OK now basic economics teaches us a little something about human behavior and how people apply it to gain an advantage. This manifests in two major ways: differentiation, whereby one competitor will seek to make a 'premium' product with better service or whatever and distinguish itself that way (Mercedes, Apple Computer, &c.) This is mostly irrelevant to my question compared to the second one, which is filling a specialized niche to offer a better selection or price than a general retailer to attract people that way (Bed Bath and Beyond vs. old-style department stores, for instance.)

(WoW population models taken from wowcensus observations while it was still up, now some kind of remainder is at http://www.warcraftrealms.com/census.php. I don't know how recent it is, but it does take into account post-60, so its recent enough for me to make some judgments about classes as they stand today.)

My question is about the major flavor of the month "trends" (for lack of a more specific descriptor) in crying about class imbalance. Sometimes, when a class is identified as "too powerful," exactly what one predicts would happen occurs: it is flooded. When rogues (way back when) and warriors were identified as "too strong" (for whatever reason, based in fact or not) tons of people picked and played alts of those classes or rerolled. Hunters, which started the game as arguably the worst class (or tied with warlocks) jumped to the front of the pack in terms of popularity after their talent redo/later adjustments made them a viable class. On the flipside, after the expansion, warriors (being perceived as boring/stupid) went into steady decline, and priests took the biggest hit (not being the most popular class to begin with, now priests are near the bottom with paladins shooting up.)

The problem emerges when the reality doesn't match the logical prediction of a class being called "too powerful." My personal favorite and 2 years rolling with a warlock, actually, is what got me inspired to write this. The outcry over warlocks being too powerful has been arguably the longest-lasting "common knowledge" concern in the history of WOW trends (starting, albeit at low intensities, roughly around the 1.08 patch change to make Death Coil the short cooldown horror-inducing "panic button" instead of the 10-minute mediocre blast it was.) After the 2.0 talent redos, the cries against warlocks reached their apex and plateaued to this very day.

After the expansion, druids, who were supposed to be the "hybrid class" (in reality being pretty much confined to resto-spec healers for the vanilla raid game) got their tanking and later caster specs balanced to be reasonable and worthy contributions to a raid group. Alongside the rebalancing of arms/fury with warriors and the necessity of prot-heavy specs to do a decent job tanking in expansion content, druids received similar outcries from the public about being tiny instruments of furry death and about how Blizzard must be biased about making that class better and better at the expense of others. The most recent theme against druids is "Cyclone is waaay too powerful in arenas, druid on arena team = IMBA"

Now I'm not trying to incite any actual battles over whether a class is balanced or too powerful (save that sort of bullshit for the WOW boards.) My question is merely one of group behavior not matching its logical predictable outcome: given the similar trends in the past and outcries of "flavor of the month overpowered!" given to rogues/warriors/hunters, why does the population of warlocks/druids not match the hype? Given the very obvious "common knowledge" about those classes one would expect to see an influx of alts or rerolls so that the individuals complaining could reap that competitive advantage as many did before and become more powerful themselves. The reality of the situation, though, is that warlocks and druids both remain in the bottom 3 classes in terms of population to this day (not counting the paladin/shaman choices, which were each exclusive to a faction until recently and as such have not yet produced fair/stable samples for evaluation.)

I don't think anyone can argue the recent popular outcries of warlocks/druids being "too powerful," (regardless of one's opinion yes or no on the matter) and the objective data exists to show that those classes aren't trendy picks, so why does the reality not match the prediction (or precedent from previous class complaints, if you will?) Is it simply that these complaints have gathered huge amounts of steam from people not knowledgable enough to judge properly and are without any merit, or is there another factor at play in the equation in your opinion?

I think you may be inferring causation where there is only correlation. In my thinking, it's probably more likely that rogues and warriors were "discovered" to be "overpowered" as more and more people started rolling them.

Leveling a rogue or warrior is probably easier for most people than leveling a druid or warlock, so it's not surprising if those classes are highly played regardless of "overpowered-ness" considerations.

I'd agree that the popularity of classes is largely based (in casualland) on their sub-20 experience. Some classes motor through 10-20 with incredible ease (rogues and hunters are both do stupid dps, twoshotting even cons etcetera) while some classes are not only slow and annoying but play completely differently because they don't have key talents or spells. Druids without cat form (this is particularly agonizing), priests without significant points in shadow, and warlocks without succubus, fel concentration, etcetera, level strangely and probably irritate more casual players.

Healing-oriented classes often seduce group-oriented casual players into doing silly things like speccing deep holy at low levels. A good way tol make your leveling experience completely miserable for zero gain, as a half-asleep shadow priest can heal any old world instance by themselves. DPS classes obviously don't face this problem, a rogue or hunter could level to 70 without using talent points fairly easily.

Sure, a warlock with imp out can fear kite and own stuff, but that sort of complicated tactic is not exactly newbie territory. 99% of newb warlocks are slowly burning down single mobs with their voidwalker out, slow steady and extremely boring.

I think Shamans are also a deceptive class. It's a weak PvP class at 70 (though solid in raiding/groups) but the perception of Shamans by the general populace has always been affected by the Shaman levelling experience. Shamans (Enhance specced) absolutely CRUSH everything up through lvl 50+, and while they slow down considerably after that many casual players won't take them that far anyway.

New players, of course -- although many are influenced by their friends. That said, all the non-raiders I know have many alts, even if none are at level cap, and I think this is what the thread was referring to: people who reroll due to what class they perceive beats theirs, or that they hear (Barrens chat anyone?) is overpowered.

There's also the PvP issue. Some people simply do not understand how or why they get killed. The perfect example is the druid who shifts endlessly to try and get out of Judgement of Justice. Now in some cases it can be seen quite easily. Warlocks, simply put, have absolutely everything they need to utterly tater a paladin. It is luck on fear resists that keeps me alive against a lock. But some people will read forums and develop complexes. They'll see "wait, other people are dying against this class" and jump on the bandwagon. From the perspective of their class, everything with that class looks peachy keen.

So they roll that.

I've thought about the problem of class balance exactly this way (and also the issue of faction balance) and it has occurred to me that the missing component is a market balancing force in the form of feedback. In a real market as suppliers rush to fill market opportunities the margin advantage of the niche diminishes until equilibrium is reached. However, "equilibrium" in WoW == official buffs/nerfs of the classes, which is roughly analogous to waiting for government regulators to balance markets. I.e., overdue and ineffective.

What if class/faction powers were somehow dependent on relative populations? For example, the AP multiplier for rogue finishers was linked to relative rogue population, either globally or server-by-server. (You would want it to be real-time, that is based on current log-ins instead of unused toons, and weighted by level, to prevent people from creating tons of level 1 alts of their most hated classes in order to weaken them.)

The nice thing about this solution is that even if the designers got the mechanics "wrong" the marketplace would both demonstrate that and account for it. Again looking at my rogue AP example, if the designers overcompensated with the multiplier the result would be that the rogue population would end up intentionally low. But since the population is now decreased the mechanics would balance out and the class would be fine, and the imbalance would also be immediately apparent to the designers, who could then start nudging up the multiplier. They could even announce their intention to do so on a staged basis, i.e. a little bit each month, to allow the market to invest intelligently.

That would wreak havoc on the raid-game in terms of guild class composition. Any rogue-heavy guild, for instance, would be crushed if the rogue "market" ever became flooded. At least, if your suggestion had any real noticable bearing on the game. And if it didn't, its useless and moot anyway.

My conclusions hold true if the census is adjusted for strictly 70s (warlocks move up a couple points, but are still down in the doldrums with druids even then) which we can presume to be fairly "well-informed" players in the sense that they are not completely ignorant and have some sense of battlegrounds/instance runs and know what is what (too optimistic? You tell me =)

I have a strong suspicion that any of the "nerf x" posts exist because they came across someone that had a strong gameplay sense to go with quick reactions. Always responding the correct way to attacks and defenses and such and not panicing and doing something stupid.

If someone uses their class with a high degree of understanding against someone that isn't as well versed it become comical almost. But when you get capable players on both sides the real class balance issues become apparent, eg warlocks and druids less desirable in 5v5 arena matches despite their "overpowerdness" in 1v1 and 2v2 encounters.

So people say this on WoW forums and contribute to the "general knowledge" of x being too good and thus people begin to reroll to x and during the course of leveling figure out what they did and realize that they were just countered properly instead of just having their target stand there without moving.

Do you honestly believe that the whole (Legolas / Drizzt) - especially for Alliance with elves - has nothing to do with more Hunters than Warlocks?
How the classes are perceived mean a lot, although the fundamentals might be very similar.