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Q u o t e:
I seriously doubt GC gets mad about what people post. If they post something trollish he just bans then and goes on doing what he does.

The problem for Ghostcrawler is he posted so much on the beta forums and at the release of WOTLK that he gave the player base a false expectation that they could debate with him about the development of the game. He has realised that was a mistake and has been trying to make better selections in terms of the threads he actually post in.

Alot of people on the forums want to have a open debate with him about the Development of the game and he is just not going to have that conversation.

It's his job, and the job of the designers to develop the game, and it's our job to play the game that they develope. It's the job of this forum us to tell them how we feel about how they are doing developing the game, and what areas can be improved.

Some players take the above as if you make a suggestion they should instantly make a change, and that is just not how development works at any level in any business. If you write a letter to McDonalds and tells them you think they should change the Quarter Pounder. They will read the feedback doesn't mean they are going to change the sandwich.

My only beef with the devs is when there are glaring issues like disease dispeling and how it impacts Death Knights, or how certain mechanics are borderline breaking classes and they remain silent. I feel somethings do warrant a response.

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/ cast Tranq shot!

Seriously, forum posters don't make me angry. At most you are seeing sarcastic, eye-rolling or world-weary responses. Most of the time I am just responding quickly because any demonstration that we read the forums at all seem to go a long a way and I don't always have the time to author a well-crafted novella.

I have no problem having an open debate on design with the community. I enjoy it. Where the problem comes is that I am one guy, and I just don't have the bandwidth for an open discussion on every single class issue nor even the important issues that you might feel are "borderline breaking classes." I try to jump in and touch on *some* issues because that's the best I can do, but players sometimes try to interpret that as a stacked rank of what we feel are the most important issues.

It's like weeding a garden. You can rarely ever get every weed out, especially if you only have an hour. You can try and triage the weeds and pull out the worst ones first, but the triage process itself takes time and you end up making a lot of judgment calls trying to compare apples and oranges. Really you can accomplish something if you just pay a little bit of attention to it every day. That's what I try to do.

And I'm not calling you guys weeds. :) WoW is a complicated ecosystem not unlike a garden and it certainly has some problems that need to be plucked out at the roots. Sadly, the list of things we think we can improve in WoW is long and I promise you that we are harsher on our designs than are most of you.

And I totally agree that many players have trouble distinguishing between feedback and demands.