My post about Blizzard’s disinterest in WoW blogs sparked an interesting discussion in the comment section. Some agreed with me that they should make an effort to acknowledge and encourage the community and fan sites more. Others pointed at the risks. Blogs can be expected to be personal and opinionated and put your company in an awkward situation if you accidentally link to material that is against your policy.
Learning about social media
I’ve been working in public relations for over 15 years, but I can’t claim to be any expert in social media strategies. I’m still trying to make up my mind how they fit into the media mix and how to interact with them in the interest of my employer. One of the underlying reasons for me to start this blog in the first place was that I didn’t have a clue about what blogging was about. Over the last couple of years I’ve been learning by doing, but I’m still very humble in those discussions, eager to listen and get new perspectives.
Bristal, a long-time reader and commenter at PPI was one of those who argued against Blizzard putting too much attention to social media. He said that WoW is a brand and that you couldn’t expect a company to endorse fan sites without having direct control over them.
In my reply, I begged to differ and reminded him that I believe many marketers of today make huge efforts to get on good terms with bloggers, since they see the value of viral marketing. I also referred to an article about how you can work strategically with social media and a video where a Coca Cola representative shares his views on this.
The view of a marketer
The other day I got an e-mail from Bristal, who now had shown my post to his wife to get her opinion. She is not a gamer, but unlike me she has a solid background in marketing. The last three years she has been incorporating social media strategies to her corporation. To my delight it turned out that she agreed with me:
“Wow...no pun intended...there is so much wrong here. Here's some of what I thought when I was reading this blog post. IMHO (and in the HO of many social media experts), the #1 rule of any social media is, Don't start it if you can't devote resources to monitor and contribute to it. The #2 rule is, It's a conversation; you don't always hear what you want to hear so be ready for that. And the #3 rule is, Content is king. Or in the case of WoW I think it's, Content is big fat purple drops. There is no "obligation" but I do wonder why, as a virtual business, Blizzard would start a social media strategy and assume it would sustain itself without their help. They should know better.
The other thing is about the Blizzard website. It sounds, unbelieveably, that they created an online brochure without a strategy for what they wanted their site to do for them. Some of my thoughts on effective websites are they need to be sticky - visitors need to have a reason to hang around and come back again and again. For Blizzard it could be for shopping, fan connection (like the blogger said), previews of coming attractions, goofy games, news, free downloads of stuff...things to get new players engaged. Also, I think websites need to continuously add content or new info (see Rule #3 above) in order to remain relevant. And, they should include some level of optimization strategy - people need to be able to find the site even when they're not specifically looking for it.
I wonder if Blizzard has devoted all its resources to the game and has little left over for other projects. WoW is, by itself, a sticky social media site that is continuously being updated. Still...I expect more from them.”
The lack of strategy
Now, to be fair, I should say that some of the features that she asks for already exist on Blizzards community website if you look closer. There is shopping. There are some previews and downloads. Wallpapers. Music. Movies. Contests. Stuff like that. But it all seems pretty random, the structure is messy and updating is unreliable to say the least.
Just like she says, it’s hard to see the underlying strategy for the overall Blizzard website (which I've bitched about earlier) as well as the WoW specific site. They don’t seem to know for themselves what they want to accomplish with their web presence. This includes their fumbling efforts to Twitter, where they arrange developer chats occasionally but not very much in between. And why do we have to look into a gazillion of blue posts and putting things together for ourselves if we want to understand the minds and intentions of the developers better? Wouldn't it be way better to let them have their own blogs? Have they really thought this over?
The structure is wild and confusing, branching out in all directions. New features are launched, but they don’t seem to pay any thought whatsoever to if they have the resources it takes to sustain it. It’s easy to find horror examples of neglect. A podcast with something in the lines of two episodes a year, can you really expect that to be much listened to? A newsletter where the latest issue is from March 2009, what’s the point?
Lack of updates
What is worse and even harmful in my opinion is that there is so much outdated, flat incorrect information floating around at the official website, misleading new players who are pointed to look at the website if they need further ifnormation than what comes with the instruction book. That's nothing but a shame.
I guess the company lacks resources for proper updating, or maybe their website system is so old and clotted, which happens to most websites as time passes, that they’ve lost the overview.
Regardless of the reason behind it: you don’t have to poke around long to find stuff that is so old that it smells. Like when they give the basics about partygrouping, and don’t mention the new LFD tool with a word, but still are referring to LFG and LFM. That’s not cool, especially since the information lacks a time stamp. There is no way that a newcomer can judge if this information is valid or not. I would be truly embarrassed if I was the one who was responsible for this information.
A reflection of Blizzard’s failings
I’m far from the first one to notice the weakness of this site. It’s one of the reasons why we have such an abundance of unofficial resources which are way more accurate, in-depth and useful than Blizzard’s own information.
As Tim Howgego commented, those third-party services are a “tribute to Blizzard's own communications and design failings.”
The eco-system, including everything from fan sites and blogs to wikis, movies and addons, has grown crazily huge and wild and Blizzard doesn’t yet seem to have figured out how to handle it. What is the best strategy for the future? Have things gone so far that they can’t take control anymore? Should they do like I suggest, encourage the community efforts more than they do now? Or have they got a valid reason to ignore it? Could they incorporate more of the community into their own sphere? Or will we see them fighting more to maintain control over their intellectual property?
I don’t know the answers. If I did I suppose I wouldn’t write blogposts but apply for a job at Blizzard.
What I do know is that Blizzard has a lot of strengths and opportunities, but also weaknesses and threats to their communication with fans and customers.
In the very end the sales figures will reflect how well they have succeeded.
I look myself into the mirror, trying to be humble and objective. Could it be that I under influence of my own professional hybris overestimate the value of good communications?
Blizzard doesn't seem to have that much clue about their website and what to do with it. But how much does it matter?
Learning about social media
I’ve been working in public relations for over 15 years, but I can’t claim to be any expert in social media strategies. I’m still trying to make up my mind how they fit into the media mix and how to interact with them in the interest of my employer. One of the underlying reasons for me to start this blog in the first place was that I didn’t have a clue about what blogging was about. Over the last couple of years I’ve been learning by doing, but I’m still very humble in those discussions, eager to listen and get new perspectives.
Bristal, a long-time reader and commenter at PPI was one of those who argued against Blizzard putting too much attention to social media. He said that WoW is a brand and that you couldn’t expect a company to endorse fan sites without having direct control over them.
In my reply, I begged to differ and reminded him that I believe many marketers of today make huge efforts to get on good terms with bloggers, since they see the value of viral marketing. I also referred to an article about how you can work strategically with social media and a video where a Coca Cola representative shares his views on this.
The view of a marketer
The other day I got an e-mail from Bristal, who now had shown my post to his wife to get her opinion. She is not a gamer, but unlike me she has a solid background in marketing. The last three years she has been incorporating social media strategies to her corporation. To my delight it turned out that she agreed with me:
“Wow...no pun intended...there is so much wrong here. Here's some of what I thought when I was reading this blog post. IMHO (and in the HO of many social media experts), the #1 rule of any social media is, Don't start it if you can't devote resources to monitor and contribute to it. The #2 rule is, It's a conversation; you don't always hear what you want to hear so be ready for that. And the #3 rule is, Content is king. Or in the case of WoW I think it's, Content is big fat purple drops. There is no "obligation" but I do wonder why, as a virtual business, Blizzard would start a social media strategy and assume it would sustain itself without their help. They should know better.
The other thing is about the Blizzard website. It sounds, unbelieveably, that they created an online brochure without a strategy for what they wanted their site to do for them. Some of my thoughts on effective websites are they need to be sticky - visitors need to have a reason to hang around and come back again and again. For Blizzard it could be for shopping, fan connection (like the blogger said), previews of coming attractions, goofy games, news, free downloads of stuff...things to get new players engaged. Also, I think websites need to continuously add content or new info (see Rule #3 above) in order to remain relevant. And, they should include some level of optimization strategy - people need to be able to find the site even when they're not specifically looking for it.
I wonder if Blizzard has devoted all its resources to the game and has little left over for other projects. WoW is, by itself, a sticky social media site that is continuously being updated. Still...I expect more from them.”
The lack of strategy
Now, to be fair, I should say that some of the features that she asks for already exist on Blizzards community website if you look closer. There is shopping. There are some previews and downloads. Wallpapers. Music. Movies. Contests. Stuff like that. But it all seems pretty random, the structure is messy and updating is unreliable to say the least.
Just like she says, it’s hard to see the underlying strategy for the overall Blizzard website (which I've bitched about earlier) as well as the WoW specific site. They don’t seem to know for themselves what they want to accomplish with their web presence. This includes their fumbling efforts to Twitter, where they arrange developer chats occasionally but not very much in between. And why do we have to look into a gazillion of blue posts and putting things together for ourselves if we want to understand the minds and intentions of the developers better? Wouldn't it be way better to let them have their own blogs? Have they really thought this over?
The structure is wild and confusing, branching out in all directions. New features are launched, but they don’t seem to pay any thought whatsoever to if they have the resources it takes to sustain it. It’s easy to find horror examples of neglect. A podcast with something in the lines of two episodes a year, can you really expect that to be much listened to? A newsletter where the latest issue is from March 2009, what’s the point?
Lack of updates
What is worse and even harmful in my opinion is that there is so much outdated, flat incorrect information floating around at the official website, misleading new players who are pointed to look at the website if they need further ifnormation than what comes with the instruction book. That's nothing but a shame.
I guess the company lacks resources for proper updating, or maybe their website system is so old and clotted, which happens to most websites as time passes, that they’ve lost the overview.
Regardless of the reason behind it: you don’t have to poke around long to find stuff that is so old that it smells. Like when they give the basics about partygrouping, and don’t mention the new LFD tool with a word, but still are referring to LFG and LFM. That’s not cool, especially since the information lacks a time stamp. There is no way that a newcomer can judge if this information is valid or not. I would be truly embarrassed if I was the one who was responsible for this information.
A reflection of Blizzard’s failings
I’m far from the first one to notice the weakness of this site. It’s one of the reasons why we have such an abundance of unofficial resources which are way more accurate, in-depth and useful than Blizzard’s own information.
As Tim Howgego commented, those third-party services are a “tribute to Blizzard's own communications and design failings.”
The eco-system, including everything from fan sites and blogs to wikis, movies and addons, has grown crazily huge and wild and Blizzard doesn’t yet seem to have figured out how to handle it. What is the best strategy for the future? Have things gone so far that they can’t take control anymore? Should they do like I suggest, encourage the community efforts more than they do now? Or have they got a valid reason to ignore it? Could they incorporate more of the community into their own sphere? Or will we see them fighting more to maintain control over their intellectual property?
I don’t know the answers. If I did I suppose I wouldn’t write blogposts but apply for a job at Blizzard.
What I do know is that Blizzard has a lot of strengths and opportunities, but also weaknesses and threats to their communication with fans and customers.
In the very end the sales figures will reflect how well they have succeeded.
I look myself into the mirror, trying to be humble and objective. Could it be that I under influence of my own professional hybris overestimate the value of good communications?
Blizzard doesn't seem to have that much clue about their website and what to do with it. But how much does it matter?
20 comments:
I've often wondered about the projects left abandoned without any official cancellation too. I mean, things like the fan art submissions and the comic contest are a huge hit and are updated pretty regularly, but other things like the newsletter disappear off the radar very quietly. It's fine if something is cancelled because it isn't well received, but it would be awfully nice to have them put up a brief note that says "btw, we've cancelled X because of lack of player interest" done!
I think the end result of this is that everyone who wants info goes elsewhere for it. I wouldn't dream of going to the official site for anything besides realm status or the phone number for account support. Even blue posts I can find easier someplace else! Blizzard has lost a huge opportunity to make revenue from advertisements (the huge web community devoted to wow proves it would be profitable) and to advertise their own products to their playerbase. They'd be wise to correct that before too much longer.
My first thought was the UI. The base UI just isn't very good. It's dull and had little customization. That's where their openness to addons comes in, allowing players to customize to their hearts' content. They might be going for a similar strategy with information: why take the time to try to present information to players when there are thousands of players who are eager to do it themselves?
There's one problem with this rosy comparison: Blizzard has a habit of copying those aspects of addons which are most popular or appear to be mandatory. They don't see which blogs are most popular and try to bring them into the fold (as far as I've heard) or make their own bluetracker. They're just leaving it all to us, possibly to their detriment.
It feels as though not handling it has worked pretty well for them so far. Or rather, Blizzard being so hands off has left the ecosystem a lot of room to grow.
It is strange to see so many parts of the website out of date, though. It could certainly be better than it is.
Tracking blogs seems awkward to me. I remember the Warhammer guys were really proactive in reaching out to bloggers ... but imagine how people felt if their blogs were ignored? I'd love to see some creative use of guest curators though. They could really do so much more with the website.
Like you mentioned in your post Larisa, why not have a developer keep their own blog? One prime example that i know of is the Lotro developer Orion, who keeps a wonderfull blog about his day to day activities as a game design developer, and gives us valuable insight in what goes on behind the scenes. He updates on a very regular basis (used to almost everyday), has a large following, and interacts very well with the commentors. It's like having a 1-on-1 with Ghostcrawler, without forum-spam.
If only a wow-developer would try the same.... *dreams on*
Orion's Belt blog is located on http://my.lotro.com/orion/. I don't currently play lotro anymore, but i still occasionally read his blog because it's all so interesting !
I think it is safe to say that Blizzard like the idea of being involved with their fans, users and consumers. They just do not like to actually *be* involved with their, fans, users and consumers.
Case in point: Twitter.
They started 3 twitter tweets, one for diablo, one for WoW and one for SC, neither had *any* content at launch. They hardly had any posts for two weeks. Then they got a little. But they have never ever replied to comments by others. The "tweet with developers" are not really that. They are more "submit your questions via (what could be email the way we use it) and we will answer the ones we FEEL like answering.
Blizzard has no clue how to handle communication in what most call web 2.0
They throw out press statements, they leak sneak peaks at content, but only via their own official blue posts.
There is no communication on their part, only talk.
...Still, the game is great. (and klep's comments about the UI is very good)
When talking about Marketing, one should consider, that its not all about advertising and communication, the most vital part of Marketing is gathering information about your Market.
My girlfriend works in the marketing department of an international insurance company. She argues a lot with another colleague, who plays LotR with her husband, about how gifted those MMO Companies are.
Their biggest problem at work is, that they are selling a product that is based on pure reliance, establishing a brand in which the customer trusts. How do you measure trust in you, if people are not talking about you.
This is why I say, that Marketing specialists would kill for an opportunity like Blizzard has.
In every aspect Blizzard appears like, a group of nice guys that accidentally stumbled from their garage office into the "big (bad) world".
They still haven't found their way from, scene talk in the forums to public audience. At the moment, the quickest overview you can get about the game is, visiting MMO Champion.
Someone mentioned establishing a brand. If you try to establish a brand, you don't give opportunities away. At the moment, Community Sites draw the image of WoW not Blizzard itself.
Larissa, you mentioned Public Relations, which is a brilliant example for missed chances as well.
At least those from Europe will agree, that WoW as a brand, was burned down in the media.
There is no doubt, that the customer numbers in Europe would be much higher, if the game wasn't stigmatised as addictive and life ruining.
Anybody can tell you a bad story about WoW, even if he has never played the game itself.
Instead of picking their battle there, they let the media disparage their brand.
"Does Blizzard suck at... ?"
Yes without a doubt.
"And if so - does it matter ?"
Depends whos perspective you take. To the players it matters, I would agree with other contributors that it is easier to find information anywhere aside from Blizzard's own website and resources.
"In the very end the sales figures will reflect how well they have succeeded."
Net Revenues:
2007 - $1.349B
2008 - $3.026B
2009 - $4.279B
(http://investor.activision.com/reports.cfm)
Would investing money in tidying up your website help ? I don't think so, not when there's so much free information out there and other organisation willing to do the work for you (at the benefit of their own advertising revenue of course). Is this by accident or design ?
Cuckoos don't build their own nests.
I think the website is suffering from the "no one loves it" syndrome.
This happens to a lot of virtual resources you need someone who looks at it frequently who has the desire to make it perfect and the authority to change things.
I worked on a website once where the function of the website was really so the partners in the firm could namedrop the website so as to sound up to date.
"My secretary's number is on our website."
I did ask who was going to be responsible for the website and people rather looked blank. It never occurred to them before that websites need monitoring, the plan was to put stuff on and forget about it.
This is really common amongst businesses in general and you see this on many sites.
It's a step backwards for Blizzard because the Diablo 2 site, the Arreat Summit, was really good. In fact I believe it still gets updated ten years on.
I think you guys are making it too complicated.
Blizzard is a company of Game Developers. Developers want to work on the new cool stuff. Maintaining the web site, communicating with bloggers, patching old content are not "cool" or "fun". Thus they get no real love.
To reference another nerdy pasttime, I really like what Wizards of the Coast (makers of Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons) has done with their website over the past decade. For one, both MTG & D&D sites have grown in content. While each has had some very odd hiccups over the years, WotC is typically very open about identifying pieces of their website that don't work and then trying out a variety of fixes until something sticks.
For example, I really like that MTG runs a zine that uses some of their designers and developers as regular authors. The articles are more polished than blogs, and in some cases come across more as press releases than anything else, but there's still a lot of content available.
On the D&D side of things, devs have taken the theorycrafters (known as the Character Optimization Boards) and involved them directly in QA & UA testing of new rulesets and patches. While Bliz does this as well on the PTR, the CO boards have a lot more leeway to discuss the various changes as they are being tested, which leads to a lot of community involvement. D&D devs are also encouraged to run blogs.
One of the issues Bliz would have to face with a more open relationship with the greater online community is the fact that the online community is rather unpredictable. The blogosphere has some great people in it, but the forum trolls are some of the worst outside of 4chan. Directing people to other places and establishing relationships invites those forum trolls to, well, troll. How would bloggers feel if, after being mentioned on Ghostcrawler's Blog Spotlight, their sites were filled with comments like "disp preist sux lol always lowest on heling nerf pallys rofl"? I feel like the current blogosphere is able to avoid a lot of that sort of crap, but it would be a lot harder if Blizzard started giving the trolls directions.
Intersting. As someone who has started WoW only three months ago - virtually NONE of the information before subscribing came from the official Blizzard site, and exactly NONE of the information I seek now comes from the official Blizzard site.
In fact, when googleing some topic, I don't even consider clicking on Blizzard link in the results, instead I head straight for a few fansites and blogs I trust.
It should be the other way around. Blizzard should be the definite source and first step for anybody looking for information, with a solid list of references and resources sites that are maintained by thrid parties.
@Rhii: yeah, they’ve really lost many possibilities to direct contact with the playerbase I think. I guess I use the official website for….hm… check for information when the server is down. Bump our recruitment add in the realm forum. And look for forgotten corners that I might blog about, those deserted ships such as the guild relations program. But as a source of information about WoW it’s pretty useless. A combo of Wowhead, wowwiki and mmo-champion is way better. But how is a new player supposed to figure that out?
: yeah, it’s really deserted. I’m fortunate enough to be quite good at information seeking, having it as a part of my job. But for new players it must be a nightmare to get into it and find the good information sources that replace a decent Blizzard.
@Spinks: It IS surprising that so basic things as timestamps are missing. And that they don’t bother to update the beginners manual so it’s relevant… that’s weird, considering that they really signal that they want to get new players into the game, making levelling easier, finding up RAF and such.
: oh, I’d SO love to read that kind of blog. And thinking about how many blue posts GC spits out it should rather be easier than harder to put them together to a blog, where HE sets the agenda rather than just responds.
@Dwism: haha, yeah I think you’re spot on there. The idea of being involved is prettier than actually being involved. I’m personally no twitterati, but I certainly see that Blizzard’s current way of using leaves a lot to wish for.
@Usiel: yeah, they certainly have many opportunities, a lot of things they get for free, that they seem to just waste. You might be right about that they’ve grown so quickly that they haven’t quite managed to adopt. But still. It’s a big business and I think they have loads of people working with PR and community management. I’m a little surprised they haven’t come any further than this.
@Chewy: I guess the time-limited character of every game - WoW included – puts up a limit for how long it’s interesting to invest in things such as the website. Maybe they find it more profitable to invest in a way better website for their next secret MMO, where they use the experiences they got from WoW? Just thinking aloud…
@Stabs: I can’t help being a little bit surprised though that no-one loves Blizzard’s website. The potential for it is so huge… It could be a fantastic news-site, a site for interaction, inspiration, sales (yes!)… IMHO it’s kind of strange that the ones who are responsible for it don’t seem to have that commitment to it. I would think it was a fantastic thing to work for.
@Sam: they were game developers once upon a time. Nowadeys they have a huge staff of other professionals, and I suppose it includes web and PR specialists. That’s pretty basic for a company of that size.
@Juzaba: yeah, it’s true that we enjoy the tranquillity of the blogosphere and don’t want TOO much of attention. We’ve seen examples of how bloggers have been a bit overwhelmed when a mentioning at wow.com has let the trolls find them. I imagine it might get worse if you ended up at the official fansite.
: /agree. I think it’s especially weird that the beginner’s information seems to be so deserted and not-up-to-date. But maybe they think that people don’t need any out-of-game information now that they’ve made the ui and introcuction zones easier and included more of how-to-play information as a sort of tutoring system.
Nevertheless: Blizzard’s site should be a natural focal point for the community. Which it isn’t now. That’s odd.
Blizzard is very paranoid and they are also very aware of their bottom line.
As someone above showed, Blizzard is STILL growing. They simply do not have a need to reach out to the community. For them, the question is not how to increase good community relations to increase player growth, but when will the current player growth stop.
There will not be a developer blog. Blizzard is just too stingy about its information. The sporadic Blizzacast episodes and the twitter thing are examples of how Blizzard wants to share, but chokes and censors the information so much that you really only get repeats of old blue posts.
You also have to keep in mind just money-hungry Blizzard-Activision has proven to be. They realized some time ago that they can make a lot of money off of information. The Comic Con was not good enough for them. They realized they had enough monetized information that they could support exclusivity to their own annual event.
And they were right.
When ticket sales proved to be inadequate for the demand, they sold the ability to watch the event via live stream.
Blizzard's information is a gold mine.
The new magazine is going to be another hit and all it does is recycle old information and drop a few carrots.
So, why would Blizzard want to put that information on their own site where everyone can get it for free when they can (and do) make so much money by selling it?
The blogosphere is just free advertising. Why mess with that?
For Blizzard, the way things are is a win-win.
I used to visit the WoW website often (now that it's blocked at work, not so much) and I normally went to the General or mage forums looking for any tidbits about changes to the game, changes to my class, upgrades to my gameplay or try to find a way for gnomes to get more lovin' and less puntin' from other players. I never cared for the Gadget times or the comics, so eventually, I just stopped going.
Besides the ease of finding the information I wanted from other sites, it was too much of a hassle to weed through all the crap on the forums and to have simple questions answered with, "Your gear sux."
Blizz did succeed in making a pretty site, but pretty and functional don't always go together. I think it's quite obvious that Blizzard doesn't feel a need to communicate much beyond the minimum and have stock answers to everything, like check the Technical Support forums or things will happen soon™.
Why would a business link to online diaries that are overwhelmingly negative of their product? That's just bad business.
Check your archives. Check other people's archives. Do a count. Is the a positive WoW experience, or Negative? Tell us the totals.
Throw in occasional IRL posts, hiatus posts, unprofesional language and links to unprofessional content, and you see why why linking to some person's diary is just BAD BUSINESS.
To pick up on "Blizzard's failings" - because they're not all bad:
At launch WoW had some of the best documentation ever seen for a MMOG. Still technologically and ontologically basic - nothing of substance in-game, no use of video, no sense of immersion - lots that could be done better, if they had really thought it through. But a reasonable start.
Then they had to deal with some serious scaling issues - both technical and organisational. Plus an ever-greater desire by players to know everything possible. By the time a lot of the currently popular "fansites" were first launched (most didn't appear until 1-2 years after release), Blizzard were clearly not able to cope.
Ever since then, they've been struggling - a lot of what they do now is simply trying to catch up.
About a year ago they published a introduction to Sunwell. That's a year after it had opened. A clear 6 months after it had become irrelevant to the endgame. And the information published revealed little more than where the entrance was - of questionable usefulness to the hardcore raiders these dungeons were intended for, even if it had been published with patch 2.4. Even the forum CMs seemed to be somewhat embarassed about it.
Internally, communicating to a large number of support staff is problematic. For example, when the Sea Turtle was patched in 3.1, large numbers of Blizzard staff seemed unsure what a "pool" was. Translations got mangled. I read endless chats with GMs where players were reassurred that the Sea Turtle could be caught anywhere (in Northrend), which was incorrect.
What do I think is going on?
1. Very little, if anything, is ever removed from WoW, so the game just gets more and more complex. The systems required to provide good customer support must be terrifying.
2. Several thousand people work on WoW, across several different languages, yet one developer can easily affect one change (potentially) without anyone else noticing. Even more confusing when you have 3+ different versions on the boil (next expansion, major patch, and minor/live code).
3. Blizzard collectively can't react as fast or as flexibly as individuals. Fansites tend to be better at hacking/exploring/documenting than Blizzard are at writing patch notes, in spite of the fact that Blizzard have the raw code in front of them.
4. Help and documentation systems *can* fall out of sync with design, because there's always been poor integration of tutorial and documentation into overall design.
5. Since release, player demographics, and prevailing expectations, have changed. A move away from the (Bartle) explorer player-type increases the demand for information, because fewer players are prepared to discover things themselves.
...to list 5.
To some extent they're managing, in difficult, constantly changing, circumstances. Might not be perfect, but things like this rarely are...
My wife will be thrilled.
Who knew that it would be her PR/marketing talent that would finally bring her into the WoW fold?
I have to say Tim Howgego above makes a pretty good point.
Maybe we're giving Bliz too much credit for how easy/valuable we think it should be to create and maintain the friendly social media-savvy site we all imagine.
And perhaps we undervalue the massive effort that is the unpaid, tireless (obsessive?) online blogging/data-mining community of WoW-heads.
Maybe Blizzard isn't ignoring us. Maybe they're wary of tinkering with something that they don't fully understand, nor feel that they can improve upon?
@Hound: you have a point that there is a market value in good, in-depth information and that they may want to sell it. They have to think carefully about what to give away and what to charge for. Nevertheless I think it's bad PR for a brand in the long run to not maintain their offical website properly.
@Markus: to be honest I don't think it's pretty at all! I think the new Blizzard corporate site look pretty nice and blue-coolish. But the wow site is just a mess. I find it especially apalling that they don't seem to be able to stick properly to a consequent theme in the site. There are too many different stylesheets. Ugly as hell if you ask me. The front page navigation gives me a headache.
: I've never suggested Blizzard should link without thinking to every wow blog regardless of content. I don't think PPI would qualify for a link. But there are blogs and fansites that are more information-heavy that would qualify. Like Restokin, Gray Matter or El's extreme anglin http://www.elsanglin.com/ for fishing. Just to give you some examples.
Tbh you seem to have prejudices against fan produced material, which actually sometimes is way, way better than commercial, supposedly professional stuff.
@Tim Howgego: I don't deny there's a challenge in it. However, with the tons of money they've made on that pony, I don't think it's too much to ask for that they hire some more people to catch up with their own patches and clean up their website a bit. I hope they'll put a bit more effort into this, especially since, as you say, the new players are a different kind, with other expectations.
@Bristal: haha, yeah, I must say that from a communication perspective I'm intrigued by the MMO world myself. Tell your wife that she's missing something!
It would take Blizzard SO little effort to give a little bit of love to the volontairs running the community without risking to spoil anything. If you don't want to include bloggers and such in yor fan site program, you can do other things to encourage them. What's so harmful about offering a few betas or press passes to the most prominent fan sites? Why can Warhammer do this and not WoW?
It wouldn't be all that hard to identify a few bloggers that you'd like to encourage.
Then ofc from MY side of the rope I'm not sure that bloggers should accept that kind of approaches. It depends on what kind of blog you want to run... being independet and all that stuff. But that's not the perspective I'm talking about in this post, so let's save that for another day.
Possibily, Larísa. But this isn't as simple as money.
For context, the pony is probably only a few percent on Blizzard's monthly turnover, assuming sales declined a lot after the initial rush (logical, once everyone realised how commonplace these mounts had become). Financially, enough to turn heads, but not quite the lottery win it may seem. It's also likely filling a huge hole in Blizzard's cashflow: They're working on at least 4 major projects, but they haven't sold anything (substantial) new for over a year. At a time when corporate finance has become very difficult.
(The most cynical part of me couldn't help but notice the mount went on sale right on the cusp of the traditional financial accounting year, even though the art itself had been in the game for months. I digress.)
But most important is the "man month" problem: Adding new staff and resources to a project like this doesn't get anything done, it just slows down everyone who was previously involved. They could side-step that by not intergrating better PR/information/etc into their existing operations. Except that Blizzard has a ridiculously strong, and curiously personal brand image ("Blizz", "Blue" - it's like people are talking to their dogs, not a 4 or 5 thousand strong corporate monolith) - non-integrating anything poses a huge risk to that (very valuable) asset.
So what you say is entirely rational from a "if we were doing this again" standpoint. But I can see a lot of reasons why Blizzard's management might currently be keen to "bat it into the long grass". And I'm only seeing a fraction of what they're actually dealing with.
That said, they don't seem to have improved much with Starcraft. There are subtle shifts, like Battle.net as a social platform, and the Map Marketplace as a form of small-scale licensing. But not the kind of "quantum shift" you and I might hope for.
(With appologies for the accountancy terminology...)
Blizzard info out of date?
You mean I can't trust the description they have given to the Mage class?
Arena info...
I have just started Arena, some weeks after the start of season 8.
Not that you would know it from their website... At the best we are in season 7, fighting for season 7 rewards... At worst... I guess I should give them credit for tacking on some information about changes that have ocurred.
Blizzards website is at best a time capsule at worst a nightmare to navigate for even the simplest of information. When you can't find it in their menus... Don't bother using the search function unless you want 1.1 patch notes...
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