Wednesday, February 6, 2008

A Call to Blizzard

I started a forum post today that attempts to inform Blizzard why the Shaman Community is in such an uproar and attempts to open up a dialog with them in hopes of getting some discussion going.

You can find the post here.

But in case it was deleted, I'll add it here as well.

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A message to Blizzard from a concerned, self-appointed "community representative".

Blizzard, the Shaman communities world wide are devolving into horrid cesspools of...something, because of the way this class has been handled throughout the last year and a half (and this is going all the way back to the Shaman half review that was promised in the patch after that...then in the patch after that...then in TBC...then never showed up).

We're tired of uninformed community managers spewing nonsense like:
- You can lightning bolt spam for 5 minutes without consumables (before the Clearcast and Water Shield changes)
- Resto/Elemental Shaman melee using a 41.5 DPS weapon + Flametongue is > Priest/Mage wand DPS (absolutely false!)
- Enhancement is just a leveling spec
- False statements about an improved totem UI (statement by Eyonix after our half-assed half review) that never came to fruition.
- and, like I said, making false statements about when we'll see the other half of our class review.

The reason the community has devolved into what it is now is not because you people don't moderate it (in fact, mass bannings of "protesters" only exacerbates the problem) it is because of the lack of "back-and-forth" style communication between us, the devs, and the CMs. (We're the only class not to have had a thread started by Kalgan to discuss anything about our class, unlike every other class did during TBC-beta).

Bus Shock, Dot Shock, and other such "memes" are a result of this lack of communication, and if you honestly think banning people is the answer, then you're only going to be losing subscribers, especially when it's the only form of PR you have with Shamans and threads like this, like Nert's and Zifna's, and like countless others, go on seemingly ignored.

It's time for this to end, Blizzard. It's time you started talking and working hand in hand with the Shaman class...no, with all classes, so as to avoid things like Warriors crashing entire servers, the Shaman corpse line up from Durotar to Orgrimmar, and other such problems. Because at this point, that sort of inappropriate behavior seems to get you to do something more than any constructive posting full of well reasoned arguments and suggestions ever will.

If the rumors I'm hearing that China as well as EU are getting upset about your mishandling of our class, then maybe it's time to own up and take a serious look at the class, because as it stands if there aren't some serious discussions going on, changes being made, or anything else of the sort, Shaman will start quitting, if they haven't already. Want to know why we're the least played class?

Because of you.

If you feel I'm wrong, by all means, come and have a talk with me here. I won't lash out any more than I may have in this post, and I'm willing to talk civilly, because I believe that's the only way things will get done.

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