them then that could help find a better balance

I can certainly agree that twitter is ok for some things, but I also agree building in a twitter plugin for the official wow website would be a wise use of time considering how important some of the tidbits there can be. I think if there was a way for the community to see, on the wow official forums, all those tweets and springboard forum discussion off them then that could help find a better balance.

I see twitter being great for simple exchanges,or world of Warcraft mostly ANSWERING PLAYER QUESTIONS, it's really terrible for ANNOUNCING NEW/CHANGING INFO. As you say, it's much easier for a dev to quickly glance at twitter and see @Devname Will we be able to tame hydras in warlords? and answer them back. Some of us (<<guilty) tend to write pretty long posts attempting to make our points fully fleshed out on the forums, but issues NEED deeper discussion that 140 chars allows and go beyond what a community manager can handle (absolutely no insult intended to them, I think they're doing a great job, but I can't expect them to know the answers to all the design decision questions).