Page 1 of 2
1
2
LastLast
  1. #1

    Will we ever character balance in WoW again?

    It occurred to me, with the release of the ability to buy level 90 characters, that it is not in Blizzard's interest to balance the game. Having a flavor of the month or overpowered class could generate millions of dollars for them.

    Just think of it, Monks are overpowered in January. Everyone who does not have one goes out and buys a monk. Blizzard nerfs monks in February and super buffs hunters. Everyone goes out and buys a hunter, etc. and the process continues.

    It is even more worrisome when you consider that they have specifically stated that they want to put in character specific encounters into mythic raiding. Could these just merely be used to generate extra revenue and not to make the game more interesting?

  2. #2
    Quote Originally Posted by Arcbound View Post
    It occurred to me, with the release of the ability to buy level 90 characters, that it is not in Blizzard's interest to balance the game. Having a flavor of the month or overpowered class could generate millions of dollars for them.

    Just think of it, Monks are overpowered in January. Everyone who does not have one goes out and buys a monk. Blizzard nerfs monks in February and super buffs hunters. Everyone goes out and buys a hunter, etc. and the process continues.

    It is even more worrisome when you consider that they have specifically stated that they want to put in character specific encounters into mythic raiding. Could these just merely be used to generate extra revenue and not to make the game more interesting?
    Having a well balanced game creates a much better game in the long term, thus will drawing much more money over many years, and if there's a game company that thinks in the long term, it's Blizz.

  3. #3
    dude the fucking sky is falling !!! in all seriousness though no, sure they make money off it but they aren't putting a gun to your head or anything. . . . .shit at this point im surprised people already don't have all toons maxed out im at 7 90's atm and ive been unsubbed since midway through ToT.

  4. #4
    Quote Originally Posted by Kezel View Post
    Having a well balanced game creates a much better game in the long term, thus will drawing much more money over many years, and if there's a game company that thinks in the long term, it's Blizz.
    Perhaps they are thinking about the long term by having character imbalance. Blizzard has been creating a lot of new games recently probably largely funded by WoW and possibly trying to find an alternate revenue stream (which is good business). Leveling characters is old content in Blizzard's mind, so they are trying to extract as much money from old content as possible, which may not be the best thing for WoW long term, but could be the best thing for Blizzard long term, since WoW is on the decline. I am not saying WoW is dying, just on the decline (as the decreasing sub numbers show, yes they had a small blimp up during SoO, but that blimp was really small and for the last major patch of the xpac fairly pathetic).

  5. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by Kezel View Post
    Having a well balanced game creates a much better game in the long term, thus will drawing much more money over many years, and if there's a game company that thinks in the long term, it's Blizz.
    Oh god I'm laughing over here.

    Blizzard by far focuses on the now. Many of their changes have limited future development, and they bend to the will of player who come and go.

  6. #6
    ffs where to even begin.

    1) The target audience for the buyable 90s are people coming back for WoD and people who want to skip leveling an alt. When the cap is 100 buying a 90 will still involve going up the longest 10 levels in the game. I don't think there's going to be as much paid rerolling on a regular basis as people seem to think there will be.

    2) There aren't enough classes in the game to really warrant this. Additionally, Blizzard can just as easily throw another mount or minipet on the store to make an absurd amount of revenue on demand.

    3) Major class rebalancing doesn't occur often enough to make this a viable money maker.

    Currently playing Borderlands 1 remaster. Amped for Borderlands 3.
    Add me on the PSN for jolly-cooperation @ PuppetShoJustice

  7. #7
    FOTM is a very bad business model and Blizzard doesn't do it on purpose. If 20% of the player base plays a Monk in Jan because they are overpowered, do you think come March, when Monks are overnerfed, that the majority of this 20% will jump onto the next best thing? No, they will either keep playing their Monk, or more likely than not, get angry at suddenly being weak and leave.

    The game isn't unbalanced because Blizzard wants it to be. If they could somehow get it to be 100% balanced and even, they would, but that has never, nor will it ever, happen in a game as massive as WoW.

  8. #8
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Arcbound View Post
    Perhaps they are thinking about the long term by having character imbalance. Blizzard has been creating a lot of new games recently probably largely funded by WoW and possibly trying to find an alternate revenue stream (which is good business). Leveling characters is old content in Blizzard's mind, so they are trying to extract as much money from old content as possible, which may not be the best thing for WoW long term, but could be the best thing for Blizzard long term, since WoW is on the decline. I am not saying WoW is dying, just on the decline (as the decreasing sub numbers show, yes they had a small blimp up during SoO, but that blimp was really small and for the last major patch of the xpac fairly pathetic).
    They aren't trying to make as much money as possible off of it. Not with this price. 60 Dollars are far too much to lure a broad number of players in for it. Players mention that often enough. And Blizz themselfes do. And with WoW going, it's still enough revenue overall, even with subs "in decline". In fact the Game has been getting better and better at everything. More Content, more everything. The thing is, that most people who "decline" and cancel their subs have good reasons for it - Family, Job, Finally realizing that the Game isn't made for Casuals Fucks - thus going off to another MMO. And honestly. With the overall "decline" going on, every up in Subs is a positive thing. Subs will decline until WoD, then go up as usual. But I don't think that with WoD, we'll see as much decline as we saw with previous Expansions since the "Decline" started. I actually am guessing, Subs declined to a "Final" Number. A Number range (7-8m Players) in which the game will pretty much play baseball with the numbers going up and down. Pretty much a long-term "balance", until there is truly bad content in the making.

  9. #9
    I am Murloc! Tomana's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Feb 2012
    Location
    Silvermoon City
    Posts
    5,291
    By now, people have multiple 90 alts anyways. So it won't matter much.
    MMO player
    WoW: 2006-2020 || EvE: 2013-2020 || FFXIV: 2020- || Lost Ark: 2022-

  10. #10
    Herald of the Titans
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Jun 2010
    Location
    Dallas
    Posts
    2,509
    Again? I can't think of a single moment when this game was balanced...

  11. #11
    Elemental Lord Tekkommo's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Nov 2011
    Location
    Scotland
    Posts
    8,054
    Think how many people already have each class at level 90... It also doesn't take long to level.

    You will still have to level to 100.

    The game has never, and never will be balanced.

    People that play FotM classes are limited.

    The price of level 90s will put people off buying more than one.

    They want 20 man raids to require you to bring each class, wtf is the problem with that?

  12. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by Kezel View Post
    Having a well balanced game creates a much better game in the long term, thus will drawing much more money over many years, and if there's a game company that thinks in the long term, it's Blizz.
    hhhehehehe

  13. #13
    I am Murloc! Tomana's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Feb 2012
    Location
    Silvermoon City
    Posts
    5,291
    Quote Originally Posted by snackfeat View Post
    hhhehehehe
    You shouldn't laugh, if they didn't they would release unfinished buggy crap like some companies I won't name do. They sure are not perfect, but when you spend years working on a game before even releasing it, you are thinking long-term. Short-term would be release a new version of a crappy football or car console game every year.
    MMO player
    WoW: 2006-2020 || EvE: 2013-2020 || FFXIV: 2020- || Lost Ark: 2022-

  14. #14
    The game is balanced. FFS. Stop comparing Paladins to Warlocks and Rogues to Shaman. Build a fucking team and use your talent to defeat the other side - who, OMG, what!?! - are DOING THE SAME THING.

    It's not like vanilla, where the Shaman/Paladin schism actually made balancing hard. Everyone has the same shit. The only thing you could claim are some races are stronger than others... and that'll always be the case while there are racial abilities - but racials don't tend to win wars, only skirmishes.

    I guarantee - if you took a 10 man team of the FOTM overthetopwtfbbqomgdiaf class and a 10 man team of randoms - the randoms will win, everytime - no single class is going to have everything at their disposal. No, not even a balanced team of druids, were they the OP.

    2v2 was Blizzard's Al Gore moment of calling Climate Change, Global Warming. "OMG, It's like the coldest ever!!! Global warming is a scam!!!" Yeah, and trying to "balance" the game on an absurdly low denominator like 2v2 is a scam. Get over it.

  15. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by Tomana View Post
    You shouldn't laugh, if they didn't they would release unfinished buggy crap like some companies I won't name do. They sure are not perfect, but when you spend years working on a game before even releasing it, you are thinking long-term. Short-term would be release a new version of a crappy football or car console game every year.
    You mean like diablo 3?

  16. #16
    Herald of the Titans
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Mar 2012
    Posts
    2,545
    Balanced is a subjective thing where it's very hard to 100% define success. Balanced is different things and degrees to different people. Within a reasonable degree and compared to other mmos wow is actually quite balanced IMO.

    However, anyone who's played wow for long knows that Blizz is pretty strategic and intentional with fotm and has been for a long time. There is some benefit for them in it in that it keeps people re-rolling and leveling new classes, which in turn helps keeps people subbed. In the case of DKs them being strong also helped push wrath expansion sales. But monks for example at least in 5.4 pve are not OP like DKs were, so things have improved. Pvp is another story and I/we could probably think back to every op class in each patch going back to vanilla. But *generally* the differences are fairly minor nowadays at least on the pve side. Other than disc priest the healing classes are generally balanced, tank classes are all doable, and dps is weighed towards the pure classes like hunter/lock/mage by design. It's nothing like another popular mmo (I'll leave the name out to avoid shifting focus of the thread to a game v game debate) where the imbalance is so bad that only 3 classes are feasible for pve and any other classes that join a dungeon get kicked.

  17. #17
    I am not saying that everyone will do this, but what I am saying is the type of people who have money to spend and would buy a 90 because it is overpowered one month would probably spend $60 the next month to buy a new overpowered toon. Now you could argue that this is not a bad thing, but one thing is for sure, with this addition it is in Blizzard's best interest to create imbalance in the game, and that is a dangerous thing (even if not done intentionally initially, it could be too tempting of a revenue source to turn down at a later point). A business' goal is always to maximize profits, for Blizzard to claim that their intention is not to maximize profits with this addition is absurd. The price was well calculated to be high enough that a good number of people would buy the game, but not high enough that it would hurt subs, thus maximizing profits. So while it might not maximize profits in the short term, it maximizes them over a slightly longer period of time.

  18. #18
    The Undying Wildtree's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Nov 2010
    Location
    Iowa - Franconia
    Posts
    31,500
    Quote Originally Posted by Arcbound View Post
    It occurred to me, with the release of the ability to buy level 90 characters, that it is not in Blizzard's interest to balance the game. Having a flavor of the month or overpowered class could generate millions of dollars for them.

    Just think of it, Monks are overpowered in January. Everyone who does not have one goes out and buys a monk. Blizzard nerfs monks in February and super buffs hunters. Everyone goes out and buys a hunter, etc. and the process continues.

    It is even more worrisome when you consider that they have specifically stated that they want to put in character specific encounters into mythic raiding. Could these just merely be used to generate extra revenue and not to make the game more interesting?
    Will we ever character balance in WoW again?
    Again? To my knowledge, there was never ever such thing as character balance.
    There's some sort of balancing, by limiting OP abilities to some degree. But true balance never existed, and should never exist. It would make the game utterly boring.
    "The pen is mightier than the sword.. and considerably easier to write with."

  19. #19
    I think that you are overestimating the importance of balance, to the community of the game first and foremost. Take a look at the number of players that participate in heroic-mode raiding; add to that the number of raiders that have, or are close to, defeating Garrosh in normal mode; there is the number of players that care about the theorycrafting aspect of the game in PvE. If you count, the even less, players that participate in organized (rated) PvP; and add them to the PvEers, you will have approximately the sum of players that actually care about theorycrafting. And that number is low compared to the overall sum of players; I doubt it even reaches a million, out of 7 + millions. "Less than half" isn't even close to describing the number.

    Meanwhile, the vast majority of the game's players care very little about theorycrafting. They play to have some fun, settling for a basic, if that, at times somewhat more, understanding of the game's mechanics. And they bring the big money. Not the tiny minority of balance/output/performance-obsessed players. Even in most raiding guilds, and battleground/arena teams, the focus on optimization is not that high. You have to go to the top to see optimal setups throughout.

    Incidentally this throws your reasoning that periodically changing gross imbalance is done for economic reasons out of the window: there are very few people that switch around so much, following the flow of over-"poweredness."

    So why would the developers focus so much on something so few care about? Especially when it makes the game suffer for it. And it does, oh so awfully. The streamlining and homogenization plaguing the game right now; the way classes and specialisations feel so similar, the fact that there is next to nothing exciting, no room for creativity, about the gameplay; is largely due to this "quest for balance," mostly under Ghostcrawler. This has added to the overall lack of excitement in the game, and the feeling of it as a routine task rather than a gripping and adventure.

    Additionally, you misunderstood the information about class/specialization-specific encounters in Mythic mode. It's not that some classes will be overpowered, but that the encounters will depend upon specific tools brought by classes, within the reasonable expectation that a guild attempting Mythic would have at least one of every class, perhaps even every specialization.

    Lastly, even if Ghostcrawler came back and was given free reign to do as he pleased he still would be unsuccessful in achieving balance; for a, simple, reason: the only way to have ba;ance between two or more concepts is for them to be the same, one concept. A difference, any difference,n pertaining to the application of element(s) if each concept in an activity, will produce an imbalance. One concept will be better due to its element(s); either because they perform comparatively, even marginally, better; or because the other concept's element(s) are inapplicable to said activity, thus the former concept will be the better choice be default due to relevancy. So, either go play chess, or embrace the inherent, but interesting and fun and creative, chaos that is in the nature of a game that strives for variety and uniqueness. In any case I think that you should at least stop chasing chimeras.

  20. #20
    This is in reply to Drithien, I did not feel like restating his whole post. I agree with you there is a relatively small portion of the population that experiences heroic raiding, however, there is a very large part of the population that follows heroic raiding. This is amplified in the general community, on the forums, and in game through trade, general, and guild chat, and it is the reason Blizzards continues to develop heroic raiding tiers (it does not make sense to make content for .1% of the game audience unless it brings something to the game. The advertising for Wow given by the top raid guilds is more than worth the development cost and is the main reason they develop the content). Someone sees that a class is overpowered in a raid or at pvp. Suddenly they want to be that overpowered class even if they will never use it to the capacity that the top players will.

    Chances are you are right, most top end players already have most classes at max level and will not be buying level 90s, but players who aspire to be the top end pvp'ers and/or raiders will, and there are a lot more of these fan boys and girls than there are heroic raiders and top end pvp'ers.

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •