01/26/2011 8:51 PMPosted by ZarhymI challenge everyone reading this who feels similarly to the original poster to help steer this community toward better civil discourse. Don't respond to trolls insulting you. Report them. If you want to vent, be reasonable about expressing why you're frustrated, rather than choosing an inflammatory tone. Vote up the posts you feel have reasonable, well-stated feedback, even if you don't agree with their viewpoints. Vote down the posts that aren't going to lead to anything more than impulsive ranting, finger-pointing, and insults. (Carrying this type of mentality into the game goes a long way as well if you aren't satisfied with some of the behavior around you.)
Ok, so here is a major problem that most players are having. We do vote for posts we like and agree with strongly. We do ask for stickies on 20+ page threads because we agree with it for the most part and feel that it echoes our thoughts.
Instead of responding to hundreds upon hundreds of posts from disgruntled players, we are left to stew for weeks and completely and systematically ignored. After this happens sometimes things do become understandably heated. (case in point the ire over certain proposed class changes that have caused multiple hundreds of posts without even a single blue response)
After all of these posts go completely unanswered for so long, they then get locked or oops they just disappeared. That does not inspire confidence, or imply that you actually care how we feel, in fact it strongly implies the opposite.
You cannot completely ignore so many threads on the same subject, and then delete them. Put yourselves in our shoes. Would you feel like you were being listened to and treated like a valued customer, or would you feel like your opinions meant less than nothing and you were held in contempt?
Regardless of the reasoning for changes and if people are justly or unjustly angry, we become more angry by being ignored than we ever were about the changes or whatever the issue was. If Ghostcrawler and other devs spend so much time playing, they know how passionate we are about this game. The devs could and should take some time out of their day and actually have a dialog with frustrated people. Explain to us why x, y, or z is needed and necessary. We still may not agree but you will not see as much hate and anger directed at the devs.
You do not get respect simply because your name and posts are written in blue. You have to earn our respect by being sincere and respectful yourselves, just like you would when pugging with us. You get paid to do a job many of us would die to do. Sometimes it pays to remember why you have that job. It takes less time per day than a single dps queue, and helps your standing with your player base, and the game we all love so much.
Respectfully, Grizz