Blizzard's Lost a Great OneFollow

Wow Spoiler, good for him though. He's got an impressive achievement on his resume, it had to be hard not to leverage that for so long. Kudos and good luck to him. What's he working on next? Anybody know?

Also, does this mean all those people who used him as an excuse to leave WoW are coming back now?

Relevant?





SpoilerYou'd think by this point people would point to WoW following the same life cycle as just about every other MMO out there. But I suppose you're right, yay internet!

Edited, Nov 27th 2013 2:38pm by someproteinguy

If anything it's the over-sized shoulder pads driving people away from the game.

Only that the game started smaller, grew in popularity, peaked, and is now in the slow inevitable decline that follows that peak, like any number of games before it. Of course given WoWs popularity it'll be like the Simpsons and will still have hefty numbers of people tuning in 20 years from now as they continue to turn out decent entertainment; but the days when it shined the brightest are probably past in the eyes of most people.

Edited, Nov 27th 2013 2:58pm by someproteinguy

Got any specific examples of what he personally broke, then?

Have you ever noticed how the devs actually communicate with the players these days? That's directly Ghostcrawler's doing - he's the one who started letting the fans see into what the devs were thinking for future changes and judging player feedback.

I at least had an immense respect for the guy, and I usually agreed with what he said in regards to design and gameplay. And we can actually read dev posts on MMOC because of GC.

Don't be happy the guy's leaving because you feel he nerfed your favorite class. Keep that kind of **** on the oboards.

I wouldn't be so hard on yourself, for all we know he's some kind of *********. I mean you'd have to be a least a little to keep at his job as long as he did, right?

oh come on now, it wasn't too long ago that we had lengthy discussions here about how terrible expansions and design choices were. I had EVERY class, so generally speaking, if one was nerfed anther got a buff. But most of the changes were heavy handed like destroying Beast Master hunters in Wrath, Cataclysm (et al), the nerf of warlocks damage by like 30% (was that Cataclysm too?)

I really couldn't care less about the devs communication with the community. The first team of devs didn't do that and they created an amazing game and follow-up expansion. What I care about are the results.

BC was fine. Vanilla is another story. But middle to end of BC was fantastic. Were there dungeons that were hard without people who knew what they were doing? Absolutely. It's called *heroic* for a reason.

Yes Cata heroics were amazing... if you ran them with friends or guild members. They were an absolute nightmare with pugs. Sure there were people who were "CC? Wut? pull n00b! GoGoGoGo!" but I found most of the trouble lied with getting some of the worst grouping. Nothing like getting really bad CC setup for dungeons like Grim Batol.

You cannot have hard heroics as the only option when the skill of players you are going to get is completely random.

TO THE GROUND, BABY!

Edit: I've had my disagreements with Ghostcrawler, but I'm sad to see him go.

Edit2: The above "To the ground, baby" reference is to the Retribution Paladin nerf that occurred back in TBC. I know Ghostcrawler wasn't responsible, but the meme still happened and even exists as an achievement today. Just to explain it to the newbie with the itchy trigger-finger.

Edited, Nov 28th 2013 5:26pm by Mazra

Was the state of CC in Cata really that bad? I may be misremembering here but I don't think I ever had a group without the option of proper CCing. And those weren't all guildruns. Many of them, thankfully, but not all.

Ozruk was doable without any addons. I solo'd Stonecore around 80 times this expansion without any Cata-plugin. And YES I know I was level 90. That's beside the point.
My point is, after I failed a few times in the beginning I never was hit by any of his abilities again because I then knew his pattern well enough to dodge them even without DBM screaming at me. Sure, I wasn't relying on anyone other than me to execute the fight properly then. But if I managed to do so without an addon, why should people in a PUG not be able to do it with said addon? Downloading DBM isn't too much to ask, in my book. Either Blizzard disables ALL addons or they design the encounter with the knowledge in mind that addons exist and will be used.

I agree with everything you said about CMs. For all I care they can even design two different CM modes for every dungeon. One with the time limit and one with the other approach you described (or something similar).

I really do think you are misremembering. CC availability was a major problem in the LFG tool.

Death Knight - no CC
Druid - Hibernate, and Entangling Roots/Cyclone for really short CC
Hunter - Freezing Trap
Mage - Polymorph
Paladin - Turn Evil and Repentence (for Retadins, and its cd matches its duration).
Priest - Mind Control (which you don't really want to use), and an undead-only fear.
Rogue - Sap
Shaman - Hex and Bind Elemental
Warlock - Fear and Banish
Warrior - Glyphed Intimidating Shout

Of these, Hex and Polymorph are by far the strongest. They each only affect humanoids and beasts.

The ONLY CC on this list useful for (more or less) every mob are Freezing Trap and Sap (and Repentence, but that's spec-specific).

Humanoids can be comfortably CC'd by Mages, Shaman, and Retadins (though the latter is more limited)
Dragonkin can be comfortably CC'd by Druids and Retadins.
Elementals can be comfortably CC'd by Shaman and Warlocks.
Bears can be comfortably CC'd by all of the above.

There are other fears, most notably Fear (lol), which are more last-resort CCs, because they have a high risk of pulling additional mobs.

But let's suppose you didn't get a Rogue, Hunter or Retadin. Now you're playing the rocks-paper-scissors game, and whether or not you're screwed depends on what heroic you're doing. If you have elementals to CC, then that Shaman or Warlock won't be so bad. The Shaman is still useful for Humanoids, the Warlock less so. A Mage is solid against Humanoids, but can't help against Dragonkin.

If you need to CC Dragonkin, better hope you have a Druid in your group.

Etc.

The power levels are just all over the place. If you get a Rogue, a Mage, a Shaman healer, a Hunter/Retadin, and a Warrior or DK tank, you're team setup is WAY more equipped than pretty much any other possibility available. You can CC any mob type, and your group can easily hold 4 mobs in long-term CC.

On the other hand, without a Retadin, a Hunter, or a Rogue, you're now playing a much more annoying game.

I probably just missed it.

But same deal. Outside of Priests and Freezing Trap/Sap/Repentence, very few CC styles work on Undead.

Fear, of course, has a wide reach. But I'd rather try no-CC before I try using fear...

Sort of rings a bell. I didn't have a lock, so I didn't track their CC closely.

Also, I'm firmly against any design situation in which an addon becomes required. Addons should make your life easier and adjust the game to your aesthetics. They should NEVER make the game noticeably easier.