Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft is a massively multiplayer online experience that is home to many different types of gamers with different play styles, preferences and interests. WoW provides many different ways to play the game with options to do PVP, PVE, role-play, run dungeons, level alts, and even pet battles. When dealing with such a diverse and multifaceted gaming community in one game, it can sometimes prove difficult to appease fans of the game as a whole.
On a forum for WoW, Ion Hazzikostas, an assistant game director, responded to a complaint about the WoW development team not listening to the feedback from players wanting things to be changed. Hazzikostas explains in a long post about the complicated nature of trying to please everyone in the WoW community.
He starts off with saying that multiple viewpoints are on nearly every topic having to do with the game. “Almost every facet of WoW is an activity that caters to a minority of the playerbase” said Hazzikostas, “And yet, taken together, that collection of minority groups literally IS the World of Warcraft.”
With such a huge amount of people that have many diverse playstyles, the act of pleasing the playerbase becomes a game of take and give. “So when there’s a change, or a feature, that is aimed at a portion of the game that isn’t your personal playstyle, it’s easy and in fact natural to have the sense that ‘everyone’ dislikes it” Said Hazzikostas. The game has such a wide range of playability that it can cause conflicting interests that are too many differing opinions to make a concise decision for the best interest of everyone in the game as a whole.
Blizzard is always walking around eggshells when it comes to WoW. It is an old game that holds many veteran and new players who want to play the game in their own way. As comes with having the largest MMO playerbase, it seems as though Blizzard is stuck in a hole they can not get out of with every decision having a positive and negative consequence.
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