There should be a name for the syndrome that Arenanet seem to be suffering (like Stockholm Syndrome for example) where a business dealing with the public begins to suffer resentment and anger towards its (paying) customer base. This syndrome is much more common in the gaming industry.
The relationship starts “all smiles” during the development process, begins to deteriorate at beta, further deteriorates at launch (mainly because some paying customers do not appreciate what was delivered, which is probably no-ones fault).
Then you have a major change in a largely settled game, e.g. ascended items, bloodlust buff, leagues or whatever which inflames a large section of the customer base. The customer has invested time and money in to the game (albeit less than the dev team has, but the customers time is their own and their money can be spent on whatever they like). During the initial period the customer develops a great deal of passion for the game and this change, well it feels like a betrayal.
The dev team, like the customers, are not perfect. They make mistakes, they pay too much attention to what the metrics tell them and largely ignore even the constructive posts on the forum. They fall back on the fact that the forum, reddit or whatever else is really just a small part of the community out there and most of that is full of jerks. Entirely missing the point that, by and large, happy gamers spend more time in game and unhappy gamers take to the forums to complain.
So when you see anger and disrespect it should tell you that you inflamed a great passion in these players but you let them down somehow. Those with the greatest investment (time, money, past games with Anet) will shout the loudest.
I’m a good example. I’m SO angry at the continuing WvWvW changes (siegewars, bloodlust, ill thought out leagues, ignoring GvG, giving PvE players everything on a plate, how long till we got ascended and when, if ever, can we get all ascended there etc). This is because I spent 3 – 4 hours playing WvWvW every day, bought three accounts and spent upwards of $1500 in the gem store.
I have no personal animosity to anyone at ArenaNet, even Devon Carver (I’m sure he is a reallly nice guy, I probably have more animosity to whoever decided he should be appointed to that job as it speaks volumes relating to the impotance Anet gives WvWvW in the grand scheme of things). But I reserve the right to speak my mind and get angry when so many of us have been beating our heads bloody against the Anet wall making constructive posts for over a year that are almost always ignored. Often there are good reasons, most of the time it comes across as it doesn’t suit “your vision” of WvWvW or you just don’t care enough.
So to all ArenaNet developers and staff – you really shouldn’t take it personally. Listen MUCH more to your paying customers, take metrics with a pinch of salt (hey check out Warhammer for how metrics went down for them?) and start putting real decision makers in the firing line instead of PR bots.
This community interaction thing is, after all, a two way street.
