My intent here is an honest question and specifically to avoid “Blizzard, y u no listen?” just-do-what-I-say territory. In fact, it’s pretty clear that this is a universal problem for companies. Still, this blog is about WoW and Blizzard is an excellent example of the problem I want to explore.
Let’s start off with some statements I think anyone can agree with. Blizzard is a successful company with a large and varied customer base. To expect such a company to be able to consider the opinion of all of its customers is ludicrous. Further, to expect that company to even be able to find the opinion of some of those customers is pretty unreasonable. And if they do find opinions, there’s nothing to say that the feedback given is good. After that, there is a fair discussion to be had about the line between artistic vision and meeting customer wants.
With all of that said, I really don’t understand why Blizzard often seems to be caught by surprise by problems of their own making. Flying is the easy go to, and I will go there, but let’s start out with a very recent problem: the mission table for the shipyard.
As soon as people got their hands on them, I think nearly everyone remarked on their placement. That the distance from the garrison made it unenjoyable to use the shipyard. Yes, it makes sense that the shipyard are close to water of course, but there is no reason that the table to assign the missions needs to be. Not even sure why it had to be a separate table from our follower one, since that seems to be a general command table. Just as we send our followers out on missions and can watch them leave the garrison, there is no reason why we shouldn’t be able to send a deckhand out of the town hall with orders for their captain. Or even just call the captain up themselves. We are a general at this point, are we not?
But I digress and back to the point. It was pretty obvious from reading feedback that it wasn’t enjoyable to have to ride down to the shipyard to send out ships and then ride back to the garrison. We couldn’t even log out at the shipyard, even though they are ostensibly part of our garrison. This has been changed and now you can log out at the shipyard as if it was the garrison. Which is great, but why did the shipyard go live without this? I’m sure people gave that feedback early on and it seems like a pretty obvious need. And now they are adding a table to your town hall when you get a level 3 dock. Which again, great, although why does it have to wait until level 3 and more importantly, why did this not exist before?
Let’s tackle flying in Draenor. One of the condescending replies from Ion Hazzikostas about the flying situation was a (seemingly apocryphal) Henry Ford quote. "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." (This may be my favorite reply to that nonsense.)
Most people expected no flying until max level and were okay with waiting for it. When it came down that we would never fly in Draenor, there was a huge negative response. Yes, some people liked it but the overwhelming response was anger, frustration, and confusion. Without a doubt, part of the reason this response was so strong was that Blizzard had kept saying maybe, maybe, maybe and then suddenly, amongst something of a content drought, during a poorly received expansion, on a 3rd party site, on a Friday, the final answer is no. That’s of course going to generate anger.
But if we were to remove the poor (terrible, bad, no good) presentation of this information, it still would have gotten an angry response. How can I say that? Because people had been talking for months about how they were looking forward to flying. How much they missed it. How much it mattered to them. And the thing is, this wasn’t just on random blogs or in obscure forums. This was on their own Beta and regular forums!
Note that far above I said Blizzard has a large and varied customer base, not fan base and I think that’s important. (Well, I think all of my writing is important and so does my mom). A fan is almost assuredly a customer but the reverse? It can’t be assumed. Blizzard may have a large and varied fan base but I’m willing to say it is still much smaller than their customer base.
Blizzard is a company first and foremost and obviously tailors itself to the needs and interests of the majority of its customers. The problem is that they can’t really predict what the large group of silent customers will want out of their game. This, to some extent, justifies the not-Ford quote above.
But what of big names and “thought-leaders”? As averse as I am to using that second term (the idea of a thought-leader makes my skin crawl), it can be fairly said that that are some bigger name bloggers and writers that can reach and sway a large audience with their thoughts and opinions. Those bigger names are often passionate fans who want to see the game improve. They are (partially) big names because what they write (or vlog or whatever) may often speak for a large number of people.
Yes, of course Blizzard would need to be careful with listening solely to those type of people; not only can they be wrong but they may come to abuse that power. This is not a plea to listen to the superfans always and 100%. But it is a question of why developers in general, and Blizzard in particular, seem to purposely tack against fans for as long as they can until it becomes untenable.
Across the industry, fans seem to be regarded as whiny and entitled know-it-alls that can only see as far as their own interests. And many are, let’s not lie. But many are not. Many are passionate players of the game that “get” the game as much, if not more than, some of the developers. Many are people who listen, talk, and generally interact with both the small fan base and the larger customer base and so have a good idea of what is going on at multiple levels.
There’s a fair and immediate objection to the previous paragraph and that is to define “many”. I agree, who knows what group is truly the “vocal minority”. I’m not saying that Blizzard should always do what fans ask. I’m saying I don’t understand why Blizzard doesn’t try to research, listen, and directly address fan feedback more often.
To end this let me quote from the Harvard Business Review article above:
“Yes, some customers in certain types of businesses are quite capable of verbalizing precisely what sort of innovative product one could build and sell them. And of course, customers in other types of businesses are wholly incapable of verbalizing, with any sort of fidelity whatsoever, what they need and why they need it.
An innovator should have understanding of one’s customers and their problems via empirical, observational, anecdotal methods or even intuition. They should also feel free to ignore customers’ inputs…The real lesson learned was not that that Ford’s failure was one of not listening to his customers, but of his refusal to continuously test his vision against reality….”
Fan feedback is one of these tests against reality. Why don’t more companies see that?
(This post was created a week or so before the post on clothes and choice but it ties in well)
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