#172 - July 21, 2010, 3:11 p.m.
Q u o t e:
I do speak for me, never said I spoke for others. ;) I did say that Blizzard doesn't always do what the actual players want, which is true. I did say that those players should be asked what they wanted, to actually give them a voice rather than ignoring them.
We welcome the voices. I'm here discussing things and providing my perspective on things and happily reading yours.
Q u o t e:
However, the Blue speaks for Blizzard and stated they don't care for smaller guilds having to merge or disband because of this. So those players don't matter to Blizzard.
I am not sure where you read this, but there is a big difference between understanding things will change and not caring about our players so I will try to spell this out as clearly as possible.
We care about all of our players. We consider many different factors before implementing new systems especially when they may affect a lot of our players. That said, we do have to design and implement what we feel is best for the game. As a random example off the top of my head, players tend to dislike nerfs, but if one class is ahead of others we will nerf that one class and not buff 9 others.
A lot of players are also afraid of change. Before they even test things out or while it's in an early stage, they will declare the world has imploded. (See talent tree changes.) None of this means we don't care about our players. We understand that things will get shaken up, this won't be the first time gets shaken up and it won't be last, but we still need to design things the way we feel they are best for the game. Players can either choose to try it out or avoid it in favor of their own style.
There may be an impact on the economy, there may be an impact on recruiting, there may be an impact on guild sizes - but the end result is likely to be very positive on the game. We aren't designing it to cripple solo players and I haven't seen anybody provide a valid example of this so far. We have made a lot of changes recently to help support both smaller and larger guilds and want players to feel special for being part of a cool guild in this multiplayer game. We are looking forward to testing this feature with the thousands and thousands of players who are (and will be) in the beta and make it the best it possibly can be for as many of our players as possible.
Okay, I started babbling in there, but hopefully that helps get the point across.