Wrong.
If we assumed that a mob had 100,000 HP right now, and you autoattack for 25,000 per hit, then it should take you roughly 4 hits to kill it; if they reduced everything, across the board, by 50% then you've got a mob with 50,000 HP and you hitting for 12,500 per hit. It still takes 4 hits.
The relative power of players wouldn't change, it's simply a visual remedy to "big numbers syndrome". If you quit the game and/or refuse to buy the expansion because of this change, you're probably 6 years old and not the target demographic for this game.
I seriously can't believe how many people are upset about this.
Of all the changes that have ever been done to WoW this is like the least consequential ever.
In other words, your Fireball will still do the same percentage damage to a player or a creature that it does today, but the number would be smaller. Logically, this seems like it would work, and it does.
Ghostcrawler says this, and they've tested the item level crush internally. If he says logically it works - logically it works.
I don't understand why everyone is freaking out, you aren't going to get less powerful as you level up, they are only easing the differences in ilvl gaps, they probably wont change much in those terms until Late LK content, and they'll revamp old raids and mobs so they are still soloable by the lower ilvl on max lvl gear. All this is going to do is make it so there isn't as big a jump between content tiers, which will make gear you have last longer and not become useless the instant the next tier comes out.
Wrong.
Also going to point you to my maths on page 8. There is no "Flat % reduction for all players" because:
1. It's not what Blizzard proposed in their item squish blog at the end of Cata
2. It fucks with low level players. How do you take 50% off a piece of gear with 1 int?
Click for LK/Cata main's armory (this toon has the correct achievements earned- more than my Worgen)
^ Click for current main's armory ^
Only it still will be soloable because you do the same damage now relative to what you did before. They aren't slashing our stats while keeping the rest of the game the same. That would not only break old content, but it would break current content as well. EVERY number is being lowered. The only difference you will see is you do 2000 damage instead of 200,000. Current soloable bosses will still be soloable.
That is the kind of change most are fine with. Though, there is also a chance and some people saying they also want the relative player power to decrease in the process to give the old content a semblance of being relevant.
With what you mentioned, I am fine.. no problem. Decreasing relative player power (which might.. possibly happen) is something I would hate and very much so. And I feel many people would be angered by it.
Item squish will be truly amazing. Some of us have been working almost 9 years on the same character now, slowly increasing it's power over the years. And now people are asking to simply undo half the work. Guess character progression isn't something that belongs in RPGs anymore these days.
How about we lower peoples wages by 50% and tell them nothing will change
One thing to add
The oldest CPU I have ever owned was a 1995 laptop, with 320 MB of ROM, 32 MB of RAM, running Windows 95.
I played around with a mathematics program on it as part of an assignment for programming class. I was attempting to see the max limit in mathematical preformance before there was "noticable" lag on the computing preformance.
The first time I noticed a slight lag in time of calculation was when it was solving 54 equations/second using 52-56 digit equations.
WoW will NEVER reach the point that computations in game will slow ANY device capable of running the minimum requirements for the game.
So, the entirety of the Item Squish really boils down to big numbers v small numbers. (Theres also the affects on soloing, with most of the supporters for item squish going "fuck soloing, ALL RAIDS SHULD BE UNSOLABLE 4EVA", and most of the ones AGAINST the squish worrying about how it will affect soloing)
So dont be bringing in BS about big numbers causing strain on the CPU, because WoW won't even get into 13 digit computations within its lifetime.
I hope there wont be any squish in next expansion, the big one.
What i really want is Pandaria gear 2.0. I mean we'll start with blues at 450, heroic items at 476 and so on up to 550-600 maximum.
Or... squish ilvl to cataclysm, could work too.
Hope it goes ahead, up until Cata (more so in vanilla and TBC) getting upgrades seemed to give a better feeling (personally) of power augmentation now it just seems...meh "545 strength instead of 500 ok guess that's good"
It may all be relevant percentage wise but smaller numbers just feel better (again personal opinion).
If they are trying to give old content a semblance of relevance, it will be at the level it's meant to be completed at and not max level. Ever tried running a 40 man raid at level 60 these days? Complete joke. I know people who do Herald of the Titans runs still and you only need 8 competent people to complete it, and they can be in a mix of quest and Naxx gear. For twink guilds, old content is a joke.