The pre-patch for World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth has had some notable problems, and it looks like they extend all the way down to the relatively innocuous Communities feature. Blizzard talked the feature up as a more social alternative to guilds, so you could be in your guild for raiding (because why else would you be in a guild, obviously Communities can’t be used to organize raids, guilds have never been social features) and use Communities to organize roleplaying, social events, and so forth. Except… that isn’t working out well, either, because Communities aren’t publicly viewable and thus can’t connect like-minded groups who aren’t already connected.
The feature also is limited by characters rather than players, meaning that even the cross-server feature doesn’t help matters (if you want to invite Steve’s dozen alts, he’ll take up a dozen slots in the community). Moreover, it’s difficult to ban trolls and the public recruitment forum has already become a vector for harassment. In short, it’s not clear exactly what benefit the feature is meant to provide for anyone. That’s not to say the feature can’t be improved over time, but at launch, it seems a rather grim assessment.
