired - I see myself more as one to run directly into the fire and hose it down from the inside out. I don't mind getting caught up in "controversy" and "drama" here (that's my job, after all), and I don't mind if forum goers hate responses I give or come to hate me even, but I do my best to try to share what I know, when I can, where I can.
Of course that doesn't mean that people will always get the answers they want when they want it - which is the case of a lot of class balancing feedback at the moment. I did listen and read tons of posts and threads after poking my head into a few of the class forums. I didn't get a chance to follow up on any of the feedback, as I'm not personally aware of what changes are being made yet - but I did take the time to read the feedback and discuss it with members of my team and the development team here.
----- Skip this part if you don't want to read about restaurants -----
A bit of an aside/ramble for a bit, but it's interesting to think of game development and the customer-feedback loop as a restaurant. The Community team, as well as other teams like Customer Support, are in a more "front of the house" position. We are bringing you the menu, making sure everything is fine with your meal, and having conversations, both good and bad. It's also our job to move your feedback and concerns back to the kitchen and chefs (the development team and individual designers), and our hope there is that those conversations will ultimately lead to a better meal being served to you guys in the days following, once we are able to adjust to the feedback and find a way to better serve and present your meal.
Game design isn't as simple as many may thing, though. You can't just add another ingredient to the dish without changing the entire dishes composition, and, sometimes, changing entirely what the dish is.
While it is my goal to always come by your table and let you know some updates on your food, some changes do take a while to cook in the kitchen before they are delivered to the front of the house, and the bell rings for the dish to be taken to the table. We could always do things faster, and rush to implement more and more fixes and tuning, but sometimes we do need to slow down, observe, listen, respond, listen some more, and figure out exactly what needs to be done to improve the quality of our meals.
That's where we are at right now. We are on the cusp of improving our meals, we've put out a lot of new choices onto the menu, and we about to push a new order out onto the window, but we are making sure it's delicious before we do.
I'll stop talking about restaurants now, because it's making me hungry and I haven't really had a chance to eat today, but I hope visualizing this helps someone on these forums understand our roles here, and why it takes a bit longer than the customer may want to get something they want to eat.
----- Okay I'm done rambling now -----
Like OP said, in a sense there's nothing to be done about these things - sometimes you just have to wait. We will be here when we get more information on upcoming changes, you guys will know as soon as we do about what is being implemented.
Aside from this, and using Lore's case as an example, we do like to drop in and have fun here. It's nice to be able to chat about things that aren't along the lines of "balancing Destruction Warlocks who want to fly in the Broken Isles with 3 legendaries during Vanilla". I understand that these are huge topics, and there are a lot of players who feel strongly about them, but a personal conversation that doesn't touch these topics does not detract from them at all. I understand the frustration that comes when topics about "coffee and tea" gets a response over one about "the state of retribution paladins", but, again, we do need to give our brains a break sometimes. ((As a note, it comes much, much easier to respond to threads about coffee and tea than it does to sit down and write out a long post like this, if that's not obvious))
While this may be seen as a more "junior" responsibility, like you said, it is one of the more important roles in developing our community. Someone has to be down in the trenches, and someone has to wade into the bullet storm that can come from there. When I get home from the office, the first thing I do is open the forums. I try not to respond much after hours to avoid the wrath of my manager/HR, but even then I am still reading threads, following along, day-in and day-out.
Now, I get what you're saying here is that you'd like me to come by and check in on you more often - and I can do that. But it is a double-edged sword. I know many of you would love for us to drop in and say "Hey, thanks for the feedback, we're listening!" over and over again. You may have seen my dropping on occasionally with those kind of responses already, but there is a method to the madness here and a reason every feedback thread doesn't get a response. Since I can't control the time it takes to get changes implemented, I do worry, though, that many of you will tire of a constant "thanks, we're listening" and we will end up in a place worse than when we started.
I'll see what I can do with doing that bit more for now though, and I'll definitely be around a lot more going forward. I've only been handling this forum thing solely for a bit over a month now, so I'm still getting my feet wet and growing a bit into my own here. I hope you guys can come to learn to help me in the same way that I hope I can help you.
It's going to be a crazy ride around here, but, as always, I'm happy to be on board.
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TL;DR: Development is hard and takes time. Communication is hard and takes tact, a thick skin, and lots of alcohol. I am always here, and always listening. I'm looking forward to learning and growing more as I engage with you guys. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
