Vanilla wow was far more balanced

As someone who's been reading these forums as a Blizzard employee since the launch of the original World of Warcraft, I'd have to say there was no support for your argument back then. This thread reads on par with the "WoW is in decline" threads. So long as the game remains alive and players continue posting on these forums, threads like this will exist.

This isn't to say WoW isn't any more or less balanced than it used to be, but one certainly couldn't easily make an argument one way or the other if one were to read these boards nearly every day for the last four years.

We have some work to do in the balancing department. Typically the first major content patches after the release of an expansion are quite large, as they provide us an opportunity to fine tune things after the masses have reached the end game and really taken their class abilities and items to the limits. I think you'll see some promising results when patch 3.1 hits the live realms.

To add to this, our development staff does not exist in a vacuum. They're aware of balancing concerns, as expressed by players as well as through their own experiences. They're listening and they're constantly making and testing adjustments to provide something for everyone in patch 3.1. That's in addition to all of the new content coming, including but not limited to:

• Several new user interface improvements
  
• Dual talent specialization feature
  
• Equipment Manager
  
• The initial stages of the Argent Tournament, including new dailies, rewards, ways of building reputation with capitol cities, tabards, pets, faction shirts and mounts, etc.
  
• Ulduar, an expansive 10/25 player raid dungeon with various hard modes for select bosses, challenging players who want the opportunity to earn extra rewards
  
• Many new achievements
  
• Many improvements to various professions
  

The list grows by the day. We're always going to be looking forward when it comes to improving this game and keeping it fun. Sure, we can learn from the past. That said, we also understand that one's ability to objectively assess past experiences in a game they've been playing while watching evolve for years now diminishes over time.

Edit: Fixed a grammatical error.

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I love this phrase and I'd never know its meaning if I hadn't read these forums.

lawl

We all wanted to be astronauts before deciding to work on video games. :p

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Given that a vast number of players have rerolled death-knights with the launch of wow, wouldn't it be fair to assume that an equal percentage of the development staff has as well? Many of the changes, specifically to the priest class, leave us to assume there is MAYBE one developer that plays a priest and considers it their main character and the rest don't have a clue.

You know, I couldn't honestly tell you what classes each and every developer plays. Most of them have multiple classes at level 80, and, frankly, there are a lot of developers on the WoW team. I will say though, that when a player ever draws the initial assumption that one class is less favored than another based on the play experiences of the developers, the argument being made is unavoidably diminished. It requires an additional assumption that we lack understanding of certain classes, or outright favor specific classes to the detriment of our own game.

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Like Engineering?

Yea, there are some changes to engineering I personally find appealing. I didn't say we're providing everything engineers have ever wanted, but there are positive changes for this profession nonetheless.

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How can you possibly even say engineering is in an ok state? That's impossible. Do you even have an engineer? And If you do I bet it's not your main... why would it be? It's so bad...

Yes, my main is an engineer. If you'd like to take your time to fully formulate assumptions about how bad of a player I am, I'll wait. :)