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Q u o t e:
I seriously doubt GC gets mad about what people post. If they post something trollish he just bans then and goes on doing what he does.

The problem for Ghostcrawler is he posted so much on the beta forums and at the release of WOTLK that he gave the player base a false expectation that they could debate with him about the development of the game. He has realised that was a mistake and has been trying to make better selections in terms of the threads he actually post in.

Alot of people on the forums want to have a open debate with him about the Development of the game and he is just not going to have that conversation.

It's his job, and the job of the designers to develop the game, and it's our job to play the game that they develope. It's the job of this forum us to tell them how we feel about how they are doing developing the game, and what areas can be improved.

Some players take the above as if you make a suggestion they should instantly make a change, and that is just not how development works at any level in any business. If you write a letter to McDonalds and tells them you think they should change the Quarter Pounder. They will read the feedback doesn't mean they are going to change the sandwich.

My only beef with the devs is when there are glaring issues like disease dispeling and how it impacts Death Knights, or how certain mechanics are borderline breaking classes and they remain silent. I feel somethings do warrant a response.

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/ cast Tranq shot!

Seriously, forum posters don't make me angry. At most you are seeing sarcastic, eye-rolling or world-weary responses. Most of the time I am just responding quickly because any demonstration that we read the forums at all seem to go a long a way and I don't always have the time to author a well-crafted novella.

I have no problem having an open debate on design with the community. I enjoy it. Where the problem comes is that I am one guy, and I just don't have the bandwidth for an open discussion on every single class issue nor even the important issues that you might feel are "borderline breaking classes." I try to jump in and touch on *some* issues because that's the best I can do, but players sometimes try to interpret that as a stacked rank of what we feel are the most important issues.

It's like weeding a garden. You can rarely ever get every weed out, especially if you only have an hour. You can try and triage the weeds and pull out the worst ones first, but the triage process itself takes time and you end up making a lot of judgment calls trying to compare apples and oranges. Really you can accomplish something if you just pay a little bit of attention to it every day. That's what I try to do.

And I'm not calling you guys weeds. :) WoW is a complicated ecosystem not unlike a garden and it certainly has some problems that need to be plucked out at the roots. Sadly, the list of things we think we can improve in WoW is long and I promise you that we are harsher on our designs than are most of you.

And I totally agree that many players have trouble distinguishing between feedback and demands.

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Q u o t e:
The information that is provided is typically very generalized when it deals with balance. There's a lot of 'close enough' type comments, but never anything specific. Something as basic as "Our internal testing and date we collected showed that _________ was doing too much damage or __________ was taking less damage over the course of the average fight than _________, so _____ was changed to adjust it." Maybe quantifying things vice speaking in general terms would help?

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In my experience players don't believe numbers unless they support their preconceived notions. This applies to numbers coming from us or other players. In the rare instance I have attempted to supply numbers, players have wanted to attack those numbers, presumably under the assumption that if they can prove the numbers invalid that they can get us to make a change or prevent us from making a change. It's like a court of law where the prosecution is questioning the handling of evidence. It's an understandable response, but really not what these forums are about. We'd rather you comment on how the food tastes, not challenge whether or not we followed the recipe correctly.

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Q u o t e:
Saying, "We feel things are close enough" doesn't come close to addressing tanking concerns, dps discrepancies, or any other balance issue. Particularly when the players that frequent the forums are having anecdotal experiences that fly in the face of what you're saying. Hell, you can often find player provided data here that goes against the 'vision' you guys have. At least as that vision is perceived by the players.... "we based our recent changes off that fact that tanks/dps were within __% of each other according at a variety of gear levels based on our testing." I know that would at least put things in a perspective. As it is now it's anybody's guess why things are the way they are most of the time.

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The response would be, very quickly:

In what gear? Because our percentage difference is different.
Yes, but, you didn't include X and Y. If you had considered those, it would have been different.
You must have made a math mistake. Show us your math.
Why do you think __% is fair, when our class also has all these other problems?
And so it goes.
The response is not going to be "Oh. Okay."

Nothing is wrong with asking those questions. I would probably ask them myself of another player. But that isn't what we're here to do. It gets into those "Prove to us you can cook" issues when the reason we post is to ask "Do you like the food?" Maybe that distinction is too subtle, but I'm not sure how else to explain it. We need to be able to make the changes we think are right for the game in order for the game to be good. We do not think having to get community buy-off on every change is a reasonable way to do that, and all of these "prove the change is necessary" issues are essentially your demanding that we justify all changes with you. Essentially we have to ask permission to make the change. It's not going to work well like that.

Saying "We think things are close enough" DOES address your concerns. It just doesn't provide the specific change (typically a buff to your class or a nerf to the other guy) that you're looking for.