Why We QQ, Part Three

This was touched upon briefly in comments, but this has to do with a difference in ideals.

Basically, it’s a disconnect that occurs between players and developers where the two groups have different visions of the game in question. My recent despair at the death of things like defense rating and armor penetration is exemplary of this.

I have my own notions, my own ideas, for WoW and where WoW should go. Some of this I share with the developers, some I don’t.

For instance, I fully agree that every mage tree should be perfectly viable for both PvP and PvE, just not simultaneously. Frost, for instance, should be perfectly capable of topping the damage meters, but should also be a kick ass PvP tree. You couldn’t be good at both with the same spec, similar to how a bear specced druid can’t produce nearly as much DPS as a kitty specced druid can.

But there’s a disagreement in the how part. I fully support firmly splitting abilities between PvP and PvE. For instance, the PvP version of Deep Freeze deals no damage and stuns/freezes the target for 5 seconds, while the PvE version of Deep Freeze deals about 8k damage and afflicts the target with a debuff that allows the frost mage to treat them as frozen for 5 seconds.

To me, that’s the ideal solution. It doesn’t overpower frost PvP, it gives a much needed buff to frost PvE, and does it by very firmly separating PvE and PvP.

But that’s where the developers disagree. To them, such a solution is a last ditch effort. Ideally, they’d want for nearly every ability to be exactly the same for both PvE and PvP, with only slight differences like taunts not really working in PvP and roots not really working against bosses.

All of us players have our own particular ideas of what WoW should be. Some of us wish arena PvP a swift and merciless death, others love it, others don’t mind, just stop balancing the game around it already! And so on it goes.

Some people quit the game with the death of attunements, some cheered, and some like me would prefer a middle ground. I, for one, would love it if attunements were still in the game, but only if they were account wide.

I suppose this is where a significant amount of QQ comes from.

In the old days, we were told nothing.

Every few months a patch would drop, with a bunch of changes to this, that, and the other thing, with absolutely no explanation of why. The patch notes might as well have said “this patch we nerfed warriors and warlocks and frost mages” for all they were worth.

This modern era is a little different.

Nearly every class change is explained, often in great detail. Ghostcrawler has even gone far enough to explain core scaling issues (woopsidasie crit is too high who saw that one coming cause we certainly didnt lol) to their vision for the mage class as a whole (yes we know we know holy crap im sooo drunk right now).

Without an explanation, all one can see is a change. A change that might agree with their idea of the game, it might not. And what happens if it doesn’t agree?

Well, they complain, of course. Loud and hard. That’s what we, as people, do.

All of it exacerbated by the fact that we instinctively seek out those who share our opinions. If you find a bunch of mages flinging poo about the same thing you hate, you join them and fling your own poo, and they accept you without question. If you don’t find anyone who agrees with you, you just shout louder and louder until those who do finally hear you, and then poo flinging for everyone!

Nowadays, of course, we do have explanations for most things.

For instance, removing attunements was Blizzard’s way of getting more people to raid, as was easing the difficulty of earning loot. The fewer barriers to raiding content, the more people who actually do that content. Blizzard told us as much, over and over again.

Player Base: Why’d you remove attunements?! OMG this change sucks!

Blizzard: We wanted more people to be able to experience the end game content. [Insert stats about old naxx].

Player Base: BUT [insert counter-argument here]!

Blizzard: You don’t HAVE to play. This is what we want to do with our game. Feel free to quit whenever you want.

Player Base: … *flings poo*

That’s the thing that, I think, many of us forget. This is not our game, this is not our property. It does not belong to us, it belongs to Blizzard, and they can do whatever they damn well please with it. It’s your choice whether you go along with it and continue paying for it.

Let’s say you’re renting a house. Your landlord decides to cut down the tree in the front yard. Maybe you really hated that tree, maybe you really loved it. Maybe you say “YES BURN THAT SUCKER DOWN!”, maybe you… heh… pine for it once it’s gone.

Either way, your opinion means nothing. It isn’t your house, it isn’t your tree, technically speaking you have absolutely no say what happens to that tree. Sure, you can bring up your concerns with your landlord, but s/he doesn’t have to listen to you.

They could very easily respect your opinion, you know, due to the fact that you are paying them, but they might just as easily say “fine, leave, I can get another renter”.

You’re still going to complain to your friends, maybe be hostile to the landlord, but at the end of the day you’re still living there, aren’t you?