Hello,

I am starting this post simply because I am very dissapointed of Blizzard's attitude against Mage Class players (actualy players in general), and i will try to develop this a bit further. Also, while hoping not to get baned (and as of now, LOCKED), I sencirely hope to get a reply from the forum team.

First of all, I want to tell you a bit about myself, simply because i would like to underline that the following comment comes from personal experience.

I am an IT Consultant, with more than 5 years of experience in this job. The product I am working on is at least as complex as World of Warcraft, the big diffrence is that any "bug" or functionality error must be treated within 24 hours, since the product is used in a national company and the consequences of something being wrong are quite serious. In fact, compared to WoW, our company risks legal pursuit because of the errors not to mention losing the contract payments (similar to your player's subscription but on a diffrent level - for the sake of the comparison). In those 5 years i have worked closely with the client - so I do believe that I have quite a deep understanding of the neccesary requirements involving this part (compliance with the client's requests).

I have also been involved in all the processes of a project, starting with Analysis, Functional Design, then the Technical Desing, Development, Testing, Client Tests, Implementation, and Maintenance.

From my experience I realised that the most important skill of all is not the Technical one, but the Social skill, since the Analysis is by far the most important step of all. One cannot do a good analysis without first being able to understant the client's needs and requests, and also explaining the client what paths, what solutions to apply. From this point of view, the Consultant - Client relationship must be a good one. Both must repsect each other, understand the positions they have in this relationship, and both must show a great degree of trust.

Also, i still have a great deal of respect for Blizzard and consider the Blizzard products as being pretty much the best there are on the market (along with some other notable examples). Overall, Blizzard is one of the companies that succeded in producing few games yet those games had great succes, although they were never at the top of technical advances. This succes simply came from the quality of the products and this is what I respect the most at Blizzard. Sadly, in the past few months i have come to doubt the fact that Blizzard is a serious company with a positive attitute towards it's Client (Cliet = player community).

This pretty much ends my introduction part, with one last thing nedded to be mentioned. The tile of this post is not random at all, and has quite a big significance. It is closely related to a post that has recieved a swift response from Bizzard (http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=8449735174&sid=1).

For the past few weeks i have kept a close eye on this forum, as many of you people did, because of the announced changes in Patch 3.1.0 and the steps back made in Patch 3.0.9. I "visited" the forums allmost each day trying to find a "blue" response to all the "whines" posted by fellow mages. I couldn't find any (except the Arcane Barrage PvE/PvP discution).

Also, another interesting fact is that many of the problems that arose with the Mage Class, at least in the past few weeks are a result of the poor job (and yes, this is coming from somebody that really knows what he's speaking of) Blizzard did in developing and testing their Product. Quality management isues here, I do wonder how you got your certificates.

Today i had a great surprise, since the Forum Team decided to show us that they are alive and real, and saw that there were several posts that drew your attention and got a response. Unfortunatly, the responses were as... and please excuse my language, dumb and useless as the posts themselves.

Useless - simply because you decided to respond to topics that had nothing constructive in them and dumb simply because you adopted a "god-like I tell you what to do, I make the rules, I control your reality... We control the horizontal, and the vertical... We control everything that you hear and see (C) The Outer Limits :)".

Those posts are a direct result of your attitude (you = Blizzard as entity, i have no quarrel with any concrete person). The forums are filled with interesting observations, suggestions, comments, and as none of them got the deserved respect and atention, yet a post that is ment to attack you directly (with a more or less vulgar language) got a response in record time, or get locked altough they do not break any rules (see my original post, allmost identical to this one).

This just shows your lack of respect and lack of interest towards the people that pay for your houses, your cars, your children's tax schools, your holidays and so on, the people that you are dependent on.

The forums pretty much work, in concordance with the PTR as a Client Test step in a project. Your lack of respect, even seen only from a professional point of view (not to mention a moral point of view) is quite disturbing. What kind of company Blizzard is when it decides not to answer any critic (more or less objective, yet product based critics) but reacts fast and decisevly when they are attacked on a personal level?

From my point of view it's a company that simply does not care anymore about the Clients simply because the revenues got so high and the company management got so ignorant (not to mention the middle and low level personel).

The best tool to improve this product is overlooked. PTR + Forums provide you the tools to improve the product (and, realisticly speaking, to earn more $/€) and you completly ignore it? Moreover, you show a disgusting lack of respect towards the very people that sustain the company. It is outrageous.

In the end, the sole purpose of this post is to draw the attention to the bigest problem of all. Blizzard's attitude and lack of respect and professionalism. All the other problems derive from this single one issue. And in case Blizzard does not take major steps in solving this problem, things re just going to get worse.

Blizzard, FYI: All the "Screw you blizzard" posts are a direct consequence of your attitude. Since the forum is literaly filled with serious discutions, suggestions and comments, yet you decide to act on a post that is worthless you encourage people to "screw you" more. Sorry to say this, but although worthless, and dumb, and idiotic even as those threads are, you rightfully deserve all those epithets - since you do nothing to combat them. Treating your Client with ignorance will only result in more of those posts apearing.

How ironic - 10 or 15 page discutions that would surely improve your (and also our) product do not deserve one single word from you, a small reaction, feedback... yet posts like "Good job blizz" or "Screw you blizzard" get your attention in a couple of hours. Oh, i forgot to mention the five-words reply (telling only how much you apreciate our interest and reasuring us that you do read those forums - oh my god, how hipocritical of you) to the "Molten Armor" threads.

Also, just to remind you, the people that insist on informing you of their warm feelings like "screw you!" have paid for this product. And responding in this manner is not acceptable. Also, urging us to review our attitude about posting is hilarious, considerint your attitude towards out posts. You, Blizzard, deserve to be treated in the same ignorant and disrespectfull way you are treating the players. The people that bought, an pay a monthly fee, that, all in all, pay your wages deserve better than this.

In the end, i am quite serious about this - consider this as you like: bashing, calling you bad names or any other childish attitude you seem to adopt those days - but this is the sole single real issue with this game: Blizzard's lack of respect towards it's Client. Shame.

To the point answer:

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Q u o t e:
The players who decide to post in a manner that violates our forum codes of conduct are only doing themselves a disservice by essentially ensuring that they will not be able to provide any thoughts, comments or feedback to us at all - possibly never - if their suspension history or forum offenses warrant it.

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- The players posted in such a manner exactly because their thoughts and comments did not recieve any feedback from you.

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Q u o t e:
Without trying to sound too draconian with our policing; it boils down to the simple case of "Either you post in the manner we have deemed acceptable or you don't post at all".

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- Maybe you've forgotten your place in this relationship. I agree that rules must be made, and they must be respected but since your attitude is more than offensive towards us you seem to need to be reminded that we pay for this - thus puting us on a step higher than you. To be concise, it boils down to the simple case "What you eat, we provide.". Simple as that. So before being "draconian" with your policies, try to fix your attitude.

Please do not post threads with "blizzard" and similar terms in the title.

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Q u o t e:
Using the words “Blizzard,” “Blue,” or any community team member’s name in a thread topic is frowned on

Everyone would like Blizzard to read and acknowledge his or her post, and we understand that. However, use of such words in the topic does not help that come to pass. Please make your thread title relevant to the post subject.

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Also please do not re-post locked threads.

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Q u o t e:
Do not post about (or re-post) locked or deleted threads

Posts that are locked or deleted have a reason behind the moderation. We generally lock before we post on a locked thread to stop the violation in question as soon as possible, so if you have yet to see a comment by a member of the community team on a locked thread, please wait for it and do not post on the subject. In some cases the moderator may consider the reason obvious enough to not need explaining, or simply not wish to bring the post back to the top of the forums.

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The moderation of these forums are not a valid topic for dicussion in the forums. If you wish to comment about the Community team and our actions, please do so by using the web form provided for that purpose:
https://www.wow-europe.com/community/webform/index.html

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