Lack of change - Devs

#0 - Nov. 3, 2008, 6:32 a.m.

The lack of change I refer to is in BC. In WotlK, you guys are trying to fix a lot of problems that raiding and pvp had. To name a few, stacking shamans in pve, some classes not being pvp viable (mainly due to ineffective talent trees), specific roles for classes (healadins) and many others.

I agree that all this had to change. But why not have implemented these before? Everyone knew for a fact that classes were not balanced in BC. There were too many hard counters and arenas were dominated by druids and rogues. So why not have fixed it back then instead of waiting for an expansion. This also relates to the PvE part, why not have fixed it back then when things were turning for the worse.

I know that changing stuff in pve comes back to pvp, but some things could have been fixed. I'm not talking about minor things such as hunter aimed shot, drains getting affected by MS. Talking about major changes that affected gameplay much like WoTlK is doing, where things are a LOT different than in BC.

So, my last question is - unlike BC where changes were pretty slow, will WoTlK offer rapid change? If certain PvE elements are conflicting to your wanted changes (like shaman stacking), certain classes being too good in pvp, would change be faster/slower or better or worse.

I just wanted to get an idea because it felt that even though some things were present, nothing happened until the expansion. Just wanted to see if this was the case or not.

Ghostcrawler

#4 - Nov. 3, 2008, 6:54 a.m.

I answer the way you described typically when asked about specific cases, because the truth is that I don't always know the history there. But I can respond in general terms.

We've handled class balance adjustments differently over the course of the game. We used to do the big passes where every patch was someone's turn to get overhauled. On the plus side, players really looked forward to these and it did build a lot of excitement. On the down side, we felt like we needed to tweak classes that in our estimate didn't really need a lot of tweaking. It also took so long to get back to the earlier reviewed classes again that new balance problems had crept up.

We didn't make a lot of changes during BC. In part the whole concept of Arenas was new to us and we didn't want to suddenly nerf someone massively in the middle of a season. We also changed some specs quite a bit, really getting specs like Prot paladin and Shadow priest into raids for the first time. We knew it would take some time for players to adjust. You always have to be careful making adjustments. Even if we did nothing, the game would change over time because the community would figure out new rotations, new ways to use gear, and new responses in PvP. It's hard sometimes to predict when we really need to intervene or when players will just adapt.

I will say that we realize the Arena design, while overall a positive experience, has put class balance under a powerful microscope, and we're not sure that's in the best interest of the game. We also made some pretty dramatic changes to classes as well as combat mechanics, so when problems arise, we do need to be able to respond to them.

I do think you will see classes adjusted more frequently than occured in the past. There will be a lot of tweaking shortly after LK ships, but still substantial changes even beyond that. Some will be us responding to the state of the game and some will just be new things we want to try or new solutions to old problems or just things we can finally get around to taking a look at.