The End of Class Changes

#0 - Sept. 8, 2009, 4:13 p.m.

Obviously one of the features that makes WoW so popular is that it is constantly evolving over time: new content, new quests, new items, world events, etc.

One other thing that continues changing is the classes: new spells, rebalanced stats, new ways to play. Sometimes the changes are small, other times they're so big we get our talent points reset and have to learn our classes all over again.

My question is, will classes ever reach a state of static equilibrium? Will Blizzard ever say, "Okay, the classes are balanced and we're happy with the level of enjoyment everyone gets from them. I don't think we'll be changing them again. All future patches will focus exclusively on new content rather than changes."

A follow up is, would that be a good thing, or a bad thing? Do people enjoy keeping track of all these changes ("oh, right, I need to switch my rotation to ABXY instead of AXYB since X is now 15% blah blah")? Or would some stability be welcome?

Eyonix

#14 - Sept. 11, 2009, 9:40 p.m.

Q u o t e:
Obviously one of the features that makes WoW so popular is that it is constantly evolving over time: new content, new quests, new items, world events, etc.

One other thing that continues changing is the classes: new spells, rebalanced stats, new ways to play. Sometimes the changes are small, other times they're so big we get our talent points reset and have to learn our classes all over again.

My question is, will classes ever reach a state of static equilibrium? Will Blizzard ever say, "Okay, the classes are balanced and we're happy with the level of enjoyment everyone gets from them. I don't think we'll be changing them again. All future patches will focus exclusively on new content rather than changes."

A follow up is, would that be a good thing, or a bad thing? Do people enjoy keeping track of all these changes ("oh, right, I need to switch my rotation to ABXY instead of AXYB since X is now 15% blah blah")? Or would some stability be welcome?

It will never happen because we're always going to be adding content to the game (including class content) that will require us to make adjustments to each class. Additionally, classes scale differently with gear and content, and we always have to monitor that closely and change things as needed.

Eyonix

#20 - Sept. 11, 2009, 9:52 p.m.

Q u o t e:

Just to clarify... you're saying that, due to the nature of WoW as an MMO, it will always be broken in some form or another? Or will you end up making changes just for the sake of making changes?

The answer to your question was in my statement, friend. Due to the nature of an MMO we will always add fresh new content that may and often does require that we make adjustments to the areas of the game the content affected, or to the new content itself if necessary.