#0 - June 19, 2009, 12:48 a.m.
I really feel that the game needs to reach a STEADY STATE (Soon TM) that I can just play and enjoy for a while.
In the software business, as an example, care has to be taken to not release a major upgrade too frequently because it forces upgrade costs which users grow increasingly unwilling to pay.
In this game, "upgrade costs" equate to how much time a player has to spend getting a feel for how major game changes will affect their playstyle.
For the more hardcore, this includes reading out of game along with the in game costs of regemming, respec'ing, re-glyphing, and farming the gold to pay for the above. I found in this expansion pack I wasn't willing to pay those costs as I had in vWoW and BC and have raided less and less.
In addition, the sheer volume of changes we've seen is rather unprecedented I think for a Blizzard product. Blizzard has long been a company that releases things when they are ready and the volume of change we've seen in this expansion pack has been a detriment to that history and is beginning to challenge my faith in the company's products. Yes, that's a grandiose statement to make, but you've probably said far worse about a car company after spending a day with a mechanic.
Finally, I feel like we're not working towards a well stated goal with all these changes. It doesn't feel like we're incrementally working towards a final, stable state, but grasping at ideas that might produce balance.
I am looking forward to healing being more of a challenge, but I'm fretting the likelihood that the upcoming changes will be as much of an overcorrection as the changes that got us in a place requiring changes be made in the first place.
