Requesting Ghostcrawler back please?...

07/15/2011 02:57 PMPosted by Starling

Where did he go? I am not aware of what exactly happened. Did he get a lot of trolls attacking him than decide to lay low after that?

No, it didn't really have anything to do with that. We (community managers) had several discussions with Ghostcrawler and the other lead developers about how we'd be approaching communication on the new community site when it launched. Ultimately, we all agreed it'd be better for the company and the community to have the community managers be the primary source of forum communication. He still reads the forums every day for feedback. Likewise, we stay in touch with him every day, often relaying information he provides us to you all. So his thoughts on any given subject are still very often shared on the forums. The only difference is we, as community managers, take the time to relay his thoughts to you so he can focus more on considering the feedback we collect and provide from the forums, affording him more time to focus on development.

That said, he's always looking for new subjects to tackle for our blogs, so you still get a direct link to his (and the rest of the development team's) thought process. As we've stated before, we also plan on completely revamping the concept of Ask the Devs. The goal is to make sure the new Ask the Devs format allows for more interaction between devs and players, and has a quicker turnaround time on answers provided.

He may not be in the trenches interacting with players on the forums daily anymore, but he's still watching. Reading. Contemplating. Waiting to strike. And when he does, we'll be there to share his words of wisdom. ;)

07/15/2011 03:17 PMPosted by Staverlyn

Activision-Blizzard

HERECY!

Heh, yeah the name of our company is Blizzard Entertainment.

Activision|Blizzard is the name of our parent company. Same as was Vinvendi Games before that, or Davidson & Associates before that.

:|

That sounds a lot like he was either A( Punished. B(Demoted.

Any time any business uses the words 'discussions' 'new approach' and 'we all agreed it'd be better for the company' the real message is almost always (90% of the time) 'He !@%*ed up or wasn't doing his job, or stepped on someones toes so we're getting rid of him'

Methinks you're over-analyzing it a bit. We're community managers for a video game company, not politicians trying to get your vote.

I'm not a big fan of spinning information, particularly when I could have just chosen not to respond at all. :)

I do not mean this to be offensive in any way at all to the CM's, but when you relay info to us it comes across like a post-it not is getting fleshed out. That isn't your fault in your wording or in your intent, but in the fact that, in the end, you are just the middle man.

Ghostcrawler, on the other hand, relayed NOTHING to us. He came to the forums and got real with us. As CM's, you can never do that (about development). As much as I love all of you guys, Nethaera with her Wisdom, Lylirra with her compasion, Zarhym with your bro-ness, Bashiok with his trollin', and all the others that help keep this community together and moving forward on these forums, when it comes to relaying information that is all you are, relays. I can't stress how much I love you guys, how much i f5 that blue tracker waiting to see who has what to say, reading your posts like Nethaera's today about PvP servers or a while back Lylirra's about working to help people in your dungeon group instead of just /raging at the nooooobs. That stuff comes from you guys and I EAT IT UP. But the straight up information about game balance is not your information, it is not your brain child, its just....NOT YOU GUYS! Greg brought his perspective and his thoughts to our forums. We would have conversations with him in threads about a multitude of things, and we knew exactly where he (and by extension the dev team) stood. He brought that information to life and gave it meaning you guys, simply, never can.

I really don't mean that as to be insulting to you guys, and it is somewhat awkward for me to write this all up as I have much respect for you guys who do sit here in these trenches with us. You are the guys that work through the hardships with us. You guys are who we talk to about not putting real names on the forums. You are the guys we talk to about new premium services and what they might mean for the future of the game. You are the guys that make the forums fun to be a part of, but when it comes to development of the game.....that isnt you guys. It isn't even necessarily Ghostcrawler either (as, unless you have a cloning machine, he is not the only developer).

tl;dr??

CM's are my homies on these forums, but you come across as merely relays for development post-it notes whereas Ghostcrawler gave it a different feel. Honestly, I would rather listen to a podcast from a few members of the dev teams once or twice a month specifically talking about class balance, future content, thoughts and feelings on current content, and the general direction the game is going, then see you guys post that information on the forums.

edit: apologies for spelling your name wrong Nethaera, hope i spelled the others right. xD :3

I totally understand where you're coming from, Jibberjabber. I think you said it quite well, so I don't feel insulted at all. ;)

In many respects I agree with you. Just know that we're very close to Ghostcrawler (and the rest of the dev leads), so we can have very frank discussions about game design. Sometimes we'll sit in GC's office and argue points we've seen on the forums, either because we personally agree with those points, or we're playing devil's advocate. He sits with the rest of the class design team too, so it's really awesome to get a philosophic design discussion going with the lot of them. They're very receptive to unfiltered feedback.

I guess my point is, the perception that something is missing in terms of player feedback from the forums reaching people like GC, is stronger than the reality. But I do agree that the communication about that feedback isn't as strong as it used to be. Our department is relatively new to the structure we have now -- it began shortly before the launch of StarCraft II when the new community site format was introduced about a year ago. We're still learning how to optimize our team and figure out the tools/staffing we need to better support our forum goers. To be honest, the roles and responsibilities of Blizzard community managers have greatly increased over the years, but we know that employee interaction on the forums is still as important as ever.

For now you'll still probably see developers on the PTR forums from time to time when they need direct testing feedback, or need to inquire further about any issues/concerns. Having said that, it is the role of the community team to get information from the company to the players, and vice versa. When we're doing our job right the developers can focus more of their time on developing the game, while still feeling like they're attuned to what players are saying.

07/15/2011 05:57 PMPosted by Aedilhild

Put Ghostcrawler on the phone so we know he's okay! ;)

I've been talking to him throughout the day. He's... fine. I promise. 0:)