Can Blizzard not keep their CM's in the loop?

[Stephen Zepp]

And while I'm not claiming at all that WoW isn't making some really good money, slim to zero chance that they paid even past dev and production costs, not to mention infrastructure setup...much less enough to staff their community managers with development engineers.

WHAT WHAT WHAT? Let's do some back of the envelope calculations.

They HAVE sold 1.5 million copies of the box. That's confirmed. Let's just say that if they made $10 a box (on a $50 box, not including collector's editions), that's $15 million dollars on boxes, after I'm sure the publisher and retailers got their cut. Maybe they get more per box, maybe less, but $10 is a good fucking start.

$15 million doesn't cover production and startup costs? Ok, maybe it doesn't. Then let's just assume that of those 1.5 million subscribers, only 1 million actually paid for 1 month before quitting (which we know isn't true because they claimed 1.5 million over 3 months after release). Now, just assuming that of the $14.95 per month they extract, they only get say $3 out of it. Just three dollars, less than 25%. That's another $3 million. Now, the budgie on WoW was supposedly around $20 million, maybe as high as $30 million.

At $21 million after the 2nd month, I'm pretty sure they've made back production costs and more, because I'm putting some pretty low goddamn estimates on how much money they actually get out of things. First off, I'm pretty sure they won't sign a deal on the CD's that doesn't let them recoup the entire initial budget on sell-through. So if they signed a deal that gave them $15 per box, that's $22.5 million on just CD sales.

Ok, now let's factor in:
1) Interest on credit and/or investor return on investment
2) infrastructure + NOC center operations, insurance (disaster recovery, etc.), including all of the servers stood up as the numbers spiraled
3) Bandwidth
4) emergency recovery (backup servers, etc.)
5) marketing costs (yes, it was mostly viral marketing, but still adds in)
6) adminstrative overhead

and then factor in having 300+ customer support personnel (giving them 1 to 5000 subscriber ratio, which some say is a good guestimate), plus the customer support facilities, etc.

Again, I'm not in any way saying that they aren't making quite a bit of money, but especially during the first 6 months there are a ton of costs as well, and my gut tells me that they aren't handing over corporate jets to each dev quite yet.

[Hoax]

And I would argue that when that is the case, the fault lies with the CMs, not the players. The customers have the right to speak to the developer and they will do so in the manner that they are allowed to and/or are encouraged to. And it's a bigger issue than just forum moderation, although that is part of it. I think we (CMs) have done a poor job of educating players on what the purpose and goals of the forums are and of molding an environment cohesive to achieving those goals. We also far too often encourage the wrong behavior, most of the time without even realizing it.

You may be right, but its too late now.  Before a beta even exists you will find fucking special intrest groups advocating for everything under the sun and concerned about class/race/faction/pve/pvp/catass/solo/group/raid balance.  I can't wait for the time when there are official organizations that lobby for improved aggro control in games where they find tanking too difficult or some other form of nonsense.  It will happen, because the squeeky wheel does get the goddamn grease pretty much every time.  The players know this and many have so much of their life invested in these games (/played > skill thx much for that) that they WILL spend an extra hour or two from work or mom's basement raising holy hell over miniscule injustices faced by their chosen character sub group(s).

[Xanthippe]

Again, I'm not in any way saying that they aren't making quite a bit of money, but especially during the first 6 months there are a ton of costs as well, and my gut tells me that they aren't handing over corporate jets to each dev quite yet.

Money is not the reason that Blizzard, SOE and Mythic do not provide good customer service.  Paying more money would not ensure better customer service.

Cryptic has a fraction of the subscribers, yet provides excellent communication and CS.

The others don't do it because they don't think they have to.  They think it isn't hurting them now.  They are wrong.  How many people will not play another game put out by a particular developer because of a soiled reputation?  I'll wager I'm not alone in my feelings on this.  If Cryptic comes out with a new game, I'll preorder without knowing anything else about it other than it's a mmog put out by Cryptic.

Whenever there is room for improvement - and there is a lot of room for improvement - someone will come in to fill the void.  So Blizzard better enjoy their cash now, because they will not be on top of the heap for long without radically changing how they treat their customers.

[Edited to fix grammar]

[El Gallo]

I doubt it, Xan.  Giving a fuck about what raving asstards on your forums think won't hurt you much because raving asstards on your forums are (a) about one trillionth of your player base and (b) for the most part hopeless addicts anyway.

EQ dominated the market with similar/worse customer relations, now WoW dominates it.  AC and now CoH were famous for their friendly, communicative devs, and both games were insignificantly tiny compared to EQ and WoW respectively.

The lesson to draw from this is how your message board monkeys treat the raving asstards on your official forums means jack and shit.

[Xanthippe]

Yes, but realize this is still a relatively new genre.

In order to attract those who are not the addictive compulsive types who continue to pay for shitty customer service - i.e., normal people - the vast majority of the population - MMOG companies need to do a better job of treating customers with respect.  How many of these people play a mmog for a while and then quit because they don't trust the mmog company any more?

I know people - marvelously addictive types who love to play these games - who won't buy an SOE game because they got burned from EQ.  They won't even consider purchasing EQ2.  Others feel similarly about Mythic, and I note people beginning to feel that way about Blizzard.  Blizzard had great customer devotion before WoW.  It's burning through that rather quickly now, however.

EQ2 should have been a mega-hit, and would have been, I think, except for the poor reputation of SOE.  I didn't buy it, and I didn't even play EQ.  I just know a lot of people who did, and heard the complaints.  It scared me off from even bothering to try it, and I buy a fair amount of games.

Of course, I could be completely wrong about all of this.  Simply because this all squares with how I feel about it doesn't mean many others do, but perhaps I'm exposed to more who do because I do.  (Can you follow the doo here? doobydoobydoo).

[lamaros]

In order to attract those who are not the addictive compulsive types who continue to pay for shitty customer service - i.e., normal people - the vast majority of the population.

My experience has been that normal people make up a very small minority.

EQ2 should have been a mega-hit, and would have been, I think, except for the poor reputation of SOE.  I didn't buy it, and I didn't even play EQ.  I just know a lot of people who did, and heard the complaints.  It scared me off from even bothering to try it, and I buy a fair amount of games.

I suppose that's what normal people do? Personaly I choose not to play EQ2 because nothing I read or heard about it made me think it would be that much fun. I'm not playing Guild Wars much these days because the retail implementation of PvP isn't that much fun either. And I quit WoW after realising that none of the stuff I had yet to do was going to be very fun.

Now this might strike you as being very odd, but I think you'll find that if EQ2 had been made by Blizzard and WoW by SOE then SOE would be the one with the subscribers.

I personaly think that good communication from the customers to the developers is going to keep people playing the game more than good communication going the other way.

If there's a problem with the Warlock spells that stops me casting half of them I want to know the devs will be aware of it, and fix it, ASAP. It would be nice to hear back from them on the issue too, no doubt, but it's much more important to me to get the problem fixed.

[Llava]

Now this might strike you as being very odd, but I think you'll find that if EQ2 had been made by Blizzard and WoW by SOE then SOE would be the one with the subscribers.

I doubt.

[HaemishM]

Now, personally, I think official forums are cesspools of stupid, wastelands of ignornant ball-lickers who scream for dev attention like rockstar groupies lust for Gene Simmons' cock. I think the noise FAR outshouts the good on official forums, ESPECIALLY on really successful MMOG's.

And I would argue that when that is the case, the fault lies with the CMs, not the players. The customers have the right to speak to the developer and they will do so in the manner that they are allowed to and/or are encouraged to. And it's a bigger issue than just forum moderation, although that is part of it. I think we (CMs) have done a poor job of educating players on what the purpose and goals of the forums are and of molding an environment cohesive to achieving those goals. We also far too often encourage the wrong behavior, most of the time without even realizing it.

I see some people advocating that we should stop talking to players because the noise is drowning out the signal. I can’t disagree with that more. One way communication is cop-out and an admission that you don’t know how to communicate with your customers. One-way communication achieves nothing other than to send the message that you don’t care what your customers say or what they want. If you stop talking to your customers all you are doing is admitting that you don’t know how to. I do think the idea of a weekly developer update is a good idea though, but that doesn’t excuse the team from checking the feedback and posting some follow-ups.

If nothing else, this is my biggest issue with OCR…as Community Managers, we need to start managing the feedback loop, not just react to it.

Bolded emphasis is mine. I'm not too sure I agree with that statement. I would go so far as to say I think that's part of the problem.

Fans of MMOG's especially feel as if they have some entitlement to have developers listen to them. You can see this is some of the attitude in the whole MMOG ranting community, or in sites like this one, and even in some of my writings on the subject. I believe it is because of the inherent communal aspects of MMOG's that they believe this. However, I do not think this is an inalienable right, say on the level of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." I think it is more of a conditional right.

Players of an MMOG are customers of a SERVICE. That's the important part. I think in regards to SERVICE issues, such as bugs, downtime, lag, availability, UI usabiity, playability, griefing and harrassment etc. players have every right to communicate with the developers. They need that feedback loop, because those are the things that the developers should never fuck up, and if they do, they should fix it as quickly as possible. But things like balance, story/backstory, and the development of the creative aspects of the game? Fuck no. These are the things developers need to decide upon, need to lay down and need to stick to. It needs to be their game, their world. Otherwise, you get the Mythic overbalancing problems, you get flavor of the month bullshit, etc.

Bugs that cause imbalances, yes. But balance itself in the hands (or even touched by the hands) of players? Fuck no.

[HaemishM]

Ok, now let's factor in:
1) Interest on credit and/or investor return on investment
2) infrastructure + NOC center operations, insurance (disaster recovery, etc.), including all of the servers stood up as the numbers spiraled
3) Bandwidth
4) emergency recovery (backup servers, etc.)
5) marketing costs (yes, it was mostly viral marketing, but still adds in)
6) adminstrative overhead

and then factor in having 300+ customer support personnel (giving them 1 to 5000 subscriber ratio, which some say is a good guestimate), plus the customer support facilities, etc.

If all of those things did not factor into the price of the box, the # of boxes needed to be produced and the amount of the monthly subscription such that all of those combined would take care of it as long as X% of the boxes were sold, then the business managers for the company are fucking idiots who do not deserve jobs in any industry. All of that shit is or should be budgeted into production costs, especially the server farms;  and the CS personnel costs and maintenance overhead should be factored into the monthly subscription fee.

[Stephen Zepp]

Ok, now let's factor in:
1) Interest on credit and/or investor return on investment
2) infrastructure + NOC center operations, insurance (disaster recovery, etc.), including all of the servers stood up as the numbers spiraled
3) Bandwidth
4) emergency recovery (backup servers, etc.)
5) marketing costs (yes, it was mostly viral marketing, but still adds in)
6) adminstrative overhead

and then factor in having 300+ customer support personnel (giving them 1 to 5000 subscriber ratio, which some say is a good guestimate), plus the customer support facilities, etc.

If all of those things did not factor into the price of the box, the # of boxes needed to be produced and the amount of the monthly subscription such that all of those combined would take care of it as long as X% of the boxes were sold, then the business managers for the company are fucking idiots who do not deserve jobs in any industry. All of that shit is or should be budgeted into production costs, especially the server farms;  and the CS personnel costs and maintenance overhead should be factored into the monthly subscription fee.

Except that you can't, because there are hard and fast industry expectations for both box cost and subscription fees. While we see incremental attempts to modify both (more successful in the subscription fee aspect), just this community alone has said time and again that they won't pay ++ bucks for a game above what they expect, regardless of how good or bad it is.

But that's not really the point of my post--you said that in the first 2 months they should have completely recovered their research/dev/production costs, and be rolling in the dough...all I'm pointing out here is that in my un-informed (as to their actual budget, costs, investments, etc.) opinion, they haven't gotten quite into the "completely rolling in the dough" point yet.

[Stephen Zepp]

Now, personally, I think official forums are cesspools of stupid, wastelands of ignornant ball-lickers who scream for dev attention like rockstar groupies lust for Gene Simmons' cock. I think the noise FAR outshouts the good on official forums, ESPECIALLY on really successful MMOG's.

And I would argue that when that is the case, the fault lies with the CMs, not the players. The customers have the right to speak to the developer and they will do so in the manner that they are allowed to and/or are encouraged to. And it's a bigger issue than just forum moderation, although that is part of it. I think we (CMs) have done a poor job of educating players on what the purpose and goals of the forums are and of molding an environment cohesive to achieving those goals. We also far too often encourage the wrong behavior, most of the time without even realizing it.

I see some people advocating that we should stop talking to players because the noise is drowning out the signal. I can’t disagree with that more. One way communication is cop-out and an admission that you don’t know how to communicate with your customers. One-way communication achieves nothing other than to send the message that you don’t care what your customers say or what they want. If you stop talking to your customers all you are doing is admitting that you don’t know how to. I do think the idea of a weekly developer update is a good idea though, but that doesn’t excuse the team from checking the feedback and posting some follow-ups.

If nothing else, this is my biggest issue with OCR…as Community Managers, we need to start managing the feedback loop, not just react to it.

Bolded emphasis is mine. I'm not too sure I agree with that statement. I would go so far as to say I think that's part of the problem.

Fans of MMOG's especially feel as if they have some entitlement to have developers listen to them. You can see this is some of the attitude in the whole MMOG ranting community, or in sites like this one, and even in some of my writings on the subject. I believe it is because of the inherent communal aspects of MMOG's that they believe this. However, I do not think this is an inalienable right, say on the level of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." I think it is more of a conditional right.

Players of an MMOG are customers of a SERVICE. That's the important part. I think in regards to SERVICE issues, such as bugs, downtime, lag, availability, UI usabiity, playability, griefing and harrassment etc. players have every right to communicate with the developers. They need that feedback loop, because those are the things that the developers should never fuck up, and if they do, they should fix it as quickly as possible. But things like balance, story/backstory, and the development of the creative aspects of the game? Fuck no. These are the things developers need to decide upon, need to lay down and need to stick to. It needs to be their game, their world. Otherwise, you get the Mythic overbalancing problems, you get flavor of the month bullshit, etc.

Bugs that cause imbalances, yes. But balance itself in the hands (or even touched by the hands) of players? Fuck no.

I think this is a naive point of view: When you call "customer support" for any large scale application vendor, do you get the developers, or the minimum wage customer support staff that couldn't understand a lick of code if they ate it? Microsoft certainly doesn't give you direct access to developers in any way, and I don't know of other industries (except for possibly small scale shareware/independent software applications) where any customer can get access to a developer.

In the healthcare information sector, specifically vendors that provide applications, I know of zero vendors in the entire industry that let customers of ANY type even send an email to a developer, much less call them or expect the devs to read forums of any sort. And these are applications that cost hospitals millions, if not tens of millions of dollars yearly, including "support agreements" in the 5 digits per year.

[Calandryll]

Now, personally, I think official forums are cesspools of stupid, wastelands of ignornant ball-lickers who scream for dev attention like rockstar groupies lust for Gene Simmons' cock. I think the noise FAR outshouts the good on official forums, ESPECIALLY on really successful MMOG's.

And I would argue that when that is the case, the fault lies with the CMs, not the players. The customers have the right to speak to the developer and they will do so in the manner that they are allowed to and/or are encouraged to. And it's a bigger issue than just forum moderation, although that is part of it. I think we (CMs) have done a poor job of educating players on what the purpose and goals of the forums are and of molding an environment cohesive to achieving those goals. We also far too often encourage the wrong behavior, most of the time without even realizing it.

I see some people advocating that we should stop talking to players because the noise is drowning out the signal. I can’t disagree with that more. One way communication is cop-out and an admission that you don’t know how to communicate with your customers. One-way communication achieves nothing other than to send the message that you don’t care what your customers say or what they want. If you stop talking to your customers all you are doing is admitting that you don’t know how to. I do think the idea of a weekly developer update is a good idea though, but that doesn’t excuse the team from checking the feedback and posting some follow-ups.

If nothing else, this is my biggest issue with OCR…as Community Managers, we need to start managing the feedback loop, not just react to it.

Bolded emphasis is mine. I'm not too sure I agree with that statement. I would go so far as to say I think that's part of the problem.

Fans of MMOG's especially feel as if they have some entitlement to have developers listen to them. You can see this is some of the attitude in the whole MMOG ranting community, or in sites like this one, and even in some of my writings on the subject. I believe it is because of the inherent communal aspects of MMOG's that they believe this. However, I do not think this is an inalienable right, say on the level of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." I think it is more of a conditional right.

Players of an MMOG are customers of a SERVICE. That's the important part. I think in regards to SERVICE issues, such as bugs, downtime, lag, availability, UI usabiity, playability, griefing and harrassment etc. players have every right to communicate with the developers. They need that feedback loop, because those are the things that the developers should never fuck up, and if they do, they should fix it as quickly as possible. But things like balance, story/backstory, and the development of the creative aspects of the game? Fuck no. These are the things developers need to decide upon, need to lay down and need to stick to. It needs to be their game, their world. Otherwise, you get the Mythic overbalancing problems, you get flavor of the month bullshit, etc.

Bugs that cause imbalances, yes. But balance itself in the hands (or even touched by the hands) of players? Fuck no.

I think we actually agree to some extent here. Let me clarify my original statement. When I said they have a right to speak with the developers, I didn't necessarily mean directly.

I do think that players should be heard though. Whether its about a bug or their opinion of a creative design they have a stake in the future development of the game. I totally agree that players should never be used to drive design (that's bad) and it's one of the reasons I have always been against polling players on design decisions. But this is the crux of my point. We (OCR) haven't done a good job of educating players on exactly what kind of feedback we want from them and then working to create an environment that facilities and encourages the feedback we want. We let them just post about anything and everything and then are surprised when people feel ignored. We also need to be more willing to say "no" to a player's feedback and take the time to explain why we said no.

It's the developer's job to choose a direction, but once that direction is chosen they should absolutely seek feedback from their subscribers - even if just to tweak the design. More imporantly, the community team should be involved in those decisions, representing the players in design and development meetings, before the design is even presented for feedback.

[HaemishM]

One should NEVER allow developers to speak directly to or directly with customers. Developers aren't known for their tact. I think all communication between developer and customer should go through the filter of a community manager, both ways, someone who understands how PR works and can polish up the dev comments and filter out the "cock" from the customer comments. Even the dev posts should go through the CM before going public, simply because. I think we've all seen enough instances where that didn't happen and things like "Being a victim is FUN!" get through.

And yeah, Calandryll, customer's expectations are not being managed at all well. I think it's an example of too much legalese (in long EULA's on forums and games) and not even clear talk. Things like forcing players to read FAQ's on forums, so they learn about things like the quote function, or the search function, before being allowed to post, etc.

As for tweaking designs with player feedback, I don't think that serves much good unless you go the "Team Lead" direction that DAoC did. Mostly I think that because the majority of players can't see past their dicks in regards to game changes.

[Stephen Zepp]

One should NEVER allow developers to speak directly to or directly with customers. Developers aren't known for their tact. I think all communication between developer and customer should go through the filter of a community manager, both ways, someone who understands how PR works and can polish up the dev comments and filter out the "cock" from the customer comments. Even the dev posts should go through the CM before going public, simply because. I think we've all seen enough instances where that didn't happen and things like "Being a victim is FUN!" get through.

And yeah, Calandryll, customer's expectations are not being managed at all well. I think it's an example of too much legalese (in long EULA's on forums and games) and not even clear talk. Things like forcing players to read FAQ's on forums, so they learn about things like the quote function, or the search function, before being allowed to post, etc.

As for tweaking designs with player feedback, I don't think that serves much good unless you go the "Team Lead" direction that DAoC did. Mostly I think that because the majority of players can't see past their dicks in regards to game changes.

Hehe..ok, I thought we were saying opposite things, but it sounds like we aren't...that was my whole reason for posting in the thread, in that it sounded like people felt is was a requirement/absolute right for players to have direct access to dev's...and that's just not feasible either economically or diplomatically in my opinion!

[Shockeye]

I think what Cryptic does is great, but I don't feel I need to be able to bitch directly to a dev either. I like knowing upcoming things and I have no problem with CM's as long as they are kept in the loop. Blizzard seems to have a problem with this.

[Hoax]

I still say that the only things players really need are:

A semi-comprehensive list of what the devs are up to, it doesn't need to go into too much detail but if they can keep a blog/journal/log style thing so players know what to look forward to / worry about.

A test server, that players can access and some form of feedback mechanism available when they put a new build on it so that players can at least feel like they are weighing in on new patches.

Thats it.

Scrap everything but server boards and tech support, call it a day.

[AcidCat]

I still say that the only things players really need are:

A semi-comprehensive list of what the devs are up to, it doesn't need to go into too much detail but if they can keep a blog/journal/log style thing so players know what to look forward to / worry about.

A test server, that players can access and some form of feedback mechanism available when they put a new build on it so that players can at least feel like they are weighing in on new patches.

Thats it.

Scrap everything but server boards and tech support, call it a day.

I agree. All I really want is info on what's coming for the game, patch notes, and someone to call if I have a technical problem or billing error. That's it. And I'd say there's a large percentage that don't even need that much, as long as they can successfully log in and play they are totally satisfied.

[Xanthippe]

I still say that the only things players really need are:

A semi-comprehensive list of what the devs are up to, it doesn't need to go into too much detail but if they can keep a blog/journal/log style thing so players know what to look forward to / worry about.

A test server, that players can access and some form of feedback mechanism available when they put a new build on it so that players can at least feel like they are weighing in on new patches.

Thats it.

Scrap everything but server boards and tech support, call it a day.

Agreed.  Cryptic provides well beyond that, but I thought they were being shown as example-of-what-is-possible, not example-of-what-should-be-the-norm.

SOE, Mythic, Blizzard and others with shitty CS have it because it's not a priority - they think it doesn't matter.  And to be fair, Mythic at least tries to have decent CS - it's more the problem in communication breakdown between their CMs and devs.  This is a problem that shouldn't have ever been, and I have no idea if they still suffer this problem because I quit the game a year ago and haven't bothered checking back.

Customers remember. Iin new markets people become more sophisticated over time in terms of what they will and will not put up with.  The MMOG market was very specialized with EQ - when EQ started, a lot of people didn't even own computers.  That is no longer the case. 

Companies can either cater to the miniscule part of the market that SOE relieds upon for success, or they can attempt to gain more customers - which will mean they need to become better than they've been in the past.  Rarely has providing shitty customer service been a method of becoming successful - certainly not in a mature market, at any rate.  When you're the only game in town, sure.

[I think this poor horse is dead by now.  Suffering from chick affliction today - the necessity to say the same thing over and over and over...]

[Strazos]

Blizzard's boards are simply excessive. I don't pay a sub fee so people have a place to go beg for quest walkthroughs, laugh about what some jackass did on some other server, or bitch and moan about whatever the problem of the day is. Do that somewhere else, I don't need that noise.

And devs should be busy doing their primary job - developing the game, not reading the ill-advised and poorly-typed ramblings of MomsCC24718 or BasementDweller12648.

People expect far too much sometimes.