Is Burning Crusade bugged/unbalanced? Or what?

[frber]

Isn't in Beta so can't really tell for myself. Though I play a Warrior and is currently a bit concerned that the expansion will make it less fun to play the class, obviosusly because of suddenly finding myself with a character that might as well log-off after raids since doing anything else with the now mandatory protection spec seems pointless...yeah pretty much like Holy priests.

But seriously they miss Christmas by a month. If it were just small tweeks then I am sure they would just have released the expansion anyway and fixed things in a patch before people reached level 70.

More importantly I guess. When did they decide to implement the nerf to down-ranking healing spells? Seems to be a pretty major change that truly change gameplay alot. Did they first play-test the game for months, and then suddenly change such a fundemental mechanic just a few weeks ago?

Why even add a talent Weapon Mastery with +4 weapon skill in the first place if it was already planned to make it useless a week or two later in another game mechanics change?

I get the feeling that Blizzard just realised that the game turns out to be crap and is just trying to patch it up in pure panic. But there is no real sense of direction. Not beeing too used to how community managers operate in MMOs I guess but I have never previously seem such crappy forum posts as Blizzards official forums. Community managers don't explain anything, just adds nonsense remarks usually, but never answers any questions.

I suppose I am most familiar with Warriors. First they move Tactical mastery to Protection to allow for variety in warrior builds (besides 31/30/0) but Tactical mastery can't be trainable because the stance switching is a core element of the warrior class. Then a few weeks later rage generation is nerfed to crap so 31/30/0 isn't an option anyway since everyone needs the new 41 point arms talent or no rage anyway. Which means the tactical mastery move accomplished what exactly? Besides making warriors angry since of course. Not to mention its now trainable (partly) anyway so no big deal.

Can anyone make any sense out of this beasides the obvious that Blizzard don't have a clue and is just acting in sheer panic? Realising that if they delay for more than a few weeks they are losing customers fast to other games? Hence introducing the new PvP system so players can get started on their new grinds before expansion even?

[Grimmhjort]

If you're not enjoying it, stop playing. Seems pretty simple to me.

As far as wether Blizz knows what they're doing or not, yeah, they do. They will continue to change the game as they deem necessary to maintain a vibrant and interesting game world. Several million players world wide seem to think they're doing an ok job.

Bottom line, just because you don't like it, or don't understand it, doesn't make it wrong.

[frber]

Well obviously not having fun while playing means quitting. Wouldn't make sense to do anything else. Though seriously I do belive a fair portion of the customers don't enjoy the time they spend in the game. Just look at how the battleground participation dropped off when people finally figured out that the next patch wipes both Rep (or at least makes Rep pointless) and Honor?

There are much fewer AB/WSG's now compared to just a few weeks ago. Even though in the case of Battlegrounds the result is very much better and more enjoyable games since the ones who left seems to mainly be AFK botters, leet speekers, HK farmers, and generally the types of players you don't want in a team anyway. Its still a fact that lots of people seems to have stopped and there are less games running. Meaning the actual game fun isn't enough for many people when the item rewards are removed.

Though thats slightly besides the point. I don't see how anyone trying to follow at least warrior changes can get the impression that Blizzard knows what they are doing. If they do in fact have a clue, and a vision about what they want warriors to be then its a massive break down in customer communication.

[Lezwyn]

High end rage generation was broken
Increased weapon skill was broken
Downranking was broken
The pvp system was broken

Honestly these changes were neccesary to keep the game balanced. I don't see how this lacks direction. I would say Blizzard is doing its best to keep the scalability and balance of all classes in order.

[Arnulf]

Erm, if they don't enjoy playing why are they still playing then?

Really, it would actually remove some strain on the overpopulated servers if they just would quit. I'm not holding any grudge or something. Just to make myself clear: you can play World of Warcraft for 2 years (or even much less!) and then just stop if you don't have any fun anymore. Nothing wrong with that at all!

What is really wrong with the attitude of some people in my opinion is demanding something from Blizzard they are not able to give. So there are roughly over 7 million subscribers, and even if only half of them are actively playing the game there have to be some who are not satisfied with every aspect of the game. Browbeating Blizzard to change this or that is not going to help. Leaving and remembering the good times is the best way to do. Cancel the subscription and be happy that one had enjoyed some good times.

I admit so much that WOW is the game that got almost overwhelmed by its own massive popularity. And that Blizzard really struggled to meet the technical expectations. Finally after over a year the servers seem to be stable. Of course clients were clamoring about "unplayable" instances and such. But still they came back and played despite this. Yet, when it seems that these issues are finally resolved, I hear no words of praise whatsoever. But now people found another beef, or several as it is. Be it the so-called class balance, racials, or just flying mounts preventing open PVP. People never seem to be satisfied.

[Springer]

not to mention that many seem to be very short sighted on what the changes mean.. they see a change, see the nerf aspect of it, and really don't think much further, drawing the conclusion that there experience will be a lot worse just because of that change...

firslty there are TONS of new things, and positive changes for the good.. making the game more fun and less of a grind, not to mention, new areas, 1 new profession, tons of quests, lots of new abilities, the list goes on.

there were some serious issues with the current game, when it comes to balance and for PvE and raids, with most classes, for e.g. Hybrids only having their healing builds of any significance to raids was messed up, hunters not caring for any stat but agility and not having pets scale was messed up, druids just been so easy to kiill most of the time and pretty laughable outside the resto build in raids was messed up, the list goes on.

First of all, Looking at the BIGGER PICTURE, downranking penalty is a good idea, because they want you to use your more advanced spells and there is another issue. When Flash heal was nerfed in 1.10, preist healing power took a dip becuase easy mode was disabled, and the penalty to +healing was for that purpose,..but then, DRUIDS, who are not suppose to be as good at healing as priests got an excellent very mana efficient heal in HT Rk 4 downrank which actually allowed them to almost match the priests healing... this was not intended at all.. it meant the hybrid which is suppose to be weaker at healing because of it's other attributes was nearly as strong.

for this reason and others like it, they nerfed down-ranking, a druid healer is a druid healer, not a priest, priests get their advantage restored again, are druids less popoular because of it? NO, there will still be druid healers, but guess what, no one will be piling on druids now if they can't find priests, forcing non-resto druids to spec resto rather than going out to recruit some priests.


And how can you feel Protection is mandatory? You should be cheering Protection Paladins are now VERY viable tanks, and feral druids are viable enough to tank, this means that the raid only needs 1 full protection warrior, the other 2 tanks will consist of a Paladin and Feral druid, the other 2 warriors in the raid can be DPS, one can be full DPS fury, the other should have some protection talents, porbably an arms/protection build... this is becuase i expect the optimal class spread for raids in the BC to be 3 members per class, and funnily enough, 1 member in each tree.

so, the 3 warriors will have 1 in tanking, 1 in dps, 1 that moves in-between
3 Druids: 1 in tanking / Dps moving in between, 1 in healing, 1 in range (if there is space)
3 Paladins: 1 in tanking, 1 in healing and 1 in melee/off-healing

and so on.. obviously to make 25, 2 classes will have to have 2 member only, given that all things being equal, but which classes will go with 2 will either depend on availability in your guild or the type of instance.

All in all, the BC is great for game balance with a fair number of classes spread throughout the different roles, they did a great job, if you don't like it then don't play. I am looking forward to it immensely.

[frber]

I didn't say that Downranking, or Weapon skill, and other changes wasn't good for the game possibly. Just that the order these changes seemingly was intropduced in doesn't make much sense.

That is first give Warriors a talent (Weapon mastery) that gives +4 skill and pass it off as a great buff to warrior talents. Quite a few warriors I know took that as finally getting some recognition that Warriors are to be valid damage dealers in end-game. I mean thats the point of +weapon skill right? Do damage on higher level monsters. Also a talent that offers something for PvP (Disarm Immunity) and PvE (+skill) is great and works against the pidgeon holeing of gameplay that seems so important to World of Warcraft developers. Then suddenly its revealed that the +weapon skill talents are now useless and I bet the developers secretly laughed at warriors feeling buffed for once.

At least to me it appears to be really crappy customer communication (to bad to belive really) if it was planned in this order. Hence I take it to mean that what happend was that the talents were developed assuming the current mechanic, and that the game was about to be released without the change to weapon skill (and probably without other changes) before christmas but Blizzard finally realised just how crappy it would turn out and that they had to do more than just patch up the worst of it.

Will see how it turns out of course.

[Hydro]

High end rage generation was broken
Increased weapon skill was broken
Downranking was broken
The pvp system was broken

Honestly these changes were neccesary to keep the game balanced. I don't see how this lacks direction. I would say Blizzard is doing its best to keep the scalability and balance of all classes in order.


Clearly the appropriate fix was to break rage generation with a simply scaled formula with no regard to 1H/2H use, to completely remove weapon skill effects without any counterpart, to nerf the ability to downrank without providing increased mana regeneration/+healing itemization currently, and to remove the PvP honor system replaced with an equally arbitrary grind fest that still doesn't reward skill over time invested.

Clearly.

[Pongle]

Clearly the appropriate fix was to break rage generation with a simply scaled formula with no regard to 1H/2H use, to completely remove weapon skill effects without any counterpart, to nerf the ability to downrank without providing increased mana regeneration/+healing itemization currently, and to remove the PvP honor system replaced with an equally arbitrary grind fest that still doesn't reward skill over time invested.

Clearly.

As a warrior, and a healer, and a PvPer on a limited time scheduele, I agree with everything you just said, including the sarcastic parts.

[frber]

I guess on a similar note. I do belive that currently Tanking is one of the more enjoyable parts of the game. In particular tanking in 5-man dungeons (healing in 5-mans comes close until getting so overpowered that mana conservation gets less important).

I do belive that a fair part of the enjoyment comes from the fast that actual skill appear to be involved. The difference between a good and a bad player is much more obvious with tanking compared to the difference between talent specc'es. Since currently a skill tank player can do quite a bit better with a 31/20/0 build compared to a crappy player with a full protection spec.

I do belive this is how it should be and would truly dislike if warriors get free super tanking talents added to the protection tree. For instance if Developers make Devestate into a super aggro tool that no other spec can compare with then I do belive tanking is dead for me (I don't belive they have). Likevise Druid tanking with Swipe for multiple mobs appear to triviaize the whole gameplay aspect of tanking.

Its something I kind of fear a bit that the new Protection talents when they are finally created will end up having dumbed down the tanking game so much that it loses all fun completely. Of course everything would be alright if Developers simply clarified what gameplay is supposed to be like. How they expect the class to be played, if warriors are to be pidgeon holed by their talent choice, or if they can continue to spec fairly freely, or in general what they want for the class.

I can't really see any reason why they don't communicate that clearly. Unless of course they don't have a clear goal, or know that their goal is something they better hide from people since most wouldn't like it.