Mists of Pandaria discussion

[Lissa]

Are we really debating how tanks specced in the easiest raid instance that existed, while we were a tier behind everyone else and had the Dire Maul gear advantage? MC taught people what a raid was, BWL taught threat and self-survival, AQ taught movement, and Naxx was the first that required it all.

Well, a little. But that's just a minor point that we're bickering over.

The big point is, back for the first tiers of raiding, the game was an incoherent mess, relative to what it is now. Top tier talents were useless. Entire talent trees were worthless. Gear was comically itemized. Instances were badly built and awkward to play. Bosses were gimmicky, finicky, and whole classes were trivialized for some encounters. (Firemaw positioning? Melee DPS on Spazzrah?) Entire quest chains were bugged, or went nowhere. Zones of the map were left unfinished, filled with placeholders, or boring desolation. PvP was a life-wrecking grind, and top titles were monopolized by elite farmers who passed the title around among themselves.

Did they really think all this through? Did that have good design reasons for all this? Surely not. It's a learning process, for players and for Blizzard. I thought it was a good game then, and it's a better game now - though our expectations have gone up, and we're getting bored. But I think any concept that this was a well-thought out game back then, and not now? It's what GG and Conc have said, just rose-coloured glasses.

-Jester

Yes, it's a learning curve, but the A team didn't have anyone's shoulders to look over and make sure things were right. The B team had that opportunity and still screwed up. There's a difference when you've got no one else's mistakes to go on where as you have someone else's mistakes and the ability to ask them and still make the same kinds of mistakes. That is where the problem lies. A team had no understanding of exactly where they wanted to go with WoW when they started, the B team knew where WoW was going and had the advantage of seeing what the A team did and probably still had the ability to communicate with A team members to get advice and they screwed up and they're driving away subs across all sectors of the game, hard core and casual.