GC burst onto the scene in 2008 during the WOTLK beta and immediately amazed everyone with his grasp of the game and incredible foresight on how to design. One of his biggest concerns was CC not taking a backseat to AOE in dungeons (sound familiar?) Here are some of the choice quotes before, during and after the release of WOTLK covering a 1 month period from October to November 2008.
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"The only think we're slightly concerned about is we don't want to see PvE CC just go away. Several classes are designed around their ability to CC, and we don't want that to be neglected. In an ideal world, this would be less of an issue of threat management and more of an issue that if the tank tries to tank 4 and 5 pulls without CC that the incoming damage is too great."
- GC, 10/28/2008
"A lot of groups are AE tanking and burning down groups. It's fun, but at higher levels the risk you're going to take is that those groups kill you."
- GC, 10/31/2008
"You will not be able to AE tank and AE burn down every encounter in Lich King like we're all doing now in Hyjal and Sunwell."
- GC, 11/3/2008
"We don't inflate the value of deeper talents. If the bottom talents were always the best there would never be any reason to take less than 51 points in a tree."
- GC, 11/3/2008
"Let's see what happens when more players are running heroics. They seem to be providing much more of the challenge you're looking for."
(in response to dungeons being too easy)
- GC, 11/17/2008
"By most account so far, you can't really AE your way through the heroic 5-player dungeons, so we'd like to see more people get to 80 and try those first. It is not our intent that CC and single-target dps are just a thing of the past."
- GC, 11/17/2008
"There is definitely a lot of AE (area effect damage) going on in World of Warcraft dungeon runs at the moment. We’re not too worried about it for now ... If we find that AE tank + AE damage strategy (with no sheeping, sapping or other crowd control) is the only way people are running heroics and raids, then we’ll probably make some changes, but for now we’re content to just see what happens."
(he goes on to list upcoming buffs to AOE for 3 classes)
- GC, 11/24/2008
"Our goal is not to make every spec in the game awesome at AE damage."
- GC, 11/24/2008
"I would not expect the strategy in Ulduar and Icecrown to be: I'll Swipe while you guys Blizzard. Volley and Hurricane down all the trash."
- GC, 11/24/2008