Every World of Warcraft activity “caters to a minority of the playerbase,” says lead designer
Throughout its nearly 12-year history, World of Warcraft has undergone numerous changes that have essentially made the game almost unrecognizable compared to its early days, but deciding how and when to change game elements is a difficult challenge for developer Blizzard Entertainment. Almost every change is met with backlash from at least a small part of the fan base, but leaving certain things unchanged can sometimes be even more unpopular.
In a recent forum post, Lead Game Designer Ion Hazzikostas responded to one fan’s claims that Blizzard does not listen to player feedback, explaining that for every player who wants one feature changed, there could be numerous others who are happy with the way things are and simply have not felt the need to voice their opinion on the forums or elsewhere.
“It’s exceptionally rare that everyone wants the same thing (despite frequent framing of ‘no one likes X’ or ‘we want X’ when giving feedback)”, Hazzikostas said. “And even then, there is a large silent majority that does not post on forums.”
According to Hazzikostas, there have been a few times when the fan base was united in its opinion on certain game features, such as when loot mechanics were changed during the Warlords of Draenor expansion. At the time, Blizzard quickly reverted a change it had made when the player reaction was almost universally negative.
Hazzikostas also explained that World of Warcraft is by its nature designed for a wide variety of niche playstyles that do not affect the wider game population.
” … almost every facet of WoW is an activity that caters to a minority of the playerbase,” Hazzikostas said. “That may sound odd at first blush, but it’s true. In a sense, that’s part of the magic of WoW. It is not a narrow game, but rather one that can be enjoyed in numerous different ways, by people with hugely diverse playstyles.”
“A minority of players participate in PvP. A tiny minority touch Mythic raiding. A tiny minority of players do rated PvP. A minority of players have several max-level alts. A minority of players do pet battles, roleplay, list things for sale on the auction house, do Challenge Mode dungeons, and the list goes on.”
Hazzikostas concluded, “In closing, I know it often can seem like we don’t listen. We are – just to many, many different voices. And it may be that a given change, feature, or reward is simply aimed at a different portion of the playerbase. Or we could be wrong and we haven’t realized it yet. So please, keep talking.”
Image credit: Blizzard Entertainment (c)
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