I have a 62 troll warrior purely because I saw that video. I knew the guy had 52 talent points but I still didn't care. And I was a scrub then and took videos at face value =p.

Funnily enough I can't ever remember a time when anyone called mages overpowered, except for maybe the hardcore arena players who are jealous of ice block. The way the community perceives mages has always been fascinating to me, as the responses I get are so varied. I like to tell people about my mage when I'm playing alts and chatting, and the responses I get range from "I would 2-shot you" to "Fucking nerf ice block" and everything in between. It's bizarre.

I think, in part, this is due to the expansions pack.

From my perspective, outland is wonderful. The quests make sense, give rewards that are at least useful some of the time. Almost every zone has some built in pvp event/game. There are multiple reputations to grind, which give nice rewards eventually. The "world" is smaller and easier to travel around.

All these things make outland great.

However, you can't start an alt in outland. You have to drag through some 59 drudging levels in the boring plain old world.

So, in my opinion, that is partly why there are fewer rerolls these days. After tasting outland and seeing a well-designed world, nobody wants to go back and level in the hellhole for levels 1-58.

Maybe you were not playing by then, but when they released ZG, and good guilds cleared it in couple of weeks, mages started getting ZHC and it was stackable with ToEP from MC. Ap pom pyro was good enough, but with double trinkets, you can imagine ^_^. Some videos released, when some guy picks zerker and goes pew pew. Was nerfed in a couple of months tho.

Only about 40. The new starting zones are amazing. If you go from the ghostlands to tarrens mill, it feels like a punch in the stomach throwing you two years back in time.

You are absolutely right, the difference is huge.

I'm actually in a course numbered Ec 101 right now (although Introductory Economics at my school is numbered Ec 11). It is a lecture course on Behavioral Economics given by the economist who basically founded Behavioral Game Theory. Anyhow, it's funny how this field actually applies. Behavioral game theory assumes limited rationality of the consumer. That is, the consumer cannot perceive exactly how their actions will benefit themselves, how others will act, or lack the computing power to do so. Essentially, the models generated by this assumption better fit the real world.

In one of the models proposed by behavioral economists, consumers are assigned a level of strategy. So, someone who didn't take anyone else's action into account would be a level 0 consumer, someone who assumed everyone else was a level 0 consumer would be a level 1 consumer, etc. The striking feature of WoW, in my opionion, is simply how many level 0 consumers there are. You rarely hear non-healers/tanks say, "I rolled my class because I thought it would be needed by others." (While this does not strictly imply they are a level 0 consumer, it's a strong indication.) While personal utility must be taken into account when rolling a character, the synergy gained in parties in WoW dominates the utility function, at least for non-marginal cases.

Rolling ignites were considered pretty overpowered by a lot of other dps classes. In pve that is.

I think ignite actually helps reduce crys of mages being overpowered, at least in pvp.

It's amazing how many players will cry nerf about a 4k shadowbolt crit, but see a 3.5k fireball crit as fine, even though the fireball does far more damage after the ignite is considered.

In my opinion, class imbalance does not correlate with class popularity as much as you have implied. Yes, there is a correlation between how powerful a class is and how many players play that class. However, I think that the relationship that you've drawn between the two is exaggerated, and thats why the new alleged "flavor of the month" class has not received the degree of hype that you had expected.

I think that Warriors, Rogues and Hunters are naturally popular because of the natures of their class. The concept of axes, swords, daggers and bows attract a larger percentage of MMO players than sorcery, healing magic and metamorphosis. That's as simple as it is. Also, consider the fact that Druids and Warlocks are limited by the races that can select them. Druids are only selectable by Tauren and Night Elves. After Shaman and Paladin, who are also naturally limited due to the fact that they were faction-dependant, Warlock is the next most limited, with five races. Suppose that a player is considering a multitude of classes, but would prefer not to be a Tauren. That already eliminates Druid from his scope of possibilities. Likewise, if a player wanted to roll a Night Elf, Warlock is not available to him. For two of the more limited classes in terms of race selection, it will naturally affect the total population of Druids and Warlocks, compared to Warriors, Rogues and Hunters, three classes that are available to a wider variety of races.

It's true that some players often quit playing their main characters and switch to something that they think is more versatile and powerful when it comes to the game's mechanics. It isn't out of the ordinary for a class to emerge as one of the 'better' classes in PvE or PvP and for players to become attracted to that class. However, as cool as it would be to play a class that can potentially tank, heal AND deal damage, there's something about Druid that just doesn't interest me. If I was one day unhappy with my Priest, I still doubt that I would play a Druid because the concept of metamorphisis just turns me off. I'm only one player out of millions, but I'm using myself as an example that there are many factors that come into play when choosing a class, either for the first time, as an alt, or as a reroll. Being powerful in PvE or PvP isn't everything.

In summary, the population of each respective class has a lot to do with asthetics and the role-playing element more than it has to do with class imbalance. Personally, I chose to play a Priest because, before I even started playing WoW, I knew I wanted to be a healer. I eventually ended up with Priest. It had nothing to do with how powerful the class was, what was the flavor of the month, or what people were saying about it on the forums. I just simply liked it. I think that certain classes attract a certain type of person, and the Druid and Warlock classes attract fewer people than most of the other classes do. Don't look too deep to figure out why Druid and Warlock aren't popular. Despite being very versatile and powerful classes, some people just don't want to play a demonic sorceror or a cow that turns into bears and trees. It is really just this simple.

I agree with Bokchoy, I rolled a mage generally because of its magic abilities, and considered them being "cool" two years ago ^^. Oh well they are still rather appealing to me.

That's just a case of perception as well, single large numbers are seen as more attractive than a lot of small numbers. In fact, I think DoTs are the only recent example I can think of in which people complain about something that's not a single large number, but even there the complaints tend to focus more on the fact that 'It continues even after I kill the warlock!'. (Another comparable thing being pets continuing to attack even a stealthed target, though people seem notably less patient about a largely AI controlled entities in general, I never was particularly impressed by BM hunters when the Hunter talents were initially revised, but the posts about Bestial Wrath were all over the forums)

It's also one of the reasons why Arms Warriors are notably more common than the other two Warrior types as a choice for anyone new to the game rolling a Warrior; practically ever Warrior you saw when the game was newly released was swinging a big axe/sword/mace. Same with people who rolled Paladin when the game was newly released; while I share the concerns about Retribution being a viable spec, it is the case that a lot of people simply liked swinging a big two-handed weapon and seeing big numbers pop. One of the most common complaints I see (or saw) about Hunter damage was about Aimed Shot crits as well. Large numbers draw people's attention.

I know there was a lot of backlash against "Trinket Mages", but that's pretty much it. I think most people realized that Trinket/3 minute Mages weren't anything to be scared about in the grand scheme of things, but they loved posting pictures of themselves getting "one shotted" by massive Pyroblast crits on the forums.

Double trinket period, rolling ignite period, to a lesser extent AV join-as-group period and early arena period.

Mages have had their times at the top of the hill. Not quite as extreme and long times as certain other classes though, but then again, most of the classes that have been very overpowered for long periods of time have also tasted the opposite end of the spectrum. Mages haven't.

I don't recall that mages have ever been very underpowered. And because of sheep they've always had a more solid role in groups than the other dps classes which have less crowd control. The issues they have had are to do with other classes being 'overpowered' and Blizzard being really unclear about how they want to balance dps. The mage itself seems solid to me and always has done.

Just some people really don't like playing squishy casters

I agree, even now I think mage is one of the best balanced classes. The 3 talent trees all work together and all have their weak and strong points.

I considered mages a bit underpowered back in the BWL days, we had to spec a lot of points in arcane to be somewhat viable, half of the bosses were fire immune and we had really no way to lower our aggro. Blizzard did an awesome job with the mage/naxxramas patch though.

Retribution Paladin is actually one of the examples where a large effect on the population happened. Paladin was originally the most played class on alliance, something close to 20%. It has fallen to more like 10% by now.

The expected playstyle was to use a 2H sword and fight on the frontlines and from level 1-59 that was actually happening. When they were asked to stay in the back and heal, they lost interest in the class completely. It doesn't really matter at that point how good the class is at healing. If you do not want to play a healer, you are simply not going to do it.

Unfulfilled expectations make rerolls happen.

Well, when we were in bwl all our warlocks were MD specced and had threat reduction and warriors could take aggro in a way. They just died when they did. If a mage took aggro on any of the dragons, chromaggus, nef, broodlord it was a wipe. And a warrior with some points in protection was a very viable offtank back then.
All I know was that I felt totally useless in bwl, except on razorgore and nefarian and ofcourse decurse duty on chrommagus :p.

Yep, in the times of bwl, warlocks had no reduction whatsoever but for nemesis set, and it was pissing them off, as threat wall was the only factor stopping them.

One of our Warlocks still uses his 8/8 Nemesis set in threat-sensitive encounters. He's kept it updated with top-of-the-line enchants since BWL :P

Mages didn't have much in the way of threat reduction, just the talent for 40% subtlety on Arcane damage. Which led to spamming Arcane Missiles for basically the entire BWL instance, especially if they were Horde (who didn't have Tranquil Air Totem at that point). Mages have been very up-and-down in PvE since WoW's launch. Warlocks have, it seems, only gotten more powerful and I think the class's legitimately amazing capabilities in both PvE and PvP is why I see Warlocks EVERYWHERE. Half my guild has Warlock alts. It's had the advantage of being the perennial "OMG OVERPOWERED" class ever since the Death Coil change.

I think a lot of people find MS Warriors appealing as well, but in terms of esthetics and OMFGDAMAGE in PvP. The thing is, you need some very nice gear to really compete.

From AQ to Naxx, it was common to bring 2 Warlocks, tops. One for the CoR, one for the CotE. Stack 7-8 mages instead. If that's not a downer in terms of PvE viability, nothing is.

Well, rolling ignites were the king, i remember like all our naxxramas from start to end, on each boss swstats was like:

1.Mage
2.Mage
3.Mage
4.Mage
5.Rogue
6.Mage

Weird, our rogues usually topped the damagemeter together with the ignitewhore, we were lucky with weapon drops though. All our rogues had 65dps weapons after a month of naxx. Our dps warriors were bad. Top 5 damagemeter usually was 2/3 rogues, 2/1mages and a warlock.