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:

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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.

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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:

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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.

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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."

Gaming needs more innovation

Just over ten years ago, I was introduced to my first MMORPG. My brother brought over his copy of Ultima Online, loaded it up on my computer and showed me his new world. He tooled around the world for a bit and then got up and forced me into the chair. A few minutes later, Roland Boone was born. He didn't last long actually. By the end of the first gaming session, I knew I was hooked and the next day, after work, I drove out to the office store and bought my very own copy of Ultima Online. It was a Friday night and I stayed in from the bar scene for the entire weekend skilling up my character. I haven't purchased a console game since that day. For me, if there aren't a thousand or so other people online with me, it just bores me to death.
So I am a MMO geek. At first, it was a secret shame. Most of the people around me had no idea what I was talking about if I said I played MMORPG's. Some actually looked at me like a deer trapped in the headlights. Eventually, I came to realize that we MMO'ers were actually pioneers. Television over the years has included more and more interactivity. The viewers at home are asked to vote via phone or internet, to participate in someway with what they are watching. From home game versions of their favorite game shows to interactive webisodes, more and more interactivity continues. And what could be more interactive than a MMO? Beyond that, I have always wondered how long before MMO's and Virtual Reality merge to become the ultimate immersive experience?
I came to the conclusion that MMO's are to 21st century what Television was to the 20th. The fact that games are now the number one money making entertainment genre only solidified that belief in my mind. And now, with the popularity of World of Warcraft, my secret is no longer my shame, nor is it others. Some folks have even started placing their gaming experience on their resumes. And to everyones astonishment, some employers are even taking that experience seriously!
So when I see how far we have come in terms of acceptance, it saddens me a little to realize how little true innovation there has been in the MMO genre. Some developers talked about different ideas but for some reason the truly revolutionary could never make it to market. A great example of this was a little game called Boundless Adventures ( or was that the company name? I was never quite sure. ) They developed a world which they would seed initially then let run for at least a month before any players were allowed on the server. Why? because their NPC's were programmed to congregate and build on their own. So each and every server, while having the same terrain, would have different city, town, village, camp and spawn areas which were to be completely decided by the NPC's themselves. This would allow for players to destroy towns and cities and they would stay destroyed but in a week or two NPC's would gather together in a seperate location and begin to build again. The concept excited many of us but alas it was not to be. Boundless Adventures died along with so many other forward thinking ( and backward thinking ) MMO ideas.
The next great innoovative game will be Spore. It will be the first MSOG, or Massive Singleplayer Online Game. But wait, how can it be massive and a single player at the same time? It does so in the space exploration mode. Every time a player advances into a new area of space, the game connects to the internet and downloads new content from other players. What this means is, when released, Will Wright and Co. will have created the worlds first infinite virtual universe. Yes, that's right INFINITE! Think about that for a day or so and get back to me. The game itself may not be any good. It may fail miserably. But, the technology and concepts that create an infinite universe will now be out there for others to expand upon and build whole new universes for us to explore. And that is truly innovative.