Bluetracker

Tracks Blizzard employees across various accounts.

Suggestions for How to Reveal an Expansion without Angering the Player Base

Prologue (aka 'down, reddit contrarians'): You are never going to make everyone happy. These are suggestions for how to improve the existing reveal process to increase player base satisfaction.

Body (aka 'the arguments'): There are many things Team 5 is getting very good at. Among them: understanding what excites players, positive and negative in-game emotional triggers, the stratification of the player base, in-depth discussions / accessibility of key team members, etc. But as we sit at the doorstep of a new release, riding the wave of one of the most successful Hearthstone expansions ever, the last couple of weeks have left many players sour. Below are a few ideas for how to improve the release experience.

(1) Be reliable. There is nothing more pleasing to an eager fan than getting what is expected (and maybe a little more) when they are expecting it. Remember, you set your own expectations, so set the bar and stick to it.

(2) Put yourself in your audience's shoes. Fans have a voracious appetite for new content (which is good - though insatiable, it means you're winning) and will generally want all changes and updates to disproportionately favor themselves and their tastes (which is normal - humans are normally naturally self-centered). Though there will always be complaining, the masses are generally reasonable if you are reliable and predictable in your behavior (see 1). If you announce that there are 100 cards to reveal over approximately 15-20 days with no further information, it is reasonable for your audience to assume they will be approximately evenly spaced and reasonable for them to react negatively if that is not the case (i.e. Ticking Abomination). It will be especially negative if you do not follow number 3.

(3) Be thorough. Except in cases where holding back specific details is likely worth it (not spoiling single-player content or other similar surprises), communicate loudly, repetitively, and consistently. It should feel like a high school essay. Tell them what you're going to tell them (as exactly as possible: "We're going to reveal 3-5 cards per day in the following locations until a big final reveal on August XX!"), tell them a couple of times and in a couple of ways (Twitter, Facebook, forums), and then tell them what you've told them. Team 5 has the luxury of having a tremendous amount of media at its disposal, but a disjointed, ill-communicated treasure hunt of random stream reveals is not cute or 'spreading the love;' it is infuriating and feels willfully exclusionary to your most loyal (and most profitable) fans. If Apple released a new phone and hid details about it on 30 different websites over two weeks, you can imagine the backlash.

Closing (aka 'the pandering'): Hearthstone is a game that TENS of MILLIONS of people love, and we want many reasons to continue to love it more. Fun, competitiveness, fairness, and novelty are all key pillars of that experience, and you have improved all of these areas dramatically. But don't squander the goodwill created by the fabulous work you do in your core competency by goofing up the marketing part. Most businesses struggle to sell their product. Hearthstone has throngs lined up at the door, cash in hand. Just take it, and give them a little bit of a show while you do it. We know it's harder than we think, but it's not as hard as you're making it seem.

Thank you. Love, a fan

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