A short and simple update post for all of our fans!
Tharvolde has been hard at work making sure our next Featured Retadin addition will please the masses - and I’ve been hammered down by a constant flow of busyness. Luckily enough for all of us, all is well seeing that finals are over and it’s back to laying around being uselessful for all! Though there isn’t much more to hate in this world other than someone apologizing for the lack of posts with a post apologizing for lack of posts, so it’s about that time to pull out a card we all love to play with.
About 10 days ago, Blizzard’s Vice President of Game Design Rob Pardo almost openly admitted (and I say openly only because of his use of euphemism) that arenas and the direction of World of Warcraft to be competitive and E-Sport worthy was a mistake (page 2), and he would rather not even went there.
“If I could go back in time before we shipped WoW, I would have either made serious changes to basic class balance to facilitate that type of play, or if I went back to when we had the idea two years later, I would have said, “Maybe we shouldn’t go there.”
I would only hope that you would make some serious changes to how classes worked back then. Need I remind you that even PvE was severely shot with fine examples like Paladins auto attacking for three years?
PvP has not been around for only five years, contrary to popular belief. Even the most religious PvE games that some of the most in-depth PvP to this date, where communities rule and thrive with little to no help from other parties such as developers. Unfortunately, all of WoW is instanced and there is barely any interaction with the happenings in the world, even when compared to Burning Crusade, outside of those silly horde that killed you at while you were doing Chillmaw. A hand thrust into the air and a few profanities before you gather up your flasks on the AH and get ready to raid in your Sanctuary tagged zone, hoping that the next day will be more fortunate and PvP will not happen on a PvP server.
Though, the topic here isn’t the lack of iron will when it comes to defending your internet honor, it is the hilarity involved in the statement, “PvP has been around for decades before WoW, but I don’t think we should have included that into our game whatsoever in any competitive sense because we were too retarded to do it correctly and are still trying to fix blatant flaws that have been around for years that we are too stubborn to fix”. Interestingly enough, a small off-book interview was done featuring Tom Chilton, the mighty Kalgan, stating;
“Well, again, we have to keep the game fun for everyone. Take Retribution Paladins for example. You don’t see many of them in many top comps or in a tournament setting like this, but to someone in a battleground who looks at the charts and sees a retribution paladin killing everything in it’s path it seems really unfair. This may be true in lower rated arena as well, we have to take that into consideration.”
Or rather, “Lots of people cry at low level rated arenas and Battlegrounds, so we are going to nerf a class as we see fit without to ensure happiness among the noobs and definitely make sure that a poor class at the top levels of play decline so they are even worse”. Don’t get me wrong - I agree that classes shouldn’t be absurdly overpowered with less dedication to have the skill to achieve an overpowered situation. Or in other wording, you need to have the skills to pay the bills and not just be able to breeze through scenario after scenario coming on top every time. Or in other wording, every single class can be ridiculously overpowered depending on the situation and how noob their opponent might be, but they should at least take more than a few button presses atop of having the smarts to do so, so they aren’t beaten down at any high level of play.
I wrap up today with a picture of Kalgan euphemising a euphemism with Ghostcrawler having his eyes (and his chloroform rag) set on his late night prize.
- Megaphone
PS : As always, we have goodies in store for our loyal fans coming soon! Mmm yes. We do.
November 22nd, 2009 - 2:26 am
ROFL!! I love that picture! It’s my new wallpaper.. I stumbled upon the interview a few days ago and it made me feel good to hear that arena wasn’t the best idea, at least not implemented correctly. LOL that picture just makes my hate for GC that much more enjoyable! Grats on finishing finals, maybe now you can get back to enjoying the game!
November 22nd, 2009 - 2:41 am
With the upcoming expansion, they should just reset all the ground rules to Arena: Cooldowns, certain spells, damage and healing coefficients, the broken stat called Resilience, etc. Now that it’s admitted as a mistake, just overhaul it and make it the way it was meant to be made. Cataclysm - aptly named - will be the best chance.
November 22nd, 2009 - 2:56 am
ROFL at picture. Yeah i hope that they will change something in Cata and it won’t be so gay as Wotlk was.Also i have little hope that they will make something cool in paladin class and change our defensive cooldown’s to not be locked down or affected by this gay Forbearance.
November 22nd, 2009 - 8:21 am
I saw a link to the interview a few days back on Ferarro’s site and read it. I’m glad at least one person in their staff had the balls to admit that modern day arena is a screw up. It’s like he said - they either should have never put it in or had it designed into the game’s core components to begin with.
Wrath is another failed expansion for arena in my opinion, and I can only hope they get over the idiotic ideals of “we don’t want to separate pvp and pve effects/spells” and adjust it so that PvE and PvP fans can be happy. I can’t describe how many times I’ve wanted to stab every Glad paladin I see in the face because of all the PvE nerfs I’ve taken as a result of PvP. And they’ve had their fair share of shin-kicks from PvE paladins to, so..
Not that I don’t like PvP, I do, I just find it frustrating that they cannot balance it with PvE(which is my main interest) in the games current state. At this point I believe it’s overhaul or go home with PvP and especially arena. Competitive game play may be older than MMO PvE, but in WoW, the PvE was there first, so fix the red-headed stepchild of an e-sport, rather than destroying the PvE core to cater to it.
November 22nd, 2009 - 10:11 am
I like Rob Pardo. He’s been with Blizzard for a long time and he’s a good developer. And what he said about arena holds weight. You may like arena, but it changes the focus of the game to something that wasn’t originally intended and puts balance under a microscope. The original PvP vision of WoW was world PvP and battlegrounds, where class balance wasn’t put under a microscope.
What Kalgan said about Ret is also true. You have to make the game fun for everyone, which includes looking at balance in BGs and low level arena. I just don’t like the fact that in order to achieve that balance, high-level balance is sacrificed.
November 22nd, 2009 - 11:15 am
Not disagreeing with what Kalgan said, but fixes that they implement usually make no sense.
And by usually..
November 23rd, 2009 - 2:48 am
The thing is you cann’t balance low level arena’s nor Battleground if I am going to do, Battlegrounds my level gear will be higher then 90% of what currently is playing in battleground.
Of course you will destroy a new level 80 or a badly geared one hitting him with my heroic judgebringer.
Same goes for arena’s.
November 23rd, 2009 - 7:09 am
Every class that is well geared will destroy fresh 80’s.
This is not new. Veteran 70’s blew up fresh 70’s, veteran 60’s blew up fresh 60’s. Nerfing ret because of this trend is yet another kick in the balls for the ret paladin.
“Hey you make baddies cry, nerf!”
November 23rd, 2009 - 11:09 am
Where do you go on this site to see past/archived Featured Retadin articles?
November 23rd, 2009 - 2:04 pm
Making BG’s and arena’s balanced at low skill groups is like a certain Family Guy Skit that I saw last night: There are 8 sprinters, 2 were white and 6 that were not. The starter starts the white people ahead of everyone else, giving them a 5 second headstart or so. They still were dead last… Racial overtones aside, that’s what I think of balance according to Kalgan and Ghostcrawler - using these halfbaked balance guidelines in order to justify and fuel their Ret hate that they have been known to have. Seriously, how much of a head start do we have to give everyone else, 10 seconds? 20 seconds? How about we start the race AFTER the 2 white racers cross the finish line.
Here’s my advise on the < 1000 rated qq’ers that can’t beat ret. Get better. If you can’t the problem is you. It should be the responsibly of everyone else to play to your level, it’s YOUR reponsbily to play up to everyone elses.
November 23rd, 2009 - 3:14 pm
The Featured Retadin section of the site in our navigation on the upper left-hand corner of the site!
November 23rd, 2009 - 3:34 pm
As dumb a question as it sounds, I’m going to ask it anyway. And no, it’s not about MS for Ret.
Is there any truth to the rumour that there are or were groups of overly geared arena players who would disband then recreate their teams so that new people into arena were being pushed below 1500 or lower?
It’ll be interesting to see how Rated BGs turn out. Hell, we might see more Premades being created for the purpose.
November 23rd, 2009 - 4:01 pm
Nerfing classes is far easier then fixing them.
And really, what did they have to lose? A backlash of anger from the forum community about how unfairly Paladins are being treated? Not likely.
November 23rd, 2009 - 6:25 pm
“And really, what did they have to lose? A backlash of anger from the forum community about how unfairly Paladins are being treated? Not likely.”
It should be pretty obvious by now how paladins, particularly ret are treated, I think it serves Blizzard a purpose in the big picture.
Of course no one cares if the perennial whipping boy class of the game is further nerfed or treated with the same disdain they’ve been since inception. It galvanises the rest of the community in a way only hate can. Look at the way they bring up choice comments at certain Blizzard events etc etc. It’s really quite sad, almost like the bullies picking on that kid in the corner while everyone stands around watching and laughing.
November 24th, 2009 - 4:07 am
@ dodge.
thats exactly how it is.
Someone needs to do something. Desperately even.
November 25th, 2009 - 5:58 am
Well, I just wanted to say I actually represented the Ret Paladin vs. SK.gaming at the ESL tournament. We lost quite hard but 1st game went quite ok! Almost had it. Further more I’ll be playing at Dreamhack this monday as protret / ret.
I’ll be playing the 30th vs. either a RMP or a Pala/Warr/Ele S so remember to tune in
November 25th, 2009 - 7:02 am
Just putting this out there, have you ever put yourself into the shoes of another class and attempted to kill a paladin in world pvp / bg. Now granted a warlocks 3 spell combo or a frostmage kiting you is normally always a lose vs a good warlock/mage, but for other classes they dont really stand a chance. Take world pvp for instance, the biggest advantages of specific classes are no longer there because of things like [flying mounts]. In world pvp, as a paladin if you had to chase someone on foot your immediately at a disadvantage but because of flying mounts you instantly remove that from the game. Negating half of the other classes range advantages because your instantly in melee range. This is something ive noticed since playing a hunter alt. Sacred Shield - THE biggest advantage given to a paladin in WotLK. Unless you are geared or have an ability to remove it, as your gearing you have no chance of killing someone that absorbs a large percentage of your damage with an infinite number of uses (based on your mana). It doesnt absorb 500 damage like the tooltip suggests, its actually a lot more then that because it scales with your SP.
DA = 3/4 * SP + 500
So my paladin absorbs 1858 damage per hit self buffed. If you were trying to kill someone that could absorb that much of your damage 80-90% of the time you would be calling it unfair as well. High end area we cant compete because of the obvious lack of utilities, low end pvp however - ever wondered why everyone has a paladin alt? its because in the noobish part of the game the paladin class is completely overpowered. I have been playing paladins since classic and I was thrilled that they actually became a viable DPS class in WotLK, but they are exactly what blizzard said - too tanky. take into account that SS gives an instant heal doubled with a HoT. its for that very reason that ret paladins are getting “nerfed” although really they are removing things that are not required as a DPS class such as the HoT effect of SS. We cant bubble hearth as of 3.3 which i would guess is to allow people to kill more paladins and give the feeling that they arent able to escape EVERYTHING no matter what, and they are making it impossible to use your damage reduction and instant health regen at the same time. Its quite fair. If you think it isnt, imagine the same abilities on another class, or swap characters with a friend and duel a paladin.
November 25th, 2009 - 7:07 am
^^
Thought I should correct something in there before someone else does, the instant heal if from AoW, the Hot is from SS.
November 25th, 2009 - 2:27 pm
“We cant bubble hearth as of 3.3 which i would guess is to allow people to kill more paladins and give the feeling that they arent able to escape EVERYTHING no matter”
lol what?
November 25th, 2009 - 4:26 pm
“So my paladin absorbs 1858 damage per hit self buffed.”
Huh? It’s a 1858 shield every 6 seconds - not ‘per hit’… The sort of damage a hunter, lock rogue etc bust through in microseconds.
Besides, apparently you’re happy being nerfed for noobs and bg only players (ROFL). That’s something I’m NOT happy about, but each to their own.
Pwning arena with warrs > Smashing noobs in bgs with ret.
November 26th, 2009 - 8:47 am
Destinatus is just a paladin hater, he doesn’t even understand how one of the abilities he is QQing about works.
From now on lets just ignore his B.S. arguements, k?
November 26th, 2009 - 6:00 pm
“High end arena we cant compete because of the obvious lack of utilities” What good is a class that can’t compete in arena? Why is everyone concentrated on ret, when other classes can 1 shot you? Since when BG and world PvP became an indicator on how good the spec is? Everyone full epic can 1 shot a greenie…. And if World PvP and BGs matter so much to you, what’s the problem the same person who pwned you in arena comes and kills you in a different environment (aka Arathi, Alterac etc.)?