Infraction for Leodan: Rampant Idiocy

◊ Praetorian · 04/14/07, 10:38 AM

Post: Essay to WoW, Universe and Everything
User: Leodan
Infraction: Rampant Idiocy
Points: 5

Administrative Note:Message to User:

Our forums are not your blog.

Original Post:

Hello Folks,

First, my former character was Leodan, Human Paladin on Wrathbringer (EU). I've never leveled past lv 66, and only occasionally played lvl 70 characters from friends. To disarm the "haha you've never raided in BC"-argument, this is not about raiding experience or comparison of classes or L2P. To add to my background, I was a so called "Healadin", and yes I was specced 21/0/30 and had my first 5 points put into Divine Strength. Still, outperforming most other healers was a breeze, mainly because you can work around such limitations you put up for yourself for fun (or, in my case, because I like to do LOL DAMAGE in BG'S and stroking e-peen by having more AttackPower then most raiding warriors who stepped in AQ40). My Raiding Alliance was up to Gluth, and we were arguably the highest DPS and best Healers Raid on our server (before you ask why then we were only up to gluth (cleared Spiderwing, killed razuvious and then up to gluth), I'll just tell you that tactics where not our strong point. This is backboned by the fact that we killed patchwerk within 4 tries but never even really touched gluth, a more tactic intensive fight. Call me a noob or my raiding people, it's not really touching me any way at the feint of heart.

Whoever read until here, you can also read to the end before replying something like "GTFO you've never raided or been 70", a I won't be defending paladin healing or speak up other classes healing etc. This is just a pure analysis of blizzard's way of deciding.

I've come here today, to speak to you a little about Blizzard, and their "rather nerf then buff"-train of thought and, coming from that, actual style of designing the game. I've retired pretty much some time ago from wow, totally, because it just was not fun for me (can be fun for anybody else, but who likes this and that is not a point to argue about anyway) to do the pretty much same stuff I did two years time, just with a new fancy texture on everything, in some cases even just recolered. It was still the same grinding & questing procedure, and only thing that was REALLY new were flying mounts.

As a sidenote, flying mounts not working in azeroth is a distinc sign of blizzard NOT thinking really far into the future, regardless of what they say, instead it's the same as pretty much any big company today - fast money. To translate this for some of the really deep WoW freaks, where you DPS for damage and HPS for heal, blizzard's only looking for MPS; which translates to money per second. They don't really THINK about new content, and, this is understandable for me to a certain point. why pay people to be innovative, if you can just reuse the same database of models and skills every day, and, despite of people talking about quitting, most people's backbone lies not where their mouth is. and even if all of the people talking seriously about quitting, the constant stream of people TO WoW is bigger than the stream of people leaving WoW.

This, of course, does not count for the lone developer/designer who really tries to put up effort and is being laughed by his friends at lunch for really trying to hold up a constant stream of creativity for several years. In japan, they would just put his desk with the back to a window to tell them in a subliminal way where they'll be in the next fiscal year.

So, to get back to the topic, which is: recently introduced and incoming paladin healing nerfs, general underpowerment of priest, druid and shaman healing (or the so called, but I'll get on to this later).

First, I can somehow remotely understand other healing classes ranting about paladin healing, as WoW is a pretty competitive team, and just like a football team, where everybody actually works as a team, there have to be stars who want to be the best at any price in a competition (even if this means the team may loose due to, for example, an injury that's some of the best teamplayers having. this will put some other players in the spotlight, and to be honest who does not want attention in this or that way? If you're a metal guy and you don't want attention or be categorized by your look, don't dress like one. This is just a example and you can put in hiphop, fancy clothes, wearing an inflatable mobile shower with a giant twin-turret cannon spilling pure tequila on people in an alcohol withdrawal clinic, or any other thing that comes to your mind to get attention. However, the last one could be a nice way to protest against inflatable showers. with turrets. and tequila in it.).

What I cannot understand, are non-healer classes and even some paladins yelling at people to shut up about the nerfs. I mean, hey guys, it's not like your DPS will rise magically due to the nerf of a healing class in PvE. Or your DMGmeter rating. For PvP, anyone who is serious about PvP can get a paladin himself, it's not like they're not everywhere, and if you do have a 2000+ rating, it's likely that you have one anyway - if you're under that rating, you're not hardcore super serious pvp'er anyway.)

And, following this train of thought further, it came to my mind like a shining superfly wearing a glittering bodysuit to convince people they've seen elvis, why blizzards keeps nerfing healers, and to a certain point, any class which is played by people who use their toolset, be it spells, talents or items, in a creative way to pass the sometimes incredibly encumbering content, to raise their self-esteem or their repututation in the game. this is, by no means, meant to be degrading, because good players do have a pretty good self-esteem in the game, that's ok, as some people's life is centered around WoW and it's their way of life. I won't argue about that with anyone, again a matter of your preferred flavor of life.

How many guilds are right now working at lady vashj? 10, or maybe 100 worldwide? Two well known ones are D&T, and, as far as I know the only ones who killed her in some or another way, Nihilum. On the other hand, people watching those guilds, and people on the forums, are the loudest part of the whole WoW community, even if they're only provide 0.000001% of the player base (did not calculate this one!!!!!). Blizzard sees how they're rushing through content, and then demanding new content on the forums daily. This is not how they've intendet the game to be, as innovations costs money, and money is something today's big companies do preserve only for the managers and investors. AS a result, more people get upset, even those who haven't touched endgame really, and if anyone's seen Matrix, and I suppose some of you did, people who are not controlled, be it by a electronical mastermind providing them with addictive gameplay, err I mean life simulation (to stay on the matrix topic, like that comparison), are always endangering the rulers with riot.

So, instead of buffing other classes a bit (this would shut up the ranting of this class vs. that class pretty effectively as well until new content comes out or some creative player finds a way to abuse Lizzards's (b left out intentionally) own creation to rule the World of world of world of warcraft.), they rather nerf them to stealth-cockblok content, and this is even supported by the large base of non-players of the nerfed class because they can have their spot on the spotlightt, to buy them time to copy & paste content and call it new and exciting. Well, looking at the record of players in serpentshrine, they do have a application to do it for them, because it does also cost money to place trash mobs in an instance.

This is the same with enrage timers. In my eyes, their sole purpose is so you can't have a raid consisting of paladins, priests, and druids (maybe shamans as well) with a single warrior tank. No need to argue, such a setup would be slow in the actual progress they do as felt individually, and encounters would last by far longer, but you could beat any content in this way. It would take 30+ minutes for some encounters, that's true, but you'll need way less time in total to clear out the instance as you'd have with a "real everyday setup". everybody could heal and return mana in this or that way, the lone warrior def tanks would get all the tanking gear so you'd gear them up pretty fast, and, this is especially true with BC, where 5-man blues are at least fully comparable to most epics of tier 5 and possibly higher. healers could get gear very fast from the five man content, and you'd have a geared out raid stacked with healers and some of them would do dps (yes, shadow priests for infinite mana on healers (some moonkins maybe too), enhancement shamans and feral druids, and even ret pallies as they would provide blessings and raid-wide buffs, and two to three of them could maintain judgements the whole fight, shooting shadow priest mana regeneration to the sky and therefore healer mana regeneration, especially paladins.) You'd maybe say, who would do this? I, certainly would if I'm aiming for world's first kill screenshots, as this would be a extremely efficient way, although not the fastest. some people would call it "the paladin way of doing things".

So, to avoid extremely fast content progress, Lizzard's nerfing classes instead of buffing them, and builts in gimmicks like enrage timers, which somehow even manage to look new and fun-providing due to setting up the fight in a faster paced way - this is the final conclusion on this.

At least, as I'm not THAT stupid, and if I'd worked at Lizzard or even be their CEO, I'd watch the forum daily and laugh about whining on the one side and yelling from the other and people tearing up themselves on the forum, in teamspeak, guild channel, whatever, about which class should be the best at this or that, and then go home and count my money which I could only carry along in several bags, all this while driving my new 800 HS bugatti car, well knowing that a lot of people are addicted to WoW, if they admit it or not, and that I've earned enough money to never have to worry about anything anymore.

Please, don't write stuff like "whining" etc. as I'm still looking back to my earlier WoW time with a moony smile, because it was fun time and I've met a lot of people who I like and also people who I dislike (as well as some of them dislike me, but WoW is only a microcosmos containing the whole world's people in a nutshell), and I'm just having excess of creativity I don't know where to put as I'm waiting for a visitor. This is meant to make people think, and also maybe let them smile a bit, be it because of my infinite stupidity I interpret as ingenious or because, one or another, will find this really somewhat amusing. This, of course, would only be people that find it funny (like I do) to answer every question in a school test with 42 just to annoy teachers, because they always think this is meant sooo personal.