No company can make all of its customers happy at the same time. Especially when there’s about twelve million of them. It’s just not possible. I came to accept this fact early on, shrugging off nerfs to the classes I play or annoying changes to various system as a they came. I figured it was for “the greater good” of World of Warcraft. There was one aspect of WoW that I believe Blizzard really bombed on. A folly that hurt the community (and thus, the company) that was consistently overlooked or sweep under the rug. The recurring hiccup for the past six years and going has been organization of the community. Mainly, the dissemination of information to us.
The medium core (medcore?) to hardcore audience that cared for every patch change, every lore snippet or blue mechanic discussion had no central repository of information. The reason sites like MMO-Champion and WoWInsider (and, god willing, LoreHound.com) became such juggernauts isn’t because of stellar writing, interesting debate and constructive criticism, but because Blizzard has been so god-awful at relaying information. The founders of those sites saw the need for a centralized system, official or not, and being the good capitalists they were, filled the void. From the humble roots of a few successful startups arose a forest to showcase just how starved for information and organization the WoW community was. And it went on like this.
For years.
I can’t fathom why it went has taken so long, but it appears the Blizzard is finally making an attempt to remedy the situation. The WoW Launcher was a start, but made little impact. Blizzard followed it up by launching an official blog. Recent weeks has seen the company making full use of the space, from Ghostcrawler mechanic discussions to touting the latest in canon lore and even fanart and fanfic. The culmination, in my opinion, has been the multiple preview posts for Patch v4.2 that have been running for over a week.
Being able to find the majority of information I care about in a single, official place is something I can get used to. Whoever championed the move deserves an epic cookie.