03-21-2007, 07:27 PM
The game is definitely a different one than it was when the end game was just getting started. You have got to give credit to Blizzard that it is learning as it goes. For a long time, most jobs were pretty boring. Tanking would be stationary, healing would be the same thing over and over and DPS would stand around beating on things in the same way each battle. Now, things are a lot more dynamic as people have to be able to do a wide variety of things rather than one thing very well. In addition, in the 5-mans you can get away with wildly varying group compositions because there are usually multiple ways to handle a given encounter. The only real requirement is that of some sort of tanking and some sort of healing, but now that each faction has Warriors, Paladins and Druids that can tank and Priests, Shamans, Druids and Paladins that can heal, that isn't as big a burden.
One interesting thing is that people have been able to see the game progress as they progress. Each new encounter has shown, to me, a continuous maturation process by the WoW developers. Things have been getting more complex and interesting as new things are added.
That said, there are still problems that need to be fixed. Consumables are still out of whack, the current TBC end-game is not as accessible to people just starting out as the classic WoW end-game was left (with ZG, AQ20, MC and Onyxia as intro instances that all somewhat overlapped versus a hardened progression of Karazhan -> Gruul -> etc via attunements and gear requirements), and the "hybrid" classes (Druid, Shaman, Paladin) still seem to be bouncing all over the map in terms of their design intentions rather than having any real design direction. But overall, things have gotten more fun, in my opinion, and hopefully when these problems get addressed, this game will continue to advance, getting better and better as it goes along.
One interesting thing is that people have been able to see the game progress as they progress. Each new encounter has shown, to me, a continuous maturation process by the WoW developers. Things have been getting more complex and interesting as new things are added.
That said, there are still problems that need to be fixed. Consumables are still out of whack, the current TBC end-game is not as accessible to people just starting out as the classic WoW end-game was left (with ZG, AQ20, MC and Onyxia as intro instances that all somewhat overlapped versus a hardened progression of Karazhan -> Gruul -> etc via attunements and gear requirements), and the "hybrid" classes (Druid, Shaman, Paladin) still seem to be bouncing all over the map in terms of their design intentions rather than having any real design direction. But overall, things have gotten more fun, in my opinion, and hopefully when these problems get addressed, this game will continue to advance, getting better and better as it goes along.
-TheDragoon