Can you recall any version of the game where there was a fairly casual channel that a Dev was wiling to use? Aggrend is the exception to the norm of wow. I think Ghostcrawler was the last to really communicate to this degree?
Otherwise it's just a Community manager compiling some methodical news or patch notes for people.
Jeff still operated by the old ways. His communications with players were planned, long-winded and one-sided. He was a very charismatic guy, and talented team lead, with a pretty great track record.
But he didn't communicate with players in the same manner Aggrend does. He can be hit or miss for sure, but Aggrend undoubtedly has more productive back and forth convos with players than Jeff did.
That’s not true at all. Jeff was very active on both the Blizzard forums and overwatch subreddit. /u/Blizz_JeffKaplan to see how much he communicated directly with the community.
I'm aware of his reddit acc. The volume doesn't match Aggrend's. Look through his Twitter and you'll see the sheer number of conversations he has with players.
I think you clearly just weren’t playing overwatch when it came out because you are speaking about something you know nothing about. The main difference between Jeff and Aggrend with communication is that Jeff never verbally insulted customers in conversations. Aggrend gets triggered and gives dickish responses all the time. Are they often warranted? Sure. But Jeff was simply a way better communicator than Aggrend will ever be.
Papa Jeff would communicate all good then nothing would happen in game for 8 months. Let's not pretend Kaplan's communication ever actually lead to anything changing. For better or worse, at least here with Aggrend and sod things can happen quickly sometimes
To be fair, people weren't really as entitled and aggressive towards devs back in the OW days. People have gotten progressively more entitled and asshole-ish online in general.
As someone who has worked in AAA game dev for 20 years, communication is hard because you have to dance around the unfortunate truth that some decisions and restrictions are handed to you from on high that you have to work around. That being said there is a gigantic amount of control the dev team has within their product which is why people like Aggrend have so much they can talk about, but topics will inevitably lead to some of the restrictions teams have that are company focused and not player focused.
Publicly traded companies are ultimately responsible to their shareholders to increase value of the company which in turn means their ultimate goal is to generate more money from their consumers. In general the higher ups at the company control budget, team sizes and scheduling while mandating a few very high level features (like add a battlepass or add mtx to the game). They are hands off on how said requirements are added, thats dev team stuff.
If I had to guess I would think the devteam has to make some compromises over scheduling since there are so many wow branches to manage and the company would be very focused on trying to maximize player count which means spreading out new releases and phases as best they can.
The last big point are resources, I’m fairly confident the devteam doesnt have the people or time needed to produce the products it wants so they need to work within the limitations they’re given.
So now back to communication, you can see how some topics can be tricky for developers to have honest conversations about without basically “yea management made us add the wow token” or “yea we wanted phase 2 to be shorter but we couldnt because of wrath”. Developers can either dance around and avoid topics that have the above bad answers or try and put a positive spin on them and for a lot of developers its just easier and less stressful to just not engage at all.
Now that being said there a hell of a lot of stuff developers can talk about that they have full control over. The runes they decide to bring over? Balance changes? Incursions? All of these things fall directly in dev court that they can easily engage in and aggrend does a pretty good job despite a lot of the toxicity the community brings
> you have to dance around the unfortunate truth that some decisions and restrictions are handed to you from on high that you have to work around.
The other uncomfortable truth is that many of your customers are stupid, and many of them are stupid *and* toxic. And many others aren't stupid, but are definitely toxic.
There's a reason most developers want to have *nothing* to do with their playerbase. They want to build videogames, not be screamed at by xxXredditLordXxx.
I always wonder where blizzard would be if they were a private company.
And sure Blizzard might have “sold out”, but that happened in 1994 when they were acquired by davidson and associates. I cant find any details in why they allowed themselves to be acquired by davidson and associates but if I recall correctly they needed $$$ to continue running and davidson and associates gave them complete free reign as long as they remained profitable. Also keep in mind that this was before they’d even released warcraft 1 let alone diablo or starcraft
From there Vivendi got them from D&A, then activision got them from vivendi then MS got them from activision.
So sure they “sold out” but like most people think.
Maybe I'm weird but I'd honestly just prefer to be straight up given answers like "Yeah we can't because of Wrath". You see some Indy developers this blunt and it is honestly just so much more refreshing.
This stubborn societal idea you still see in so many big companies that its better to not acknowledge anything you did wrong really needs to die out. We'd live in a far less tiring world if we could skip the bullshit and just admit when something wasn't ideal and why then look at ways to avoid it happening in future.
Sure, it means you're not always getting the answer one wants but at least I'm getting an actual answer and I'm being treated like an adult and given it straight ya know?
There’s a lot of wrongs can and do admit (Aggrend has a admitted some misteps they’ve done for example)
The answer they absolutely wont give is basically “we’re doing this for profit at the expense of our users because our bosses made us”
At the end of the day, this is the answer for 95% of the problems WoW has.
There are a bunch of dedicated developers doing what they can with a skeleton crew while management asks them everyday via a meeting that could have been an email: What have you done today to help me finance my new yacht?
Its actually not, theres a **lot** of control the dev team has, item tuning, new content (incursions), balance changes etc are all basically within control of the development team. The main things they’re limited by is basically scope (the time and resources available to produce what they want)
I guarantee you their initial list of things they wanted to do to class via runes included some things that werent feasible because of how much time it would take to implement them. Sadly some good ideas just take an obscene amount of resources to develop and it just make sense when you can spend those resources to make many other almost as cool things in a much shorter time and thats just responsible dev management.
Theres a line between just being irresponsible with your development resources and just having too few resource to develop quality content for your users.
I get that its a more difficult one to convey neutrally and well but you can absolutely admit this without throwing someone under the bus with the right phrasing though:
For example: "That decision was unfortunately out of our hands and made for x financial reasons" is benign enough while still telling the truth and i've seen this posted by Indies before.
Maybe I just expect too much from people...
They absolutely can but the bigger companies tend to steer away from those types on comments. I’m not surprised indies have broached the subject as they are quite literally limited by the only money they have while larger companies are limited by how much they decide to spend and people tend to me more lenient to a company that is doing the best they can with the limited funds at their disposal vs a big company who has tons of money gained off the backs of their customers and choose not to spend it to better their customers.
Its much more nuanced than that of course, big companies aren't strictly being evil as there are reasonable fiscal limitations they can and do make while they juggle multiple products and multiple live services. Its a murky topic for a dev to discuss and I dont think developers really have all the information on why those top level decisions are made anyways
Terraria 44 million copies sold. Stardew valley 30 million copies sold. I think maybe the problem is trying to maximize shareholder profit with micro transactions and shop items instead of fixing the game. Sod is huge and they're dropping the ball for what? At the end of the day it's a multi billion dollar company that you're making excuses for. I work in finance and if I provided such piss poor results I'd be out of a job with the quickness.
>At the end of the day it's a multi billion dollar company that you're making excuses for.
I never meant to come off as making excuses for them, just why devs being open and honest can be hard. I did say financing is nuanced and there are some reasonable restrictions/limitations to put in place but that sure doesnt mean they dont also make unreasonable ones too
you can tell the wow players who've only been playing for a couple of recent xpacs.
No actual wow player who was around during the time Jeff K. held active roles in WoW's development would say this.
Why do you think Jeff is a fan favorite? Not just cause of his time with OW.
Tseric used to post on the forums back during original vanilla and tbc. He's likely one of the reasons we don't get normal communication - Tseric was an asshole and would regularly talk shit to people
This is a weird revision of Tseric's history. He definitely didn't start out as an asshole. He tried too hard to be helpful to the playerbase by interacting with them regularly and got burned to hell and back for it.
*Then he became an asshole. But he most definitely didn't start that way.
Yeah, I've heard of him but it was before my time. I was always under the impression he was just dogpiled by the community and lashed back with hostility.
Oh he was. He was like the employee from spongebob where he looked old and sad but was so bushy when he started. Every time he'd post, it'd inevitably get locked from all the flaming. When he was on his last 2 weeks you could really tell he stopped giving a shit.
This feels like it was so long ago, back when people would flame each other for the lulz. Now everything is corporate and that behavior would get you axed and blacklisted in an hour.
Actual Devs, yes and no, back in the days. We also used to have frequent Q&A streams with community managers which would relay the info to devs and relay us their info aswell. It was tons better than now.
Right now if the one guy communicating leaves, we're left with nothing.
Idk, if you go back to blue posts for bashiok or anybody from like 2010-2014 the posts were like BOOKS with math, reasoning, intent, go look at some of the end-mop pre-wod posts.
I think in general communication has slowed to a drip feed and Aggrend talks more than we’re used to but it still ain’t that crazy.
Nah, it's the worst thing a game dev can do. Have a person who filters forum/community feedback for you and presents it to you. Write an answer and let them post it.
Engage with the fanbase at conventions or other real life events. Never online.
This man gonna leave blizzard within 12 months
He’s in too deep with the community got Reddit threads with his name on it almost every day now
Happened to tseric, happened to ghostcrawler, gonna happen to aggrend
I was about to post this until I saw yours.
Outside of the quiet majority of players who just log and play, those who have the most noise on forums and Reddit are downright insufferable and create a situation where nobody would even want to be paid to deal with.
Honestly, you'd think they are animals if it weren't for the rather high ratio of fedoras and monocles.
Im a long time around wow players (Which is nothing im proud of but it happens) but the recent classic community is just a major oof.
I mean i understand some people get really invested in something they like, but they just go too far, way too far
Right. Unless you are a literal god of WoW lore, game mechanics, items, abilities, ect…
Everything you say will be meticulously picked apart by the community and you will be shit on relentlessly.
i dunno, it wasn’t nearly as bad throughout wrath. maybe at a few specific points.
i think SoD just brought back a lot of the turbo boomers wanting whatever “classic+” was in their mind, and with it the tidal wave of complaining when things don’t meet that expectation.
Na people have a right to complain.
Blizz customer service (both ticketing and communication) has been awful for a long time.
They are lucky they don't have a major competitor to their product so they can feed us 20 year old content every couple years because if MMO's ever get a resurgence again, this shit isn't gonna fly.
Simply the better product then, and that _despite_ not having any major competitor to chase. Damn Blizz!!! Always getting away with it… they make a product that you can decide if you wanna play or not but if enjoy it you are just a simple mongrel sheep that got tricked by big corp reusing old content!!!
Why are you twisting OP's words? The issue he has obviously isn't Aggrend going on vacation. It's that blizzard doesn't have anyone else to fill his role when he's away. Maybe his communication with the community is entirely voluntary and not part of his actual job, but it also wouldn't kill blizz to have someone else fill that role.
Whether or not you agree with that is one thing, but don't be weird and purposely misrepresent what OP is saying
> It's that blizzard doesn't have anyone else to fill his role when he's away.
I know this sub is full of professional developers and people with lots of experience in large companies, fully qualified to talk about how badly blizzard runs things, and definitely not just making shit up… but as someone who has actually been working in the tech industry for several decades this is entirely normal.
His essential duties (which are not talking to the internet…) will be covered by other staff. Things that can wait are left until he returns. Talking to reddit and twitter can wait.
Yup. It would be different if communication with community was an essential part of his role which Blizzard deemed as important
It’s like if Phil brings donuts for everyone at the office on Fridays because he is a nice guy but he decides to go on vocation for a couple of weeks. Does that mean the company needs to find someone else to bring donuts until he is back?
I would say at least *one* status report on Cata as a whole? Kinda like what we got for TBC and Wrath multiple times.
Like fixing bugs that have been present on the beta for weeks is all fine and expected but otherwise there has literally been zero actual *talk* about Cata since...January? When they did their last Q&A video or whatever I'm pretty sure.
And back then everything was still pretty vague. Like "we might do this and that, not sure yet". So...is it sure yet? I guess we'll find out soon enough for ourselves by seeing it but still kinda disappointing how this one went down.
This is a subscription game, so ya. Imagine paying for Netflix and getting no updates. Not expecting Aggrend to do anything, mans on vacation, power to them. But they have co-workers
Yeah Netflix wasn't a good example but you see my point. This is like a workmate going above and beyond 24/7, they go back to BAU for one week and then get hit up that they aren't doing the 1000 other things they did to be nice.
IMO two weeks really isn't that long to just play the game and not need constant announcement of fixes..
Why do you think it's a good idea for someone to fill the role of "verbal punching bag to countless entitled neckbeards?" The only way the communication works is if it is voluntary.
Even wow players don't want to talk to wow players
Look at this sub self reflection is painful but important you can't honestly tell me this community is even worth engaging with id pull the plug personally given the chance
if blizzard were to fill that role, it would be communications through an official channel with no feedback loop and we’d be complaining about that instead lol
Blizz should fill a job that doesnt exist in the first place? If the dude is communicating with us on his own time, blizz doesn’t need to pay someone else to do it when he’s not doing it.
His willingness to talk to people at all beyond just a blue post is probably the only thing you can't fault him on.
Its a thing people clamber for but the vitriol makes it not worth any amount of money much less the peanuts CMs would be paid
People don't like to hear it but this community is terrible and deserves to just be given what it gets and be happy or quit.
I'm active on a few other gaming subreddits, and the amount of hate game devs get is unreal.
The devs on the Path of Exile sub basically cut off all communications a while ago because of how bad the community got. Like some of the rank and file devs were actually reported to have broken down into tears at their work stations due to the shit the community threw at them.
The fact that any game devs talk to their communities at all is miraculous.
I just don't know what people are expecting? If you're bored of ph3 that's a personal problem. But to act like there's nothing to do when there is a plethora of things a person could choose to do. If you're a caster and don't have BOED, solo farm princess, if you're also an enchanter the blue dagger is a guaranteed brilliant shard. Druids, warlocks, and shamans bis ring is exalted with dreamwardens.
Everyone can work on their supply crate rep as revered/exalted give 16/18 slot bags for a very large fraction of the cost you can buy anywhere else.
Do BRD rounds for black diamonds for brotherhood rep next phase. Work on argent dawn rep now.
Is your profession maxed out?
If you're a warlock modas kharkun is your bis dagger, farm it.
There's so many things one could do, but chose not to.
And for all the people complaining about how hard and how long ST is. Go watch some era streamers clearing naxx/mc/bwl you're in for shock. Player power will undoubtedly be better but to actually think the end game raids aren't going to be more challenging than ST. You might as well quit and go play retail and lfr it up.
You’re getting downvoted by people but you are right. People will simply not play the game for the intrinsic fun of it anymore. They only obtain fun from getting an end result, so they’ll put themselves through miserable gameplay provided they get a few pixels at the end. It’s genuinely sad to me.
thats the thing you make your own fun. there was periods where all i did was log in and play the auction house, other times it was only to pvp. but everyone has seemingly devolved into the mindset of only wanting the theme park experience.
Think about how his communications are treated and then ask yourself again why nobody else wants to do it.
Hell you’re here right now acting entitled to direct dev communications despite everything he says being met with a torrent of abuse and screaming. Nobody here is owed those communications nor were they promised to us.
And despite this subs supposed expertise in how large companies work, this is entirely normal. Someone goes on leave their *essential* duties are covered and the rest is put on hold. Dealing with screaming babies on Twitter? Not essential.
If something important needs to go out, it’ll go out. Otherwise he’ll be back soon.
I mean its pretty simple. If you don't act like a condescending ass and also lie constantly to your customers, they are generally going to treat you pretty well.
I don't know where this notion that CMs who are honest, transparent, and kind just get shit on out of nowhere comes from.
>I don't know where this notion that CMs who are honest, transparent, and kind just get shit on out of nowhere comes from.
Because it happens to almost every CM in the business, especially if there are things they are not allowed to be transparent about or the answer is just not what some subset of players wanted
Do you have any examples? Because the kind of cm I am thinking about get almost universally praised. And even when players are disappointed in a company decision, they make sure to point out that they are angry at the company not the dev.
Old Wow cms like Lore, CMs for Apex Legends used to be super active and got ripped apart, CMs for Smite used to be super active and are super friendly but still get absolutely shit on by angry people on reddit / twitter... The thing is the CMs/devs that communicate will just be the outlet for all the frustrations people have about the game or the company. So even if a dev or CM is super active, they get all the "how do you have so many braindead developers that cant understand simple balance" or "you are selfish and killing this game by milking every red cent out of it" comments
Any issues with the companys business decisions like how things are monetized, pushed out early etc, the CM becomes the lightning rod for all the backlash even months after it happens when the CM is discussing unrelated topics... god forbid if they arent allowed to answer some topic and people follow them around everywhere calling them liars, censoring, etc
I dont blame devs for not communicating these days. I'm sure there are communities that have fostered a pretty healthy space for dialogue (OSRS seems pretty good in this regard, aside from their customer support which is a meme), but I dont think a WoW dev/cm could ever interact on the forums/reddit/twitter without degens screaming at them.
Thats been my impression, yes. At least looking through the lens of it being a dev sharing their perspective and not a customer service agent. Like if he was a customer service agent then saying things like "its almost like we wanted being out in the world to be lucrative" (re: incursions breaking the economy) would seem condescending, but given his position just seems like a bit of tongue in cheek, albeit they were undeniably overtuned.
He's given a lot of insight into why they do things the way they have, clearing up expectations (eg on raid difficulty), had good dialogues with people collecting feedback. I think its a pretty small and agile team (thats also juggling Cata classic) so things are almost certainly a moving target, procedures and project priorities changing.
> I don't know where this notion that CMs who are honest, transparent, and kind just get shit on out of nowhere comes from.
First day on the internet or something?
A Destiny 2 dev who focused on PvP used to be super active on twitter. Not part of their job they just loved to go into deep tech discussions with people.
One day Bungie made a change that wasn’t super popular, someone asked this guy why. He explained the technical reasons behind the decision.. and was promptly run off the internet after being doxxed and having his and his families lives threatened by unhinged internet whackjobs.
So you know, things like that are why.
Because, like a lot of the public faces at Blizzard, Aggrend takes the limelight to draw the heat away from his employees.
It's easy to put all the blame on him if he is the only one communicating. This way the toxic community doesn't talk shit about the other devs, and instead focuses all their ire on Aggrend.
If you were a Blizz employee working on SoD would you want to deal with us after seeing all this shit Aggrend gets? I sure wouldn't.
How is any of that making him a martyr? They were just explaining proper channels of communication and funneling it to one spot. No where did they say if it was good or bad
He isn't? Sounds like he is to me. We only hear from him, he takes all the shit. I mean, just because you're upset the guy won't make your favorite class OP doesn't take away from the things he does.
There has to be someone like him. The average person on this subreddit and other WoW doesn't know how the world works, let alone how businesses operate. They have no idea what actual effort and processes are involved in software/game development so it has to be insanely exhausting to interact with online communities like this (according to the average user all development and bug fixes are trivial and their class is the most underpowered class which is obviously because aggrend hates them). It's an insanely entitled and ignorant community at the same time. I wouldn't want his job. I'd want to tell everyone how stupid they are everytime they open their mouth.
Even when you have dedicated community mgmt they always get fired after the company sets them up for a brutal week. Arrowhead is a great example of a company where most of the staff are pretty reachable and look what happened there with Helldivers.
The other employees are just fine, its not like the shit talk magically goes right to the devs, they’d have to search it out and anyone in game development is well acquainted with toxic communities.
On top of that dev managers are very good at showering their teams with positive community sentiment about their products
Official dev communication hasn't really changed in the last 2 weeks, because Aggrend's communication with the community has always been largely unoffical.
SoD and Cata does not depend on one person keeping communication afloat, because classic and retail (and the vast majority of the games industry) has never had community dialogue as a central part of it's developement process. Feedback, sure. But that isn't the role Aggrend fills.
Even while Aggrend is choosing to fill that role, it's not because the team needs it, it's because the community likes it. Maybe you could un-chicken little your brain and not assume the sky is failing because you noticed a change?
>official dev communication grinding to a halt
There’ve been at least 3 blue posts in the past 2 days discussing official news. What are you trying to argue?
> 1 for SoD bug fixes
May 8, 2024
Season of Discovery
Fixed an issue with Efflorescence generating frequent immune messages on totems.
>2 discussing PvP balancing changes.
one of those is just quoting the pvp aura from last week's post to reference in this week's post.
Eh. It’s Reddit. Hard to read tone from a post. The clarification probably seemed combative, instead of supportive. Since it sort of is.
Clarification that doesn’t actually contradict a point, but does slightly undermine it, is kinda pointless, and a bit petty. To be fair.
Reddit is easy to read the tone of a post. Imagine a 30 year old man crying uncontrollably while talking at the same time for a moment. Now hold that tone, and apply it to a post.
Only when it _doesn't_ read well that way, may you assume its anything else.
If the comments on this post don't reflect the mentality of the classic community, then I don't know what does. There are truly some unhinged opinions here.
Employees going on vacation or being laid off and no one else picking up the work is the cause of so many problems. People always think it's a conspiracy when no one was taught how to do Craig's job before he left for Norway.
Its absolutely crazy to think about how many people have to work at blizzard, but its like a company with 6 people.
"Hello, Blizzard here... Oh you would like to talk to aggrend, hes on vacation with his family till next week, I could write something down and he will message you when hes back"
who cares? he just says pre approved PR stuff and half if it is most likely just bullshit anyways, we aint losing much by not seeing his “then you are insecure” comments…
Blizzard's current business model is not designed to compete in the market. WoW already has a big enough presence in the market that their best option is to do nothing, spend nothing, maintain, and wring every last drop out of the work they've already done. They keep getting rewarded for doing the barest of minimums with their ip, why would they do work?
Honestly this sub just trashes everything the devs do ( for the most part) so why would anyone want to step up? As someone who loves vanilla I can wholeheartedly say that SoD may have not been exactly what I wanted as “classic +” but it has breathed new life into a game that I enjoy. P3 has been the weakest phase by far but that does not diminish P1 and to an extent P2.
Seasonal games are meant to be a short experience and as the first real attempt to appease the classic + crowd I’m satisfied so far. Let’s not forget that this game is pretty much figured out so content runs dry pretty quick due to the fact that we’ve played the fuck out of this game. So just touch some grass and raid log like the rest of us instead of complaining you have nothing to do because the devs are human too and can’t get please everyone but they can keep this 20 year game alive and thriving.
And then you have Cata where official dev communication has been nonexistent since about mid-January. Fantastic. We're at BfA/SL Retail level here basically.
aggrends work is a net positive imo. had honest comms with the community, was active. brought some good ole blizz vibes. but the things his team created for sod was detrimental and shows sod devs dont get vanilla
If you are a dev and not a apart of any communication channels would you really want to put yourself out there to get eaten alive by this toxic community?
Aggrend has the juice to be able to communicate unvetted and un-pr'd stuff. He also has the class and interpersonal skills to be able to do such. When both those items don't happen we get communication on the level of "you have phones don't you?" Game devs by and large don't have the interpersonal or pr skills to be able to communicate effectively with the masses.
Remember whenever Blizzard spouted that they want to communicate more with their community? Has that ever lasted more than one content patch? And been done by more than 1 or 2 select people?
Do you blame them? Wouldn't matter if a dev announced that every player is being given 50k usd, half the community would still attempt to crucify them and doxx their children because they wanted 100k.
They are paid to work on 4 completely different versions of the game not to be the community punching bag.
Wowhead does a fine enough job reporting game changes
They should have a community manager. People need to realize being a community manager is not Aggrends job, he goes way above and beyond what should be expected of him. Hearthstone is probably the best example. They have a great community manager who engages often on reddit and Twitter with the community, even some of the devs do as well, but less often. I don't get why it's so hard to have this for WoW as well.
This sub continues to be trash as per usual. Not OP ofc, but the comments. In the last 2 weeks, other than the PvP changes there has been only one change, and its nothing:
May 8, 2024
Season of Discovery
Fixed an issue with Efflorescence generating frequent immune messages on totems.
Is this because of Cata or Aggrend on vacation, or both? Idgaf, whatever the reason is, that is not OK. Not when they have said time and time again this is an iterative process.
I remember the good days when we had basically zero contact with the dev team and we had a good time
It was almost non existent in 2004
It was bad in 2007 during BC
It was bad in 2009 during ICC
It was bad 2010 with cata (we're here again)
I could go on. But the point is we would just a patch one day and that would be it
I think y'all need to get off Twitter and play the game 🤷🤷
Yeah no.....the way he behaves is not the norm. Unlike it but also completely understand why it's so abnormal..
Basically almost no one does what he does because dealing with the level of toxicity on the internet is highly taxing.
He is not required to do what he does but he does it because it likes supporting classic.
Expecting someone else to just "be him" for two weeks is a wild stance. Almost no one wants that job.
Because interacting with this cesspool of a 'community' is exhausting and doesn't deserve constant updates. It's good his team took a break the same as him. More people should take breaks...lol wow players
Have you seen the behaviour of game communities? On top of that, have you seen the degeneracy if the Wow community?
I'm not surprised in the slightest that nobody else is taking up the banner. Hell I count us lucky Aggrend took that bullet in the first place.
Not many games have a lot of communication. People want there to be some special thing they have with the game company and feel involved but it's just a product that they're selling. I probably wouldn't talk to the wow community either, it's the complete opposite of supportive or encouraging toward them. Most of the forum browsers just want the game to cater to their own personal needs and most of the time have absolutely no life so they get really upset when something changes or they feel it isn't fair to them.
I’m not entitled. So, if other people are too busy ensuring content is put out and bugs are fixed in a timely manner to communicate with us while Aggrend is out, that’s perfectly fine by me.
A LOT of people have no sense of responsibility, that is why. I have noticed it at work a TON the past two years taking on a higher roll in my field. And people are getting dumber.
Almost all companies are motivated entirely by money. They have likely recognize the fact that if they communicate or don't communicate, it doesn't matter in regard to how many people will subscribe.
Probably because there are so many asshats in the community that treat the devs like shit each time they communicate with the playerbase?
Gamers are the absolute worst people to communicate with
With the way the community acts, good or bad, I wouldn’t be surprised if he took this time to stop reading death threats and verbal abuse in his dm’s. Who wants to “step up” to that?
Because the community are assholes and to be quite honest if I was a dev I wouldn’t want to post anything either because whilst they do have some good interactions with players, people take it too far sometimes and are dickheads to them.
>Which means when he leaves the office for 2 weeks for any reason, others should have stepped up in his place to communicate and be active
No, because you are still paying them when he doesn't.
>Why do SoD and Cata have to depend on one person on that team being the one to keep communication afloat?
Because you're still paying them anyway.
Can you recall any version of the game where there was a fairly casual channel that a Dev was wiling to use? Aggrend is the exception to the norm of wow. I think Ghostcrawler was the last to really communicate to this degree? Otherwise it's just a Community manager compiling some methodical news or patch notes for people.
Jeff Kaplan was an incredible communicator when he was at Blizzard and led the Overwatch team.
Jeff still operated by the old ways. His communications with players were planned, long-winded and one-sided. He was a very charismatic guy, and talented team lead, with a pretty great track record. But he didn't communicate with players in the same manner Aggrend does. He can be hit or miss for sure, but Aggrend undoubtedly has more productive back and forth convos with players than Jeff did.
That’s not true at all. Jeff was very active on both the Blizzard forums and overwatch subreddit. /u/Blizz_JeffKaplan to see how much he communicated directly with the community.
I'm aware of his reddit acc. The volume doesn't match Aggrend's. Look through his Twitter and you'll see the sheer number of conversations he has with players.
I think you clearly just weren’t playing overwatch when it came out because you are speaking about something you know nothing about. The main difference between Jeff and Aggrend with communication is that Jeff never verbally insulted customers in conversations. Aggrend gets triggered and gives dickish responses all the time. Are they often warranted? Sure. But Jeff was simply a way better communicator than Aggrend will ever be.
Papa Jeff would communicate all good then nothing would happen in game for 8 months. Let's not pretend Kaplan's communication ever actually lead to anything changing. For better or worse, at least here with Aggrend and sod things can happen quickly sometimes
That is exactly why devs are not encouraged to talk to players. They aren’t communicators, they work.
To be fair, people weren't really as entitled and aggressive towards devs back in the OW days. People have gotten progressively more entitled and asshole-ish online in general.
They were. We've always been entitled, let's not kid ourselves into thinking that this is a new thing.
I think overall the Overwatch community was less toxic than the SoD community, but people have always been awful to devs.
Entitled to get what you pay for? Where do you live that you think that’s a crazy concept?
>I'm aware of his reddit acc. The volume doesn't match Aggrend's. Yeah you might want to check Aggrend's reddit acc lmao. Need a link?
Quantity over quality has been SoD's downturn so far so atleast Aggrends consistent.
As someone who has worked in AAA game dev for 20 years, communication is hard because you have to dance around the unfortunate truth that some decisions and restrictions are handed to you from on high that you have to work around. That being said there is a gigantic amount of control the dev team has within their product which is why people like Aggrend have so much they can talk about, but topics will inevitably lead to some of the restrictions teams have that are company focused and not player focused. Publicly traded companies are ultimately responsible to their shareholders to increase value of the company which in turn means their ultimate goal is to generate more money from their consumers. In general the higher ups at the company control budget, team sizes and scheduling while mandating a few very high level features (like add a battlepass or add mtx to the game). They are hands off on how said requirements are added, thats dev team stuff. If I had to guess I would think the devteam has to make some compromises over scheduling since there are so many wow branches to manage and the company would be very focused on trying to maximize player count which means spreading out new releases and phases as best they can. The last big point are resources, I’m fairly confident the devteam doesnt have the people or time needed to produce the products it wants so they need to work within the limitations they’re given. So now back to communication, you can see how some topics can be tricky for developers to have honest conversations about without basically “yea management made us add the wow token” or “yea we wanted phase 2 to be shorter but we couldnt because of wrath”. Developers can either dance around and avoid topics that have the above bad answers or try and put a positive spin on them and for a lot of developers its just easier and less stressful to just not engage at all. Now that being said there a hell of a lot of stuff developers can talk about that they have full control over. The runes they decide to bring over? Balance changes? Incursions? All of these things fall directly in dev court that they can easily engage in and aggrend does a pretty good job despite a lot of the toxicity the community brings
> you have to dance around the unfortunate truth that some decisions and restrictions are handed to you from on high that you have to work around. The other uncomfortable truth is that many of your customers are stupid, and many of them are stupid *and* toxic. And many others aren't stupid, but are definitely toxic. There's a reason most developers want to have *nothing* to do with their playerbase. They want to build videogames, not be screamed at by xxXredditLordXxx.
Tldr blizz sold out and now we pay the price while the stockholders laugh at us for continuing to support.
I always wonder where blizzard would be if they were a private company. And sure Blizzard might have “sold out”, but that happened in 1994 when they were acquired by davidson and associates. I cant find any details in why they allowed themselves to be acquired by davidson and associates but if I recall correctly they needed $$$ to continue running and davidson and associates gave them complete free reign as long as they remained profitable. Also keep in mind that this was before they’d even released warcraft 1 let alone diablo or starcraft From there Vivendi got them from D&A, then activision got them from vivendi then MS got them from activision. So sure they “sold out” but like most people think.
Maybe I'm weird but I'd honestly just prefer to be straight up given answers like "Yeah we can't because of Wrath". You see some Indy developers this blunt and it is honestly just so much more refreshing. This stubborn societal idea you still see in so many big companies that its better to not acknowledge anything you did wrong really needs to die out. We'd live in a far less tiring world if we could skip the bullshit and just admit when something wasn't ideal and why then look at ways to avoid it happening in future. Sure, it means you're not always getting the answer one wants but at least I'm getting an actual answer and I'm being treated like an adult and given it straight ya know?
There’s a lot of wrongs can and do admit (Aggrend has a admitted some misteps they’ve done for example) The answer they absolutely wont give is basically “we’re doing this for profit at the expense of our users because our bosses made us”
At the end of the day, this is the answer for 95% of the problems WoW has. There are a bunch of dedicated developers doing what they can with a skeleton crew while management asks them everyday via a meeting that could have been an email: What have you done today to help me finance my new yacht?
Its actually not, theres a **lot** of control the dev team has, item tuning, new content (incursions), balance changes etc are all basically within control of the development team. The main things they’re limited by is basically scope (the time and resources available to produce what they want) I guarantee you their initial list of things they wanted to do to class via runes included some things that werent feasible because of how much time it would take to implement them. Sadly some good ideas just take an obscene amount of resources to develop and it just make sense when you can spend those resources to make many other almost as cool things in a much shorter time and thats just responsible dev management. Theres a line between just being irresponsible with your development resources and just having too few resource to develop quality content for your users.
I get that its a more difficult one to convey neutrally and well but you can absolutely admit this without throwing someone under the bus with the right phrasing though: For example: "That decision was unfortunately out of our hands and made for x financial reasons" is benign enough while still telling the truth and i've seen this posted by Indies before. Maybe I just expect too much from people...
They absolutely can but the bigger companies tend to steer away from those types on comments. I’m not surprised indies have broached the subject as they are quite literally limited by the only money they have while larger companies are limited by how much they decide to spend and people tend to me more lenient to a company that is doing the best they can with the limited funds at their disposal vs a big company who has tons of money gained off the backs of their customers and choose not to spend it to better their customers. Its much more nuanced than that of course, big companies aren't strictly being evil as there are reasonable fiscal limitations they can and do make while they juggle multiple products and multiple live services. Its a murky topic for a dev to discuss and I dont think developers really have all the information on why those top level decisions are made anyways
Terraria 44 million copies sold. Stardew valley 30 million copies sold. I think maybe the problem is trying to maximize shareholder profit with micro transactions and shop items instead of fixing the game. Sod is huge and they're dropping the ball for what? At the end of the day it's a multi billion dollar company that you're making excuses for. I work in finance and if I provided such piss poor results I'd be out of a job with the quickness.
>At the end of the day it's a multi billion dollar company that you're making excuses for. I never meant to come off as making excuses for them, just why devs being open and honest can be hard. I did say financing is nuanced and there are some reasonable restrictions/limitations to put in place but that sure doesnt mean they dont also make unreasonable ones too
you can tell the wow players who've only been playing for a couple of recent xpacs. No actual wow player who was around during the time Jeff K. held active roles in WoW's development would say this. Why do you think Jeff is a fan favorite? Not just cause of his time with OW.
Tseric used to post on the forums back during original vanilla and tbc. He's likely one of the reasons we don't get normal communication - Tseric was an asshole and would regularly talk shit to people
This is a weird revision of Tseric's history. He definitely didn't start out as an asshole. He tried too hard to be helpful to the playerbase by interacting with them regularly and got burned to hell and back for it. *Then he became an asshole. But he most definitely didn't start that way.
It’s not a revision of any history. It’s not even a telling of a history. It’s just saying he was an asshole, which he was.
Yeah, I've heard of him but it was before my time. I was always under the impression he was just dogpiled by the community and lashed back with hostility.
Oh he was. He was like the employee from spongebob where he looked old and sad but was so bushy when he started. Every time he'd post, it'd inevitably get locked from all the flaming. When he was on his last 2 weeks you could really tell he stopped giving a shit. This feels like it was so long ago, back when people would flame each other for the lulz. Now everything is corporate and that behavior would get you axed and blacklisted in an hour.
Man, Tseric is a throwback. The forums were wild back then, and his final days as CM were quite memorable.
Got bus shocked.
Killing a Tseric should aggro every Tserics in a 40 yd radius. It makes sense, you are actually killing their best friend.
Popping enrage
Scarizard & Zorbrix both share a fair amount on Twitter/X. But often less formally than Aggrend does.
Tseric. *(cue canned laughter)*
Actual Devs, yes and no, back in the days. We also used to have frequent Q&A streams with community managers which would relay the info to devs and relay us their info aswell. It was tons better than now. Right now if the one guy communicating leaves, we're left with nothing.
Idk, if you go back to blue posts for bashiok or anybody from like 2010-2014 the posts were like BOOKS with math, reasoning, intent, go look at some of the end-mop pre-wod posts. I think in general communication has slowed to a drip feed and Aggrend talks more than we’re used to but it still ain’t that crazy.
This is probably the most uncommon yet basic thing EVERY game dev should do.
Being a competent game designer should probably be priority one.
Nah, it's the worst thing a game dev can do. Have a person who filters forum/community feedback for you and presents it to you. Write an answer and let them post it. Engage with the fanbase at conventions or other real life events. Never online.
This man gonna leave blizzard within 12 months He’s in too deep with the community got Reddit threads with his name on it almost every day now Happened to tseric, happened to ghostcrawler, gonna happen to aggrend
Maybe communicating and giving valuable news from his personal account wasn't the best idea Also lies, they tend to make people not very popular
Well, when you have only 6 people working there besides him anyway, these things happen
Are you sure they're 6 full employees?
Seeing this sub this doesn't surprise me at all, who in it's right mind wants to interact with this community, especially with the SoD crowd
I was about to post this until I saw yours. Outside of the quiet majority of players who just log and play, those who have the most noise on forums and Reddit are downright insufferable and create a situation where nobody would even want to be paid to deal with. Honestly, you'd think they are animals if it weren't for the rather high ratio of fedoras and monocles.
Im a long time around wow players (Which is nothing im proud of but it happens) but the recent classic community is just a major oof. I mean i understand some people get really invested in something they like, but they just go too far, way too far
In a temporary game mode lol
So ? How does that interfere with my comment ?
Right. Unless you are a literal god of WoW lore, game mechanics, items, abilities, ect… Everything you say will be meticulously picked apart by the community and you will be shit on relentlessly.
And if you got all that right, you are a "jobless basement dweller virgin who shouldnt get attention".
Forreal. Buddy probably highly regrets opening that can of worms
Because It’s obvious that he does it because he wants to not because blizz requires him to? Y’all are weird
This sub boils down to complaining for the sake of complaining, especially the SoD crowd
>especially the ~~SoD~~ **Classic** crowd FTFY. The Classic online fanbase is insanely whiney and toxic.
i dunno, it wasn’t nearly as bad throughout wrath. maybe at a few specific points. i think SoD just brought back a lot of the turbo boomers wanting whatever “classic+” was in their mind, and with it the tidal wave of complaining when things don’t meet that expectation.
Nah, its always been here. There just was a lower active base in this reddit which SoD rejuvenated, hence the extra complaining
Yessir, those'd be the turbo boomers.
I see, i just joined this sub with SoD so i cant compare how it was before.
About the same. Endless complaining without a solution in sight.
Literally. Every single thing Blizz says about Classic this subreddit attacks them.
I don't get it, if you are so unhappy with this game just move on, there are thousands of games out there.
Addiction is a hell of a drug
Na people have a right to complain. Blizz customer service (both ticketing and communication) has been awful for a long time. They are lucky they don't have a major competitor to their product so they can feed us 20 year old content every couple years because if MMO's ever get a resurgence again, this shit isn't gonna fly.
Simply the better product then, and that _despite_ not having any major competitor to chase. Damn Blizz!!! Always getting away with it… they make a product that you can decide if you wanna play or not but if enjoy it you are just a simple mongrel sheep that got tricked by big corp reusing old content!!!
Guy goes on a probably well deserved vacation and Redditors are mad he didn’t run it by them first.
Why are you twisting OP's words? The issue he has obviously isn't Aggrend going on vacation. It's that blizzard doesn't have anyone else to fill his role when he's away. Maybe his communication with the community is entirely voluntary and not part of his actual job, but it also wouldn't kill blizz to have someone else fill that role. Whether or not you agree with that is one thing, but don't be weird and purposely misrepresent what OP is saying
> It's that blizzard doesn't have anyone else to fill his role when he's away. I know this sub is full of professional developers and people with lots of experience in large companies, fully qualified to talk about how badly blizzard runs things, and definitely not just making shit up… but as someone who has actually been working in the tech industry for several decades this is entirely normal. His essential duties (which are not talking to the internet…) will be covered by other staff. Things that can wait are left until he returns. Talking to reddit and twitter can wait.
Yup. It would be different if communication with community was an essential part of his role which Blizzard deemed as important It’s like if Phil brings donuts for everyone at the office on Fridays because he is a nice guy but he decides to go on vocation for a couple of weeks. Does that mean the company needs to find someone else to bring donuts until he is back?
In the scheme of a video game, two weeks isn't much lol.... Do you expect an update each week on every single other game ?
When it’s in pre-patch and you are hoping some very obvious and very concerning bugs get fixed before the xpac release that is IN 2 weeks, yes.
we’ve been getting hotfixes with summary posts basically every day he’s been away.
Yeah. I don’t really understand what this community is expecting.
I would say at least *one* status report on Cata as a whole? Kinda like what we got for TBC and Wrath multiple times. Like fixing bugs that have been present on the beta for weeks is all fine and expected but otherwise there has literally been zero actual *talk* about Cata since...January? When they did their last Q&A video or whatever I'm pretty sure. And back then everything was still pretty vague. Like "we might do this and that, not sure yet". So...is it sure yet? I guess we'll find out soon enough for ourselves by seeing it but still kinda disappointing how this one went down.
This is a subscription game, so ya. Imagine paying for Netflix and getting no updates. Not expecting Aggrend to do anything, mans on vacation, power to them. But they have co-workers
Do Netflix provide patch notes once a fortnight?
They still don't get it lol. All of this screams entitlement and taking things for granted to me.
Yes, yes they do haha. But Netflix is an unfair comparison as they are a beast at updating and releasing new content
Yeah Netflix wasn't a good example but you see my point. This is like a workmate going above and beyond 24/7, they go back to BAU for one week and then get hit up that they aren't doing the 1000 other things they did to be nice. IMO two weeks really isn't that long to just play the game and not need constant announcement of fixes..
They have had blue posts though? Just because we got two weeks of no aggrend you act like its been completely silent when it has not.
Classic redditor downvote and forget but avoid the truth.
Why do you think it's a good idea for someone to fill the role of "verbal punching bag to countless entitled neckbeards?" The only way the communication works is if it is voluntary.
Why do you assume I condone people flaming devs on Twitter? The communication would also work if it was part of someone's job description.
Because that's an unfortunate, but inherent, part of the role and not many people want to subject themselves to that.
Even wow players don't want to talk to wow players Look at this sub self reflection is painful but important you can't honestly tell me this community is even worth engaging with id pull the plug personally given the chance
Doesn't he communicate on his personal X account?
if blizzard were to fill that role, it would be communications through an official channel with no feedback loop and we’d be complaining about that instead lol
Blizz should fill a job that doesnt exist in the first place? If the dude is communicating with us on his own time, blizz doesn’t need to pay someone else to do it when he’s not doing it.
Stop simping for blizzard and stop twisting ops words. That's not what people are saying.
His willingness to talk to people at all beyond just a blue post is probably the only thing you can't fault him on. Its a thing people clamber for but the vitriol makes it not worth any amount of money much less the peanuts CMs would be paid People don't like to hear it but this community is terrible and deserves to just be given what it gets and be happy or quit.
I'm active on a few other gaming subreddits, and the amount of hate game devs get is unreal. The devs on the Path of Exile sub basically cut off all communications a while ago because of how bad the community got. Like some of the rank and file devs were actually reported to have broken down into tears at their work stations due to the shit the community threw at them. The fact that any game devs talk to their communities at all is miraculous.
I just don't know what people are expecting? If you're bored of ph3 that's a personal problem. But to act like there's nothing to do when there is a plethora of things a person could choose to do. If you're a caster and don't have BOED, solo farm princess, if you're also an enchanter the blue dagger is a guaranteed brilliant shard. Druids, warlocks, and shamans bis ring is exalted with dreamwardens. Everyone can work on their supply crate rep as revered/exalted give 16/18 slot bags for a very large fraction of the cost you can buy anywhere else. Do BRD rounds for black diamonds for brotherhood rep next phase. Work on argent dawn rep now. Is your profession maxed out? If you're a warlock modas kharkun is your bis dagger, farm it. There's so many things one could do, but chose not to. And for all the people complaining about how hard and how long ST is. Go watch some era streamers clearing naxx/mc/bwl you're in for shock. Player power will undoubtedly be better but to actually think the end game raids aren't going to be more challenging than ST. You might as well quit and go play retail and lfr it up.
You’re getting downvoted by people but you are right. People will simply not play the game for the intrinsic fun of it anymore. They only obtain fun from getting an end result, so they’ll put themselves through miserable gameplay provided they get a few pixels at the end. It’s genuinely sad to me.
thats the thing you make your own fun. there was periods where all i did was log in and play the auction house, other times it was only to pvp. but everyone has seemingly devolved into the mindset of only wanting the theme park experience.
Yep. It’s gogogogogo let’s get this dungeon done as fast as possible so I can sit around and complain there’s nothing to do.
most entitled player base of all time
Think about how his communications are treated and then ask yourself again why nobody else wants to do it. Hell you’re here right now acting entitled to direct dev communications despite everything he says being met with a torrent of abuse and screaming. Nobody here is owed those communications nor were they promised to us. And despite this subs supposed expertise in how large companies work, this is entirely normal. Someone goes on leave their *essential* duties are covered and the rest is put on hold. Dealing with screaming babies on Twitter? Not essential. If something important needs to go out, it’ll go out. Otherwise he’ll be back soon.
I mean its pretty simple. If you don't act like a condescending ass and also lie constantly to your customers, they are generally going to treat you pretty well. I don't know where this notion that CMs who are honest, transparent, and kind just get shit on out of nowhere comes from.
>I don't know where this notion that CMs who are honest, transparent, and kind just get shit on out of nowhere comes from. Because it happens to almost every CM in the business, especially if there are things they are not allowed to be transparent about or the answer is just not what some subset of players wanted
Do you have any examples? Because the kind of cm I am thinking about get almost universally praised. And even when players are disappointed in a company decision, they make sure to point out that they are angry at the company not the dev.
Old Wow cms like Lore, CMs for Apex Legends used to be super active and got ripped apart, CMs for Smite used to be super active and are super friendly but still get absolutely shit on by angry people on reddit / twitter... The thing is the CMs/devs that communicate will just be the outlet for all the frustrations people have about the game or the company. So even if a dev or CM is super active, they get all the "how do you have so many braindead developers that cant understand simple balance" or "you are selfish and killing this game by milking every red cent out of it" comments Any issues with the companys business decisions like how things are monetized, pushed out early etc, the CM becomes the lightning rod for all the backlash even months after it happens when the CM is discussing unrelated topics... god forbid if they arent allowed to answer some topic and people follow them around everywhere calling them liars, censoring, etc I dont blame devs for not communicating these days. I'm sure there are communities that have fostered a pretty healthy space for dialogue (OSRS seems pretty good in this regard, aside from their customer support which is a meme), but I dont think a WoW dev/cm could ever interact on the forums/reddit/twitter without degens screaming at them.
I don't really know those cms, but I guess here's a common one between us: Do you think aggrend is kind, honest, and transparent?
Thats been my impression, yes. At least looking through the lens of it being a dev sharing their perspective and not a customer service agent. Like if he was a customer service agent then saying things like "its almost like we wanted being out in the world to be lucrative" (re: incursions breaking the economy) would seem condescending, but given his position just seems like a bit of tongue in cheek, albeit they were undeniably overtuned. He's given a lot of insight into why they do things the way they have, clearing up expectations (eg on raid difficulty), had good dialogues with people collecting feedback. I think its a pretty small and agile team (thats also juggling Cata classic) so things are almost certainly a moving target, procedures and project priorities changing.
> I don't know where this notion that CMs who are honest, transparent, and kind just get shit on out of nowhere comes from. First day on the internet or something? A Destiny 2 dev who focused on PvP used to be super active on twitter. Not part of their job they just loved to go into deep tech discussions with people. One day Bungie made a change that wasn’t super popular, someone asked this guy why. He explained the technical reasons behind the decision.. and was promptly run off the internet after being doxxed and having his and his families lives threatened by unhinged internet whackjobs. So you know, things like that are why.
Aggrend is constantly coming with empty promises, being a know it all or flat out lying. Of course he will get hate when he does all that
Because, like a lot of the public faces at Blizzard, Aggrend takes the limelight to draw the heat away from his employees. It's easy to put all the blame on him if he is the only one communicating. This way the toxic community doesn't talk shit about the other devs, and instead focuses all their ire on Aggrend. If you were a Blizz employee working on SoD would you want to deal with us after seeing all this shit Aggrend gets? I sure wouldn't.
Aggrend has reached mortdog status, god save him
I don't think we're blaming Aggrend at all...we're missing him.
Lmao are we making a martyr out of him now?
How is any of that making him a martyr? They were just explaining proper channels of communication and funneling it to one spot. No where did they say if it was good or bad
It's not being a martyr, it what proper leadership does. Shielding your team from toxic fucking clients is exactly what I would expect him to do
He isn't? Sounds like he is to me. We only hear from him, he takes all the shit. I mean, just because you're upset the guy won't make your favorite class OP doesn't take away from the things he does. There has to be someone like him. The average person on this subreddit and other WoW doesn't know how the world works, let alone how businesses operate. They have no idea what actual effort and processes are involved in software/game development so it has to be insanely exhausting to interact with online communities like this (according to the average user all development and bug fixes are trivial and their class is the most underpowered class which is obviously because aggrend hates them). It's an insanely entitled and ignorant community at the same time. I wouldn't want his job. I'd want to tell everyone how stupid they are everytime they open their mouth.
Even when you have dedicated community mgmt they always get fired after the company sets them up for a brutal week. Arrowhead is a great example of a company where most of the staff are pretty reachable and look what happened there with Helldivers.
Yep, always, 100% of the time, and never not 100% of the time, wholly, and completely, all of them every single time.
The other employees are just fine, its not like the shit talk magically goes right to the devs, they’d have to search it out and anyone in game development is well acquainted with toxic communities. On top of that dev managers are very good at showering their teams with positive community sentiment about their products
Bro relax omg..
Official dev communication hasn't really changed in the last 2 weeks, because Aggrend's communication with the community has always been largely unoffical. SoD and Cata does not depend on one person keeping communication afloat, because classic and retail (and the vast majority of the games industry) has never had community dialogue as a central part of it's developement process. Feedback, sure. But that isn't the role Aggrend fills. Even while Aggrend is choosing to fill that role, it's not because the team needs it, it's because the community likes it. Maybe you could un-chicken little your brain and not assume the sky is failing because you noticed a change?
>official dev communication grinding to a halt There’ve been at least 3 blue posts in the past 2 days discussing official news. What are you trying to argue?
For SoD?
Yeah, 1 for SoD bug fixes and 2 discussing PvP balancing changes.
> 1 for SoD bug fixes May 8, 2024 Season of Discovery Fixed an issue with Efflorescence generating frequent immune messages on totems. >2 discussing PvP balancing changes. one of those is just quoting the pvp aura from last week's post to reference in this week's post.
So what? OP is arguing that Blizzard hasn’t posted *anything* since Aggrend went on vacation.
I mean someone clarifying shouldn't be that big of a deal lol
Eh. It’s Reddit. Hard to read tone from a post. The clarification probably seemed combative, instead of supportive. Since it sort of is. Clarification that doesn’t actually contradict a point, but does slightly undermine it, is kinda pointless, and a bit petty. To be fair.
Reddit is easy to read the tone of a post. Imagine a 30 year old man crying uncontrollably while talking at the same time for a moment. Now hold that tone, and apply it to a post. Only when it _doesn't_ read well that way, may you assume its anything else.
Post of the century, as all I can hear now is the distant wails of thousands of men.
its just a video game
Man the shit people complain about on Reddit is fucking wild.
If the comments on this post don't reflect the mentality of the classic community, then I don't know what does. There are truly some unhinged opinions here.
Employees going on vacation or being laid off and no one else picking up the work is the cause of so many problems. People always think it's a conspiracy when no one was taught how to do Craig's job before he left for Norway.
Aggrend ideas and philosophy is killing SoD.
Its absolutely crazy to think about how many people have to work at blizzard, but its like a company with 6 people. "Hello, Blizzard here... Oh you would like to talk to aggrend, hes on vacation with his family till next week, I could write something down and he will message you when hes back"
sod dev team headcount reduced by 20% for two weeks
considering how toxic the classic community can be I'm surprised we even get one developer talking to us
I mean aggrend has no idea what he’s doing game design wise and shouldn’t have his job but I guess he is the only one communicating.
Jesus let the man take a break!! Yes there’s been a bit less communication. But you’ll survive two weeks my god
who cares? he just says pre approved PR stuff and half if it is most likely just bullshit anyways, we aint losing much by not seeing his “then you are insecure” comments…
Blizzard's current business model is not designed to compete in the market. WoW already has a big enough presence in the market that their best option is to do nothing, spend nothing, maintain, and wring every last drop out of the work they've already done. They keep getting rewarded for doing the barest of minimums with their ip, why would they do work?
Honestly this sub just trashes everything the devs do ( for the most part) so why would anyone want to step up? As someone who loves vanilla I can wholeheartedly say that SoD may have not been exactly what I wanted as “classic +” but it has breathed new life into a game that I enjoy. P3 has been the weakest phase by far but that does not diminish P1 and to an extent P2. Seasonal games are meant to be a short experience and as the first real attempt to appease the classic + crowd I’m satisfied so far. Let’s not forget that this game is pretty much figured out so content runs dry pretty quick due to the fact that we’ve played the fuck out of this game. So just touch some grass and raid log like the rest of us instead of complaining you have nothing to do because the devs are human too and can’t get please everyone but they can keep this 20 year game alive and thriving.
bring back Caydiem and Eyonix!!!!
The man is single handedly keeping the hype alive.
Majority of classic team is on vacation right now, including that Q/A lady from Twitter.
So wild.
Lol
because the classic tam is basically 20 people big, while retail has hundreds of devs. just the way it goes with a smaller team.
That one guy in the group project that does all the work.... except here the rest of the team is Blizzard.
I reckon its not advisable for the average blizz worker to be community facing. Especially with wow fans being hard to please
And then you have Cata where official dev communication has been nonexistent since about mid-January. Fantastic. We're at BfA/SL Retail level here basically.
aggrends work is a net positive imo. had honest comms with the community, was active. brought some good ole blizz vibes. but the things his team created for sod was detrimental and shows sod devs dont get vanilla
If you are a dev and not a apart of any communication channels would you really want to put yourself out there to get eaten alive by this toxic community?
Aggrend has the juice to be able to communicate unvetted and un-pr'd stuff. He also has the class and interpersonal skills to be able to do such. When both those items don't happen we get communication on the level of "you have phones don't you?" Game devs by and large don't have the interpersonal or pr skills to be able to communicate effectively with the masses.
Remember whenever Blizzard spouted that they want to communicate more with their community? Has that ever lasted more than one content patch? And been done by more than 1 or 2 select people?
There’s also been no SoD changes since he’s been gone. Insane that the balancing of an entire game mode depends on one person.
Who would the 2nd-in-command be?
To put it in the nicest way possible, its difficult communicating with classic player. Don’t blame any of them for not wanting to
Do you blame them? Wouldn't matter if a dev announced that every player is being given 50k usd, half the community would still attempt to crucify them and doxx their children because they wanted 100k. They are paid to work on 4 completely different versions of the game not to be the community punching bag. Wowhead does a fine enough job reporting game changes
Remember when we were promised weekly class balancing patches?
They should have a community manager. People need to realize being a community manager is not Aggrends job, he goes way above and beyond what should be expected of him. Hearthstone is probably the best example. They have a great community manager who engages often on reddit and Twitter with the community, even some of the devs do as well, but less often. I don't get why it's so hard to have this for WoW as well.
I can already tell most of you never get any matches on Tinder.
I feel like SoD is slowly dying out
Let the man live his life jesus Christ
Lol
This sub continues to be trash as per usual. Not OP ofc, but the comments. In the last 2 weeks, other than the PvP changes there has been only one change, and its nothing: May 8, 2024 Season of Discovery Fixed an issue with Efflorescence generating frequent immune messages on totems. Is this because of Cata or Aggrend on vacation, or both? Idgaf, whatever the reason is, that is not OK. Not when they have said time and time again this is an iterative process.
I remember the good days when we had basically zero contact with the dev team and we had a good time It was almost non existent in 2004 It was bad in 2007 during BC It was bad in 2009 during ICC It was bad 2010 with cata (we're here again) I could go on. But the point is we would just a patch one day and that would be it I think y'all need to get off Twitter and play the game 🤷🤷
Class discords are cesspools.
Yeah no.....the way he behaves is not the norm. Unlike it but also completely understand why it's so abnormal.. Basically almost no one does what he does because dealing with the level of toxicity on the internet is highly taxing. He is not required to do what he does but he does it because it likes supporting classic. Expecting someone else to just "be him" for two weeks is a wild stance. Almost no one wants that job.
What are you talking about? Literally there have been a few blue posts in the last few days. 1 or 2 of those were for Classic.
Uuuuu someone takes a vacation or extended leave in corporate america call the cops.
This community doesn't deserve any communication.
Yo! Where the fuck is my punching bag! Who took my punching bag?
Because interacting with this cesspool of a 'community' is exhausting and doesn't deserve constant updates. It's good his team took a break the same as him. More people should take breaks...lol wow players
Have you seen the behaviour of game communities? On top of that, have you seen the degeneracy if the Wow community? I'm not surprised in the slightest that nobody else is taking up the banner. Hell I count us lucky Aggrend took that bullet in the first place.
I wouldn’t want to have to communicate with the majority of you people either
Because smol indie company you know
Not many games have a lot of communication. People want there to be some special thing they have with the game company and feel involved but it's just a product that they're selling. I probably wouldn't talk to the wow community either, it's the complete opposite of supportive or encouraging toward them. Most of the forum browsers just want the game to cater to their own personal needs and most of the time have absolutely no life so they get really upset when something changes or they feel it isn't fair to them.
Aggrend is hard carrying.
I’m not entitled. So, if other people are too busy ensuring content is put out and bugs are fixed in a timely manner to communicate with us while Aggrend is out, that’s perfectly fine by me.
A LOT of people have no sense of responsibility, that is why. I have noticed it at work a TON the past two years taking on a higher roll in my field. And people are getting dumber.
Almost all companies are motivated entirely by money. They have likely recognize the fact that if they communicate or don't communicate, it doesn't matter in regard to how many people will subscribe.
Crying bitches
Why do the people on this subreddit have goldfish memories? There was a long period of no communication toward the end of P2 as well.
Probably because there are so many asshats in the community that treat the devs like shit each time they communicate with the playerbase? Gamers are the absolute worst people to communicate with
With the way the community acts, good or bad, I wouldn’t be surprised if he took this time to stop reading death threats and verbal abuse in his dm’s. Who wants to “step up” to that?
Because the community are assholes and to be quite honest if I was a dev I wouldn’t want to post anything either because whilst they do have some good interactions with players, people take it too far sometimes and are dickheads to them.
Omg we are talking about 2 weeks, game is not going away. Chill the f out.
>Which means when he leaves the office for 2 weeks for any reason, others should have stepped up in his place to communicate and be active No, because you are still paying them when he doesn't. >Why do SoD and Cata have to depend on one person on that team being the one to keep communication afloat? Because you're still paying them anyway.
>Why do SoD and Cata have to depend on one person Because its Activision-Blizzard. Small poor indie company.
Aggrend probably a dictator, told them no one talks but him :P
Now is the best time to quit any version of wow you might be playing. Rest up, get Fit, and prepare for gta6online2