How do you feel about Blizzard’s new weekly World of Warcraft blog posts?

Communication is always important for major gaming franchises, and World of Warcraft is no exception. Unfortunately, development teams don’t always consistently keep players in the loop — or just outright ignore them altogether — and the recent self-implosion of a major social media site has removed a previously reliable outlet for relaying information. Perhaps in light of this the Warcraft team has started publishing two blog posts a week: “This Week in WoW” on Mondays and “Blues News” on Fridays. While it may be too soon to judge their effectiveness (or whether they’ll be reliably posted), it’s an interesting addition to an already packed schedule for Dragonflight.

This Week in WoW is probably the more impactful of the two, a point driven home by the fact that in its first edition they announced the release date for patch 10.1. While subsequent weeks didn’t bring news that exciting, they used it this week to premiere the latest in-game cinematic for the upcoming patch. The summary of the upcoming week’s news and event may seem pretty blasé compared to announcements they’re leading with but the fact that they’re listing forthcoming articles is a bold move. Not every topic will be worth waiting for, of course, but committing to a topic schedule demonstrates confidence in their communication team — and if you’re not confident in the communicators, how can you be confident in the communication?

Blues News is a somewhat less impactful effort, functioning as a catchall to what the staff considers the important forum posts and articles from the week. While it’s tempting to deride the effort, it’s good to remember that not every player makes the time to visit fan sites or the official forums on a regular basis. A weekly summary is a great way to create a baseline of relevant information to communicate to the entire playerbase. It could probably be made a little more exciting for those of us who already hang on every blue post — maybe save an update just for the post — but it’s still useful and will hopefully continue to be published.

What do you think? Have you found these weekly blog posts useful? Did you even know they existed before you read this? What other things could the developers do to communicate better with the playerbase?