@Myopic Vitriol: Sinfest ftw!

Specifically because that is always how that game has worked. If they WANTED people to be able to gear out correctly before MC, they would have had more solo content so people could work out the gear issues beforehand. I didn’t go to one of my two hundred or so raids of MC or later BWL without carrying someone, because they had bad gear. This is to say, Warcraft has really really poor design. Incompetence is it own, delicious strawberry flavored issue. But I cannot take issue with strawberry. It is the best. It is a pirate fact.

If I still really cared about the game I might even find his post laughable, considering actual balance takes forever. In fact, it took about four years before pretty much all trees were viable. Even then, because of their confused design, things still weren’t even.

They really need to go with a simpler understanding of the classes and build from there, not say “oh hey we have another expansion coming out what useless ability should we give X class now?”

Maybe Valve could give them lessons? TF2 is pretty much the complete opposite in terms of design. Having a hundred buttons that just do different levels of the same ability (healing) isn’t necessary. Hell they could steal an idea from Champions and have a charge up bar that goes off whenever you stop charging. Anything would be an improvement, but they just keep adding to the Jenga and they wonder why it’s wobbly and has so many holes. I’m not sure who is to blame for the accepting of the tower, but Blizzard is definitely adding more blocks from other boxes.

I expect when Warcraft finally has a competitor that steals away a substantial amount of players, it will collapse. Its real stability is not the game itself, it’s the interaction. It might as well be a chatbox with a fancy character creator. Even the obnoxious kids help sell the subconscious idea that this game needs to be played so you can be better than the snot nosed brat that just made fun of your mom. To be fair, “doth bear the mark of Chef Boyardee upon her flesh” was totally funny. (Joke totally stolen.)

MMO gamers must get over the primitive gear progression addiction as “motivating factor”.

Fancier gear instead of gear with better stats works for some games already.

What I do agree with, is that scaling is bad in the sense that new players will be left out if they need gear to even do the slightest dent in the latest tier of dungeons.