Ahh, QQ. A staple of the WoW community, the foundation of this blog, and something every one of us likes to delve in from time to time.
Sure, there are some who QQ because they legitimately hate the game but don’t quit for some reason and go do something that’s actually fun (my theory is that they enjoy being miserable), but most of us genuinely love the game.
We only QQ when a change that we don’t like, or otherwise don’t agree with, is applied to the game.
Or, more specifically, our ideal of the game.
As a company, Blizzard has always held itself to the standard of utter perfection. They are not a company willing to go forward with “good enough”, anything less than “best game in the history of everything” just isn’t good enough for them.
I hear you scoff. I hear you already typing in your counter-argument. That’s some impressive multi-tasking there, by the way.
Stop typing for a second, and let’s look at the facts here.
Starcraft was hugely successful. Sporting three completely unique and balanced races (a feat thought impossible), brilliant story-telling and ridiculously well crafted characters. I can’t be the only one who got all misty-eyed when Fenix died, to say nothing of the perpetual stiffie I have for Kerrigan. Baby, I’d let you infest me any day.
It was a very good game, but not perfect. Yes, it was very balanced, but not perfectly so. Comparing the up-to-date PC version with the N64 version reveals the differences rather starkly. To be brief, Zerg are so horrifically overpowered on the N64 it’s not even funny (4 pool I win durr hurrrrr).
But “very good” wasn’t good enough. So patch 1.08 (this is the humassive patch that basically fixed every single balance issue) was released, and was Blizzard’s way of saying “we want this game to be the best ever”. I mean, there were still patches coming out in 2005. That’s dedication.
Who keeps releasing patches to their game a decade after it first game out? And no “well, it’s still such a popular game” is not good comeback, that just reinforces my point.
Consider the games Blizzard didn’t release, Starcraft: Ghost and Warcraft Adventures.
Those two games are guaranteed best sellers. Even if they were merely average, they would easily earn millions, with at least a million copies of each game selling on release day.
Both games are, amazingly, essentially finished. Somewhere at Blizzard, the effectively completed games sit somewhere in a vault, abandoned for merely being “good”.
Ghost ended up being put on hold indefinitely, though there are still plans to maybe get it out someday. Warcraft Adventures, by comparison, is dead and gone.
Diablo, yes, the original Diablo, still makes it into top 20 best seller lists, to say nothing of the immense popularity the Warcraft games enjoy. WoW, of course, possesses over 11 million active subscribers, and likely tens of millions of people who used to play.
The trick is, Blizzard doesn’t actually have a higher rate of success than other game studios. Instead, what Blizzard does is axe the games that won’t meet their standards of utter perfection.
To quote Rob Pardo:
we’ve cancelled a lot of projects… We’re just willing to cancel the products that fail. That’s important to our brand. We’re willing to bite the bullet and write off those expenses.
Such a philosophy is not an easy one to hold.
The biggest problem, of course, is that us, the player base, begin to share that philosophy.
Blizzard says “nothing short of perfect is good enough”, and we hold them to that.
Blizzard wants the perfect game, so we point out every single thing wrong with them.
The source of QQ is not our anger, not our rage or frustration, but from Blizzards own ideals.
They hold themselves to a standard of perfection, and we do too. Thus, whenever anything less than perfection is attained, we feel cheated somehow. We were promised something, and received something less.
You need look no further than patch 3.1s promise to revitalize fire PvP, and the outrage and frustration that followed when that promise wasn’t fulfilled.
We wouldn’t complain nearly as much if Blizzard went with “good enough”, or even “meh”.
Another finely crafted article from a fellow troll mage. Please sir, can I have some more?
While I agree with your assessment of Blizzard’s reputation for quality, I don’t necessarily feel that their perfectionist business ethic is the only cause of our QQing.
People QQed a LOT in Everquest, and it most certainly wasn’t because Sony Online Entertainment had a reputation for only releasing The Best Game Possible. Hell, they released their Shadows of Luclin expansion without actually finishing the final raid content.
I think it’s just human nature to QQ about whatever we can, especially when we can hide behind even a little bit of anonymity (See Penny Arcade’s “Internet D*ckwad Theory”) or if the ability to make the changes we QQ about is out of out control.
There’s actually a part 2 of this post covering what I think to be the other two root causes of QQ (in short, love of the game and/or player ideals of the game).
People QQ for all sorts of reasons of all levels of legitimacy. I’m not sure Blizz’s perfectionism has much impact there.
But thanks for managing to support Blizz without fanboyish fawning. I’m sick of hearing “Blizz doesn’t care, they’re just laughing on the way to the bank with your money”. It’s easy for people to forget exactly what Blizz goes through to ensure that their customers get a superior product.
Every time I hear one of the Blues talk about this issue or that, I’m always struck by their thoroughness, their frankness, and oftentimes by their out-of-the-box thinking. These guys do work hard. It’s easy for us to complain about some little thingy wrong with our class and spec, but given the sheer complexity and number of options that the game offers, Blizz does remarkably well. And they never rest on their laurels—they’re constantly working to improve everything.
Kerrigan, lawl. Yes, just yes.
I QQ simply because I made a mage, and the first thing the trainer leveled me at was.
Art of QQ – Level 1
I’m going to name my first daughter Kerrigan. I’m just saying.
EMERGENCY GC POST ON COMBUSTION! WHAAAAAAT
http://blue.mmo-champion.com/28/19595732241-why-does-combustion-have-a-3-min-cooldown.html
I just had to come in and say:
I didn’t get misty-eyed when Fenix died (neither first nor second time). Kerrigan was just too cool. However, I did:
Cry when Tassadar died.
Cry when Grom Hellscream died.
The “perpetual stiffie” – pre-infestion, yeah. Afterwards, the stiff blade hair thing kinda ruined it for me.
So far, WoW hasn’t made me anywhere close to this emotionally attached.
To me people’s expectation that Blizz will deliver something that is perfect, or even close to is laughable. IMHO they do a brilliant job.
Blizzard are required to make money. They will make compromises at times.
I heard a speaker at a business council talking about innovation. He said something similar too. ‘Any product that is more than 5% better than the competition is wasting money.’
Sure this is a generalisation and the percentages can be argued but the premise that the profitability sweet spot for a product is only slightly better than what else is available seemed to be a reasonable premise.
Blizzard have certainly beaten the competition by more than a small bit.
I think I am preempting part II, but in my experience people only QQ when they care.
If you don’t care about quality (be it in a game, customer service etc.), you just walk away.
When you do care, you will QQ loud and clear.
When you do care, and an avenue is made to make things better (eg: addons, forums, blogs), you make it better… if you really care, you make it publicly available to everyone.
Really great post. Listening to people constantly complain about how awful Blizz is, how they make so much money but still ignore us and blah blah blah really gets on my nerves. It’s nice to read a perspective with a healthy dose of respect that doesn’t veer off into fanboi land.
Great write up. Blizzard is just a company that has to make money in order to keep providing. They do have a mindset of not releasing a game til they deem it ready (notice how they dont give dates with announcements for xpacs and new games). They simply state it will release when its done.
I have to agree that people mainly QQ when they care. If someone didnt care they would simply leave and be done with it. The majority of the player base truly does care about this game.
The main thing that gets me to QQ is the, ” Additional instances cannot be launched at this time. Please try again later.” They changed the emblems to get more people in heroics but cant run enough instances to support the player base now wanting to run heroics.
I’d have to agree with those who say that people QQ when something they are invested in gets affected by change.
Is this just a Blizzard thing? I say nay.
How many people long for the days of Final Fantasy VII?
How many people wish that they’d left Knight Rider alone? (Heh.)
How many people cringed at that which was Episodes I, II, and III?
And how many people wish that Death Knights were still as Heroic and kick-ass as they used to be before 3.1? (Ok, that’s just me, but still…)
People QQ about anything that’s changed that they’re mentally invested in. There have been debates up and down about how the new 3.2 world of “Emblem of Conquest” farms have affected the game. People QQ about how PvP has affected the PvE world and vice versa. Hell, I know of people who complain about the wholesale removal of Elite creatures from small questzones like Isle of Fenris. (Back in my day, those were elite and those quests were actually hard.)
Heck, even Blizzard is looking at some of their old stuff, and thinking some QQ, I believe, leading to that which will be the new Lv 80 Onyxia. (I think they’re QQ-ing that I soloed her in just under 10 minutes.)
So, QQ’s going to happen. Hell, if NOTHING changes, QQ will happen. It’s just the nature of people. Nothing will satisfy everyone, therefore no matter what QQ will exist.
Blizzard’s job is to try to make money off this product and their other products. How do they do that? Minimizing the QQ by playing to the lowest common denominator, I think.
Thus – Conquest Badge Farms.
Granted, I’m using those too. It’s nice to see Uld 25 and Naxx 25 now.
But I know it’s not the same as it was. *sigh*
But I’d not be there if it was.
Dilemma, dilemma…
*shrug* I’m glad to be there.
One point for Blizz on that.
My 2 yen,
Akiosama
I must say that you’re comment about Blizzard not meeting an individual’s “ideal of the game” is probably spot on for most QQ.
Blizzard has created the expectation, through their communication with the player base — forums, Blizzcon, content patches — that they DO respond to feedback of players to some extent, and they seek to continue to make the game new and exciting for even the most jaded players.
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