I did over a hundred DDs on tech companies over the last several years, so I still decided to put this shortlist for you. I love the game. I hoped to stay with it for a long time, but seeing my friends quit over avoidable stuff has been painful.
- Hire a documentalist / technical writer or build a documentalists team.
Since NW’s launch, poor communication was a major problem, and the last patch is an excellent example of it. You most likely have multiple technical teams, with large backlogs, that are working with branches, and it is difficult to keep track of small changes and updates that get merged. A technical writer should set standards for the developers’ teams to document their work and ensure that any merge changes are reflected in patch notes. It can be, to some extent, automated. One non-MMO example is the Rust team that kept their commit log public for a long time. It created a culture of transparency with commits and required little to no work from the technical writer. If you have the team tasked with creating user documentation, including patch notes, please review its efficiency and position in the organization. Sometimes teams cannot be effective without senior executive support.
- Review your testing strategy or hire a senior test engineer to set the standards and rebuild the QA team.
Every patch brings a large number of bugs easily avoidable with proper tooling and processes. Whatever strategy you have now is not effective. You should strive to create a culture where untested changes are never pushed to the production, and the QA team is empowered to “stop the line” whenever necessary. From my experience, a senior test engineer can make wonders by introducing standards, suggesting and implementing automation, and coaching the QA team to achieve better performance. It is more important for projects with multiply teams working on different aspects of a product because of the high risk of introducing regression bugs.
- Create a customer advisory board.
There are thousands of players representing different styles of playing. Build a group that represents the population that you are strategically planning to cater to and feed them with all the proposed changes, including balance and content updates. Do not fall into the trap of including only the most vocal players like streamers - they do not represent the full population, and their playstyle is most likely not universal to all players. Give them means to discuss these changes before being implemented. It would most likely give you an idea about universal reception and help make strategical decisions.
- Maintain proper communication about the game strategy
If you plan to move your focus to a selected playstyle or make substantial gameplay changes, make sure to give a proper explanation and lead time. Large changes are stressful to some customers. Unload that stress with lead time, and explanation. It will go a long way and can pull your customers across the line.
There are probably many more things you could improve, as is the case with most companies. I’m sure there are plenty of capable people in the company, and maybe tasking a team with performing an internal DD to help fix the issues would be a good idea.