The sad part is, that this "attitude" from Blizzard is not new. It was there at Vanilla release. It was woven into the fabric of the game, and has been obvious through interviews and responses from various devs/reps throughout the lifetime of the game.
What's new is that a lot of the customers (those that didn't attrit from Kaplan's first "public" debacle, through the whole RealID fiasco), are now unhappy with Blizzard's latest serving of Play-The-Way-We-Want-You-To.
Those customer "complaints" don't really matter if the game is considered a (continuing) success.
From a corporate culture that seems to be (from behavioral observance over the years), sitting clearly in the "expressive" quadrant, it is not a surprise that their immediate response, when placed in a stressful or defensive situation, is to make personal attacks against others. Once again, sadly observed, to attack their customers.
It is what they have done in the past (see: Kaplan's attack on customer's not playing "his game" - e.g. raiding).
PallyDog posted:
Vault_News posted:
Our goal with Ask the Devs was always to increase interaction with the developers, to provide a direct conduit to their thoughts and process. We're in the planning stages for a new Q&A process that will replace Ask the Devs, and while we're absolutely certain people will continue to be upset we didn't answer every question, we think it will overall be a far more successful approach.
That's the problem right there. THAT is WHY it's NOT working. You are trying to use as a vehicle to convice the player base you're doing a good job instead of using as a tool to improve the game. You feel that if we
understand the developers we'll agree with them. Instead of saying "What can we learn from the types of questions our players are asking?"
Thank you Pally, you nailed it. What you are describing would be the "mature" approach.
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