Well, I could make fun of posters on the World of Warcraft forums, but since threads aren’t dated anymore, (is this just me? I’m allowing all scripts for the Blizzard domains. Am I in some sort of Caverns of Time black hole where time has no meaning?), assigning a temporal context is difficult.
Like this thread, for example: WoW hit its peak … ZOMG READ, by a guy who is so much of a WoW fanboi, he’s played the game to LEVEL 9! I dunno, was this months ago and he’s happily leveled to 70 since then? And why does he care so much about WoW’s health?
I appreciate his opinion about WoW’s health about as much as I’d appreciate a level 9 priest’s opinion of the patch notes for incoming gigantor Patch 2.1. And looking at those pvp patch notes, why is Blizzard so in love with binding heal? And before that, lightwell? Does packing a class with highly situational spells increase its appeal? Answer: Only if the bread and butter abilities are solid. So, umm, no. Twits.
Other things Blizzard loves: Rogues. “Rogue poisons no longer have charges.” + a handful of other gifts. Thanks! (Forget that twit thing I wrote. We’re all friends here.)
Some new, free content, which may or may not be available to you so please hold your applause: Black Temple, Ethereum Prison, Skettis and Ob-la-da, the PVP area Ruins of Lordaeron, plus the netherwing epic flight quests and a PVP matching system.
Funniest sentence in the patch notes: “Fixed a grammatical error in the quest, The Ring of Mmmrrrggglll.”
All the former holy/disc-turned-shadow priests applaud: “An option is available at Exalted with the Violet Eye to turn in faction ring along with gold for a different exalted-level faction ring.” No more playing roulette with GM petitions hoping to get a sympathetic ear!
The BFT award goes to the Kharazhan changes. Personally, I didn’t have a problem with the boss encounters, so I would have advocated removing trash over boss nerfage, but hey, however we arrive at relief is ok by me. (psst, I’m still not going to Karazhan unless I have a gun to my head.)
And all the rogues go doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo: “Creatures will no longer Cleave targets that aren’t in front of them.”
The ‘PLEASE GOD, NO!’ change: “Polymorph spell duration has been changed from 20 seconds to 8 seconds.”
The ‘why bother’ change: “Profession recipes that had 24 hour or longer cooldowns, have had their cooldowns reduced by 1 hour.”
The ‘it’s funny cuz I’m not a miner’ changes: “Monsters will now attack players who are mining mineral nodes near to them, even if they didn’t notice them previously.” and “The location of many of the Outland mineral nodes have been adjusted both to put them in locations that are more traveled and to make them more likely to be near creatures.”
The ‘it’s not funny cuz I am’ profession changes: Alchemy. And an additional editorial comment for “Invulnerability potions now stop the first 120 damage per hit for 8 seconds, rather than making the imbiber physically immune.” ..|..
And finally, the ‘heh’ change: “All epic items of Tier 5 and beyond quality have been upgraded to reflect their intended power.”
Enjoy your adventures in Azeroth!
The Polymorph change afaik is for mob polymorphing. Its bundled in with the changes in other mob CC like netting, not the mage changes. So its something nice, not something dumb.
Were I still playing this game, I would love the 23 hour alchemy cooldown. Unless you are capable of dropping whatever you are doing and having your alchemist logged in the second your cooldown is up, you suffer from a big case of timer creep. Your 8 pm xmute becomes an 815 xmute, which is after 11 in less than a week, and eventually you miss a day because you simply have to go to bed. Then it starts over again.
Not clear how much the mining change will mean.
I did my standard mining loop through Zangarmarsh, Blade’s Edge and Netherstorm on the PRT and I didn’t see a significant change in mob placing or behavior. Some changes, but no big deal.
Of course, the effects at lvl 70 are minimized, but I still don’t think it’s as big a change as some folks are expecting.
Speaking as someone who no longer plays a healing class (well, feral Druid and elemental Shaman, but I’ll be respecing resto on either one when hell freezes over):
Thanks for nerfing Paladin healing and giving marginal upgrades to highly situational talents for the 10% of Priests who are still crazy enough to spec Holy. I really appreciate the chance to spend an extra hour looking for a healer for every goddamn group.
Seriously, WTF.
This kind of insane changes are why I left WoW. Blizzard is too new on the MMO scene and it shows in how they constantly rebalance the game. The same Warlock I played in beta is nothing close to the Warlock of today and it even changed 12 times in between those periods. They need to find a balance and stick to it. The game gets to inconsistent and then instead of loving the game people are constantly hating X change or Y nerf each month.
Concerning the Warlock thing… the funny thing is that Warlock in Beta went from insanely overpowered badasses to the weakest class in the game and then back to pretty damn good. So what was the point to all of that?
Blizz likes to nerf and balance the classes based on PvP, regardless of what it does to PvE, and have made classes nearly unbearable for long periods of time (has a holy priest ever been fun?). They’re also prone to the old SOE PvE nerf system (Make it more difficult after the first guilds in have farmed the hell out of it and complain it’s too easy). I have yet to miss Warcraft in any shape or form in the weeks since I’ve quit playing.
All this retuning instances to compensate for the alchemy/elixir usage nerfs is interesting.
I wonder when they’ll start retuning their instancing for NO HEALING cos all the healers are fucking extinct.
Btw anyone know when this patch hits europe? I don’t really pay attention to such things, I like surprises.
I’ve always felt that there should be separate stats for equipment/skills depending on if one is flagged for PvP or not flagged.
That however brings up the issue of PvP realms and I promptly run face first in to a brick wall.