How responsible are CMs for what they say?

Disclaimer first: this post isn't meant to be a public trial of Tharfor (how silly the idea would even be), who has all my respect for his work. I condemn any kind of public gloating of specific lines and comments by any CM who shouldn't be held responsible for every single comma he decides to type.

I undestand that something like:

Q u o t e:
The stats don't show a lack of popularity for shaman, they just show a ridiculous popularity for other classes. It takes a negative mind to assume that other peoples popularity is a reflection of your own unpopularity, if that makes sense.

will make your eyebrow raise if you're in a good mood, or say "what is that guy smoking" if you're not, but it's a personal statement, no matter how flawed. Mistake? "Stupid"? Maybe, but that happens. Laugh and get over it.


Now, tho, reading Tharfor's posts made me think about how much weight should we give to CM's words. Two particular bits are extremely worrysome:

Q u o t e:
Although this kind of micro-level discussion is what these forums are for, it has been said that we are not aiming for game balance at specific talent spec levels. As long as each class is able to be reasonably involved in every aspect of the game then things are going pretty well.

Uhm, hello?

We can take this statement as the official Blizzard's position on the matter? Is this, to use a very improper tems, "official" or the CM is stating his own personal approach to the matter?

Because you see, stating that you're a not aiming to balance your own game is quite groundbreaking.
If that is Blizzard's approach to the matter, then people will react to it.
Tharfor is essentially saying: as long as Holy is viable, we don't care for Ret and Prot. If Elemental finds a place in 5v5, we consider shamans fine, even if the other speccs have no place ingame. Arms doing almost the same damage as Fury but being much better in pvp isn't our problem - you don't like it, specc Arms.

It's a quite devastating statement.

Not only you're saying that you're setting your balancement benchmark at 1/3rd of your actual offering ("anything more is a gift", i guess). You're saying that you're looking at class balancement and not specc balancement in a game that is designed around each and every class covering from 2 to 4 roles.

Aside from the incredible impoverishment of the "scope" of the game (something we experience ingame daily, but without this kind of statement, we would feel allowed to think you're constantly working on "fixing it"), you create a situation of misleading advertisement.
If Tharfor's sentence is reflective of Blizzard's approach to the balancement of the game, than you need to take drastic actions to grant your customer a more fair interaction with the game's offering.

Starting from restating the main purpose of classes (since classes matter and not speccs, paladins for example would have the right to be informed that they are considered "balanced" as long as they are decent healers, as say, shamans or druids). Offering inferior options is usually worse than offering none at all, but while some classes can live with it (it would be nice if say, assassination was as good as combat, but once the rogue got his gear, he can follow the tide and respecc), others get crumbled by this design policy (if you allow enhancement shamans to get gear for their specc - costing the time and effort a rogue spends - but don't actively work on balancing the specc because "resto is already fine", you literally fraud your customer).


There's no much need to digress here - the statement "we don't consider balancing more than 33% of the speccs a quality requirement" speaks for itself.

Is that Blizzard's official policy, or (no offence whatsoever to Tharfor) a CM's brainfart?




The other bit that really puzzled me is:

Q u o t e:

From that list of statistics I can see that shaman are probably the closest to being at the balancing point that the devs have talked about because you are represented in 5v5 and not so much in 2v2.

Innocent looking, but you drop quite a bombshell here.

Basically, being horribly bad or tremendously good in 3v3 or 2v2 is a sign of good balance. Aside from the inevitable chuckling (first: not everything is meant to be balanced, now: if you suck in brackets other than 5v5 you're balanced! what's next, "if it doesn't work it's a good sign"?), this opens up an universe of questions.

First thing first: ok, it's official, 2v2 and 3v3 are considered so impossible to balance that not working there is actually a sign of a working class. Perfect. Then why in the blazes is people getting points and unlocking rating in those brackets? Expecially when you can use said gear in all other brackets?
Yeah, I guess one of the first step to turn WoW into a sport is creating a comfortable niche for doping.

Second: again, why do you carelessy introduce content you don't want to balance ingame? "We thought it was cool to have melee oriented shamans - we leave you the options but as long as some other specc works, we don't care if yours does" was already weird, but now saying "hey guys, we got this e-sport format which is once again balanced on 33% of its offering (btw, 33 isn't such a lucky number, careful guys) - the rest is unbalanced crap but uh, well, it's popular so go cheat your items there".

Eh?


It's fine to have unbalanced sides of the game. Nothing can be perfectly balanced.

We've lived for years with spoon fed lies like "we're working on balancing everything, but it's not easy and takes time". I've believed that the intention was fully there - that the ideal vision of wow was that of 27 balanced speccs squaring out in all contents, with flaws and problems, but still aiming to overall balance.
It would be MORE fine if you didn't allow unbalanced content to alter your game so much. If you can't balance speccs, remove them, or disencourage them, or whatever. If you can't balance brackets, prevent them from giving points and unlocking gear.
But I guess you're aware of how popular is your "actually balanced" content. Ironically, the fact that you're apparently oblivious to 2v2 and 3v3 being the most played brackets and the fact that you tolerate having some classes represent 2% of high end gaming can be based on the same assumptions. They mean the exact same thing, and show clearly what your priority is.

It's quite clear by now. I'm just wondering if we have to take Tharfor's words as your official stance on the matter. Because it's a quite radical turn, at least from an image standpoint, from what we've been told up to now.