I read an interesting commentary a long time ago from Richard Garfield on MT:G - the gist (and relevant part) was the idea that many of the early 'broken' cards that the game published contributed significantly to the game's early success and popularity.

You can find a similar theme in Diablo2 where the randomly generated rare item stats could occasionally be extremely powerful - if not broken. These items were highly coveted.

The point being people *really* like powerful items or effects. Many of these examples also conveyed a sense of exclusivity due to the rareness.


Something I think WoW lacks (or has lacked recently) is the *perception* of powerful items or combinations. With the really strict control over the item budget, WoW has removed most of the ability to do truly powerful effects by combination. Obviously the tradeoff is balance - and WoW tries really hard to achieve 'balance' - sometimes at the cost of enforced universal similarity.

I think the only examples from WoW that I can think of were the Reckoning Bomb paladin vs Kazzak video, [Talisman of Binding Shard], and the occasional game mechanic screwups - stormstrike or mangle stacking bugs allowing truely broken amounts of damage if used in combination.


When it comes to distinguishing yourself or your guild, I think the ideas come down to power, uniqueness and recognition. Folk want to be noticed, want to discover new and interesting ways to apply their items/chars, and folk really like to be powerful - the game is about increasing your power at a fairly fundumental level. Most folk care about these in different proportions, but everyone cares about some of it.

Along these lines, some ideas that might be interesting:
- Custom item skins. Obviously not game changing in on mechanical level, long and complex questlines to obtain the ability to change your item texture would probably be very popular. For example, a female nelf warrior might quest to change the appearance of her hat to a halo or tiara just because it happens to look cool.

- Limited edition items.
To appeal both to the collector and to the folk wanting to stand out from the crowd. Bliz has done a fairly good job with the seasonal quest items and such, but there is no reason not to extend the idea. For example: suppose that Bliz made it so that the first 100 [Bulwark of Azzinoth] that dropped world-wide had a different graphic and a glow effect.
On a more extensive note - one could add real items to a boss drop table for a limited period of time and then simply never drop them again. Items such as this would fairly easily achieve some of the same 'unique' status as the scarab lord bug mount - regardless of if they were the same power as the regular items.

- Combinations
Set items go a long way to enforcing homogeneity. One way of adding unique customization options back is to have the option of multiple items satisfying the set bonus requirements. Similar to the idea that S2/S3 pieces would both satisfy the set requirement.

Add set or 'combination' bonuses to offset piece combinations - and allow them to overlap with regular set pieces and other combinations. This will make the combinations less obvious and more of a tradeoff.

Cross player effects - Items that activate based on the actions or equipment of your party members would make for some interesting group-wide tradeoffs. You could even make some fairly 'broken' or powerful effects because it would require coordination among the group.

- Overpowered combinations/items.
Many games - like MT:G explicitly allow players to discover really powerful combinations or effects or use powerful items. The main reason it is allowed is because there is a built-in end-of-life or obsolescence. Wow could introduce 'overpowered' items that were known to have a limited lifetime or restricted use. Sort of like an extended version of the Kael'thas weapons. You could have items or set bonuses that only work within a specific instance, or only last for a season. This would allow otherwise broken or too-powerful effects to be used because the use is limited.

- Persistence
A vast amount of game time is invested in improving your char. I think this is the reason a lot of more serious players find regular power resets to be somewhat demoralizing. I understand the reasoning behind the expansions adding levels and thus making a lot of prior work obsolete, but it really is a discouraging to go from a really strong and invested charachter to just another levelling player in blues. Particularly for folk who really *dislike* the levelling aspect of the game. Some thought to persisting something from your prior work would be really appreciated. More items like the BT neck as folk mentioned earlier - which are nice rewards at any level. Perhaps a way of making prior gear not be quite so obsolete when you level up.


This is just a random set of ideas - I haven't put much thought into if they'd actually work in practise. But I do think that ideas along these lines should be explored - if only to break the boring sameness that plagues a lot of itemization and progression in the game today.

Consider the MSD/Arcane situation of the past few weeks. In EJ, Manly in particular has been accumulating spell haste gear since early 2.1, trying to see if he could make an AM-spam build viable, because he was looking for some alternative to the cookie-cutter 10/48/3 fire builds of the time. It ends up working decently well, and then the 2.2 MSD changes make the build incredible. Numerous people immediately copy it. And in a couple of weeks it'll be gone, and everyone is back to 10/48/3 or some arcane build that relies on 2pc t5. That seems like exactly the sort of innovation and room for experimentation that I think many players are looking for, but it's immediately stifled.

I think you have a very good point, and this is the main reason I am quitting WoW in favor of Hellgate:London when it comes out in a week and a half. All items in that game are randomly generated and can be randomly enchanced with a very large amount of possible properties with different effects, much more then the +stats vs +mp5 vs +healing that are the choices a WoW healer has for example. Furthermore weapons can be modded with up to 7-8 different mods that can enchance your weapon to do damage of different types, inflict status effects, etc. etc. I don't want to go into more detail about something no one here will understand but suffice to say that there are *far* more possibilities from itemization. It's basically like Diablo 2, except with far more choices, particularly when it comes to weapons because of the ease of modifying them to your liking.

To play devil's advocate here however, you have to consider the counter problem, when you have a system that allows for a large amount of customization, with many interesting choices the game becomes significantly harder and more complex. Reading HGL beta boards, many people have a very hard time understanding the system, and furthermore many complain that a "lower quality" item can be better then a "high quality item" if the first one happens to have a much better combination of the right properties for that particular class.

Every item needs to be examined on a case by case basis to decide whether it's good for your particular build and how it meshes with the rest of your items. This level of complexity is frankly way beyond the average WoW player in my experience.

I just don't think this game is built around being this complex about your personal choices as far as talents/items. Which is something I personally don't like, but it's hard to argue against the game's success - maybe there is simply a larger market for this type of gaming rather then the other. Many people in WoW have issues just figuring out a good spec and the gear choices that come along with that spec when there are really only a few good choices and a few hours of reading a board like this would provide you all the answers easily.

Whiteknight I think you are on to something. The lack of items that last long might be a piece of the puzzle. Some examples of really overpowered items for their place in progression are Blackhand's Breath and Hand of Justice (2% crit and 2% chance to get an extra attack which you both could get before level 60 and would last you to BWL at least). It's a special feeling getting that item and knowing it will last for a very long time. Finding upgrades for everything in every new instance is a nice idea but it's...boring.

I think the main issue is that it comes from out-of-the-box thinking, and hinges on specific items. For example, remember the [Green Whelp Armor] in pvp? What about the old school Elixir of Poison Resistance (which became [Potion of Curing]) for Huhuran? Or stacking the old improved concentration aura with [Talisman of the Breaker]?

Blizzard doesn't want things to hinge on specific items. They want whatever they build to be scalable into the future. That's why we saw nerfs to things like [Lifegiving Gem], and Thunderfury.

While I agree that it does stifle creative thinking, it is something that Blizzard obviously feels is necessary.

This is all true. There's room for this type of "creative thinking" in a single player RPG (where players are often not only able to become living gods but are encouraged to do so), but not in a game that strongly concerns itself with balance. The integrity of the system relies on an idea of fairness, and of reasonable trade-offs (although the developers do occasionally get some weird ideas of what a reasonable trade-off is).

No fun and lasting MMO can approach the game in any other way.

I do agree the talent system tends to strongly encourage a highly restrictive form of specialization (i.e. talents that are strongly significant in PvE but useless or even penalizing in PvP, or vice versa). The talent system could really use a revamp, especially in light of how extending it to 61 points will certainly encourage even greater specialization in the expansion, but I'm not quite smart enough to figure out what a more compelling system would be (I haven't seen one in other games that feels nearly as polished).

For a general purpose PvE MMO, it doesn't make sense. However, in light of Praetorian's point, it makes a some sense for head to head competitive PvP environment. Both Arena gear and MTG card sets have a planned obsolescence built in.

Functionally, how much different is an 'Arena season' from a MTG 'block' which consists of a set pool of valid cards. In practical terms, S2 Arena gear is obsolete within several weeks of S3 (for top level competitive purposes). While they don't 'ban' S2 gear, having a new set higher ilevel items obsoletes it in practice. So within a specific season, users could play around with a combination of stats. If something turns out to be too broken, they can just rebalance it for the next season.

At the start of a season
Blizzard rebalances stats based on 'broken' sets from previous season and Min/Maxers will be ditching their S2 gear and buying new gear regardless of whether they balance them or not, to either:
* 'Socket/Inscript' using the same mechanic (if not nerfed)
* Experiment to find the new combination for next season.

They have a chance to correct it I think.

A start might be with the Blacksmithing weapons. It would be nice to see a T4 and T5 coming into the game for those items allowing players to keep using them in some form into the game as new content is added.

This post struck a nerve with me for some reason.

Where do you draw the line between balance and homogenization?

The game has taken leaps and bounds forward in encounter design, quest design, etc since Burning Crusade has been released, but it's more than just nostalgia to think that in that same time it has become increasingly homogenized. Even with the customization possible through talents, gear, gems and enchants, there is little room to distinguish your character from someone else.

Isn't it the little imbalances that make the game fun? I mean, who really has a problem getting destroyed in PVP by a rogue wearing Warglaives? Thunderfury was such a coveted weapon because it was so overpowered, it broke the balance of the game a little bit. In turn, guilds ran MC ceaselessly to have a shot at it. Do you really think the same effort will be made for the Warglaives? Not a chance.

It's the little things that throw the game out of balance that make it fun.

Isn't this essentially what they are doing now? They're adding in armor penetration for melee, and bonus armor for all casters. Feral druids are much more damage-oriented in S3 rather than the more hybrid stats from S2 and 1. As stated previously, they have a pretty bad track record with broken combinations, so they make their changes in smaller, more controlled doses.

I guess they could get wilder and crazier and experiment more, but it's mostly the once bitten, twice shy thing. Also, given how long the seasons are, they're bound to get a huge load of complaints if they introduce a broken mechanic and left it in for the entire season.

I am big fan having permanent achievements in online games. Statistics and records you can look up on see what someone has done. Like back when Warcraft III was extremely popular, I remember sitting in clan channels talking/searching for games, when this guy with the Archmage Icon (500+ Human wins icon) joined the channel when you and everyone else had the 50+ win icon. People would stop what they were doing and say “hey”, they would profile him, they would look up his stats on battle.net, and someone would challenge him to a custom game. Then everyone scrambled to observe the game so they could watch him play.

I always thought this was pretty cool and gave me something to work towards which I eventually achieved (though only a 65% winning percentage).

When I first started playing WoW I got the same feeling. I would see the top raiders/PVPers with all epic gear that totally dominated anything I had. It gave me something to look forward to which ultimately got me into raiding. I remember seeing the first guy with an Ashkandi and thinking how cool it looked and how lucky he was to have it. I remember getting smashed by this Tauren Warrior with this huge Orange mace and thinking WTF was that! OMG that guy is powerful!

Never in TBC have I had that same feeling. I saw a Paladin in Ironforge with the server first [Lightfathom Scepter] in a guild that’s several months ahead of mine progression wise and I think so what? Big deal? Vashj is about 100 times harder then Prince yet my friends alt Priest has [Light's Justice] which is only a minor downgrade from the Vashj mace. Fast forward and now our guild has 8 Vashj kills and 3/5 & 4/9… with zero Vashj healing maces. I guess its time for me to spend the 310 points my 1550 rated 2v2 team saved over the last 3 months for [Merciless Gladiator's Salvation] that everyone and their sister already has.

If I did not enjoy the guild environment and raiding so much I would have quit the game long ago due to the lack of any permanent achievements in WoW. There should have been something in place from the start to allow people to be recognized that have accomplished things in WoW. When I started WoW I thought it would be the gear and the PVP ranks… but TBC pretty much destroyed all of that. It sucks that anything they do implement most likely won’t be retroactive which basically means anything you accomplished in the past is gone.

It annoys me that you can’t look at someone (or inspect someone) and tell whether they just started playing WoW 3 months ago or 3 years ago because everyone is just a clone of everyone else. WoW needs an achievement system… though I feel it’s too late at this point to start any kind of system because some much would already be lost.

Mudflation in WoW is not a new concept, it first occurred in the level cap:45 push of Beta when itemization point allocation for every item nearly DOUBLED, with no corresponding change in encounter design. If you're wearing pre-40 gear with mods, congrats, you're significantly overpowered vs the content.

People always throw about the "mudflation is bad!!!" line without really understanding what it is mudflation does for a game environment. Mudflation is only mudflation if encounter design does not take it into consideration. If you're designing raid content around a certain gear level, if that gear is attainable. If, for instance, in pre-BC, you killedMC bosses in pre-raid gear to upgrade to t3 items, which then led you to content designed around having that gear (SSC/TK style fights, giving t6, which then led to sunwell content), it would be mudflated and it would also work correctly in terms of continuum encounter design. Where mudflations problems are seen is taking new gear into old content and having an incredible edge in that content. This aspect is unavoidable, if you ant any sense of progression in gear.

Not to mention... true mudflation (item value increased significantly beyond a point of normalcy) is what allows hybrids to properly work. Its why gear designed for hybrids is so much worse, in most cases, when compared to generic gear. (See paladin tank gear losing sta, avoid and mitigation for int and spellpower [I'm reading a huge thread about this on the test forums at the moment, is why i use it])



Because right now, killing is the only real way to stand out. Crafting means jack in this game, you can sit down with 2k gold and max anything you want in hours. I've done that with alts alchemy 4 times, jc, leatherworking, tailoring twice, and herbalism (this took the longest). You discover the entirety of the world at level 1 with no risk whatsoever (except flying areas, which have less difficulty than that). The Dungeon Delver Merit Badge, or something similar, which you'd get for seeing every piece of every instanced zone, would just be "I jacked a(several) cleared instance(s), woohoo" unless accompanied by the previously mentioned "I killed stuff!" badge. There is no skillcrafting system in place, so you cant be the first guy to discover how to change your fireball spell into a triple-fireball chain of death (or even how to make it a hotter fireball, or faster cast). There is no diplomacy, to be a hero by brokering peace or establishing trade routes for materials or good. (Interestingly enough, this is World of Skirmishcraft, as it lacks the billion and one tactical aspects of war. harhar).

High-End raiding, and thus, the slaying of big, nasty, things, is pretty much the only thing you cannot buy your way to the top right now (and you can do that for 1 tier back). You can BUY the pinnacle of everything else (you cannot, in PvP, after next patch, at least).

First up, Sillia, you're right it's tough to balance these things, but that's Blizzard's job, to make a fun engaging game. There's no reason they can't have amazing bonuses on items then have other amazing bonuses on other items. There's on reason that Talisman of the Breaker couldn't have continued as it was with silence resist and then included other items with that later, and gave a max % or something to that, thus making it strong, unique, and upgradable. There's no reason they couldn't have made the tank weapons from Black Temple and Hyjal have +15% threat generation, or a nice aggro proc or stats on them to make Thunderfury obsolete instead of nerfing the fun thing about it, it comes to the point that yes it's tough to balance, but it'd be fun, and it's Blizzard's job to create a game with staying power. If there's lots of items with interesting, powerful, and different abilities, as long as they're somewhat balanced, you'll see variety. For example, a rogue might stay as maces, or they might find a sword that had a % chance to proc a temporary silence or something, if they're well balanced, then you have a reason to pick each and you'll see different choices based on different team builds.


Maczor and Gurgthock also have the point about how afraid Blizzard has been in TBC to give meaningful upgrades, which is just annoying at this point. The Illidan mace just isn't that much better than the Vashj mace, which just isn't that much better than the Prince mace, and that's just kind of screwed up.

When i think about it, not a single item in TBC has made me go "wow" so far. Pre-TBC it happend alot that you would see some item on PTR and then would go "I really need to have that".

Just thinking about the fact, that upgrading from S1 weapons to S2 weapons (7% upgrade) is way smaller than upgrading from the dagger droped from garr to predition's blade (15% upgrade) is sad, even more sad when you consider that those both droped in same instance.

There was a steeper gear progression curve in pre-TBC, which probably won't be met even with Sunwell gear. I can't imagine that this unintentional. They evidently don't want the same situation where top-end raid-geared players were gods amongst insects compared to blue-geared serfs, because it's ultimately bad for business when non-raiders feel like target practice.

How can they prevent that? There's screaming to the high heavens whenever Blizzard puts non-raid content with raid-like rewards, even if paced at a slower rate of acquisition. Judging from this thread, there's even a fair deal of resentment that there aren't raid-obtainable items that award unique and overpowering effects to their users, ones that aren't replaceable except by even more overpowering effects that put talent point investments to shame.

How can Blizzard possibly inject these ultra-items into the game without following the Everquest path of alienating anyone who isn't the hardest of the hardcore?

They can do that. I completely agree that it's fully possible to do so. The problem is whether the player base is willing to take the bad with the good.

Sure, they can add really wide-sweeping game changes. Sure, they can make huge jumps in item power, or add weird ass procs or items that can have a huge effect on an entire class ([Mystical Skyfire Diamond]). They can do this. The question is... do they want to do this?

Doing strange things like this will make the game much more like a pendulum. You'll probably have wildly overpowered classes/specs/gear loadouts/etc. one week/month/season, then that class/spec/gear loadout/etc. will get nerfed into the ground, and everyone will have to reroll/respec/get new gear.

Does this sound like the kind of game you'd like to play? Would you like to spend a lot of gold, time and effort to get a specific build or gear loadout, only to have it nerfed into oblivion the next time period?

There's already a ton of crying about a lot of stuff, and this is with them being careful and isolating the changes to small things.

Ninja Edit: You can say they should do this. I agree, if they could do it without needing a ton of testing and rebalancing and fixing, they should do it. But given what they've done in the past, and the sledgehammer-style fixing that results afterwards, do you think they can do it without throwing the game into chaos in the process? Would you really want a constant cycle of that going on?

They aren't necessarily afraid. With the T6 content, we saw two whole new mechanics that were introduced to raid gear, that didn't exist before: Haste and Armor Penetration. Armor penetration previously only existed on a handful of items, and then only as procs: [Bonereaver's Edge] and [The Night Blade]. Similarly, before T6 content, we never saw haste as a passive ability. It was always a proc, and only happened on certain select items ([Quagmirran's Eye], [Dragonmaw]).

Furthermore, by introducing huge upgrades in raid instances, they'd throw off that pvp/pve balance again, especially with weapons. Right now, going from [Light's Justice] to [Lightfathom Scepter] to [Crystal Spire of Karabor] you gain approximately 16% (Vashj over Prince) and 27% (Illidan over Prince) in power, respectively. How much is a bigger upgrade? 30%, 60%? Vashj drops a healing mace with +496 to heal, and Illidan drops a +611 healing mace? How do you keep pvp balanced with power jumps that large, if you apply a similar value to DPS weapons and such? It would be PvE to PvP all over again, unless they kept swinging in new Arena seasons to fix it. But then that wouldn't necessarily change anything because the raiders would still be in here complaining about welfare epics that are (almost) as good, simply because they have to keep pace.

Finally, they are also building a new expansion while they are developing current content. They are balancing the gear that becomes available now with the next expansion in mind. There's going to be another great gear slate cleaning when the expansion arrives; they've stated as much in interviews. They have a certain item budget range that they've set for themselves up to Sunwell (which will likely be the last instance before Wrath), and they've plotted out the next expansion's item levels accordingly.

Ultimately, my point is that Blizzard is being conservative. They are adding new and different things. Before the expansion, only T3 had set bonuses that took specific talent abilities into account. After the expansion, we actually have tier sets tailored for specific specs, including set bonuses. We've gotten things like haste and armor penetration as passive abilities, and they've gotten a good deal better at itemization in general. Some of the set bonuses from the various tier sets are actually really, really good. However, the stuff they are doing is, indeed, conservative. They are making their changes in small, controlled portions, in order to minimize the amount of balance concerns. Whether this is the best course of action is debatable. That's what we're discussing right now. However, I find it hard to fault them for wanting to play it safe. These issues have existed for a while, but you're still here paying your monthly fee, and so am I. Small changes will lead to grumbles, but won't lead to cancellations.

Generally speaking, Naxx epics were not replaced for their *intended* role until the late 60's for most players, and some held on until the start of 70 blue instances.

Bekah wore Naxx gear clear to Karazhan in several spots. Was it irreplaceable? No. It certainly did last longer than 62 blues and greens.

Stitch that is an exaggeration. People who had lots of T3 did not replace their gear by level 62. Heck I had T1 warrior and I didn't replace my gear by 62, more like 64-66. People who had T3 (other than maybe tanks cause of sta inflation) often did not upgrade their gear before level 70 instances other than in a few slots.

Overpowered items are bad for the game. It creates imbalances like what happened pre TBC with raiders winning everything. Maybe that works if you think raiders should get all the best toys. However the other people do pay their 15 bucks a month to not be shit on, so they need some stuff too. One big reason gear differential between instances used to be bigger? Because consumables and world buffs were used more and were more expensive. I remember all the discussion on Naxx even though I never did the zone. When gear differential was bigger, it was made up by people using overpowered consumables that skipped whole tiers of gear along with exploiting world buffs.

Ah, but your entire argument is based on Blizzard not having a Gear Matching System. You can't count world PvP because that is inherently not equal and the only time an undergeared player would play an epicced one would only be if there was no one else for them to play against anyway.

I remember the glows from certain Diablo 2 sets that were pretty cool. The Warlock Tier 4 helm sort of followed this vein, but what if having 4/5 or 5/5 of a tiered set gave you some sort of cosmetic glow effect that was either only on PvE sets or differed from PvP sets. In PvP you'd probably rather not have some sort of glow that makes you more easily identified, so it would be a neat way to differentiate the raid gear models from Gladiator stuff.

I want to see more quests (class specific eg:like the hunter epic quest) that involve you showing you know how to play your class that adds something people can see when they inspect you.

I don't know about other hunters but when I did my Hunter epic quest I felt heroic and challenged like never before in the game and each demon kill was at least or more satisfying than some first raid boss kills. It was also great to kill the ones responsible for corrupting parts of azeroth from a lore perspective.

When I saw a hunter with their epic bow (at least early on before people started to cheese it) I knew they were a skilled player who knew how to play their class and had the perseverence to complete that quest. But now how do you spot hunters who have completed it themselves?

Other than that class quest has there been any huge visible milestones that show you that someone has achieved something anymore? Are there any truly difficult quests in the game (besides TK Attunements which are getting a much deserved title next patch)?

I would love if every class had milestone class quests which although optional would show on your character sheet when inspected.

This is the part that I don't like about the recent decision to take the ability to "twist" totems out of the game. For the shaman that want to put forth 50% more effort to get 5% more result, which even blizzard has acknowledged is "not that big a deal", the stifling is pretty annoying.

We want to stand out, to show that we will make large efforts for even a small gain, but it is not going to be allowed.

Powershifting druids have already seen this take place.

It seems to me that this is exactly the type of thing that *should* be kept in the game, and would promote a passionate and loyal customer base. Let the veterans or the min maxers do their thing and be 5% better than the novices. It's not game breaking, but it gives people a sense of accomplishment when they master the more complex moves. Instead, druids and enhance shaman are/will-be playing a dumbed down game.

I have heard numerous hunters express a feeling of satisfaction when they learned to thread their shots and as a result saw higher dps. That's cool - they are gaining experience and are more powerful for it, much like the game tries to encourage through the level/xp system, but in real life.

I truly do not see the problem with giving a very minor advantage to those of us who wish to incur the raid-time stress of doing so. If, instead, we are told "you are going to perform exactly the same as anyone else who can stay behind a mob and not pull aggro", then what do we really have to feel like we are good at the game.

So, to the OP, that's one of the things that serves as a status symbol to me - knowing how the game works, and where I can perform better than person x/y/z. Blizzard is taking this away, it seems, both in itemization and also mechanics.