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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsBreakfast Topic: What is WoW's biggest mistake?
by Zach Yonzon 
Mar 25th 2009 at 8:00AM
That said, not everything's perfect. I haven't played Arenas in quite a while, and apparently a lot of people haven't been queuing up, either. I do enjoy all the Battlegrounds, and I definitely try to get my daily (or several times daily) dose of Wintergrasp. But Wintergrasp still lags like a poor version of a Ray Harryhausen movie. As much as Blizzard has gotten a lot of things right in Wrath, I'm sure a lot of people feel that they've gotten things wrong, too. In fact, some of the things I like might be the exact same things some people don't like.
So far, what do you think is WoW's biggest mistake? Do you think opening up raiding to more people was bad? I know a lot of you will yell 'Arenas' at the top of their cyberspatial lungs. Were Death Knights a mistake? Frankly, I can't think of anything truly egregious -- I'm having a lot of fun like I mentioned -- but maybe some of you feel otherwise. Where has Blizzard taken a misstep? What direction do you think is wrong or would be wrong for the game?
Filed under: Breakfast Topics
Reader Comments (Page 5 of 13)
Heston Mar 25th 2009 8:25AM
WoW's biggest mistake: Resilience.
If you've been playing long enough you may remember when PVP was...fun!
Zachery W Mar 25th 2009 8:26AM
Arena.
Not because I personally hate them, but because instead of trying to balance the game around 40 or 25 people in a group they now try to balance classes so that any 2, 3, or 5 people can compete against any other 2,3,5 combination.
I definatly think this has lowered the fun of playing any given class. The pure DPS classes for raiding are nerfed so that they aren't OP in arena. It really is a shame.
Also the "bring the player not the class" mentality would be nice if it wasn't just an after the fact excuse to homogonize all of the classes for arena competition.
My main is a mage, i also have alsts that are not getting played simply because they are no longer unique compared to my mage. Everything is the same, which is a sad state of affairs.
Ecowarrior Mar 25th 2009 8:26AM
I personally have not been a big fan of the general homogenisation of the gear, especially when it comes to feral druids and rogues. I'm a bear tank and am personally totally fed up of being told that an item I want to roll for in a raid is 'a rogue item'. I even had a raid leader tell me the other day that I shouldn't roll on Hood of the Exodus because it didn't have defense rating on it!!! I guess I just feel a bit left out when it comes to specific tanking gear...
Hoggersbud Mar 25th 2009 11:32AM
Seems like your problem is your raid membership rather than anything Blizzard has done.
Please direct them to any of a number of blog postings on feral tanking.
Defense rating = non-viable for Bear Tanks.
That's why you have a talent for it.
rika13 Mar 25th 2009 8:28AM
ret pally emo mechanics and dmg output, why take a dps who can either DPS like a tank or DTPS like a tank?
eu Mar 25th 2009 8:29AM
Arenas. Because of them, we see the all the game classes "balanced" (read: messed up/nerfed) on a weekly basis. No one i know started playing wow for PvP in the first place.
And arenas also killed the battlegrounds, which are actually fun to play by both hardcore pvpers and casuals. If there were some decent rewards in battlegrounds, not just in arenas (by decent i don't mean welfare epics like in BC, though) they would revitalize.
Agrium Mar 25th 2009 8:30AM
resilience, made pve content and pvp content well, fudged up
Snakeman Mar 25th 2009 8:38AM
I don't htink there is a single biggest mistake, but here are my top 5:
1) Death Knights. The implementation of this class was ridiculous. They are so unbalanced relative to every other class in so many ways. The whole experience of starting a DK trivializes the effort anyone has to put into leveling other classes - and giving them free gear that is high quality is just another slap in the face. All of the effort Blizzard put into class balance went out the window with the DK - it really was a horrible error.
2) Removing 40 man raids from new encounter design. I understand all the reasons Blizzard went to 25 man's from 40 man's - but they lost one of the most amazing parts of the WoW experience in the process. Sure the logistical and organizational challenges were many in running 40 man dungeons - but the rewards were epic. I remember the true sense of team accomplishment the first time I saw Ragnaros, Nefarion and C'thun die with 40 people cheering in vent. No 25 man kill has felt as exciting to me.
3) Arenas. The arena system has caused so many ridiculous class mechanic BS to be implemented just to make player balance issues work themselves out it's sad. As an above poster noted - trying to balance PVE and PVP at the same time is not ever going to work. If the arena system was removed from the game today everyone would be better off.
4) Class homogenization. It get's worse with every major content patch. In order to stifle the cries of the mass QQ, Blizzard has made their mantra "bring the player, not the class" some kind of anthem. The problem? Now the actualy EXPERIENCE of playing the different classes has become blurry. I played a warrior for a long time, but not for probably 1.5 years - but I leveled one to 80 a few months ago, and was shocked at how stupidly easy it is to tank right now. DPS is no exception - my hunter has rogue-like spells, mage-like spells, warrior-like spells. It really takes away the personality of the game.
5) Ghostcrawler. This one single person has become the single face of WoW and it has begun to feel like he's just a sponge to absorb the complaints and act as a conduit for the QQ nation to funnel their requests to the devs at Blizzard. Back in the day when there were class leads that responded to mechanic debates and the individual class reviews were actually well thought out things actually were a lot more stable. Sure, it might have taken awhile to get some things addressed about your class - but you had a sense of stability that things weren't going to just be ripped out from under you every month or two. Hell, I've had to change my spec and rotations 4 times already since WOTLK came out on my hunter and will likely have to again in 3.1.
Chuddy Mar 25th 2009 8:46AM
I really don't know what you mean by class dev's/leads coming to the forums at all. Maybe in vanilla wow that was more present but in BC there was nothing. Do you remember all the nerdy revolts on the forums as bait to get someone to respond. the "." subject. I'm perfectly fine, if anything the guy puts himself out there too much. He must have the thickest skin on the planet.
mindgem Mar 25th 2009 8:42AM
I have a suggestion to WOW's biggest misstake and when you read it, you'll probably agree.
The uneven Battlegroups!
Why is it soo hard to control the uneven numbers on either side in a battlegroup and why does some bgroups consit of 10 server while some consist of only 3 servers. And why is it soo hard to manage and control uneven battlegroups after they find it out.
Just give free migrations out of there for the biggest faction and free migraion in there for the lower number faction and just stop the option of creating new dudes for the biggest faction on the target realms.
I play on Ruin since 3 years and I have NEVER won an AV game there, and everytime I join in, it's always 40 allies versus 4-5 horde. The few marks I have is from when I played on Stormscale which had the opposite problem.
havitech Mar 25th 2009 8:47AM
As I mentioned in another thread, I'd say Blizzard's biggest mistake with WoW was making old world content virtually irrelevant to level 80's.
At this point, I don't know if they should bother making a "horizontal expansion," or just leave more room to grow in their next MMO.
qor72 Mar 25th 2009 8:50AM
I like most of the changes that have come with WotLK, it's allowed our small guild to progress nicely in content; There are plentiful PUGs running any and all raids, and you don't need to farm any given Mob for too long to get things.
That said; I miss having the mindless grinds for Rep when you "just feeling like doing something" and the epic questlines from BC. Yes, tying keying to huge chains drove guilds nutz, no arguing that, but I enjoyed that you got the lore BEFORE you hit the instance. It was part of the progression - and if you hated lore I'm sure that sucked.
You'd think there'd be a middle ground somewhere...
Rich Mar 25th 2009 8:52AM
WOW's worst problem now is....Greed.
Wow is now focused on balancing Arena first, PvE second. Why? because each toon that enters the arena tourney has to pay $20 now. So if 1% of the WOW population enters, its an extra 2.5 million in the bank for Blizzard
Same thing for allowing paid transfers from PvE servers to PvP and allowing name/toon changes for a fee. Now players can level up in PvE and cheese out and go to a PvP server at 80, and skip the gank intiations. Also, people can build a bad rep for themselves, and pay for a server transfer/ name change.
2nd worst thing about WOW is the loot system. Get rid of master loot, and force everyone to roll on any blue or better. add an extra button for enchanters for sharding that makes the roll count less then a greed. If all pass, then the item goes *Poof*
Why you ask? it gets rid of ninjas...If all-pass then someone can ninja 100% for the time. If 4 people need, and one person who shouldn't need does...that person will only have a sucessful ninja 20% of the time, and can be kicked.
NiVeKeR14 Mar 25th 2009 10:17AM
If everyone passes, and nobody wants to enchant, what does it matter if they "ninja" it anyway? I agree with your second example, if four people need and the ninja doesn't and he gets it, thats bad, but if no one needs it, no one greeds it, and no one can enchant it, then who cares if someone decides to take it after the fact?
Netherscourge Mar 25th 2009 8:53AM
ARENA
/thread
$am Mar 25th 2009 9:00AM
1) arena : a Massive Multiplayer Online that end playing 2-5 player. Where is the massive part in it ?
Also huge changes in pve because of it, as already mentioned, "bring the player, not the class" is because they want to "balance" arenas by making all classes same spells different names (MS and new Aim Shoot, Seed of Corruption and Living Bomb)
2) DK : start at lvl 55 ruined any other class, anyone who will lvl an alt will be a DK
Bigfish Mar 25th 2009 8:55AM
Letting the old world rot. There is so much great content that just sits there and never gets seen because the game is geared to getting to 58 as fast as possible so you can get in to outland where you grind to 68 to get to Northrend so you can hit 80 and start playing the game.
HappyFunNorm Mar 25th 2009 8:55AM
Homogenization of the classes.
Each class should have it's own particular thing it does better than anyone else. By having multiple classes that can heal well, and multiple classes that can tank they're allowing players to make an apples-to-apples comparison between classes with similar roles (cleric healing vs druid healing vs Paladin healing , for example).
IMO, each class should have a unique role, and should not just be variants of tank/healer/dps. There's no particular value in having multiple tank classes, just give the fighter another tanking tree and be done with it.
Classes should not be stepping on each other's role toes.
Gnome Stew's article, Without Which Not
http://www.gnomestew.com/gming-advice/without-which-not
while refering to individual characters in tabletop RPGs, I thin, is the best way to describe how classes should be handled in an MMO.
JDM Mar 25th 2009 8:57AM
In my opinion: They released Burning Crusade about 2-3 years too early.
After this, they released WotLK a good 3-4 years too early.
This isn't to say there should not have been more content - the tiers should have been more spread out, with more 'side-grade' content and additional lower-level content during these periods of time.
I hardly remember Burning Crusade, it was so short. And back in vanilla, people were -just- starting to get to Naxx, and they dropped tBC out of thin air. It was ridiculous, and I'm still pissed off they did not fill out Azerothian content/features before making Outlands & Northrend. :-/ Where's my Uldum? Grim Batol? Azshara Crater BG? Player housing? I could go on for hours about content that either should have been or was even promised to us, but never came. *sigh*
This isn't to say I didn't/don't enjoy tBC/WotLK content - I love it just as much. It was just way too soon. For those who complete all released content in the first 72 hours? You're doing it wrong.
I don't have a link or anything, but I do recall reading about how Blizzard releases new content after a certain percentage of the gamers have done everything, and it was such a small number (Like 1%). That's a TON of people who never even get to experience stuff, even with the new 'easy mode' the hardcore players are talking about. We need more time to not just complete content, but actually relax and enjoy the experience of it.
These days we do have more value to the content, such as the achievement system, but still, players will continue to push past everything available to them as quickly as they can, and it's kind of silly to me. T7/7.5 'era' should last at least 1 year.
My (crazy) .02 =3
crsh Mar 25th 2009 9:03AM
I find Blizzard's biggest mistake (perhaps unintentional, but I refuse to believe they're *that* clueless) is their reliance on the FotM system to keep people rerolling new classes.