Blizzard made a change this week to the leveling curve in the WotLK beta. Gone is the easy experience that was getting players from 70 to 77 in a week or so ( Had the leveling cap of 77 not been there, most would have reached 80 already ) and it's been replaced with a system that requires 80% more experience to level. Yes, you heard that right. 80%! As you can imagine, players went ballistic on the beta forums.
Now to be fair to Blizzard, they made the leveling process quite quick in the beta to begin with in order to get some players up in levels to test various aspects of the expansion in that level range. With the second wave( possibly third or fourth by the time, this podcast hits Itunes ) of beta invites, they needed to slow down the leveling to the normal pace in order to efficiently test the vast multitude of quests they have placed into Wrath ( over 800 by the last count we made here at the Grind )
However, instead of just telling players this, and trusting the playerbase,the only response from Blizzard on this was in a thread started by a player pretending to be selling his Beta account due to his now inability to level in a reasonable amount of time. Blizzard responded wonderfully by saying:
Your ability to post on the forums is a privilege, as is your chance to participate in the Beta. Constructive criticism is far different from complaining, and we'd prefer you to utilize the former.
This coming from the people who hired Furor Planedefiler as a quest designer, the most notorious complainer in MMO history, who posted the now most infamous "Fix it or I quit" post ever. And one of the designers who helped to bring us the broken and bugged C'thun and then insulted the WOW version of himself for calling Blizzard on it in EXACTLY the same way Furor called Sony Online Entertainment on the broken Planes of Time.
I am here to tell you beta testers you SHOULD complain if you think something is wrong. And you should do it as LOUDLY as possible. Create as much of a stir over this as you can because the rest of us non beta tester can't. If you don't then you are not doing your part to represent the rest of us and help to steer Blizzard in the directions that will be the most enjoyable for the player base as a whole. And though some may disagree with me, seeing whats coming has quickly turned from excitement to disappointment to downright disdain for me personally. And Blizzards attitude on this has become decidedly more and more SOE. Maybe it's has something to do with success or just years of the constant trolling on their official and nearly unmoderated forums that just kills a developers spirit. Maybe developers need to move on to other games to keep from silently hating the source of their livelihood. I don't really know, but game after game, for over a decade, we in the MMO community have watch great games go bad and the very developers that created something wonderful slowly stab their creation into a bloody mess.
After seeing the downrank debacle hitting the forums this week, I realized that the information that Blizzard was giving players was different in different places. So I posted about it. It was a simple post pointing out that while Blizzard claims that downranking was "never intended" they had gone to great lengths to support it in the past. Look at the Warrior class. When a warrior receives Heroic Strike Rank 2 it completely replaces heroic Strike rank 1. But new ranks of spells don't replace old ranks of spells. Why program one set of abilities one way and another set of spells another? The only logical explanation is they INTENDED players to cast lower ranked spells in certain situations. otherwise, having to program different spellbook methods for different classes is just a bunch of wasted time and unnecessary work.
In addition, the Add On GUI API used to have a CastBySpellName function. Blizzard removed this years ago to help prevent automation, but the function required that a rank be specified in order to work. Why include that if Blizzard original intention was for players to always use the highest rank of a spell.
Additionally, just a couple of months ago, a poster placed a nice little Healing for Beginners guide on the Priest forums. This guide had only 5 sections. Section 2 dealt with overhealing and section 4 dealt with downranking. The Blue responded that it was a great guide and added it to the sticky thread of great guides! If a guide is 40% about an unintended and about to be changed aspect of the game, why sticky it and lend Blue post support to it?
So I posted this. And I got a response from a Blue. Wait...I should tell the truth....I got 14 responses from Blizzard. Not all to me but that's how many times a Blue posted in the thread before it reached its 500 post limit and automatically closed just a few hours later.
Now I want you all to pause a sec and think...during this little rant I have not said one way or the other about my opinion of downranking. I have not said in any way how this change will effect gameplay for better or worse. because that is not what the post or what my happy little rant here is about. My rant is about this:
Blizzard has shown support for the technique of downranking in the past and for them to claim that it was never intended is just very forthcoming with the truth.
Of course the lousy moronic forum trolls immediately jumped in and started a debate on downranking itself but worse, so did the Blizzard employee. The Blue barely answered my concern and then posted a wall of blue text about how downranking needed to be removed, which was no where near the point of my post. But I accepted it, grabbed my stepsons and went to get our haircut.
When I got back home, the thread was 16 pages long and the Blue had posted several times more. I watched it but stayed out of the debate as it was about the pros and cons of the change rather than what my original post was about and then, in response to posters worries that Blizzard was trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, the Blue posted that, and I'm going to quote this:
We have reverted things in the past that we felt just weren't working out so I'd hate for people to believe that once in, in forever for everything we do. We don't work like that and I think it misrepresents us by saying this.
At that point, I had to rejoin the fray. You see this particular blue had posted something else in the Beta forums. And I'll quote that as well:
As noted, this isn't a bug and has been a conscientious change in design. This isn't something we will be changing, but that doesn't mean that your feedback isn't wanted.
Understand. This is the exact same Blue poster telling the public forums one thing and the private beta forums the exact opposite. now, I am going to be blunt here and I'm not going to pull my punches. Where I come from, that's called lieing and I dont know about the rest of you, but I don't like being lied to. It insults my intelligence. And I realize the normal cumulative I.Q. on the official WoW forums is a negative number, but that doesn't excuse this for me. By telling players a revert is possible, we are only looking at this, in public, but privately saying its going thorugh no matter what is not only devious to the nth degree, it's downright dangerous to the playability of a game.
I remember logging into Ultima Online after one "minor little " patch and found the game completely unplayable for the next two weeks. And though Origin did eventually relent and revert, their testers on their public test realm had spent a month prior to the patch telling them that the change was bugged. I've seen developer after developer get overconfident and ignore the playerbase only to find their game lose multitudes of players. Dark Age of Camelot anyone? And my worry is that now that Blizzard is firmly entrenched in their stance that they can tell us anything and we will continue to press the payment button in order to get our daily WoW pellet, it will only get worse from here.
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Friday, August 15, 2008
Blizzard supported downranking in the past
I am the kind of person that gets offended when someone is less than honest with me. Especially when evidence to the contrary is so readily available. I do not see the downranking nerf as that big of a deal. It'll make the game harder, yes but not unplayable.
But I cannot abide someone intentionally misleading me. It's a matter of principle. Tell me the truth and I can accept that. But don't misrepresent the facts and expect people like me to just follow along blindly.
Blizzard is not being forthcoming with the truth ( That's the nicest way to say it ) and here are only three of the pieces of evidence out there showing that this is the case.
First, the fabrication:
Now the facts:
Blizzard has supported it in the past. The devil is in the details, my good Blizzard peoples. Allow me to show you.
1) If downranking is unintended then why are those spells accessible to the players?
Heroic Strike rank 2 completely replaces Heroic Strike rank 1. A warrior has no access to lower ranked abilities once he learns the higher ranked one. And yet, all lower ranked spells are still accessible once a higher ranked spell is learned. One cannot claim that they didn't intend to program the game this way. Unintended effects of programming is called a bug. Is Blizzard claiming that the practice of downranking is exploiting a bug? No they are not. In fact they cannot because they have supported downranking in two other ways.
2) CastSpellByName() API function
Why have this function require a rank delineation if Blizzard only wanted the highest rank to be used? Hmmm? Why add it at all? There seems to have been alot of programming work going into allowing players the ability to downrank, doesn't there?
3) Why sticky a guide about overhealing and downranking if it's unintended?
Over on the EU forums, the following thread:
http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=4271898338&sid=1&pageNo=1
It's a Priest guide which covers 5 points. 2 of the points are overhealing and downranking. If Blizzard didn't support downranking then why is the Blue Response as follows:
So as recent as June 10th, 2008 ( when this blue response went up ) Blizzard employees were supporting the downranking practice.
In conclusion, Blizzard has supported the practice of downranking through their purposeful inclusion of accessible lower ranked spells, inclusion in their own .Lua functions for add ons and through their continued support of guides for new players explaining downranking and its benefits. For Blizzard to now claim that this was unintended is a falsehood and I for one cannot stand by and allow them to try to pull the wool over my eyes without standing up and saying," ummmm........no."
But I cannot abide someone intentionally misleading me. It's a matter of principle. Tell me the truth and I can accept that. But don't misrepresent the facts and expect people like me to just follow along blindly.
Blizzard is not being forthcoming with the truth ( That's the nicest way to say it ) and here are only three of the pieces of evidence out there showing that this is the case.
First, the fabrication:
Q u o t e:
Zarhym wrote:
This change was made primarily to prevent downranking, as it's a technique that was never quite intended.
Now the facts:
Blizzard has supported it in the past. The devil is in the details, my good Blizzard peoples. Allow me to show you.
1) If downranking is unintended then why are those spells accessible to the players?
Heroic Strike rank 2 completely replaces Heroic Strike rank 1. A warrior has no access to lower ranked abilities once he learns the higher ranked one. And yet, all lower ranked spells are still accessible once a higher ranked spell is learned. One cannot claim that they didn't intend to program the game this way. Unintended effects of programming is called a bug. Is Blizzard claiming that the practice of downranking is exploiting a bug? No they are not. In fact they cannot because they have supported downranking in two other ways.
2) CastSpellByName() API function
Why have this function require a rank delineation if Blizzard only wanted the highest rank to be used? Hmmm? Why add it at all? There seems to have been alot of programming work going into allowing players the ability to downrank, doesn't there?
3) Why sticky a guide about overhealing and downranking if it's unintended?
Over on the EU forums, the following thread:
http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=4271898338&sid=1&pageNo=1
It's a Priest guide which covers 5 points. 2 of the points are overhealing and downranking. If Blizzard didn't support downranking then why is the Blue Response as follows:
Q u o t e:
Wryxian wrote:
Nicely written :-) This thread should be appearing in the Forum Watch on our front page. Also, I’ve added it to the “useful thread” sticky post, here in the Priest forum.
So as recent as June 10th, 2008 ( when this blue response went up ) Blizzard employees were supporting the downranking practice.
In conclusion, Blizzard has supported the practice of downranking through their purposeful inclusion of accessible lower ranked spells, inclusion in their own .Lua functions for add ons and through their continued support of guides for new players explaining downranking and its benefits. For Blizzard to now claim that this was unintended is a falsehood and I for one cannot stand by and allow them to try to pull the wool over my eyes without standing up and saying," ummmm........no."
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