Is Blizz the root of all evil? - Printable Version +- The Lurker Lounge Forums (https://www.lurkerlounge.com/forums) +-- Forum: Lurker Games (https://www.lurkerlounge.com/forums/forum-6.html) +--- Forum: World of Warcraft (https://www.lurkerlounge.com/forums/forum-16.html) +--- Thread: Is Blizz the root of all evil? (/thread-6536.html) Pages:
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Is Blizz the root of all evil? - savaughn - 04-20-2005 Apologies ahead of time, this is going to be part rant, part opinion, part question. I'm posting this in the Lounge not because this is THE place where I'm seeing the behavior, but because this is probably the best place to have a discussion about the topic because of it's more adult audience. This is not a response to any individual on this forum, but more the world at large. It seems like I keep hearing about how terrible all of the different aspects of WoW are. According to the forums, every class has documented Blizzards List of Sins against it, the game is not and never has been stable, crashes and kicks people out constantly, is unbalanced, completely favors the alliance, is horribly unbalanced in favor of the horde, the customer service is horrific, the patches don't come out fast enough, come out too fast, and even though they fix bugs they don't fix all of the bugs or the right bugs. WoW seems like a horribly terrible place to be these days. Why am I having such a really great time playing? Damned If You Do: I keep reading these posts that tear into Blizzard in ways that don't make sense to me. For example, the patching. In the exact same thread people complain that Blizzard has clearly not put enough patches into the game, and then complain that the patches they put in aren't perfect. Testing and QA'ing a product take the exact same resources that build a patch. You can either be debugging the game or checking a patch for glitches. This is a nasty nasty trap. A thread full of people looking at a patch of gray complaining that it is at once both too white and too black... there is a contradiction here. And it really surprises me when I see both sides of the argument in the same post! Knocking Blizz for any and everything seems to be a weirdly popular past time. Balance: This is something that also gets me. Every class has this running gripe session about how they're the most put upon class. Rogues and hunters are the most popular class (depending on PvP vs. PvE/RP) because they're the easiest/most effective (overall) class to play and even these classes have running gripe sessions about how terrible it is to be the most effective class only some of the time and not being as overpowering at all times. WOW this one gets on my nerves. Yes, there are some legitimate issues out there (especially for Warlocks), but we get nonstop complaints such as Rogues complaining that despite dominating PvP, soloing more effectively than any class but hunter, being required in most instances for unlocking/sapping, etc. that there is ONE INSTANCE (MC) that they have to a bit more clever to be as effective... I've lost all sympathy and it's really starting to grate. Do We Hurt the Ones We Love? Is it because people like the game so much that it makes the little set backs seem bigger? Or maybe it's because we're so attached to our characters. Blizzard really has done a brilliant job on this game. The clarity of design and completeness of vision is great. And the little touches. My wife just started a Gnome Warrior. She's been walking around the house the last few days saying "I don't have enough Rage!" in a squeaky little female gnome voice. It's easy to get attached to these guys. Maybe that's why we hear all the complaints. I just worry that we've created a culture where it's become socially acceptable to lambast the game over any triviality. What's the great big horrible hunter bug out there? Every once in a while I have to whistle for my pet because it fell behind. I can live with that. Is Blizz the root of all evil? - Munkay - 04-20-2005 I don't play WoW, so I can't say for certain. But I do have an inkling about why people complain. They are paying for a service, a game, that is for their own enjoyment. When the game fails to live up to what is promised on the box, but more namely pleasure, it gets lambasted. I think its pretty normal to complain about aspects of any game. All in all I don't think people hate the game entirely, and there certaintly must be lots of pleasure to be derived in it or else no one would be playing it. I agree there is problems when the effect starts snowballing, and people start to jump on the complaining bandwagon. But once again I'd appeal to the truth behind the scenes: people generally like the game. Posts like this can help to put it back into perspective. But they definitely won't change the active complaining. Here's to hoping the snowball (if it exists.. again, I don't own WoW and don't follow the WoW boards that closely) stops. Cheers, Munk Is Blizz the root of all evil? - Occhidiangela - 04-20-2005 savaughn,Apr 20 2005, 09:27 AM Wrote:Apologies ahead of time, this is going to be part rant, part opinion, part question. I'm posting this in the Lounge not because this is THE place where I'm seeing the behavior, but because this is probably the best place to have a discussion about the topic because of it's more adult audience. This is not a response to any individual on this forum, but more the world at large. When Diablo II came out, I spent most of my early time playing, not bitching. I was unhappy with my bnet connection, visual clunkiness of the game compared to D I, and lag . . . but somehow I had fun. It is not the critic who counts. Most of the critics who are getting on your nerves strike me as folks who only see part of the elephant, and complain about the part they can't or won't see. I sometimes marvel at people who seek perfection from a video game. WoW meets the good enough standard. Blizz has also shown, I think, good faith in making improvements. Since I am not a MMORPG vet, I have not idea how they compare to other MMORPG's on the "keep the continuous improvement model going." I just wish I enjoyed the play more. Occhi Is Blizz the root of all evil? - Chesspiece_face - 04-20-2005 Munkay,Apr 20 2005, 12:49 PM Wrote:I don't play WoW, so I can't say for certain. But I do have an inkling about why people complain. They are paying for a service, a game, that is for their own enjoyment. When the game fails to live up to what is promised on the box, but more namely pleasure, it gets lambasted. Actually the problem that people come to is that they don't read the box, they don't read the TOS: "GAME EXPERIENCE MAY CHANGE DURING PLAY" Every single patch that comes out each player has to scroll through the TOS and accept twice! Yet they seem to have selective reasoning when it comes to what they expect from the game. MMO's are some of the most profitable forms of entertainment if they are successful and for good reason. They really do offer the most entertainment bang for your buck, but it seems that even though people flock to them in droves for all the positive aspects of the genre they lack the ability to accept the negatives that are inherant to them. Honestly everytime i see someone say "i'm paying to Beta test this game!!!!1!!" I just want to smack them. "DUH!!!!" That's the way the genre works! The complaints people have about WoW are the same complaints that people have had about MMO's since back to Ultima Online. And somehow everytime a new game comes out they come to the unbelievable expectation that this new holy grail will magically difuse all of the inherant conflicts that come with developing and running a persistant world MMO. You can't have your cake and eat it too. If you want new content, you gotta have patches and thus server downtime. If you want new content and your characters to be balanced for it, you gotta accept that your characters are going to change and that may mean nerfs. If you want them to maintain a persistant world where hundreds of people intermingle you have to expect there to be unforseen bugs and unintended interactions. These are all part of the MMO experience and as much as developers try to limit them they will always be there. As such, as long as the players of MMO's can't get it through their skulls that this will always be a part of the game to some degree there will always be whiners complaining about every little thing. Is Blizz the root of all evil? - Quark - 04-20-2005 The Blizzard forums are just awful, yes. That does not mean their points are completely invalid. Re: patching. When a server goes down within hours of being patched, something's wrong. That's happened almost every patch so far. I'm sorry, if a patch isn't ready, don't post it. Blizzard's philosophy on patches before was "let's post it when Battlegrounds is ready!" Now it's "let's just keep patching, and Battlegrounds will come when it's can". The philosophy is a good one, but actually posting a working patch is more important. Then this patch, Blizzard said about corpses causing graphical slowdown: "we will address this before 1.4.0 goes on the live realms." Tyren yesterday said they hadn't addressed it. Would it have been so bad for Blizzard to not lie to us and simply say "we are working on it?" Big difference between those two. Quote:This is something that also gets me. Every class has this running gripe session about how they're the most put upon class. Rogues and hunters are the most popular class (depending on PvP vs. PvE/RP) because they're the easiest/most effective (overall) class to play and even these classes have running gripe sessions about how terrible it is to be the most effective class only some of the time and not being as overpowering at all times. WOW this one gets on my nerves. Yes, there are some legitimate issues out there (especially for Warlocks), but we get nonstop complaints such as Rogues complaining that despite dominating PvP, soloing more effectively than any class but hunter, being required in most instances for unlocking/sapping, etc. that there is ONE INSTANCE (MC) that they have to a bit more clever to be as effective... I've lost all sympathy and it's really starting to grate. Thank you, Mr. Great, for oversimplifying something to make your point. Do people gripe too much about classes? Yes, but that doesn't mean classes are perfect ... I just had a huge rant typed up here, but forget it, you've heard all those points before. How about this: how many non-healing classes have to fend for themselves inside MC because they're getting hurt and aren't worth diverting the healer's attention? MongoJerry even wrote in one report how his CTRaid setup doesn't show the Rogues because they're not worth his time and screen space. That makes us feel loved :( Oh, that's right, but us Rogues are PvP Gods; I forgot! Sorry, but I never asked to be that way, I don't care if we are that way, and it's certainly never helped me on my PvE server. What did I get for being a PvP god last night, when PvP mattered for the first time ever? I hit Ambush against a Mage who had little life left, got told 6 seconds later that I wasn't behind my target, then watched as he "teleported" elsewhere as my computer caught up. By that point, I was at half life, because the ranged attackers and AoEers didn't need to position themselves properly in the lag. Two screen updates later I was dead. But I'm a PvP God! Thanks, but I'll gladly see that nerfed to just once see "Looking For Rogue". So that I actually get into a raid that my guildmates or the Lurkers didn't start themselves. For what it's worth, I've seen the stunlock sequence for Rogues. I saw a common concept in those fights that should be fixed to alleviate the problem: Rogues using Blind to continue the "stunlock". Blind shouldn't work that way. With the advent of this patch, I had three complaints that were on my "priority" list for Rogues. Vanish sucking, Raid instance roles (I want to use my Detect/Disarm trap skills!), and Blizzard simply acknowledging we exist. They've asked for our feedback, are considering the high-end content issues, and are adament that Vanish actually works. So now I'm down to one major issue: Vanish sucks and they refuse to believe it. As for the solo-godness of Rogues, I don't see it. 1v1 they're great, and they usually have good downtime. But the good downtime relies on bandages, meaning I find myself deliberately soloing Humanoids instead of anything else. My Mage can get out of more sticky situations with adds. About any other class has an easier time taking an elite alone. Rogues are easy to play solo, but other classes are better at it when played well. So just as classes exaggerate their problems, you're exaggerating their benefits. Oh, and one more thing: don't take the Blizzard official forums too seriously. DSF was good, but no other official forum from them has ever been worth it. If everything was as bad as people said, they wouldn't be paying. Is Blizz the root of all evil? - Quark - 04-20-2005 I'm sorry, that came out excessively negative. I just think it's important we seperate the way people complain to the issues they are complaining about. Many are things that should, in my eye, be addressed, but not necessarily OMG DO THIS RIGHT NOW OR I QUIT!!!111. Is Blizz the root of all evil? - LochnarITB - 04-20-2005 savaughn,Apr 20 2005, 10:27 AM Wrote:Do We Hurt the Ones We Love?This is what struck the chord with me. I am VERY attached to my main, Lochnar. I loved building him. I was able to build mainly doing things solo. When I did have to party, I was usually able to do the needed instances and/or quests with Lurkers. Then I hit end game. It felt like a door got slammed in my face. Parties, and mega-instance parties in particular, put me on edge. Some things can be enjoyable when they put me on edge, but gaming is not one of them. It dampens my playing ability. I miss things I would normally notice. I choose wrong attacks. I hit incorrect keys for what I actually wanted to do. The adrenaline from being pushed too fast and being frustrated is enough to actually make me shake. Being with a laid back, patient, understanding party (read Lurkers) alleviates this to some extent, but not entirely. This means that, even though I hear his muffled screams from the closet he's locked in, Lochnar does not get played like I want him to be. This makes me sad and my sadness turns to anger at the source. Thus, my gripes about the game. Also note that this is my real gripe against WoW/Blizzard. Even though I may do some complaining about bugs and server instability, I can deal with them. I find ways to work around bugs. During down times, I grit my teeth and go find things I actually should be doing anyway. BTW, I agree that the touches they've put in place greatly enhance the immersion. WoW is a beautiful thing in so many ways. There are so many things to enjoy beyond the killing of evil and questing. Just a couple nights ago, I created a male gnome warrior. One of my first comments about him was how odd it was hearing the squeaky little voice say he needed more rage. :lol: I also made a gnome rogue. Putting him into stealth and sneaking around also made me :lol:. Things we love and care about is where we put our efforts to maintain, and possibly enhance, them. Why waste time doing the same for something we will never care for anyway? Is Blizz the root of all evil? - Sir_Die_alot - 04-21-2005 Quark,Apr 20 2005, 10:52 AM Wrote:I'm sorry, if a patch isn't ready, don't post it.[right][snapback]74608[/snapback][/right]Exactly. Personally, this has been my only beef with WoW. I don't mind waiting 1 more week for a patch that works perfectly as long as the current one is functioning. This get the patch ready by Tuesday rush is dragging the overall play-time and quality down. Blizzard is trying to squeese too many fixes and changes in last minute. They should give a patch a week or more to be internally tested before they stick something with major changes on the servers. Nobody will care that a patch they simply knew was coming "soon" came a week later. Is Blizz the root of all evil? - ima_nerd - 04-21-2005 Im curious to see the effect Guild Wars release will have on the WoW population. ArenaNet has made it well known that they have ex-Blizzard guys so people will be drawn to the game. Blizz makes the best games. Hands down. The only problem with WoW is the inital lack of new content and now the forced content updates. I think people (myself included) will jump at Guild Wars as an alternative to WoW. It's free, it's an MMORPG (or at least similar to one), and it has Blizzard talent in it. Looks like a good pick to me. Is Blizz the root of all evil? - Abattoir - 04-21-2005 savaughn,Apr 20 2005, 10:27 AM Wrote:Balance: Having not fully researched the classes before I selected one to play, I occasionally regret having chosen an 'easy' class. I'm not really sure how the other classes compare, my experience lends itself to a 'all characters are relatively easy to scorch through the first 20 levels or so' outlook. But Ab is nigh-indestructible. He never dies. That being said, I have complained to Grizelle-- in hopes that I would somehow get some of her INSANE luck to rub off on me- many times about roguerliness at high levels. Rogues may dominate PVP, but I sure don't. I'm not very good at it. I prefer to play 'Protect the PVP Priest'. I have never been required in any instance. There has never been anything I've encountered that required a rogue to advance through an area. Being able to unlock chests and lockboxes is quite nice, I concur, but any blacksmith can make rather respectable skeleton keys that I hear do a decent job too. As far as MC goes... it's not an issue of being clever. I haven't been there, but this is the problem as I know it for us dime a dozen rogues. There's a lot of AOE coming from the mobs in MC. Ergo you either stand there and take it, or use ranged attacks from a distance. Rogues ranged attacks, while not ineffective, are hardly a worthwhile addition to such an encounter. In order to be effective--or 'clever'-, they MUST close to melee. And most likely, they're the only melee combatant who isn't wearing mail or plate. This means when they actually get hit they're taking more damage, in addition to having AOEs chewing through their life. So a Rogue in Molten Core who hasn't been busy amassing fire resist gear is going to get burned to a crisp far more quickly than any other melee combatants as a result of their typically lower HP, 'Elune forbid' they actually pull aggro. It doesn't matter if they're a good rogue, or if they paid someone to powerlevel their character to 60, there's no way to handle that kind of damage. While I know you're talking about all the classes having gripes, you did seem to come down rather hard on the class I've played most, and I feel quite differently about it. Because I'm a whiny rogue. And decidedly not clever. I even consider this to be a *legitimate issue*, the mechanics of the class working against their viability in a single instance--Ignoring the fact that Grizelle has insisted repeatedly that Ab can't even go to West Dire Maul-. Other classes might have the same thing going. Maybe druids suck it up big time in Deadmines. I don't know. And we've heard very vague rumors about Blizzard developing ways to fix that. My guess is they're going to give rogues their own MC-alt instance, where all you have to do is sap one creature, unlock a door, out-DPS a priest, and successfully click 'Stealth' and you win an epic. I agree that WoW is great, but imperfect. However, I hate MMORPGs. And yet I managed to cap a character on WoW partly because it's a good game and partly because of good company. The complaints are incessant and unfortunate, just like the bugs, extended downtime, and the very slow introduction of new content. I don't even care about character balance, honestly. I just want new stuff to do and new places to go. Is Blizz the root of all evil? - Guest - 04-21-2005 If you dont like some small part of a large good service. - ithe best way to change it would be to complain to service provider. The seeminggly best place to do this is on the a forum. I happen to think thats fair. Its sort of like a customer service desk where everyone can read all the complaints. Even the best businesses find that most customer feedback is negative. Thats because continued pattronage is the positive feedback. Is Blizz the root of all evil? - Malakar - 04-21-2005 Quark,Apr 20 2005, 02:52 PM Wrote:With the advent of this patch, I had three complaints that were on my "priority" list for Rogues. Vanish sucking, Raid instance roles (I want to use my Detect/Disarm trap skills!), and Blizzard simply acknowledging we exist. They've asked for our feedback, are considering the high-end content issues, and are adament that Vanish actually works. So now I'm down to one major issue: Vanish sucks and they refuse to believe it.I don't understand why every rogue expects Vanish to work every single time. Hunters do not get such luxury, or even close, with Feign Death. Yet I don't see them complaining (maybe because I don't visit the official forums). I never had a problem with it myself - nor did I see any problem when grouping with my rogues friends. Sure, it didn't work once or twice, but I can deal with that. Now in the latest patch they've increased the stealth bonus of Vanish as well. Personally, I hope it doesn't work every time, unless maybe, you have maxed Master of Deception. Quote:As for the solo-godness of Rogues, I don't see it. 1v1 they're great, and they usually have good downtime. But the good downtime relies on bandages, meaning I find myself deliberately soloing Humanoids instead of anything else. My Mage can get out of more sticky situations with adds. About any other class has an easier time taking an elite alone. Rogues are easy to play solo, but other classes are better at it when played well. So just as classes exaggerate their problems, you're exaggerating their benefits.The thing is, not only is their downtime low, they kill mobs fast too. And yes the bandages are a bit limiting, but at least the option is there. Besides you could always buy the cloth. As far as mages getting away easier - I've always found Vanish to be much more reliable than any mage escape skill, even if it doesn't work 100%. And while rogues might not be the best at soloing elites, that is not exactly required to grind fast or do solo quests. Personally, my only real beef with rogues so far is that Remorseless Attacks only lasts 20 seconds for no good reason. Perhaps that will change once I get to MC. Is Blizz the root of all evil? - Treesh - 04-21-2005 Malakar,Apr 21 2005, 03:53 PM Wrote:I don't understand why every rogue expects Vanish to work every single time. Hunters do not get such luxury, or even close, with Feign Death. Yet I don't see them complaining (maybe because I don't visit the official forums). I never had a problem with it myself - nor did I see any problem when grouping with my rogues friends. Sure, it didn't work once or twice, but I can deal with that. Now in the latest patch they've increased the stealth bonus of Vanish as well. Personally, I hope it doesn't work every time, unless maybe, you have maxed Master of Deception.It's not supposed to work everytime and most rogues know that. What the issue is is that Vanish rank 1 works really well, but vanish rank 2 breaks for no reason (supposedly. Eth does not have rank 2 yet because she isn't big enough yet and I'm a bit leery of upgrading when vanish 1 still works so well. Hopefully by the time she's ready for it, vanish 2 won't be such a source of complaint). You can be completely alone, nothing around and try to vanish and the vanish fails. Well, your combat log will say that you gained vanish and then lost vanish immediately. That is what the rogues are complaining about and not "we can't always escape every situation". They have increased the stealth bonus to try and prevent the premature vanish breaks. I do still expect it to not work reliably when I am surrounded by a circle of angry things, but if there's not much around, it damned well better work. BTW, stealth occasionally just drops off a rogue for no reason either. Nothing around me, no DoTs on me, I'm not in combat nor just got out of combat. Once GG was fighting something and I was stealthed. The critter died and I popped out of stealth. Nothing touched me, nothing saw me, nothing happened except the bugger died and I got popped out of stealth. It happened a few more times that day, but I haven't had it happen recently. There are bugs with stealth. There are also a lot of whiners who happen to play rogues because they want an "I win!" button and think rogue is the way to go so of course they incessantly whine when they don't get an automatic "I win". Learn which rogues are which and ignore the babies. ;) Is Blizz the root of all evil? - Swiss Mercenary - 04-21-2005 ima_nerd,Apr 21 2005, 01:18 AM Wrote:Im curious to see the effect Guild Wars release will have on the WoW population. ArenaNet has made it well known that they have ex-Blizzard guys so people will be drawn to the game. Blizz makes the best games. Hands down. The only problem with WoW is the inital lack of new content and now the forced content updates. I think people (myself included) will jump at Guild Wars as an alternative to WoW. It's free, it's an MMORPG (or at least similar to one), and it has Blizzard talent in it. Looks like a good pick to me. I've jumped onto that ship when I first laid eyes upon it back in 2004 E3. Is Blizz the root of all evil? - Quark - 04-21-2005 Malakar,Apr 21 2005, 03:53 PM Wrote:I don't understand why every rogue expects Vanish to work every single time. I don't want it to work all the time, I want it to do what the tooltip says it does. So, you know, if I Vanish because my group is going to die, walk up the stairs and through a doorway, then have one teammate go down, my stealth isn't broken by a mob that hadn't seen me for 6 seconds. That gets kind of aggravating, you know? Already being away from a fight but dying anyway. Is Blizz the root of all evil? - Malakar - 04-21-2005 I see, I hadn't heard of or experienced this. That is indeed not right. Is Blizz the root of all evil? - liffuie - 04-22-2005 personaly I think the lack of balance issue is a problem blizzard jumped into head first, while boasting about how they had EQ guilds leaders giving them advice on design. These people should of known better on the tipe of advice they gave, and warned them, but /shrug Mainly what i'm talking about is the pvp class balancing vs pve balancing. powers that are pve balanced can be a ftw button in pvp. Blizzard then nerfs the power for pvp and that breaks the power to uselessness for pve. EQ the game wow is most based off on, early on tried balancing pve with pvp like blizzard is doing. Finaly around the time of right before kunark xpac came out(I believe), they gave up and publicly said we dont' have the resources to fully balance for both. We're going to balance primarly for PVE, with pvp balancing a secondary concern. blizzard is now trying to do the dual balance thing to now, and from what I understand, with just about the same comparative human resources that Veriant\SOE had on their core design team. Truthfuly in the long run i realy doubt they'll be able to do it Is Blizz the root of all evil? - Guest - 04-22-2005 No one has ever done it IMO. I have played a lot of MMORPs. The only way you can have balance for both, is to keep everything simple to the point of boring. The big problem of all games is that casters either die too fast or they kill everyone at range. And AOE spell are a just a bad idea all around for PvP. Is Blizz the root of all evil? - liffuie - 04-22-2005 Ghostiger,Apr 21 2005, 08:06 PM Wrote:And AOE spell are a just a bad idea all around for PvP. problem with that is you get the urm I forget the ShadowBane term... basicaly EVERYONE gathers around one other person and moves slowly forward in a big herd. What this does is protect your healers, and protect your dps from being individualy targeted. In Shadow bane we typicaly had 30-40 people in one big stack making targeting of individaul person impossible. Meanwhile we sat in teamspeak and one person would shout out a name for us all to /target and attack with the firepower of 30x range people at once. in this type of fight protecting ranged dps was all> and we took on and destroyed forces 2-3 our size with only a few casuatly's uncapped ae's are in "theory" supposed to protect this mass herd tatic, and make combat happen in a wide front. btw totaly agree with the simple boring part=p Is Blizz the root of all evil? - Thawwing Light - 04-22-2005 liffuie,Apr 22 2005, 01:55 AM Wrote:problem with that is you get the urm I forget the ShadowBane term... I believe this was called Zerging, which is completely different from WoW 'zerg'. In WoW, we should probably rename it 'human wave attack' ... This wouldn't work in WoW, because uncapped AE would destroy it. Ultimately, I don't see the point of huge PvP, as I'm only fighting 1 foe = lag. I'd much rather have a small skirmish of 3-10 on each side. |