WoW: Bugs fixed, community ignored – a bad feeling is left behind
It was the running gag in the past few weeks. While Blizzard supposedly ignored serious bugs in WoW, insignificant bugs that were very well received by most players were eliminated from the game in record time. In hindsight, of course, that’s only half the story. Because while the annoying hunter bug, in which hunters pulled bosses without their intervention, or missing textures in Halondrus were much more difficult to fix, problems such as the increased visibility or the target macro could be eliminated in a few simple steps. In the case of Halondrus, Blizzard even released a statement apologizing and explaining why it was taking so long.
So it’s not like Blizzard prioritized one bug over another bug here. However, a strange aftertaste remains. Should Blizzard have reacted differently here, after all, they now wanted to listen more to player feedback?
Community likes it…
There were certainly reasons why the bug should be fixed, both with the target macro and with the accidentally too high visibility. The former had a massive impact on PvP and the latter gave players with larger monitors an edge. However, it cannot be denied that the reactions to the bugs that appeared were mostly positive. Many players were excited to finally be able to zoom out further on confusing bosses. And also the possibility to position area effects on the opponent, many players have wanted for years.
Still fixed…
Blizzard simply ignored this joy and removed the unwanted features. In doing so, they showed an attitude that they actually wanted to have left behind for a long time. While the developers didn’t say it outright, it felt a lot like “sry, but we know better what’s good for the game”. Is it unnecessary to zoom out further? Please let the players decide for themselves.
Of course, such a view is rather petty. But developers have been so vocal about responding to feedback in the past that they now have to be measured by that. Removing a feature that has almost unanimously positive feedback isn’t necessarily “listening to the community.”
A better way?
Certainly there would have been ways to eliminate the downsides of the bugs and keep the upsides. Target macros could have been limited to PvE and view range could have been expanded in relation to screen size or resolution. Most players would probably have been very happy with that.
On the other hand, such adjustments are of course not feasible in a few hours and the developers said to themselves: “Now let’s fix it quickly and then we’ll see how we can implement it.” If that had been the plan, they could have communicated it directly. The hope remains that the developers will recognize afterwards that there was a better way and will take it. Not necessarily because of the two concrete cases, but because of the external presentation, so that “your feedback is the most important thing to us” doesn’t degenerate into hollow words again.
Reference-www.buffed.de