So WotLK is upon us with all its splendor and all that. I've leveled to 80 and with no small amount of mana issues, but that's neither here nor there. I figured we'd take a closer look on the next tier set. Tier 7, Heroes/Valorous Redemption Battlegear.
At first glance it looks fairly decent. One thing that you quickly notice is that there's no intellect on our gear. Blizzard decided to shape paladins to become more like warriors, and to share gear with warriors and death knights.
Right.
So let's take a look at the gear.
There are two types. Heroes Redemption Battlegear - which you can get from Normal Naxx / Heroic badges (Emblems of Heroism) and Valorous Redemption which you get from Heroic Naxx / Sartharion, et al (Emblems of Valor).
Starting off with the Heroes Redemption.
Heroes Redemption Chestpiece
2241 Armor
73 strength
103 Stamina
1x Red Socket
1x Yellow Socket
+6 Haste as Socket bonus
Adds 74 crit rating
Adds 45 haste rating.
The first thought that crosses my mind is: Why is there no hit? And why do we have a Haste rating socket bonus when it would've been far more beneficial with strength or crit?
Take a look at the warrior equivalent, the Heroes Dreadnaught Battlegear.
Heroes Dreadnaught Breastplate
2241 Armor
73 Strength
90 Stamina
1x Red Socket
1x Blue Socket
Socket bonus adds +6 hit rating
Adds 52 hit rating
Adds 81 Crit rating.
Why is it that the warrior piece is ten leagues better than the paladin piece? The small amount of difference in stamina is negligible for the awesome stats you get. 52 hit. 81 crit. Socket bonus that adds 6 extra hit. I want that!
Let's take a look at the Valorous Redemption pieces.
Paladins have:
Valorous Chestplate
2241 Armor
+73 Strength
+103 Stamina
Red Socket
Yellow Socket
Socket Bonus: +6 Haste Rating
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 84 (1.83% @ L80).
Equip: Improves haste rating by 50 (1.52% @ L80).
Warriors have:
2298 Armor
+73 Strength
+100 Stamina
Red Socket
Blue Socket
Socket Bonus: +6 Hit Rating
Equip: Improves hit rating by 66 (2.01% @ L80).
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 92 (2% @ L80).
And once more, the warrior piece outshines the paladin piece. Warriors have everything a paladin wants on their set. Haste is moderately decent but we (paladins) benefit more from having a large crit base to act upon. Why is this taken away in favour of haste?
A full comparison between the paladin and warrior tier sets shows that paladins - once again - drew the short end of the stick. Check this out.
Paladins - Heroes Redemption set:
Summary:
Strength: +351
Stamina: +452
Armour: +9105
Crit rating: +222
Haste rating: +232
Hit rating: +68
Sockets: 1x Meta, 3x Red, 3x Yellow, 1x Blue
Warriors - Heroes Dreadnaught set:
Summary:
Strength: +345
Stamina: +439
Armor: +9105
Armor penetration rating: +68
Critical strike rating: +284
Expertise rating: +105
Hit rating: +85
Sockets: 1x Meta, 3x red, 2x Yellow, 2x Blue
Wow...
Warriors get more crit, more hit, Armor Penetration, Expertise which is absoutely awesome and far more balanced stats overall.
The devs wanted Paladins to be more like warriors and to share the same gear and yet the utter failure that is the Paladin tier 7 set shows that we'll never get the same good stuff warriors have.
Paladins aren't Warriors, I'm quite well aware of that, but why can't we get some decent god damn set bonuses?
"We would want every class to be within 5% of each other in terms of DPS." Everyone but paladins, yes? Give us some proper set bonuses. We couldn't care less about haste. Give us crit, or Expertise as they benefit us far more than haste does. Hell, give us socket bonuses for Strength if need be as it pushes our AP upwards.
The utter failure that is our tier set becomes even more apparent when you look at the Valorous Redemption items from the heroic raid dungeons.
Paladins Summary:
Strength: +397
Stamina: +472
Armor: +9335
Critical strike: +259
Haste rating: +270
Hit rating: +83
Sockets: 1x Meta, 3x Red, 3x Yellow, 1x Blue
Warriors Summary:
Strength: +385
Stamina: +495
Armor: +9335
Armor penetration: +86
Critical strike: +326
Expertise rating: +116
Hit rating: +108
Sockets: 1x Meta, 3x red, 2x Yellow, 2x Blue
All the good stuff ended up on the warrior tier, again, and we get stuck with the half-assed tier set once more.
Blizzard fails once again in creating something even remotely decent for us. Hell, even some of the Heroic blue items are better than this crap.
"We want Paladins to be more like warriors." Then give us a proper set with proper bonuses, then.
Monday 15 December 2008
Sunday 2 November 2008
Memorable Ghostcrawler Quotes
Ghostcrawler has been very active on the forums, outlining what nerf we're gonna get and how hard they're gonna ram it up our ass. For those who've missed some of the quotes he's said from Blizzcon, the Beta forums and paladin forums in general, here's a little list.
"We do very extensive testing on all aspects of combat balance. Remember, as a large company we have access to testing capabilities far beyond that of the average player. As developers of the game, we also have access to a large number of tools that we don't make public."
Emboldened part: Really?
"The design was not in truth to nerf Ret pallies into the ground. That should be obvious.
No? Your latest changes sure shows otherwise.
If you are not getting owned by them at least sometimes, then they were nerfed too hard.
Uh-huh...
If you are still getting owned by them all the time, then they weren't nerfed hard enough.
OR you could just be such a bad player that needs to L2P? Why does everything have to revole around us being shafted time and time again? Enough already, for God's sake. If you don't know what to do with the paladin class, then hire someone who does! Your knee-jerk reactions and hotfix nerfs are over the top.
"I think we're in a sweet spot at the moment, but I've also thought that before, so let's just see how it feels for a few weeks. :)"
And by weeks you mean months or years, as you properly showed previously.
"We LOVE Ret paladins."
Hahahaha.
"We need to start getting more testing on these changes right away to see what they do to Retribution in PvE and PvP."
Right away? What the hell have we been doing during Beta and the PTR's if not testing?!
"We were worried Arms warriors were doing too much damage, sometimes, when the RNG was in their favor. We attempted to fix that by lowering the proc rate of Sudden Death, but of course the RNG aspect just went up when we did that. We still might try alternative implementations, a 50 rage max Exectute perhaps, but we will probably not mess with it until we see Arms at 80 on Live in PvP and PvE to get a better idea of how the build is doing."
Good to see you're doing the same thing to all classes.... oh wait!
"I also want to stress that we do not make balance decisions based on the QQ of other classes."
No, of course not... That would mean the public outcry of people who weren't used to getting owned by a paladin or outdamaged by one had nothing to do with the current nerfs we've received, right? RIGHT?!
And to quote Zilea:
"We are now less than 2 weeks from the release of WotLK, and as Blizzard scrambles to nerf all of the overpowered classes in record time (not even applying the changes to actual patches, but hotfixes), you have to wonder what happened the past year and a half as druids ran wild without not more than a glance as they tore up the brackets. Were Blizzard employees asleep at the switch?"
No, they were busy playing those druids to care much about every other class.
"We think we know how to adjust Arcane to make their rotations work better in PvE (which will also help the PvP burst at the same time). It involves changing a couple of spells though so it will take some time and isn't the kind of thing easily hotfixed (as it will make tooltips incorrect)."
But it's perfectly fine for paladin tooltips to be misleading and incorrect, right?
"We still feel like we're ahead of where we were on Burning Crusader with a more experienced team. So we're not yet panicked about having enough testing time."
Another lovely quote from GC when people started to ask why Paladins weren't given a pass of their skills / Talents during Alpha Testing.
"I'm attempting to post this early since the Ret community felt totally surprised last time."
The nerf came hotfixed in about an hour later. So much for early posting...
"On bosses in PvE, they could hit every button that was up and still have mana left to be very high on healing meters. So we do think the mana regen was too generous in both PvP and PvE cases."
That's Judgement of Light and the amount of mana we have or had left has absolutely fuck all impact on how much JoL heals for.
"We are also sympathetic to the notion that if Ret can't do insane burst damage, that the spec might need other tools to be viable in PvP. We're exploring this now..."
WE ARE WAITING!!
"We want to be very surgical about what we do."
Surgical as in attempting to fix a rat infestation with a tactical nuke...
"We want everyone to be within 5% of each other in terms of DPS."
Everyone but paladins, amirite?
"We don't want to balance a class around "well this guy can do a lot but runs out of mana really fast." That's not a fun mechanic."
No? Then why nerf JotW to 15%? Contradicting yourself much?
"Yes, we could hire 10 or 30 or 100 more class designers and have them all posting happily away in the forums. I don't think this actually improves class design though. With the group we have now, it is very easy for us all to get in one room and discuss ideas and just otherwise stay in tight sync. I think we would lose that by adding a lot of additional designers."
Guess it's time to start looking for those Dev's as you've clearly no fucking idea what you're doing anymore.
"Here is just a big brain dump on Arcane mages. Warning: I am not specifically talking about any changes we might make. We might make none at all. But here are our thoughts at the moment.
1) It's fun to be able to run around and do instant Barrages.
2) Barrage does a ton of damage quickly, possibly too much, and it can't be interrupted.
3) Locking Arcane out of its school is very painful for them (no Blink etc.). Does this balance them at all?
4) Arcane Blast feels a little awkward to use and doesn't do enough dps.
5) One way to change Arcane would be to require you to build up 2 Blasts in order to get the big Barrage numbers, kind of like a Shatter Combo if you will.
6) This would make their PvE rotation more interesting too.
7) Is there enough skill involved in doing Arcane PvP, or is it all just killing time until Barrage's cooldown is up?"
It's good that paladins don't have such issu- oh wait!
"We do very extensive testing on all aspects of combat balance. Remember, as a large company we have access to testing capabilities far beyond that of the average player. As developers of the game, we also have access to a large number of tools that we don't make public."
Emboldened part: Really?
"The design was not in truth to nerf Ret pallies into the ground. That should be obvious.
No? Your latest changes sure shows otherwise.
If you are not getting owned by them at least sometimes, then they were nerfed too hard.
Uh-huh...
If you are still getting owned by them all the time, then they weren't nerfed hard enough.
OR you could just be such a bad player that needs to L2P? Why does everything have to revole around us being shafted time and time again? Enough already, for God's sake. If you don't know what to do with the paladin class, then hire someone who does! Your knee-jerk reactions and hotfix nerfs are over the top.
"I think we're in a sweet spot at the moment, but I've also thought that before, so let's just see how it feels for a few weeks. :)"
And by weeks you mean months or years, as you properly showed previously.
"We LOVE Ret paladins."
Hahahaha.
"We need to start getting more testing on these changes right away to see what they do to Retribution in PvE and PvP."
Right away? What the hell have we been doing during Beta and the PTR's if not testing?!
"We were worried Arms warriors were doing too much damage, sometimes, when the RNG was in their favor. We attempted to fix that by lowering the proc rate of Sudden Death, but of course the RNG aspect just went up when we did that. We still might try alternative implementations, a 50 rage max Exectute perhaps, but we will probably not mess with it until we see Arms at 80 on Live in PvP and PvE to get a better idea of how the build is doing."
Good to see you're doing the same thing to all classes.... oh wait!
"I also want to stress that we do not make balance decisions based on the QQ of other classes."
No, of course not... That would mean the public outcry of people who weren't used to getting owned by a paladin or outdamaged by one had nothing to do with the current nerfs we've received, right? RIGHT?!
And to quote Zilea:
"We are now less than 2 weeks from the release of WotLK, and as Blizzard scrambles to nerf all of the overpowered classes in record time (not even applying the changes to actual patches, but hotfixes), you have to wonder what happened the past year and a half as druids ran wild without not more than a glance as they tore up the brackets. Were Blizzard employees asleep at the switch?"
No, they were busy playing those druids to care much about every other class.
"We think we know how to adjust Arcane to make their rotations work better in PvE (which will also help the PvP burst at the same time). It involves changing a couple of spells though so it will take some time and isn't the kind of thing easily hotfixed (as it will make tooltips incorrect)."
But it's perfectly fine for paladin tooltips to be misleading and incorrect, right?
"We still feel like we're ahead of where we were on Burning Crusader with a more experienced team. So we're not yet panicked about having enough testing time."
Another lovely quote from GC when people started to ask why Paladins weren't given a pass of their skills / Talents during Alpha Testing.
"I'm attempting to post this early since the Ret community felt totally surprised last time."
The nerf came hotfixed in about an hour later. So much for early posting...
"On bosses in PvE, they could hit every button that was up and still have mana left to be very high on healing meters. So we do think the mana regen was too generous in both PvP and PvE cases."
That's Judgement of Light and the amount of mana we have or had left has absolutely fuck all impact on how much JoL heals for.
"We are also sympathetic to the notion that if Ret can't do insane burst damage, that the spec might need other tools to be viable in PvP. We're exploring this now..."
WE ARE WAITING!!
"We want to be very surgical about what we do."
Surgical as in attempting to fix a rat infestation with a tactical nuke...
"We want everyone to be within 5% of each other in terms of DPS."
Everyone but paladins, amirite?
"We don't want to balance a class around "well this guy can do a lot but runs out of mana really fast." That's not a fun mechanic."
No? Then why nerf JotW to 15%? Contradicting yourself much?
"Yes, we could hire 10 or 30 or 100 more class designers and have them all posting happily away in the forums. I don't think this actually improves class design though. With the group we have now, it is very easy for us all to get in one room and discuss ideas and just otherwise stay in tight sync. I think we would lose that by adding a lot of additional designers."
Guess it's time to start looking for those Dev's as you've clearly no fucking idea what you're doing anymore.
"Here is just a big brain dump on Arcane mages. Warning: I am not specifically talking about any changes we might make. We might make none at all. But here are our thoughts at the moment.
1) It's fun to be able to run around and do instant Barrages.
2) Barrage does a ton of damage quickly, possibly too much, and it can't be interrupted.
3) Locking Arcane out of its school is very painful for them (no Blink etc.). Does this balance them at all?
4) Arcane Blast feels a little awkward to use and doesn't do enough dps.
5) One way to change Arcane would be to require you to build up 2 Blasts in order to get the big Barrage numbers, kind of like a Shatter Combo if you will.
6) This would make their PvE rotation more interesting too.
7) Is there enough skill involved in doing Arcane PvP, or is it all just killing time until Barrage's cooldown is up?"
It's good that paladins don't have such issu- oh wait!
Saturday 1 November 2008
Paladin Nerfs
So reading the class nerfs that has recently come to pass, it's clear as a day that Blizzard have no idea what to do with the Paladin class. It's not only Retribution getting the shaft, it's ALL specs of the Paladin class. Holy and Prot takes a huge hit, too.
But why, though? What has caused the monkeys at the Dev team to hate the paladins so? It's clear that they don't like hybrids that much. Or rather, they do since Druids seem to dominate the game in every aspect imaginable.
They can tank pretty damn good, they have immense armour and damage reduction while in bear form and their HP is nothing short of astounding. They have enough tools to make sure the mob sticks to them if engaged. If I am to belive my friend, he says they can do some pretty mean damage too in bear form too.
So why do Paladins get shafted?
It's simple, really. Oh so simple.
I should preface this post by stating that I have absolutely no insider information of any kind about their corporate workings...only an eye for the obvious.
You see, when WoW was released, it did not have these monkeys on the Dev Team. The monkeys being Jeff Kaplan (Tigole Bitties), Tom Chilton (Kalgan) and Alex Afrasiabi (Furor Planedefiler). These guys were hardcore Everquest guild leaders, the sort of people who thought 24 hour raids should be the next olympic sport. Between them is zero prior MMORPG design experience.
Furor and Tigole hated hybrid classes. Their anti-hybrid stance was notorious in Everquest. Furor was an obnoxious baby who organized server crash protests because Paladins out-tanked him in the EQ Planes of Power expansion. He was a loudmouthed brat who didn't care a lick about taking all the fun out of the game for other people.
Tigole was his best friend.
When Vivendi bought Blizzard, much of Blizzard's developing talent left. Some of these were Diablo and Starcraft developers. They went to various other projects, including Hellgate: London and Arenanet. It's unclear whether they were fired, or merely quit.
With several of the original WoW developers gone, these two geniuses were suddenly in positions of influence, in a game with three hybrid classes. Two guys who crashed servers because, for whatever petty and childish reason, they saw red whenever someone with a mana bar out-tanked Furor's pwecious warrior.
Talk about a perfect storm.
Then the class nerfs began.
Paladins suffered from nerf after nerf, beginning with a complete gutting of the class one week before the end of open beta. This culminated in a class review wherein the class was outright lied to by CMs, their forum trolls were praised, and almost none of their major concerns were addressed. They became a pure support class, almost identical to the Everquest Cleric. Big surprise, nobody wants to play them, either. Seen how many endgame WoW Ret Paladins there are? The latest Judgement of the Wise nerf only proves the point. Many will quit or reroll. Having your class being treated like a diseased dog for 3+ years with promises of "no nerfs, just tweaks" and then being lied to just doesn't sit well.
And now, in the next expansion "Wrath of the Lich King", Paladins suffer yet more nerfs. Divine Shield and Avenging Wrath should've been mutually exclusive. If you use one, the other should've been locked out until it fades. A post made by a player on the US Beta board said the two should be made to function like a "trinket". Use one, the other is placed on a 20-30sec cooldown making it impossible to use them both at the same time.. But Blizzard in all their vaunted wisdom placed AW and DS on a 2 minute Forbearance cooldown.
This is not a nerf to Retribution spec. It's a nerf to ALL specs. From here on out, it's clear they've no idea what to do with the Paladin class.
This begs the question, why are only Paladins the ones who have to suffer this atrocity? Why don't Warriors - for example - get an "Exhaustion" debuff when they use Death Wish or Mages using Arcane Power?
Ghostcrawler - the newest Dev in the bunch of monkeys responsible for class balancing - said at the start of WotLK Beta that they (Blizzard) wanted every class to be within 5% of each other in terms of DPS in the expansion. Every class except Paladins, apparently.
Shamans fell behind as other classes saw buffs. They were no longer PvP gods, and their PvE abilities were already behind. When their class review came around, they received very little feedback from CMs, their concerns were ignored, and they basically turned into this mishmash of burst damage and poor support, which no one really wanted.
Druids were treated better. Then again, they have several tame CMs. As a result, they enjoyed a great class review. Too bad it didn't last: Like the other hybrids, itemization and talents still pigeonholed them into pure support roles. Things got better in The Burning Crusade but there are still lots of issues they want cleared up.
Now combine this with World of Warcraft's raiding endgame focus (I mentioned they were EQ raid guild leaders?), and you have a situation where one-third of character classes are being forced to do something they didn't sign up for, from the moment they hit level 70 until they either reroll or move on.
Oh, and World of Warcraft's PVP designer was Tom Chilton ("Kalgan"), the man responsible for the overwhelmingly unpopular Ultima Online: Age of Shadows expansion. His view of PvP basically wrecked PvP in UO. It's good to know that Blizzard did their homework before they made their hiring decisions. His view was that weapons = skill. Which basically turned the whole PvP scene into a mockery of what it used to be.
Blizzard doesn't even hide their class preferences anymore. They have basically baited the entire WoW community, read most of WoW subscribers, into BC and now they are left with not much to do. Complete bait and switch. It's no surprise that most call TBC The Beta Crusade.
Vivendi buying Blizzard was viewed with great scepticism from the playerbase as they (Vivendi) had mostly been active in the TV scene and little to none in the gaming scene. They've also bought Sierra (who gave us Leisure Suit Larry). It's from here on out that the proverbial excrement started to hit the rotating blades.
And now, Activision has shat on the cake, too. Activision, if you don' tknow it already, are responsible for the quite popular Guitar Hero games. They've also had a hand in making Doom 3 and the Call of Duty games. And those are really their only gems. The rest range from horrible games based on movies and kiddie games no kid ever plays.
Blizzard is Blizzard in name only. A lot of the original development team are working on new pursuits (Guild Wars, I've also heard they're involved with WAR). I'm sure a lot of them are very bitter about the fact WoW is now a polished version of Everquest with tons of fun lore to play around with.
Oh and take a look at this gem:
Déja Vu, anyone?
I, personally, have lost all respect and hope for Blizzard's Dev team. They have absolutely no idea how to fix the paladin class and I'm not going to sit around and wait for them to pull their thumbs out of their asses and start listening to the playerbase who could balance this game better than the monkeys in the Dev Department could.
But why, though? What has caused the monkeys at the Dev team to hate the paladins so? It's clear that they don't like hybrids that much. Or rather, they do since Druids seem to dominate the game in every aspect imaginable.
They can tank pretty damn good, they have immense armour and damage reduction while in bear form and their HP is nothing short of astounding. They have enough tools to make sure the mob sticks to them if engaged. If I am to belive my friend, he says they can do some pretty mean damage too in bear form too.
So why do Paladins get shafted?
It's simple, really. Oh so simple.
I should preface this post by stating that I have absolutely no insider information of any kind about their corporate workings...only an eye for the obvious.
You see, when WoW was released, it did not have these monkeys on the Dev Team. The monkeys being Jeff Kaplan (Tigole Bitties), Tom Chilton (Kalgan) and Alex Afrasiabi (Furor Planedefiler). These guys were hardcore Everquest guild leaders, the sort of people who thought 24 hour raids should be the next olympic sport. Between them is zero prior MMORPG design experience.
Furor and Tigole hated hybrid classes. Their anti-hybrid stance was notorious in Everquest. Furor was an obnoxious baby who organized server crash protests because Paladins out-tanked him in the EQ Planes of Power expansion. He was a loudmouthed brat who didn't care a lick about taking all the fun out of the game for other people.
Tigole was his best friend.
When Vivendi bought Blizzard, much of Blizzard's developing talent left. Some of these were Diablo and Starcraft developers. They went to various other projects, including Hellgate: London and Arenanet. It's unclear whether they were fired, or merely quit.
With several of the original WoW developers gone, these two geniuses were suddenly in positions of influence, in a game with three hybrid classes. Two guys who crashed servers because, for whatever petty and childish reason, they saw red whenever someone with a mana bar out-tanked Furor's pwecious warrior.
Talk about a perfect storm.
Then the class nerfs began.
Paladins suffered from nerf after nerf, beginning with a complete gutting of the class one week before the end of open beta. This culminated in a class review wherein the class was outright lied to by CMs, their forum trolls were praised, and almost none of their major concerns were addressed. They became a pure support class, almost identical to the Everquest Cleric. Big surprise, nobody wants to play them, either. Seen how many endgame WoW Ret Paladins there are? The latest Judgement of the Wise nerf only proves the point. Many will quit or reroll. Having your class being treated like a diseased dog for 3+ years with promises of "no nerfs, just tweaks" and then being lied to just doesn't sit well.
And now, in the next expansion "Wrath of the Lich King", Paladins suffer yet more nerfs. Divine Shield and Avenging Wrath should've been mutually exclusive. If you use one, the other should've been locked out until it fades. A post made by a player on the US Beta board said the two should be made to function like a "trinket". Use one, the other is placed on a 20-30sec cooldown making it impossible to use them both at the same time.. But Blizzard in all their vaunted wisdom placed AW and DS on a 2 minute Forbearance cooldown.
This is not a nerf to Retribution spec. It's a nerf to ALL specs. From here on out, it's clear they've no idea what to do with the Paladin class.
This begs the question, why are only Paladins the ones who have to suffer this atrocity? Why don't Warriors - for example - get an "Exhaustion" debuff when they use Death Wish or Mages using Arcane Power?
Ghostcrawler - the newest Dev in the bunch of monkeys responsible for class balancing - said at the start of WotLK Beta that they (Blizzard) wanted every class to be within 5% of each other in terms of DPS in the expansion. Every class except Paladins, apparently.
Shamans fell behind as other classes saw buffs. They were no longer PvP gods, and their PvE abilities were already behind. When their class review came around, they received very little feedback from CMs, their concerns were ignored, and they basically turned into this mishmash of burst damage and poor support, which no one really wanted.
Druids were treated better. Then again, they have several tame CMs. As a result, they enjoyed a great class review. Too bad it didn't last: Like the other hybrids, itemization and talents still pigeonholed them into pure support roles. Things got better in The Burning Crusade but there are still lots of issues they want cleared up.
Now combine this with World of Warcraft's raiding endgame focus (I mentioned they were EQ raid guild leaders?), and you have a situation where one-third of character classes are being forced to do something they didn't sign up for, from the moment they hit level 70 until they either reroll or move on.
Oh, and World of Warcraft's PVP designer was Tom Chilton ("Kalgan"), the man responsible for the overwhelmingly unpopular Ultima Online: Age of Shadows expansion. His view of PvP basically wrecked PvP in UO. It's good to know that Blizzard did their homework before they made their hiring decisions. His view was that weapons = skill. Which basically turned the whole PvP scene into a mockery of what it used to be.
Blizzard doesn't even hide their class preferences anymore. They have basically baited the entire WoW community, read most of WoW subscribers, into BC and now they are left with not much to do. Complete bait and switch. It's no surprise that most call TBC The Beta Crusade.
Vivendi buying Blizzard was viewed with great scepticism from the playerbase as they (Vivendi) had mostly been active in the TV scene and little to none in the gaming scene. They've also bought Sierra (who gave us Leisure Suit Larry). It's from here on out that the proverbial excrement started to hit the rotating blades.
And now, Activision has shat on the cake, too. Activision, if you don' tknow it already, are responsible for the quite popular Guitar Hero games. They've also had a hand in making Doom 3 and the Call of Duty games. And those are really their only gems. The rest range from horrible games based on movies and kiddie games no kid ever plays.
Blizzard is Blizzard in name only. A lot of the original development team are working on new pursuits (Guild Wars, I've also heard they're involved with WAR). I'm sure a lot of them are very bitter about the fact WoW is now a polished version of Everquest with tons of fun lore to play around with.
Oh and take a look at this gem:
Déja Vu, anyone?
I, personally, have lost all respect and hope for Blizzard's Dev team. They have absolutely no idea how to fix the paladin class and I'm not going to sit around and wait for them to pull their thumbs out of their asses and start listening to the playerbase who could balance this game better than the monkeys in the Dev Department could.
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