#1 - Dec. 9, 2016, 9:55 p.m.
Getting to the point, this is the viewpoint of someone outside of Blizzard HQ looking in, which is understandably sometimes hard to envision when you're the one on the inside all the time.
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Let's talk: What aren't acceptable lines of communication?
Twitter:
This trend needs to die a swift death. Twitter is a platform where you shill your new content and handle PR. Feedback cannot fit in 140 characters, and thus responses to feedback cannot fit in 140 characters. Additionally there is no filter for content that floods the development team - the tweet asking what Garrosh's middle name is ends up being in the same viewability status as legitimate concerns or feedback. Add on that there's several twitter accounts tied to the development team(Warcraftdevs for the entire team, and then individual accounts for Ion, Holinka, Celestalon etc.) and you get a jumbled mess of what's getting sent where. I've also heard numerous stories of people getting blocked on Twitter by devs/CMs for legitimate game related tweets - and this just comes off as unprofessional. I don't have a problem with Devs having their own Twitter accounts, but a line needs to be drawn if they are going to be using it for personal/PR reasons, or if they are legitimately accepting game related tweets; We seem to be getting sent mixed signals here.
Q&A:
Now, inherently I don't have a problem with Q&A's, but they need to be structured properly to be used effectively. I've talked to a few people about yesterday's(Dec 7) Q&A and we all seemed to agree that it was straight up awful. The vast majority of questions have already been answered either in the last Q&A, or at the Blizzcon Q&A/WoW panel. Why field a question on AK alt catchup, when it was not only answered last Q&A, but also at Blizzcon - and that's only 1 example. The Q&A questions could only have been softer if Lore himself had written all the questions beforehand.
Q&A's need themes, with yesterday's general Q&A around three quarters of the way through, Lore moved from Class related questions onto more general ones, and everyone had a sigh of exasperation as their class questions remained unanswered, or just got answers to extremely stupid questions. Was it really necessary to field a question on whether Hpals will receive HoTs? I'm sure there are more legitimate concerns for Hpals than that. It's like getting a legendary and it ends up being Prydaz.
There needs to be a legitimate vetting process to make sure questions that "need" to be answered, are the ones being asked. In my mind, a successful Q&A would be one with a specific niche or area, for example one week is entirely dedicated to Melee DPS and a week beforehand a blue thread pops up in all of the class sections that have a melee dps spec. The top handful of upvoted questions per spec get sent in and answered on Stream. It's not perfect(Forums aren't the best way to handle "top" comments) but I think it's infinitely better than the system we have now.
Interviews:
Like Twitter, Interviews are meant to be used for PR. No legitimately big interviewer wants to ask the hard questions, or push for substantial answers - for fear of dismantling their reputation with Blizzard and ruining chances at another interview or future partnerships with Blizzard. There's nothing wrong with Interviews per se, but they should be reserved for announcements and/or covering recently announced/released content.