Blizz's Insistence on Catering to QQ'ers

Q u o t e:
Blizz...why do you keep catering to the QQ'ers? 2 days after this patch has been released you already have nerfed mages..especially fire...as well as SP's ..etc. Why even release a patch if your so hellbent on knee jerk reactionary moves like this? I mean..2 days?? Give it a little time to prove your devs are way off but...damn...2 days is ridiculous to just make sweeping changes. Why even bother with PTR?

MC

You misunderstand the motivating factors behind these changes. We didn't decide to hotfix in some class changes because players were complaining beyond what our own observations and analysis supported. To the contrary, the concerns (at least the constructive, well-written concerns) about melee vs. caster performance post-patch 4.0.1 were mostly in line with what we were seeing as well.

Q u o t e:
Zarhym...Ok.. I can see your point..but...why only 2 days? I guess my point was..if you knew that Mage dps was going to be so off the charts..why not fix it before release?? Isn't that what PTR is for?

MC

There were a plethora of "show-stopping" bugs which were being addressed in the final week of testing. I know we've said that we're more focused on balancing classes around level 85 gameplay, but balance at 80 still wasn't quite where we wanted it upon release of patch 4.0.1. Even so, we felt it was more important to get the patch out there and make some additional tuning to class balance after the fact.

We do try to catch these things on the public test realms, but it's much more important we take care of severe bugs which, for example, may cause client crashes for a large majority of players. Our development team spent countless hours in the last week addressing bugs coming through the wire from our quality assurance department. Other bugs which don't quite have the same impact* are then listed as known issues and slated for correction in hotfixes when applicable, or an upcoming patch.

* In this context, "impact" refers to a bug which will literally make the game unplayable** for a large number of players.

** In this context, "unplayable" does not refer to Fire mages tearing through rogues, but rather refers to any bugs which keep players from being able to play the game at all.***

*** I'm adding all of these qualifiers since "impact" can be misconstrued, and "unplayable" is often thrown around a little too casually. From a QA/developer standpoint, "unplayable" has a much more literal and severe interpretation.****

**** ;)

Q u o t e:
My question though, with these nerfs to our Mage trees now will we be alright at level 85? And will we be alright levelling to 85? Because it was my understanding that we where balanced around lv 85 and levelling to 85. If we're nerfed now, would this not effect our performance for Cataclysm negatively? And are there any plans to adjust us accordingly if we are?

We'll definitely be keeping a close eye on such things. :)

Q u o t e:


I thought this is what testing was for.

It's pretty disappointing to write pretty straight forward clarifications about our behind-the-scenes processes when they're completely ignored. You really only needed to click the Blizz logo on the post you quoted to read the very next post I made in this thread.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=27292689586&sid=1&pageNo=1#14