The Neverwinter blog has been updated with an interesting behind-the-scenes article by Producer Vincent Malley with specific regard to how community feedback is gathered and prioritized for the team. Essentially, the issues that keep folks from playing the game come first with other issues coming after.
Information before new content is released is gathered from many sources including the QA department, team play tests, feedback threads and from the preview forum. Once that same content is released, even more data is gathered from the Customer Support team and the Community team.
From there, a first pass report is submitted to the QA team to look into. If a bug can be verified, then it enters the database when players' reports become more crucial to the process.
Feedback is much the same, even though cause and effect are a little squishier. "I don't like X" and "I like Y" are both important for us to hear, but it becomes much easier to focus on what's working and what isn't when we understand the individual parts involved. "I don't like the Arcanic Focus grind right now, because it feels like the game's telling me I need to grind dig sites for 12 hours a day to make standard campaign progress" is a great piece of feedback, because it tells us the perspective from which folks are speaking, the goal to which they want the Arcanic Focus (campaign progression), and alludes to potential bugs or design flaws in drop rates.
Check out the full post on the Neverwinter site.
