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Panic In The Streets Of Ironforge, Panic In The Streets Of Stormwind
In-game protests are nothing new. In World of Warcraft, everything old is new again. Since the WoW expansion, lots of people aren’t happy. In fact I think the only truly content class are Warlocks (note to self: watch for Warlock nerfs next month).
It’s somewhat ironic, really, that these protests almost always impact just the customer service staff, most of whom usually agree with whatever grievance the players have (since they almost always play the game themselves, it usually being a hiring requirement). So the CSRs have to spend time clearing out the hundreds of Tourette’s-afflicted level 1s, thus causing them to fall further behind on their queues. Meanwhile, the designers and producers who made the decisions the players are up in arms about, if they become aware of the in-game discontent, will usually see it as justification that the players can’t be trusted to actually make decisions. Look, they’re all running around naked and screaming obscenities and you want to listen to them? Don’t mind us, we’ll be reinforcing the boiling oil we keep up in the Ivory Tower of Solitude.
As developers, if your players are literally rioting in the streets, you’ve failed in multiple ways.
- Your players don’t feel like they’re being listened to, and feel that antisocial behavior is a justified response. To them, it probably is. Aggro management is SERIOUS BUSINESS.
- Your community people are being ignored, whether by the players, the developers, or both. My guess: both!
- Your managers are going to pick that week to read a random board thread to keep up their street cred, and come charging into your office asking WTF you did now. Get ready to justify those nerfs!
I don’t think we’ll ever see again the likes of Abashi threatening people to be quiet or their tradeskill backpacks will be nerfed, but the lines of communication breaking down into virtual violence and very real drama seems to be always with us. In a way it’s a good sign – after all, if your players just sullenly assume you’re incompetent, they won’t bother to protest any more! But once things escalate to the level of gratuitous gnome nudity, you have issues — and despite how silly gnomish butt usually looks, they’re serious ones. Much like rioting is a sign of social disorder and breakdown in the real world. And for much the same reasons. Your broken windows have no less effect on the social environment for being virtual.
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about 3 years ago
seems to me that creating drama is an awesome metagame, as long as people have enough fun with the drama that they don’t stop subscribing.
so, uh, give the players more awesome ways to protest and entertain themselves, then nerf away!
about 3 years ago
Having gone through a protest or two myself the best can I say about in-game protests is that at least the players care enough to protest, and not just hit the ‘unsubscribe’ button.
Part of me agrees with the “you’ve done something wrong” statement. Usually what you have done wrong is that when designing you weren’t realistic about the ability of a gazillion players to seriously exploit the hell out of what appears to be a slightly flawed mechanic or system. This usually causes you to have to make very unpopular decisions “for the good of the game.”
If you find yourselves traveling down this road, do yourself a favor and talk to your community manager about how best to prepare the community and show them that you have their best interest at heart. Properly setting expectations is the key to customer satisfaction.
Yes, you are always going to have players angry that you nerfed X – but by honestly communicating to your community leaders why the change was needed you can begin to filter the information down to the masses by providing the gamers their greatest social currency – the ability to hold superior game knowledge over another gamers head.
about 3 years ago
But how often are nerfs unjustified, or even a mistake? As I recall the Abashi statement on tradeskill packs, it sounded like he was unaware of the values of tradeskill containers as bags, and the idea was to reduce CS costs by preventing accidental combines. That was the easy fix, but the right fix was to block bad combines, and make bags as good as the tradeskill containers that had replaced them. The players may be idiots, but they are probably right in some important respect. Ignoring stampedes is not a good choice, even if cows are clueless.
about 3 years ago
If you find yourselves traveling down this road, do yourself a favor and talk to your community manager about how best to prepare the community and show them that you have their best interest at heart. Properly setting expectations is the key to customer satisfaction.
Are you obligated by contract to eat deveoper shit to make them look like they did the right thing? Or do you live in a fairy tale where everyone is a mind-controlled consumer whore? You’d be lucky if someone was gullible to believe in the excuses generated by some stupid decisions (as is with blizzard’s fanbase, if it isn’t about warriors or priests).
The more likely conclusion is that this builds a quiet animosity. The player knows he can’t do shit to change the game except quit, but he’s so desperate to escape in an MMO that he’ll put up with it. Some people are capable of putting up a lot of shit, some aren’t.
Eventually, your long-term subscriber numbers will be shakey or lower than what you had some months ago, and chances are the developers will blame just about anything and anyone else before they blame their own mistakes.
about 3 years ago
Evangolis,
Abashi actually used the bags as a threat at one point. I don’t remember the precise details, but the gist of it was that he told monks to stop complaining or else they’d take another look at the weight-reducing tailoring bags.
It was Great Moments In MMO Community Management.
about 3 years ago
Rioting is a sign of social breakdown in the real world because the rioters have quite a lot to lose. It’s an act of desperation. Rioting on the internet is just childish.
about 3 years ago
Frakazoid,
I think you misread what Lum was saying. This was a call for listening and communication with the customers before such changes are made, not after-the-fact attempts at damage control.
In other words: Tell them what changes you plan to make and why you think those changes are good ideas and then solicit feedback.
Seems like a good idea to me.
about 3 years ago
Letting the customers decide is like letting the loonies out of the bins. Comnpanies really need to learn how to convince their customers that what they plan is the right thing for the game.
There’s two problems with that though. One is, well, the compnay better be making decisions based on what’s good for the game. The other is at the consumer base level. If you make a game for players who want that “instant win” feel all the time, well, good luck with that.
about 3 years ago
In other words: Tell them what changes you plan to make and why you think those changes are good ideas and then solicit feedback.
My arguement still applies. It doesn’t matter if you tell them before or after the fact. The number of times bad design decisions have been stopped due to community discussion before implementation is completely dwarfed by the amount of times it hasen’t stopped bad changes.
Every time pre-discussion changes fails to stop a bad decision, you create more animosity and further confirm their belief that you STILL aren’t listening to them. The more this happens, the more drastic people become in getting their message across.
about 3 years ago
The cold-hearted capitalist in me says that protests really don’t matter. First of all, people could have waited to buy the expansion to see if everything was worth the money, but they didn’t; in other words, Blizzard has already taken their Porsches in for performance tuning. And, further, if they’re protesting then they’re paying for an account. Cha-ching x2, basically.
Once again: the best way to make a protest is to cancel your account. The optimum solution is to contact customer service and let them record the reason you’re canceling the account. If enough people cancel and give reason, then you know your voice will be heard. If there aren’t enough people to do that, then your issue was not that wide-spread.
And, if you can’t muster the effort to quit, then the issue must not be that vital.
Same as it ever was.
about 3 years ago
Freakzoid – there’s also plenty of times you have to make an unpopular change that’s also the right one for the game. In my experience, players don’t often look at things from a wider perspective, and they almost always take a statement of intent (after you’ve released a game) and fill in the blanks with the worst thing they can imagine, and then tell you why that would suck. I’ve seen this enough that I’ve even started calling it a law.
Consulting the community and getting ideas and feedback is important, but you can’t believe that the wider community is all-knowing or always right. You have to run the feedback past your own filters to try and find the real concerns you didn’t think of.
about 3 years ago
“Your managers are going to pick that week to read a random board thread to keep up their street cred, and come charging into your office asking WTF you did now”
{fx: tiny voice, as though from under or behind heavy furniture} make it stop, please!
about 3 years ago
I wrote this on my [url=http://antipwn.wordpress.com/]blog[/url] a few months back. I think it’s relevant to the discussion.
[quote]What this does of course is underline why games developers shouldn’t listen to players too much. There is nothing so utterly freaky, no idea so completely horrible, no concept that will destroy your game so thoroughly that someone living in his mother’s basement somewhere doesn’t fervently believe to be the one true way to lift your game into immortality. Occasionally games designers will let this fundamental truth slip but mostly it’s held politely back in much the same way that everyone pretends not to notice an elderly relative’s halitosis. It’s a gentle deceit but a necessary one.[/quote]
I’m someone who regularly has to clean up other people’s messes and don the fireproof suit of Community Relations. In my experience a vocal element will always attempt to deconstruct whatever it was that you did/didn’t do in the most unflattering way possible. If there’s a reasonable and fair explanation for a decision and an explanation revolving around crack use and an unwavering contempt for the player base this group will always choose the latter. Unfortunately these people are usually louder than everyone else combined which creates a false impression that everyone is as upset as they are. For every Gnome running around Azeroth in the buff, there are likely hundreds of entirely happy players getting on with the game and oblivious to the [i]drahmaz[/i].
about 3 years ago
I disagree.
When there is a reasonable and calm explination of the reasons behind descisions and a clear statement of where the changes are leading in terms of balance… this dispells 95% of the tinfoil hat theories before they start.
Psychochild, I disagree – old, bitter customers who disuade people from joining up, who poisen the game atmosphere and in the case of PvP games pick on newbs JUST within the rules, but still cost you subs are far, far worse than someone who quits.
That is kinda vital.
about 3 years ago
Meh, it’s only the druids bitching and they were pampered and overpowered and needed a good nerfing. Not to mention a good kicking, too.
I remember Thunderfart’s attempts at CS with the SWG Smuggler’s Forum.
“Yes, we know you’ve been waiting for over 2 years. Please tell us what you’d like in your revamp”.
“Please post longer explanations of what’s broken so we can fix it.”
“Please summarize your longer explanations because there is too much there to be useful.”
“Please try to be more civil with developers as red names in this forum is a privilege and we will withdraw from all communications if we feel that our attempts are not appreciated.”
“I am aware that there have only been (very small number) of developer posts in this forum, please bear with us while we work on the other professions which are much more iconic and starwarsy!”
“I know it has been a year since I asked what you would like in your revamp. What would you like in your revamp?”
I paraphrase of course, but you get the idea. Abashi was pure class by comparison.
about 3 years ago
So, er, What are they complaining about exactly ?
about 3 years ago
It doesn’t matter, Ironwood.
There will always be someone complaining.
about 3 years ago
There’s always some complaining however what I find tragic about the situation is that the players feel there is no other option. That indicates a tremendous breakdown and part of why I actually would welcome some government regulation into the MMO space. People invest a great deal into their avatars, when their only options after years is take whatever comes or leave I believe its greatly unfair.
about 3 years ago
CuppaJo makes a good point. For example, in her time as community manager of CoH/V, Cryptic routinely put changes on test and solicited feedback from the players. Thoughtful and informed responses resulted in several major changes to patches before they went live. Not ever time, and unpopular decisions were still made, but I think that overall Cryptic has one of the best track records out there for managing user expectations.
about 3 years ago
Xaldin > I actually would welcome some government regulation into the MMO space
Oh yeah, because nobody’s ever unsatisfied when governments are in control… :/
about 3 years ago
Is it so wrong that the first thing I thought was ‘Gee, is anyone even in Ironforge anymore? Everyone is in Shattrath City’.
There are still SOME people in Ironforge/Orgrimmar, but the numbers have dropped significantly.
about 3 years ago
This is an issue of customer communication and, like a few others said, managing expectations. There were two big changes this patch that had people excited.
* Druids were buffed dramatically in 2.0, and as a hybrid they were able to spec to outheal priests, or to outtank warriors. Their tank spec is also their dps spec, so they could spec feral and be the best tank in the game, and also be among the top dps dealers (cat form).
This was a bit silly and Blizzard nerfed a few things rather gently. My guild’s druids aren’t happy about the nerfs but they knew it was coming, and they still expect to be able to tank well and dps well. Their healing dominance wasn’t changed.
* The priest nerf was a direct pvp nerf. Prayer of Mending is an instant-cast reverse-proc heal, that fired on damage. Then it jumped to another member of the group and stayed ’til they took damage. If it proc’d twice, it was extremely mana-efficient.
As an instant-heal, it was pvp gold. Priests are target #1 when it comes to pvp, because they’re healers and because they are very easy to kill. PoM allowed a priest to extend their arena survivability from ~3s to around 10-12s when facing focus fire. That’s a big deal.
The nerf was to put PoM on a 20s cooldown. The problem was that even with PoM, priests were having severe survivability issues in pvp. This nerf came out of left field, because there were few complaints about it and people simply didn’t expect it.
Community management is about managing expectations. The community is a lot happier if they understand the reasoning behind a change. They don’t need to agree with it, but without communication we’re left guessing. In an information vacuum, the craziest theories will rush in to fill the void.
about 3 years ago
I was hoping for more Smiths references.
about 3 years ago
I think all of you have missed that this happens to varying degrees. Consider the following categories
- There are some changes that nobody will like but are necessary for the good of the game (even if most people won’t see that). At this point you hand a helmet to your CS rep and tell them to prepare for the worst.
- Changes that the devs think they need for the good of the game but can be handled in a different or better way. Having some players who are not prone to naked gnome protests and four letter words can help your devs in this
- Changes the devs don’t even realize happened. You change one segment, do some beta on it and roll it live where that 1% it affects discover it and resort to howling. (see EQ bards)
- Changes that the devs don’t know that they need. The opposite of “ZOMG NERFED WTF” is “Why is this STILL broken?” A running joke in early EQ patches was they fixed that broken door animation but they missed Big Issue X.
Keep in mind that in any protest or riot or any sort of civil unrest, there’s always an element that likes to stick it to The Man and they could care less about your cause. It sometimes seems like this number can be as high as 50%. It’s human nature.
It reminds me of a scene from the 1992 LA riots where a truck driver refused to run over rioters and was pulled from his cab and nearly beaten to death for his consideration. The men who beat the driver were black but so were the men who stopped and pulled him into their car, at great personal risk, and drove him to the hospital. Same people but vastly different character. It’s important to remember that in the MMO world as well. Some people would love to see the game crash and burn but some people want to help you make it a better place. Lumping them together does everyone a great disservice.
about 3 years ago
The real problem with the nerfs in the next patch are that they target Druids, Priests and apparently some stealth nerfs for paladin shields.
Basically 3 out of 4 healing classes are getting nerfed and people get nervous about anything that can reduce the healer population.
about 3 years ago
“Once again: the best way to make a protest is to cancel your account. The optimum solution is to contact customer service and let them record the reason you’re canceling the account. If enough people cancel and give reason, then you know your voice will be heard. If there aren’t enough people to do that, then your issue was not that wide-spread.”
This sounds like a good idea, but it’s extremely hard to pull off. Anything people have invested their emotions and time on, they’ll be reluctant to let go. It could be as simple as not losing their shiny trinkets, or maintaining contact with their friends.
If such an effort can’t reach a critical mass (and in the case of relatively minor balance shifts, it never will), it will send no message to the company, and make it harder to organize resistance in the future. Anyone that does cancel was probably ready to do so anyways, and all they needed was a catalyst.
A riot though? That’s fun! Screenshots and movies will be made and people will be laughing about it for months.. bragging about how long they managed to get banned over it. If all it takes to be heard is 5 minutes on a random server standing around spamming profanity with 30 like minded individuals, well now you’re talking.
about 3 years ago
“Oh yeah, because nobody’s ever unsatisfied when governments are in control… :/”
Has nothing to do with being satisfied as it does for giving people an avenue of complaining. Today its the company’s way or the highway when they change something. I see a bit of regulation as the only way to force a measure of balance in the process. The companies won’t do it on their own.
about 3 years ago
> Today its the company’s way or the highway when they change something. I see a bit of regulation as the only way to force a measure of balance in the process. The companies won’t do it on their own.
Your wallet is an effective voting tool. Use it, or merely be an ineffective tool. If you continue to buy a service, the assumption is that you are happy enough to pay for that service.
The company’s way or the highway is how everything works. If you don’t like it, feel free to find another company.
about 3 years ago
I think in-game protests are useless – it shows that you are still subscribed. About the only thing that would be listened to is exit surveys, so make sure you quit and fill your reasons for it.
about 3 years ago
Am I the only one who finds it ironic that in order to change a world you don’t want into a world you do, you have to sever yourself from it?
People may vote with their feet, but by the time it comes to that, they don’t care about the world enough to play in it any more, and thus their leaving ceases to be a form of protest.
Seems like a Catch-22 to me.
about 3 years ago
Druids pampered!? They nerfed… gently?
They reduced armor, health and damage, and being damage was the only thing allowing druids to hold aggro after the previous aggro nerf, aggro is nerfed then too. In the beta health was also nerfed, so that when the expansion hit most druids health actually dropped. A level 70 druid might have this huge number for AC at 70, but the equivalent damage mitigation for when they were 60 means they have less. And they nerf this.
Then you have druids at least comforted by the fact there might be some situations where they could be preferred… and the warrior buffs nerf THAT! Escaping snares? Oh druids can do that, so better give it to warriors. Immune to polymorph? Give warriors magic reflect. Holding multiple targets? Nerf druids, give to warriors.
For two years the druid “hybrid” was forced to fill only one role: healing and that’s it. Warriors, the “specialists,” could DPS or tank.
Pampered and gently indeed.
about 3 years ago
The worst way to complain is to cancel the subscription for the player and the company. For the player, they aren’t going to listen to you once you are no longer a customer. Given that most of the official boards now require an active subscription you can’t participate in the discussions that might bring you back. The devs stop listening to you because you are no longer a customer not only in the literal since being blocked from the messageboards but in the figurative sense too because the customer no longer has a dog in the fight.
For the company, forcing people to quit just to be listened to is downright insane. Again, an ingame protest is done by people who have a stake in the game. They should be, on the whole, be listened to because it’s quite possible they have a valid point. These protests aren’t the first step, after all. It takes a good deal of ignoring the customers to get them to act in this way because, odds are, they would rather be playing the game than fighting you.
So long as the other reasons people are playing are still valid, social reasons and the like, the notion that they should quit just so they are listened to is perhaps the worst thing one can suggest. Odds are they still enjoy the game and want things fixed. They are sending a portion of the meal back, not the whole thing. To walk out of the resturant because the steak was medium rare rather than medium is using the wrong tool for the right job.
People who quit because you’ve burnt them on CS don’t come back and aren’t afraid to tell everyone. Advocating this as a viable method of protest doesn’t meet the goals of any party involved.
about 3 years ago
The worst way to complain is to cancel the subscription for the player and the company. For the player, they aren’t going to listen to you once you are no longer a customer. Given that most of the official boards now require an active subscription you can’t participate in the discussions that might bring you back. The devs stop listening to you because you are no longer a customer not only in the literal since being blocked from the messageboards but in the figurative sense too because the customer no longer has a dog in the fight.
Not necessarily. Exit Survey results are one of the few bits of information that actually exits the CS department and is seen by other groups, such as marketing and management.
about 3 years ago
Pehaps that is not the best time to start taking their complaints seriously.
about 3 years ago
The fact that the only way to get a voice is to sacrifice everything one has worked for, in some cases for years, because some entity above thought they had a great idea is inherently anti-consumer. Ultimately I’d desire some measure of ‘bill of rights’ that goes beyond what is basicly a suicide pact that only gets mutual when you get critical mass doing it (see AC2) and even then still takes forever to enact things that would have fixed the situation years prior (see DAOC). In the end that is why some regulation is going to be a must. Market forces are all nice and everything but this model has made it all but impossible for a individual to be treated fairly.
Given Bill Gate’s finances it would be possible for an individual to force the situation through streams of litigation. Since that is unlikely for an individual the government is the only entity that can protect a person from company’s predatory actions.
about 3 years ago
Protests solve nothing other than having your accounts banned.
The company itself could never give into a protest as it would set a precedent for the future in that if a small minory of people do not like something they can cause a disruption until they get what they want.
In all honesty it doesn’t matter how often the developers/cm post. The userbase has a “sense of entitlement” on their $15/month that no change to the game should be made if they do not like it.
about 3 years ago
The only way to be seriously heard is to cancel. But that doesn’t and shouldn’t mean you never play again if you actually like the game. What you do is cancel for one month in protest, with your exit survey clearly stating the reason you cancelled. Preferably get organized and have a lot of people quite at once. Go do something else for a month. Then come back.
It’s not a hollow threat. Sure they aren’t loosing you as a customer forever, and you can even specify that in your exit surveys if you want. But if enough people are doing it it will still effect the bottom line, you lose nothing because your character is retained and you will still have a voice when you return.
Quitting forever solves nothing because there’s no reason to solve your probelms if they think you won’t be coming back. Not quitting also solves nothing because voting with your wallet is the only way to have an effect. One month quits can actually have an effect if done on a wide enough scale.
about 3 years ago
tide: “I was hoping for more Smiths references.”
Hang the CS, hang the CS, hang the CS… haaang the Ceeee-essss.
Or:
I would log out tonight, but I haven’t got enough XP.
This Troll said “how gruesome, that someone high-level should caaaare”.
How’s that work for ya?
about 3 years ago
Xaldin are you saying that Congress (or your local equivalent) should occupy themselves with debating whether a nerf was justified? Or that legislation should be passed that forbade developers from making quantitative changes to a game after release?
I guarantee that any nation that passed legislation like that would see an immediate exodus of its gaming industry.
about 3 years ago
you cant win a fight on the internet
about 3 years ago
Can too.
about 3 years ago
Consulting the community and getting ideas and feedback is important, but you can’t believe that the wider community is all-knowing or always right. You have to run the feedback past your own filters to try and find the real concerns you didn’t think of.
Developers are not any more or less smart than players are. They may have experience building and managing a game, but they don’t play the game nearly as often as players do. Developers see their game as a matter of numbers and statistics. They have no “feel” for the game, because they’re busy managing other people or focusing on their assigned part.
Everyone assumes all players are dumbasses who would all rally together to viciously defend anything overpowered or game-breaking, but that simply is not the case! Many players are smart and well spoken, who can articulate their thoughts well enough to convince even a simpleton the what and wheres of a problem. The dumber players then use the smarter people’s opinions as a means to cheer and rally behind the opinion.
Even if you still think developers are infallible, this still doesn’t absolve the fact that community feedback post-launch has been ineffective overall. Something needs to be done where that feedback actually matters and we see shitty balance decisions stopped more than 50% of the time. Ideally, this would be as close to 100% as possible, but I imagine it would be a long time before the hubris of most developers are truly kept in check.
about 3 years ago
This is an issue of customer communication and, like a few others said, managing expectations.
For the druids at least, a lot of the issue is this:
Right before the patch went live, based on beta feedback, they drastically changed the way that things work on the druid side of things. Despite assurances that each role would get itemized this time around, Blizzard seemed to decide the path of least resistance was the way to go, and started mucking around hither and yon with the base formulas of the manner in which the class worked. This included almost everything that’s getting nerfed.
When they did this, people made logical and well-reasoned (if not dispassionate) arguments about where this would lead. And it led exactly where the players said it would.
It’s very hard to take something “for the good of the game” when you have the impression that you understand the game (or at least the part that affects you) better than the people making it. When druids pointed out that the only way to hold aggro with the aggro nerf was going to be pumping our damage up bigtime, and then when that exact reactionary mechanism causes them to have to adjust the overall power downward, it’s disheartening. The thing that keeps players happy through the inevitable power adjustments is the feeling that the developers, even if they’re nerfing you, at least have a long-range plan in mind that will work out.
The reason I know tons of EQ players who’ll never play another SoE game is the same reason there are screenshots of hundreds of rabid gnomes bitching at Blizzard: They’ve had the audacity to demonstrate not only do they not have a long range plan, but the people who [i]pay[/i] to play the game are seemingly more competent at understanding how the game works than the people who [i]are payed[/i] to make it. That kills confidence.
Whether or not the above is [i]true[/i] (and I think some aspects are and many aren’t), it’s a horrible impression to give your playerbase.
about 3 years ago
xzzy wrote:
If such an effort can’t reach a critical mass (and in the case of relatively minor balance shifts, it never will), it will send no message to the company, and make it harder to organize resistance in the future.
If you can’t reach critical mass, then perhaps you need to re-evaluate your complaint and see if it really has any merit. If people aren’t willing to demonstrate their displeasure beyond rolling up a new character and running around stupid for a little while, then you really have to question if the issue is really that serious.
Let me explain why “riots” like this aren’t worth a dev’s time. As I said before, you’re still giving money to the developer so there’s small incentive to really do much. Further, do you really think every person there cares about the issue? Some of the people might have read about the event and thought, “Sure, sounds like fun. Nerfs do suck!” The fact that players think that nerfs suck isn’t news. Further, there’s little credence here: why aren’t people willing to do the same protest with their actual high-level characters? Several hundred level 60-70 characters shouting sends a different message than a bunch of throwaway level 1 characters.
Actually, I like TPRJones’ idea above: quit for a month. Make it known why you’re quitting. As Damion points out, exit surveys are one of the things that do make a large impact because the company is no longer making money from you. This makes people sit up and take notice if you make your point in an intelligent and coherent way.
Kris wrote:
For two years the druid “hybrid” was forced to fill only one role: healing and that’s it.
Hey, that’s not true; we could have also act as enerevate-batteries for other healers.
But, this is one reason why I quit WoW a year ago and have had little interest in Burning Crusade: I was never happy with how the Druid’s role was defined either by the developers or by other players in groups and raids. It seemed silly to want to be a hybrid then essentially be told, “You can play any role you want, as long as it’s healing.”
Yeah, my canceled account means little to Blizzard, but trying to organize a riot would not have had more effect. Blizzard will just have to, somehow, console themselves with the piles and piles and piles of money all the unhappy people are still paying them.
about 3 years ago
…after all, if your players just sullenly assume you’re incompetent, they won’t bother to protest any more!
Warriors.
about 3 years ago
Actually, I like TPRJones’ idea above: quit for a month. Make it known why you’re quitting.
It was a bit of a throw-away idea, but the more I think about it the more I like it. I can just see it now, an organized group declaring April to be “A Month Without Priests”. Heh.
about 3 years ago
I’m not too sure in-game rioting will change anybody’s mind, but warriors spammed the druid, warrior and general forums for a few months and that seemed to do the trick.
“Cancelled with a couple of more weeks of playtime left. Blizzard asked why and when I explained that the rules were changed in the middle of the game to ruin the choices I made for quest gear, enchants and items, I couldn’t believe what I was told! The phone guy said warriors were really upset by the fact the druids could tank as well as they could…”
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=79173728&sid=1
Now I remember Tigole always played a warrior, and I only hope that had nothing to do with it. All I know, after seeing the balancing throughout the beta, is they ratcheted druids back down to an ability below where they were at before the expansion.
Personally, I cancelled. Just because I don’t want to bother playing, really, not thinking it will affect any decision making. The one thing that might have held me back, community, Blizzard never seemed to understand how to foster. My original server was overpopulated, and their solution, to split communties, left me going with my guild to a new server. Didn’t know anyone, had no real pvp anymore, no community holding me back when I hit cancel.
about 3 years ago
I didn’t read all the responses, but the thing that bothered me about nerfs was the arbitrary nature of it. For example at DAoC’s release, champions had several debuffs, but only 1 of them was worth casting depending on the situation (str/con in pvp, dex in pve). Mythic then nerfed the debuffs in a manner to make all of the debuffs worthless.
about 3 years ago
But Requiel, Congress doesn’t need to waste its time debating the merits of each individual nerf. They can merely delegate their powers to a new agency, lets call it the Federal Virtual Worlds Administration, in order to regulate MMOs. Thus we can spend millions of our tax dollars to ensure that Gnome Paladins don’t become a permanent virtual underclass, and to protect the Druid proletariat from the nerfbat of their bourgeois capitalist overlords. Socialism FTW baby!
Or not.
about 3 years ago
Man, The Paladins and Priests are getting most of their nerfs rolled back, and even some other buffs.
Makes me wonder if we Druids just haven’t rioted enough or something.
about 3 years ago
If you can’t reach critical mass, then perhaps you need to re-evaluate your complaint and see if it really has any merit.
Not a question of merit I think, but of the problem that a minority of players visit the forums, threads discussing what to do are generally deleted, and there is frequent disagreement about what to do about the problem.
That doesn’t mean the complaint is meritless, it means it’s hard to organize people onto a common course.
People don’t want to quit, they want to have the fun that the game is supposed to be offering.
about 3 years ago
That doesn’t mean the complaint is meritless, it means it’s hard to organize people onto a common course.
It’s only hard to organize people to do a thing if they don’t want it badly enough. Which, again, leads credence to re-evaluating your complaint.
about 3 years ago
“Cael |
Meh, it’s only the druids bitching and they were pampered and overpowered and needed a good nerfing. Not to mention a good kicking, too.”
You play a lock or 6kpyro critting mage don’tcha.
Druids sucked for 2 years. 2 years.
They deserved every buff they got.
I’m reading that the mangle fix they think will normalize damage is a bug.
Something about having maul lit up when you use mangle that makes mangle use the cat mangle modifiers.
Either way druids are in no way OP in the arenas. Actually they are pretty crap.
about 3 years ago
I was never pampered. I was a die hard feral druid from day 1, and until 2.0, I had to fight like a rabid lion for every bit of respect I could get as anything besides an off-healer who was too selfish to spec into his real role for raids and groups.
It was awesome that I was finally wanted for what I rolled my class for, for what the description page for my class claimed I COULD play the class for, for the first time since I rolled the class a year and a half ago.
You better bet that I’m pissed that that’s being taken away from me now, and that does not make me pampered.
about 3 years ago
Time for Blizzard to set the virtual Fun Police on their asses in-game.
about 3 years ago
“Your wallet is an effective voting tool.”
Not really. I’ve dumped many games in the past due to clueless Devs.
- SWG (pure, unadulterated cluelessness)
- EQ2 (fix your damn game engine, and run your beta-style revamps *before* launch. plus ‘Station Exchange’ and the nickel’n'diming with the website features annoyed me big time)
- DAOC (There is nothing wrong with Midgard… Hibernia is not overpowered, they just play better… yeah right, plus the fact that Devs couldn’t take any criticism whatsoever in the Pendragon boards, which I was a member of for quite a while)
- City of Heroes / Villains (we don’t need content, we have super heroes… it’s sad they don’t have resources to actually expand on the base game they had at launch, and redoing the game second time over with villains was probably not the best way to expand your game, except for the alt-maniacs among us)
I’ve returned to look at each of these game every now and then – initially by reading the relevant boards or taking up on ‘free x days to check us out again’ offers, sometimes by reopening my account for a month.
Nothing much has ever changed. Well, DAOC is nowdays shaking up things quite a bit, but I’m way past that point where I would care any more. The game is dead, and EA will pull the plug after Warhammer is launched (well, as soon as it’s beancounters can make the case for it after EA/Mythic has another product out)
So much for voting with your wallet. If something major does change due to dwindling subscriber numbers, it usually comes so late that it’s some ‘quick fix’ done with the least amount of resources possible to try to entice a few people to resubscribe. “Too little too late” in just about every case I can recall – the subscribers already went away, and with them, any hope for the devs to get beancounter approval and resources to do anything major.
SWG at least had the balls to try a whole re-do on the fly. The game still sucks, as the re-do was a complete disaster, but at least they tried *something*. EQ2 has also done some major bits to combat it’s suckiness, but the fact that they apparently have no 3D engine coders left to fix their buggy ‘look, we have shadows but they disappear after 5 minutes, and we dont know how to fix it’ game engine just turns me off.
Sorry for the rant. We now return to our scheduled nerf thread, already in progress…
* Druid nerfs are fine, just add them bit more aggro generation to allow them to actually tank something.
* Priest PoH nerfs were uncalled for. Shadow priest nerf is understandable, but too severe.
* Paladin nerfs (already mostly rolled back) were just silly.
about 3 years ago
Psychochild, most people won’t quit for a month though. They’ll just GO, and that exit survey is an annoyance they won’t fill in.
And it’s considerably more expensive to get new players than to retain the ones you have.
about 3 years ago
> plus the fact that Devs couldn’t take any
> criticism whatsoever in the Pendragon boards,
> which I was a member of for quite a while
As one of those devs that took quite a lot of criticism with good humor, I feel it necessary to remind you that you know better.
about 3 years ago
“So much for voting with your wallet.”
All because you were outvoted by people who didn’t quit doesn’t mean it’s inneffective. It just means you were outvoted.
about 3 years ago
hang the dj
about 3 years ago
““So much for voting with your wallet.”
All because you were outvoted by people who didn’t quit doesn’t mean it’s inneffective. It just means you were outvoted.”
No, actually I think I was in the majority at least on SWG and DAOC.
Problem is, even with majority of playerbase gone, nothing happens. Like I said – by the time the subscriber drain reaches the point where someone goes ‘omg we must be doing something wrong, everyone is cancelling’, it’s usually too late to fix anything, because the beancounters don’t see the point of spending more resources to fix the game since it’s already dying.
And as far as DAOC/Pendragon board story goes… well, apparently someone didn’t have enough humor as I left the board via a swing of the mighty banstick of doom, because someone apparently thought that if I’m editing a post, and an admin edits it at the same time removing something, submitting his edit before mine, that does not mean I changed the admins edit back to the way it was on purpose (hello banstick). And no, no amount of explanation helped at that point.
But that’s ancient history. DAOC *was* good fun for a good while, and I definitely got my moneys worth out of it.
about 3 years ago
Whatever happened on the DAOC boards, I think DAOC itself is a perfect example of the Unsubscribing Catch-22 VPellen is talking about.
Everyone hated Trials of Atlantis. Everyone complained to Mythic. Mythic didn’t care. (Of course, Mythic did care, but for obvious reasons the company couldn’t send Tweety out to write an apology for the fact that the game sucked now.)
So everyone voted with their wallets and quit. DAOC has had plenty of cool content added in the meantime, even a TOA-free server, but no one who would have stayed for that content still cares, because no one plays DAOC any more.
That’s the problem with letting your customers vote with their wallets. The vote is sometimes like a real electoral vote- that is, it’s irrevocable.
Xaldin: Just no. No. Your sentiment is understandable, but even if it weren’t abhorrent to suggest we steal people’s games from them at gunpoint (force being the only real weight any government carries), there are very few situations in life that government intervention does not deteriorate.
It’s the pastime of long-time Lum readers and our ilk to accord to these virtual worlds the same gravity normally reserved for nuclear weapon summits. However, it should not be overlooked that we’re essentially discussing highly evolved versions of Monopoly.
about 3 years ago
Perhaps threatening to crash servers IS why the buffs were removed.
http://forums.ageofconan.com/showpost.php?p=206834
Okay druids, uncancel and go crash servers.
about 3 years ago
HitNRun nailed it about DAoC. I played DAoC at release for a couple of months (until it threatened my marriage) and then came back for SI for 6 months (had it better under control). I had tried EQ twice but DAoC kicked its butt twelve ways from Sunday as far as I was concerned. During my second break from DAoC, ToA came out and everyone I talked to online said it had turned into EQ as far as unbalancing PvP was concerned. I never went back. I’ve been playing WoW now off and on since release, but in 10 years I’ll bet I still have fonder memories of early DAoC, even though Blizzard has easily gotten twice as much money out of me as Mythic ever did. The idea that voting with your feet works sounds like a good idea, but no one has actually managed to bring up any concrete examples of it ever working.
about 3 years ago
—
The idea that voting with your feet works sounds like a good idea, but no one has actually managed to bring up any concrete examples of it ever working.
—
It’s a good question. Is anybody who is in a position to know, aware of a situation where a company has considered cancellation statistics and effected change in response to them? My guess would be that it has, but it’s a rare circumstance.
about 3 years ago
Blizzard should take at least some heed, if players become so unhappy they can kill the game like they did with SWG and DAOC.
I don’t know why but developers do miss out on obvious things sometimes. One time the developers of the game I was playing did a “graphical update” which consisted of dozens of hills on formerly flat landscape. Lots and lots of hills in pvp areas = death, for supremely obvious reasons. Apparently they just thought it would look cool because the flat landscape was too boring…did they listen to the pvpers? Nope. :p
Nerfing always makes players complain, after all they did invest their time and membership money on their character – devs making it less powerful annoys them. Devs shouldn’t be surpised. :p
about 3 years ago
Nerfs destroy a lot of games.
They should constantly raise everyones abilities up – like the classes are evolving – never nerf one – make the others stronger.
Rotate the imbalance around, one month make one class stronger, the next another class, that way everyone gets to be more powerful for a bit.