Are you guys missing Ghostcrawler yet?

[RuneDK]

He was the designer for most of the rotations which was the best they've ever been during his time and has only gone to shit after he left.
Wod, legion and bfa is great proof to that.

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Chances are you wasn't playing them right, because when he was in charge, specs actually had skill depth and ceiling, not 2 button rotations.

HAHAHAHA DW Frost DKs spammed howling blast and Frost Strike during MoP. Ive been a consistent top 100 player when i played seriously..Don't tell me I wasn't playing it right.

I will say my favorite iteration of any dk spec was also during MoP with festerblight...but that was an unintended spec and abused the snapshot mechanics of a trinket. But again you mostly used outbreak(for the high powered diseases), festering strike and death coil to keep high powered diseases rolling...you maybe weaved in some scourge strikes here and there...but for the most part you used festering strike and deathcoil with outbreak anytime you could make your diseases stronger than they already were. So yea...i wouldnt say there was a lot of depth to the rotations when GC was there either...they started getting much simpler in Cataclysm and seemed to have spiraled to what they are now...so some could say he started the simplification of rotations.

[rhorle]

The tweets don't make me miss him but I think it is a shame when any game loses a person that has passion for the job. He wasn't terrible at the job. It always has been weird how the community looks for a singular scapegoat for all the evils of the game. It isn't unique to WoW either.

[TheLucky1]

because he isnt willing to admit that the playerbase is why we are where we are at today. gotta find a scapegoat.

My thought went into because the subs stagnated and declined at that point.

But that correlation is not causation is hard to understand for many.

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The tweets don't make me miss him but I think it is a shame when any game loses a person that has passion for the job. He wasn't terrible at the job. It always has been weird how the community looks for a singular scapegoat for all the evils of the game. It isn't unique to WoW either.

Not all but many also need their black/white thinking to not get overwhelmed sadly.

[Ragedaug]

Are you guys missing Ghostcrawler yet?

I don't know about the "yet" part. I was already missing GC within a couple minutes of finding out he was leaving.

[kronides]

If Ghostcrawler had his way WoW would have been a moba, and he tried hard to make it one while he was here. So, no.

[ClassicPeon]

So much cringe in this thread.

He didnt make the best rotations in wow alone and he didnt nerf paladins alone.

There isnt one person sitting making the calls like this. Its a team effort.

Things can actually get decided by a group of people you know

[Dread Pirate Phayde]

I miss Mr T, William Shatner and Ozzy Osborne far more than GC.

[Oneirophobia]

The most recent details his experience leveling a Retribution Paladin in the pre-patch. I thought he hated Retribution spec at one point? There was a BlizzCon back in the day where he introduced himself on stage and said he is a fan of "nerfing Ret Paladins into the ground" and it always stuck out to me.

He doesn't hate retribution or paladins. Paladins, specifically ret, were enormously broken at the beginning of Wrath and had to be reigned in. There was a blue post addressing a huge thread complaint thread about how unstoppable ret was and whether blizz planned to do anything about them, the response started with "to the ground" followed by details. It was poorly received; players in the same thread were happy to make death threats towards the devs but god forbid theres a little humour about their very serious business vidja game. Blizz continues to quote the "to the ground" post every once in a while.

TL;DR players view their class as an extension of themselves and take any adjustments or jokes as personal attacks. GC usually made light-hearted statements on balance fairly frequently, which didn't sit well with players for whom their spec is sacred - usually the same people who are in trade chat day 1 of a real life tragedy to make gruesome jokes. As far as I'm aware, GC still makes jokes about balance and such at Riot - which gets similar responses.

[Queen of Hamsters]

Nope, but I don't suffer the veil that seems to be drawn over other people's memories of the past.

[Osmeric]

"It's the players' fault for not appreciating Blizzard's GENIUS!"

"The product is fine, it's the customers who are defective!"

[TheLucky1]

If Ghostcrawler had his way WoW would have been a moba, and he tried hard to make it one while he was here. So, no.

Hmmm, so going with that logic Age of Empires should have been influenced heavily by WoW and might have been a mmorpg if GC had it's way with it?

Read my post above, you are one of the guys i meant with that.

[FuxieDK]

Do you guys miss Ghostcrawler?

Fek no!!!!

Nothing, NOTHING, good came from that man..

[Kapaya]

I still am bitter about the time when Frost and Unholy were both the bottom two dps specs in the game at the end of MoP and i believe he said we just aren't playing them right.

He was right, if you were bottom DPS as a DK you were not playing it right.

Source: Me.

[Cazze]

HAHAHAHA DW Frost DKs spammed howling blast and Frost Strike during MoP. Ive been a consistent top 100 player when i played seriously..Don't tell me I wasn't playing it right.

I will say my favorite iteration of any dk spec was also during MoP with festerblight...but that was an unintended spec and abused the snapshot mechanics of a trinket. But again you mostly used outbreak(for the high powered diseases), festering strike and death coil to keep high powered diseases rolling...you maybe weaved in some scourge strikes here and there...but for the most part you used festering strike and deathcoil with outbreak anytime you could make your diseases stronger than they already were. So yea...i wouldnt say there was a lot of depth to the rotations when GC was there either...they started getting much simpler in Cataclysm and seemed to have spiraled to what they are now...so some could say he started the simplification of rotations.

Became simpler in cataclysm? Did you play LK? Like did you really? Go find a private server or something and blow your own mind.

Lol @ Ion plotting in the background.

[Semune]

I don't care that much, but he did communicate quite a bit which was great. I think the introduction of things like LFR really destroyed the community though. It really took a lot of the fun out of clearing bosses the first time. TBC did it great, if you couldn't beat a boss, tough luck, you're not moving on. Made you feel a sense of progression - Mythic raiding nowadays isn't an experience like that, it's just for bragging rights.

You didn't get to and kill Illidan/KJ without working for it.

[oplawlz]

No. His watch marked the beginning of many mistakes that wow has yet to recover from, and I fundamentally disagree with almost everything he's ever said regarding game design. That said, I'm not one of those nuts who blames him for everything bad that happens or wishes ill on him. He's just one guy with different opinions than me.

[munkeyinorbit]

"The product is fine, it's the customers who are defective!"

I still remember his epic rant in Cata. People complained that heroic dungeons in WotLK were too easy. So he made them hard in Cata. Then came the tears. It was glorious. People creating I quit threads everywhere. And then came the rant essentially telling people that they got what they wanted and to git gud. And then he came out and said "you guys are too shit. You're not getting a raid in 4.1. You're getting catch up dungeons". The reaction was better then anything I have seen here. Better than "You think you do but you don't". Better than "WTF blizzard, why are there queues for MY Classic realm".

When he says something like "You're playing it wrong", you can be damn sure you're playing it wrong. He may have been a little arrogant but at least he generally tried to give the players what they want even when they don't want them. LFR, 10 man raiding, harder dungeons, class homegenization were all things players wanted. Except that it turned out they didn't want them.

[Osmeric]

I still remember his epic rant in Cata. People complained that heroic dungeons in WotLK were too easy. So he made them hard in Cata. Then came the tears. It was glorious. People creating I quit threads everywhere. And then came the rant essentially telling people that they got what they wanted and to git gud. And then he came out and said "you guys are too shit. You're not getting a raid in 4.1. You're getting catch up dungeons". The reaction was better then anything I have seen here. Better than "You think you do but you don't". Better than "WTF blizzard, why are there queues for MY Classic realm".

When he says something like "You're playing it wrong", you can be damn sure you're playing it wrong. He may have been a little arrogant but at least he generally tried to give the players what they want even when they don't want them. LFR, 10 man raiding, harder dungeons, class homegenization were all things players wanted. Except that it turned out they didn't want them.

Those are things a vocal fragment of the players wanted. But I don't think the player population as a whole wanted them.

The average player in Wrath found the end game there to be too difficult, if one goes by completion stats.

[Aresk]

Ion doing a decent job? did the definition of the word "decent" suddenly change to "the worst ever", since bfa is considered in the running with WoD for the worst expansion?. It is really hard to say how much Ghostcrawler had to do with the decline of WoW since he had very limited power but Ion has been the director of WoW now for part of Legion and all of bfa. The buck has to stop somewhere and if you get the big pay then you should get the big responsibility when it succeeds or fails.

My opinion is my opinion, and this is a bit off topic. But in my opinion, BC was the greatest disaster in terms of lore. Cata was the greatest disaster in terms of gameplay. And in terms of being the face of the game (given that the topic is about the person's communication on the game), I think Ion does a decent job. I appreciate the way he presents the game and I think he does a good job enduring the vitriol that he gets from some of the players. You may consider Ion to be the worst ever, and you're entitled to that opinion.

[Kuja]

I don't know how he affected the game, but it always makes me sad when a familiar face leaves Blizzard. And too many people have been leaving lately. Like rats from a sinking ship.