I H8 WoW

[natty]

That's still just sad. And yeah, I didn't care much for arena, but then again shamans were pretty gimped for pvp when arena came out, so I didn't really have a chance.

Ah, so you just yearn for the days when shaman were OP.

In a way I do too. I loved grouping up with a shaman in BGs on my warrior. I was a wrecking ball with a personal healer and WF totem.

[Porn Shop Clerk]

I don't think Shamans were so much overpowered as alliance didn't have them, didn't know how to play them, and didn't know how to fight them.

Once Alliance got Shaman, they were beefed back up pretty quickly.

They definitely weren't as OP in pvp as Warlocks are, were and will forever be. Ditto for Shadow Priests and the Mage flavor of the month.

[HPPantherzfan]

I don't think Shamans were so much overpowered as alliance didn't have them, didn't know how to play them, and didn't know how to fight them.

Once Alliance got Shaman, they were beefed back up pretty quickly.

They definitely weren't as OP in pvp as Warlocks are, were and will forever be. Ditto for Shadow Priests and the Mage flavor of the month.

Warlocks are NOT OP in pvp, haven't been for a very very long time...in fact, since they have started rating arenas I don't recall a single comp that had a Warlock in it via top 100 in 2's 3's or 5's

2's seem to favor double rogue groups (go figure)

3's this is simple RMP set up

5's I don't really know

But Warlocks? Since they have nerfed the h3ll out of fear, Warlocks have been the terribad's

[Porn Shop Clerk]

That's a shame, because pvp was all whorelocks were good at.

[natty]

Arena doesn't equate pvp in general. Do a search for Drakedog and tell me warlocks are 'terribad'.

That post is actually a good example of arena ruining pvp. Arenas, especially at the top ranks, are simply flavor of the month/rock paper scissors matchups with a little randomized luck thrown in.

[blackcatgrowl]

I spent a good bit of time playing this weekend. Trying to level up a Death Knight.

Good lord that class is stupid easy to play. I rolled him on Thursday, and am just a couple quests from 68. 13 levels in less than 20 hours of play, and that is with travel time, buying some stuff like bags off the AH, learning the class.

[Porn Shop Clerk]

The Death Noob is pretty high on the list of reasons why I quit playing.

[blackcatgrowl]

The Death Noob is pretty high on the list of reasons why I quit playing.

Yeah, at 66, I solo'ed every elite quest in Terrokar forest, then went over to Nagrand and solo'ed every elite except Durn. My warrior would NOT have ever been able to do this with the same gear (and they use the same gear stats). It's pretty silly.

[Zaximus]

Warlocks are still nasty in pvp, arenas hardly counts as pvp honestly.

And DK's are kind of lame, that's like the one class I don't have really any intention on playing honestly. I think they were a bad idea, definitely bad to start them at lvl 55. They just don't fit in really.

I wish it was still like vanilla times where paladins were alliance, and shamans were horde, it made sense, but I know it was a pain designing encounters.

[Porn Shop Clerk]

And that's the other problem. Its not about how good you are at the game, but how much time you can afford to sink into it.

Its nothing but a time sink now.

[Zaximus]

It's less of a time sink now than it ever was though.

[Porn Shop Clerk]

Because its easy to farm mats for ubercrafting now?

Or you can run end game dungeons more than once a week?

[blackcatgrowl]

And that's the other problem. Its not about how good you are at the game, but how much time you can afford to sink into it.

Its nothing but a time sink now.

For what it's worth, because of their constant dicking around with game mechanics, 4 years (at the time) of class-imbalance problems, the rabbit-wheel-carrot time-sink mentality to the game, and lack of fixing just BASIC stuff (like flying mounts in Azeroth), when left, I left in disgust. Hence my departure for 3 years.

And I didn't just leave, I had all but sworn off Blizzard. I had developed such a burning hatred for them as a game developer, I vowed I would never buy another game they made (still haven't bought Starcraft 2, and probably won't).

But from what I've seen and read they actually are trying to make strides to fix some these issues. Mostly little things, but some big ones too like:

- Integrating the World Map with the quest tracker. Makes questing so much more streamlined... huge game changer.

- Making the Talent Trees less diverse. A big problem with the class balance issue was talent spec'ing. There were so many options, if they fixed one thing, another broke. I think what they've done with them makes tons of sense. (I realize this opinion is probably somewhat controversial)

- Making the base Flying Mounts 150% air speed (70%, or 60%, whatever it was, was torture.)

- Taking the damn mounts and companions out of the inventory, and putting them in spell books.

- Giving real-time benefits for profession mastery.

- Phased open-world instances. This is really cool... keeps quest time-lines more linear and make more sense.

- Heroic instances give universal currency rewards for getting gear instead of waiting on random drops (this helps with the time sink), or forcing specific currency for specific dungeons.

- Same thing with PVP currency.... rewards are given instead of waiting on a ranking system, or having to run a specific BG 10,000 times (literally).

- And this is on my list of being a big one... making Flying Mounts accessible in Azeroth. I can't wait to fly over the re-vamped areas.

(P.S. I realize some of this is WotlK updates, but I skipped out on that whole expansion, so bear with me, it's all new to me.)

I'm going to stop just short of completely defending them. They are STILL fuging around with class balance, and probably will be forever... PVP is still being treated like a red-headed step-child, and being locked into it's own instanced reality... World PVP is all but dead. So the game isn't perfect... but it seems a lot better with what they've done in the past 2 years and what appears to be happening going forward.

[natty]

The game was always a time sink, they just changed it up to make it more obvious with daily quests. In the original game you had to grind to get stuff for raiding or to make money but instead of going to daily quest hub X you had to go collect mats, farm for a rare spawn or rare drop, etc. The important thing is that put players out in the world. Some of the best pvp battles happened because I came up to a thorium node at the same time as someone else and we had to duke it out. Now most of the zones are void of players who aren't leveling because they're either at a city or the current daily hub.

Before dailies it just seemed more natural (for lack of a better term) - you made gold by collecting stuff others wanted and interesting things happened(interactions with other players). Now you just queue up for a dungeon or BGs and go do your insanely boring dailies.