Official WoW: Classic Forum Drama. Community Managers on CLASS BALANCE debate

[Deleted]

There has been some drama on the official WoW: Classic forums. This is a spicy one.
Community managers promoting an open debate for "Class Balance" in Vanilla.
If you have a strong opinion on the topic let your voice be heard on the official forums but keep it civil and constructive.

Edit: They just closed both threads...

https://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/...age=7#post-127

I personally think its fair to have a discussion about classes/specs in Classic, considering class balancing as a philosophy didn't exist back then as it does now. The idea of a "hybrid tax" was obviously not very good in the grand scheme of overarching class design and it made some specs arguably not viable/unplayable. I'm not suggesting we make huge changes or even small changes at all for that matter, but that it is a worthwhile conversation to have.

"I have to ask since you're a Blizzard employee. Does your opinion speak at all for the design team working on this?"

It's more of a personal opinion. As you've read numerous times, the team for Classic is just now coming together, so I wouldn't say there's much of an opinion internally one way or the other.

This is more so a "we", the Community team, remember that class balance was one of the more contentious discussions during the early days - and it could be useful feedback to continue those discussion so we can have a concrete place to look at how players feel Classic balance should be.

Should class balance be left as it was, or should it be tweaked within a certain margin, or should it be constantly tuned and worked on? I'm not so certain that any specific one is the default, correct choice.

A follow up thread was created to show how displeased this person was about the Community Managers replies.
The Community Manager replied

https://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/...page=2#post-26

@OP - The posts on Reddit are my favorite, as they pretty much contradict everything said here, aside from a couple people being all doom and gloom. I agree with them in the fact that they noted people are over reacting.

To be clear - we are simply encouraging conversation and discussion. We are not developers, we do not make any final decisions on Live or on Classic.

I think it's more showing that you would try to shut down conversations with your big, bolded letters instead of engaging in a constructive way. If you want to try to lay out a plan to show the community why those things are things the Classic community shouldn't want, then do that. You are not the sole voice in this conversation - there are "purists" on both sides of the argument, there are people who want 1.0, those who want 1.12, those who want 1.7 so the debuff cap is 16, those who want progression. There's thousands of different opinions, and trying to shut those down in one swoop doesn't necessarily bode well for you.

Like J. Allen Brack has said, our goal is to create an experience that is as close to that original World of Warcraft experience as possible. I personally do not see that as us chasing things down and reinventing the wheel, and definitely not anything that would fundamentally change how Vanilla was, but there are conversations that do need to happen, and if your only goal is to come here and try to stop them instead of participating and adding valuable input to one side or the other, then you're most likely not welcome here.

This forum isn't a place to yell and scream that "BLIZZARD DOESNT KNOW WHAT THEY'RE DOING - HIRE NOSTALRIUS", when all we are trying to do is be transparent and make sure we're listening from the start.

[Chookchan]

Please just release it without custom tuning - changing numbers and fiddling with classes will throw the game off balance.
God forbid this gets pushed back months because Paladins/Shamans/Druids want to DPS.

[moremana]

I think people are having a hard time with "as close to that original World of Warcraft experience as possible"

I think class balance should be involved. It was the main complaints players had at the time, it seems like some just don't remember some of the bad things with Vanilla.

[methwow]

My Favourite quoute


A word of warning: we're seeing a huge increasing in outgoing forum moderation and punishments for harassment and toxicity from people who are participating in this forum without an active subscription. We would very much like to keep this option open, as I personally realize that Classic players may not necessarily play in Legion. However, if it becomes the best move for our community, and to maintain a constructive environment, I am not opposed to flipping the switch and returning this forum to subscribers only. Please be mindful of how you are treating each other, and please make sure your posts are constructive and provide good context for the thread you may be posting in. Thanks!



A shit ton of people from reddit are spamming these forums and its obvious they don't have a sub seeing as they post on low level characters. These players are being toxic as fuck and shitting on people for playing Legion. These are the players who will cause the dev's to make the forum Sub only and those players will no longer have a voice.

[MoanaLisa]

The honest answer to this is that sometimes forums are bad and people are wrong to think that CM's are developers. Their JOB is to expedite conversation.

I don't see that much drama here other than Blizzard encouraging people to express what they think and people freaking out about perhaps having to think, much less--OMG, where's my fainting couch!!!1!--see that there might be some merit in both sides. For my part, I hope they change little.

Please just release it without custom tuning - changing numbers and fiddling with classes will throw the game off balance.

The whole question is about "different" versus "off". There's a good argument to make that balance in vanilla was terrible and that the entire affair, while fun at the time, was out-of-balance to the point that it won't be that much fun to do it again. There's also a good argument to make that it should be left the way it was. I think there are some reasonable positions between those two things but as I have consistently said I lean toward leaving it alone.

Purity may do more harm than good for the long-term. That's also a reasonable discussion worth having.

[time0ut]

It looks like the best discussions, as always, are happening here on MMO Champion.

[Grimnakh]

I think people are having a hard time with "as close to that original World of Warcraft experience as possible"

I think class balance should be involved. It was the main complaints players had at the time, it seems like some just don't remember some of the bad things with Vanilla.

Its not even close to the same game with class/spec rebalancing.

[Deleted]

The honest answer to this is that sometimes forums are bad and people are wrong to think that CM's are developers. Their JOB is to expedite conversation.

I don't see that much drama here other than Blizzard encouraging people to express what they think and people freaking out about perhaps having to think, much less--OMG, where's my fainting couch!!!1!--see that there might be some merit in both sides. For my part, I hope they change little.

Well...the drama now is that they just locked both threads...
Everything was going nice and dandy (for my point of view). One BIG thread saying "NO to Class Balance"
And now they close it and say "it's an open debate" lol

[Hitei]

Well...the drama now is that they just locked both threads...

Everything was going nice and dandy (for my point of view). One BIG thread saying "NO to Class Balance"

And now they close it and say "it's an open debate" lol

You guys will whine about anything.

They specifically closed it acknowledging that most of the feedback was for no changes at all.

[Lane]

Not that it'll happen, but they'd do better to just open legacy servers for BC & WotLK. Given the choice, I'd rather play on a Wrath server. My main interest in vanilla was just seeing the pre-Cata zones again, but as far as class balance I enjoyed my time in Wrath the most. That way classic can remain untouched, as it should, and those who want their class balanced can just choose a later expansion to play.

[munkeyinorbit]

I think people are having a hard time with "as close to that original World of Warcraft experience as possible"

I think class balance should be involved. It was the main complaints players had at the time, it seems like some just don't remember some of the bad things with Vanilla.

Sounds like you want a rehash of WotLK, not a vanilla experience. There are plenty of private servers for you to go try. Leave Classic to us players who know what they are doing.

[Deleted]

You guys will whine about anything.

They specifically closed it acknowledging that most of the feedback was for no changes at all.

It was a simple thread advocating for no changes. A big one. And now is closed.
And i see no problems with the one saying "Open to Class Balance".

Dictatorship much?

[Hitei]

Sounds like you want a rehash of WotLK, not a vanilla experience. There are plenty of private servers for you to go try. Leave Classic to us players who know what they are doing.

Yep. Bumping up balance and ret damage slightly is definitely rehashing Wrath.

It was a simple thread advocating for no changes. A big one. And now is closed.
And i see no problems with the one saying "Open to Class Balance".

Dictatorship much?

No. It was a shitstorm of people whining about how they were going to go play private servers and flaming anyone who dared to disagree.
It was closed because there wasn't any discussion, just people spamming "NO CHANGES" (I don't mean multiple people, I mean the same people copy pasting messages over and over) and insulting other people.

It was closed with the message that they acknowledge the feedback was overwhelmingly in favor of no changes and there was little point to continuing a thread that was just spamming and toxicity.

[munkeyinorbit]

Not that it'll happen, but they'd do better to just open legacy servers for BC & WotLK. Given the choice, I'd rather play on a Wrath server. My main interest in vanilla was just seeing the pre-Cata zones again, but as far as class balance I enjoyed my time in Wrath the most. That way classic can remain untouched, as it should, and those who want their class balanced can just choose a later expansion to play.

You do realise that the pre-cata zones were available during WotLK right? Because it was around pre-cata. You know that right?

[Hitei]

You do realise that the pre-cata zones were available during WotLK right? Because it was around pre-cata. You know that right?

They are saying they will play Classic for those zones but would prefer Wrath.

[munkeyinorbit]

Yep. Bumping up balance and ret damage slightly is definitely rehashing Wrath.

Well that is what it is. If you want to raid and you are a druid then you healed. If you are a druid and you want to dps then Vanilla is not for you. There are plenty of private wrath servers. Maybe you should try it out. Paladins are no different. They are a healer class in vanilla. Next thing you know people will be demanding duel specs.

[Chookchan]

The whole question is about "different" versus "off". There's a good argument to make that balance in vanilla was terrible and that the entire affair, while fun at the time, was out-of-balance to the point that it won't be that much fun to do it again. There's also a good argument to make that it should be left the way it was. I think there are some reasonable positions between those two things but as I have consistently said I lean toward leaving it alone.

Purity may do more harm than good for the long-term. That's also a reasonable discussion worth having.

The issue with "different" versus "off" is that the people who have been advocating for Classic servers for many many years have wanted "off".
The idea or discussion of "different" is just a huge slap in the face - akin to the discussion of pristine servers.

[munkeyinorbit]

They are saying they will play Classic for those zones but would prefer Wrath.

and I said that they zones are unchanged. playing classic to experience those zones doesn't make sense if they have already experienced it.

[Hitei]

Well that is what it is. If you want to raid and you are a druid then you healed. If you are a druid and you want to dps then Vanilla is not for you. There are plenty of private wrath servers. Maybe you should try it out. Paladins are no different. They are a healer class in vanilla. Next thing you know people will be demanding duel specs.

Except that there is really no reason to bring a druid at all, because their healing is not as good as priest and paladin healing. The only thing they really bring is a b-rez that is predicated on (in the vast majority of situations) someone in your raid screwing up and dying.

There is a reason that, despite there being 9 classes in Vanilla, druids generally fall below 6% of any private server's population. That is HALF the amount you'd expect to see (11%) if classes were reasonable good in their own way.

That is the problem with Vanilla balancing. It is "the classes are unique and are each good in their own way" except that they aren't. There is an entire classes that is just worse at everything it can do, and 2/3 of basically all specs sans warrior are non-viable. There is a reason warriors, rogues and mages make up the vast, vast majority of every private server.

It is just bad design. Not uniqueness, not rock-paper-scissors.



This is called "broken".

[Hypasonic]

Just release as it was in vanilla or else, guess what, it ISN'T vanilla. That isn't so hard to comprehend right? Just address the API potential "exploit" issues and the obviously known bugs that existed back in the day but leave everything else the same. Please