Developing for yourself rather than players

[A dot Ham]

You make it sound like one person, and one person alone, defines each class and how they work. They don't.

Yet Mr. Super Moderator... people in here remember class leaders. When one person had a lot of clout, and whether they had a team underneath them, or were one person, their job focused on 1 class.

Do we hear about class leaders anymore? No...

Does that mean they don't exist? No... Perhaps they just stopped being so vocal about because it was clear that they were playing favorites and you could point your finger at exactly who was the problem. If people are kept in the dark about a nameless "team" then it is difficult to focus that aggression on a single person and the entire company gets to carry that hate or blame.

[Paula Deen]

Just throwing this out here.

According to Greg Street himself, he played a Shadow Priest. This was during the time period they were objectively at there worst.

[Gaidax]

Do you think there is an inherent conflict of interest in allowing developers to play their own game?

More specifically class designers?

I think more often than not, they design games based on what they think would be fun for them, not what would be fun for the masses.

I think back to vanilla, bc, and wotlk when warriors were ridiculously OP, and guess who played a warrior?

Personally I think it prevents you from developing objectively. If you look at the roots of this game (Dungeons & Dragons) developers are Dungeon Masters. I think a good Dungeon Master can have fun because everyone else is having fun and enjoying themselves and not just the Dungeon Master himself.

I am sorry, but isn't it common knowledge on these forums that devs do not play their own game?

I think your whole argument is based around many assumptions, which were discredited by numerous developers and ex-developers (GC for example).