Original post can be found here [ http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2504845332 ] of what might be the most influential WoW forums material to ever hit the community. It indeed speaks of many issues that need to be sorted out and has finally given shape and volume to the cries of the many.
Nerf feral droods 1v1,2v2, ban healing in 2v2 (lots of reasons besides druids in feral + healing, reasons like HolyPala~DK vs. anything.), the ratings speak for themselves. End the frustration of praying that your next combo won't include a feral and a healer. This matter has left the area of amusement and has become a serious reason to just stop playing.
[quote][u][b]Introduction[/b][/u][/quote]
Blizzard you’ve shown an absolute total disregard for PvP. You’ve treated the PvP community like idiots and continue to do so. Astoundingly you seem utterly oblivious to this! In fact, based on the stuff you’ve said of late—which frankly isn’t much in regard to PvP, let’s be honest—I know for a fact you’re totally oblivious to it. Indeed, you whittle on about how PvP does matter, but here’s a hint: actions speak louder than words and you’ve certainly done none of the former for some time.
From MMR abuse, win trading, allowing PvE gear (Legendary...) in PvP, the honour gear fiasco, the poor balance, flavour of the month classes, **takes a breathe**, bugs, the return of ring of valor, forcing arena players to do RBGs, the removal of skirmishes for no adequate reason, **takes another breathe**, the shambles that was the WoW Tournament, the enormous cost of weapons, the removal of arena armoury features (match history...), “shut up PvP guy” and that's just some of the issues.
So why don’t we go through the A-Z of why PvP sucks and why Blizzard is to blame and try and catapult PvP and your treatment of the PvP community to standards we both deserve?
Pause for a moment though.
Before we continue with our little chat, I just want to point out some ideas, stuff you should keep in mind while reading this and forever more afterwards:
1. Prevention is better than cure
2. We’re not idiots!
3. Actions speak louder than words
So let’s continue shall we?
[quote][u][b]MMR Abuse and Win Trading[/b][/u][/quote]
Who was banned for either of these actions?
Was anyone in the EU? Nope.
Was anyone in the US? Nope.
Was the 3.6k, clear as day, cheating Russian team? Nope.
And yet you still have the nerve to release this gem of a statement:
[quote="23587636287"]we’d like to remind everyone about the importance of fair play. To be clear, cheating is not tolerated in World of Warcraft, and exploitation of ranked PvP play is no exception.[/quote]
And to go back to point number 3, words Blizzard, your actions say different. You’ve shown at best a passive support for cheaters and at worst, an absolute disregard to fair play. We’ve already seen that no one was banned or had their team reset, but that’s not all folks.
You see the issue of MMR abuse became most rampant the week after the season was extended. If you take a look at AJ you can see a great deal of stories of how people lost rank one and gladiator. Indeed, Hydra—arguably the best Disc Priest in the world, who holds every other rank 1 title to date—lost rank one in this particular week to some win trading double DK Paladin team. This was after holding it for most of the season. But for you extending the season, people deserving would have got their just rewards. Yet, you’ve failed to even apologise for this blunder.
Hell you called it cheating yourself and told us to report it:
[quote]So, as I hinted at before, this really is [i]not[/i] a practice to be encouraged. In the simplest terms, the fact that this ‘tactic’ effectively games the system, in order encourage queuing against specific brackets of individuals (in this case, lower rated teams) for the purposes of boosting team and personal ratings, means that it would be construed as cheating.
To this end, players making use of this type of strategy really shouldn’t expect to necessarily ‘get away’ with such actions, and if you yourself have any knowledge of teams specifically embarked on this kind of scheme then you’re welcome to get in touch with us and provide us with the details accordingly.[/quote]
To be fair, you do always state the end of the season deadline isn’t for definitive. However, there wasn’t a huge MMR bug allowing widespread cheating to occur any other time you said it. Would it have been so difficult to end the season and just have us wait two weeks instead of one for the new season?
No worries though right, the MMR bug has been fixed?
Sure it has, but you started a new season with the bug still in place and only a few weeks afterwards did you fix it. Newsflash Blizzard, it wasn’t some slight bug; you should have delayed the season until you fixed it. I mean Fair play? You launched the season while people could still abuse and still benefitted from their abuse of last season.
Or maybe you believe it our responsibility to police ourselves? I’ll just get on the phone to the exam board and tell them not to worry about students cheating shall I? It’s your job to police things, not ours. Remember point number 1, preventing cheating in the first place is better than fixing it later especially when you have ample evidence it’s occurring.
The old armoury had a match history feature that made it easy to spot and report win traders. The removal of this feature doesn’t support the argument you don’t give a damn about cheating, but it certainly adds weight to it.
Here’s what I hope you’ve learned so far if there’s ever a bug like this in the future:
• Don’t extend a PvP season when there’s a huge MMR bug.
• Don’t launch a new season until it’s fixed.
• Reset everyone’s MMR.
Those aren’t suggestions by the way, they’re demands because anything less is just insanity.
Also when patronising the entire community with a post about fair play and cheating, keep in mind we’re not idiots and can see right through your BS.
[quote][b][u]PvE Gear still in PvP[/u][/b][/quote]
Isn’t this screenshot from the Cataclysm beta interesting?
http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/4707/wowscrnshot110810190806.jpg
What’s this, PvE gear not useable in arena? It seems like Blizzard learnt something from the end of Wrath.
But oh wait, Cataclysm launches and this awesome feature is nowhere to be seen. It was scrapped and no reason was given for doing so.
Hell, maybe it was just a bug and never intended in the first place. However, unlike the MMR bug, it’d have been greatly appreciated if you didn’t bother to fix this one.
PvE items, especially heroic level items, give a HUGE advantage to people who PvE and PvP. It’s one of the main reasons retarded damage is such a possibility. Unheeded Warning...
Also do remember that there’s no longer a higher tier of PvP gear. Someone in the best PvP gear is at a disadvantage to someone in the best PvE based on item level alone.
In Wrath most melee classes had to get DBW to stay competitive. For healers Solace and Bauble were way better than any PvP trinket. Hell, Bauble was completely useless in PvE (side note: would love to see a similar thing made for PvP now).
Separating PvE and PvP items also makes balancing easier. If an item is OP in PvP, but not PvE and you nerf it, you screw one community for another. It’s not the correct way to do things.
Make the change!
You know what other PvE item is useable in PvP?
[quote][b][u]Lessons not learnt: Legendaries[/u][/b][/quote]
A few questions if I may:
Did the Warglaives not give you a slight clue that making another legendary useable in arena might just be a bad idea? Did Shadowmourne not give you inkling that well allowing that damn there staff in PvP might just be a bad idea? It’s arguably the most powerful legendary to date.
You’re going to allow PvE players to have a huge advantage in arena. Some classes just don’t need that much resilience. The benefit of the staff just outweighs the benefit of a PvP weapon by far.
Balancing arena on the assumption people are wearing full resilience gear is a good thing. Force them to do it.
And how about this for a doozy? You increased the cost of PvP weapons to insure that PvE players wouldn’t be forced to do PvE in order to obtain a weapon. Guess what? You’re pushing casters to do PvE in order to get the best weapon! Sure most won’t, but I can guarantee the best will do everything in their power to obtain that weapon and have an advantage.
It has yet to get to the Shadowmourne or Warglaives level (one person has it...) so scrap it now! Prevention is better than cure, keep that in mind Blizzard.
[quote][b][u]Speaking of Items: The Enormous Cost of Weapons[/u][/b][/quote]
Let’s get this straight. You increased the cost of PvP weapons and delayed their availability so the PvE community wouldn’t feel obliged to do PvP in order to keep up on DPS.
Did you ever consider the fact it's easily possible to enter the latest raid and obtain a weapon and a few weeks later obtain the heroic version of that weapon before a PvP player is barely half way to obtaining his tier 2 weapon?
Indeed, the advantage of using such a weapon for say a warrior far outweighs the disadvantage of not using a resilience weapon.
So technically if I wanted to do the best I can as a melee class in PvP, I’d want to hop into an awesome raiding guild and do content I might not really enjoy to obtain an advantage?
Not saying I’d do that, but the best of the best might feel the need to.
Banning PvE gear in arena would sort this issue and make it fair for both sides.
[quote][b][u]The removal of Skirmishes for no good reason whatsoever[/u][/b][/quote]
Haha, sorry I had to get that out of my system. See I just recalled what an abomination of an event the EU and NA WoW tournaments were and couldn’t help laughing. I'll discuss that shortly though.
Ok we got a new feature. We can queue up and play our friends at arena and BGs. Sweet. I’m sure some people love this feature.
However, it wasn’t a replacement for skirmishes. It was basically like removing Random BGs and saying well now you can queue against your friends!
Here’s what I hope you’ve learned so far if there’s ever a bug like this in the future:
• Don’t extend a PvP season when there’s a huge MMR bug.
• Don’t launch a new season until it’s fixed.
• Reset everyone’s MMR.
Those aren’t suggestions by the way, they’re demands because anything less is just insanity.
Also when patronising the entire community with a post about fair play and cheating, keep in mind we’re not idiots and can see right through your BS.
[quote][b][u]PvE Gear still in PvP[/u][/b][/quote]
Isn’t this screenshot from the Cataclysm beta interesting?
http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/4707/wowscrnshot110810190806.jpg
What’s this, PvE gear not useable in arena? It seems like Blizzard learnt something from the end of Wrath.
But oh wait, Cataclysm launches and this awesome feature is nowhere to be seen. It was scrapped and no reason was given for doing so.
Hell, maybe it was just a bug and never intended in the first place. However, unlike the MMR bug, it’d have been greatly appreciated if you didn’t bother to fix this one.
PvE items, especially heroic level items, give a HUGE advantage to people who PvE and PvP. It’s one of the main reasons retarded damage is such a possibility. Unheeded Warning...
Also do remember that there’s no longer a higher tier of PvP gear. Someone in the best PvP gear is at a disadvantage to someone in the best PvE based on item level alone.
In Wrath most melee classes had to get DBW to stay competitive. For healers Solace and Bauble were way better than any PvP trinket. Hell, Bauble was completely useless in PvE (side note: would love to see a similar thing made for PvP now).
Separating PvE and PvP items also makes balancing easier. If an item is OP in PvP, but not PvE and you nerf it, you screw one community for another. It’s not the correct way to do things.
Make the change!
You know what other PvE item is useable in PvP?
[quote][b][u]Lessons not learnt: Legendaries[/u][/b][/quote]
A few questions if I may:
Did the Warglaives not give you a slight clue that making another legendary useable in arena might just be a bad idea? Did Shadowmourne not give you inkling that well allowing that damn there staff in PvP might just be a bad idea? It’s arguably the most powerful legendary to date.
You’re going to allow PvE players to have a huge advantage in arena. Some classes just don’t need that much resilience. The benefit of the staff just outweighs the benefit of a PvP weapon by far.
Balancing arena on the assumption people are wearing full resilience gear is a good thing. Force them to do it.
And how about this for a doozy? You increased the cost of PvP weapons to insure that PvE players wouldn’t be forced to do PvE in order to obtain a weapon. Guess what? You’re pushing casters to do PvE in order to get the best weapon! Sure most won’t, but I can guarantee the best will do everything in their power to obtain that weapon and have an advantage.
It has yet to get to the Shadowmourne or Warglaives level (one person has it...) so scrap it now! Prevention is better than cure, keep that in mind Blizzard.
[quote][b][u]Speaking of Items: The Enormous Cost of Weapons[/u][/b][/quote]
Let’s get this straight. You increased the cost of PvP weapons and delayed their availability so the PvE community wouldn’t feel obliged to do PvP in order to keep up on DPS.
Did you ever consider the fact it's easily possible to enter the latest raid and obtain a weapon and a few weeks later obtain the heroic version of that weapon before a PvP player is barely half way to obtaining his tier 2 weapon?
Indeed, the advantage of using such a weapon for say a warrior far outweighs the disadvantage of not using a resilience weapon.
So technically if I wanted to do the best I can as a melee class in PvP, I’d want to hop into an awesome raiding guild and do content I might not really enjoy to obtain an advantage?
Not saying I’d do that, but the best of the best might feel the need to.
Banning PvE gear in arena would sort this issue and make it fair for both sides.
[quote][b][u]The removal of Skirmishes for no good reason whatsoever[/u][/b][/quote]
Haha, sorry I had to get that out of my system. See I just recalled what an abomination of an event the EU and NA WoW tournaments were and couldn’t help laughing. I'll discuss that shortly though.
Ok we got a new feature. We can queue up and play our friends at arena and BGs. Sweet. I’m sure some people love this feature.
However, it wasn’t a replacement for skirmishes. It was basically like removing Random BGs and saying well now you can queue against your friends!
[quote][b][u]Bugs, Bugs and more Bugs[/u][/b][/quote]
While I could go on and on here about a ton of issues such as spell reflect ignoring resilience, the insane amount of bugs in the “refurbished” Ring of Valor or still been able to fear and trap people behind the starting area in Ruins (seriously how many years has this been in the game), I won’t because, well, I can’t be bothered. Good enough for you?
Instead let’s look at a bug that was fixed and that was applicable to only PvP:
Show Word: Death –This ability reflects damage back and breaks CC such as Polymorph and Blind.
However at the start of Cataclysm something had changed. If you had an ability that absorbs damage up, the damage wouldn’t reflect and the CC wouldn’t break. Therefore, Disc Priests had to cancel their shields before try to use Shadow Word: Death.
How long did it take you to fix this? Was it in a hot fix or in Patch 4.0.6, Patch 4.1.0, 4.1.0a? Nope, it was in 4.2!
There were plenty of reports about it and yet it took you that long to fix it. Can you not understand the frustrations of the PvP community when a bug as simple as this and others just as simple take such a large amount of time to be fixed?
And then you don’t mention it’s been fixed.
Now this is only a limited example, but hopefully it gets the point across that the PvP community has a point when they claim they’re been ignored when it takes you so long to fix such a simple bug.
[quote][b][u]The Return of Ring of Valor[/u][/b][/quote]
Enough said really.
When the only good thing about last season was the absence of this map, it’s not a great idea to bring it back. You’re most certainly aware that most of the arena community despise RoV.
The map has caused teams at arena tournaments to lose! The map alone!
So admit it was a mistake, scrap it and move on! Show us that your listening because adding this arena back, certainly showed the opposite.
TLDR yet? Or was that a good 1000 words back?
[quote][b][u]Balancing[/u][/b][/quote]
Here’s a Tip: Remember we’re not idiots, so telling us you’re “monitoring the situation” isn’t quite believable when week after week we see a plethora of PvE hot fixes and nothing done about PvP.
I think that’s pretty blunt and straightforward to understand? No?
Why is it that your developers seem to believe that class balance is the viability of every spec to succeed in arena?
It’s a nice pipe dream, but it’s never going to happen.
Who knows what exactly balance means? I certainly don’t, but I know for certain PvP isn’t balanced.
Is it the viability of as many comps with 3 different classes to succeed in arena?
Is it Comp A been countered by Comp B, but still been able to win if they play their cards right?
Both those sound like they’d be nice, but they’re only part of balance.
Enough philosophical crap though.
The problem with this game is your futile attempts to balance the game for both PvE and PvP at the same time.
Another newsflash, it hasn’t worked out too well!
It’s created resentment between the PvE community and PvP community. It’s left certain classes unbalanced in arena just because they need to be for PvE reasons. Resto Druids are really strong in PvE at the moment, but suck you know what in 3v3.
It’s time to do it and you do know what it is.
Balance abilities separately for PvE and PvP.
What you did with Colossal Smash shows you’re open to the idea when necessary. CC as well anyone?
So do it! It’s the only way to truly be able to balance both areas of the game without one area adversely affecting the other.
[quote][b][u]Flavour of the Month[/u][/b][/quote]
Moving on...
[quote][b][u]Forcing players to do Rated Battlegrounds to max out Conquest Points[/u][/b][/quote]
A lot of players jumped for joy at the introduction of RBGs. Finally, they had a choice between doing Arena and doing more objective based PvP.
As you said:
[quote="18496914760"]Remember that part of our goal with Cataclysm was to encourage more players to try Rated Battlegrounds as an alternative to Arenas.[/quote]
While a lot of Arena players didn’t like RBGs, they could still get just as many conquest points from arena so everything was fine. People who didn't like arena had an alternative as well.
Yet due to a variety of reasons, RBGs were not the success you were hoping for. So your solution was to reward a higher conquest cap then arena.
Your aim was quite clear; you wanted to force—though I’m sure you’d describe it as “encourage”—people who favour arena to participate in RBGs.
Arena players are forced to do RBGs despite possibly not enjoying them in order to maximise the number of conquest points they can get per week.
Arena players are forced to participate in RBGs while RBGs players are not forced to do Arena and it’s wholly unfair and unjustified. It’s just as bad as forcing a 25 man raider to do arena in order to maximise his or her valor point cap.
They cater to different people and as you originally planned, one should be an alternative for the other.
While RBGs should reward more points per win and cap you faster per week due to the larger group size and time constraints, it should NOT reward more points overall. You should be able to claim the same amount of points from Arena every week as you can in RBGs albeit at a slower pace. For example, while 4 RBG wins might cap you, 20 arena games should cap you as well. This should all be based on whatever you have the highest rating in.
[quote][b][u]Conclusion[/u][/b][/quote]
What confuses me is that this latest communication failure and epic letdown of a PvP event has occurred in the wake of the gear fiasco and the comments of Jay Wilson. In fact, had it been one of my employees who had made such derogatory comments—whether intentional or not—towards a significant section of my customers, I’d be doing my utmost to please them, not taking actions such as this that just adds weight to the argument that Blizzard are showing a total disregard to the WoW PvP community. Every week we’re waiting for PvP balance changes and yet while we get a plethora of PvE hot fixes every week, we simply get the message that you’re monitoring the situation in regards to PvP.
You might firmly believe that you care about PvP and give it all the attention and more it deserves. Hell, I’m pretty sure you do believe that. However, your actions say different so get a grip and sort these problems!
[quote="24868755804"]I am totally serious when saying this. The PvP game in WoW is important, and it does have in influence on game balance in WoW![/quote]
Don’t keep telling us this. Prove it.
Now you might regard this to be highly critical and written in an obnoxious tone, and you’re absolutely on the mark. This isn’t, however, an attempt to troll. Everything I’ve mentioned has occurred or is still in effect. These issues have annoyed a large majority of the PvP community. The ball is in your court now Blizzard. What you going to do about it?
Blizzard you’ve shown an absolute total disregard for PvP. You’ve treated the PvP community like idiots and continue to do so. Astoundingly you seem utterly oblivious to this! In fact, based on the stuff you’ve said of late—which frankly isn’t much in regard to PvP, let’s be honest—I know for a fact you’re totally oblivious to it. Indeed, you whittle on about how PvP does matter, but here’s a hint: actions speak louder than words and you’ve certainly done none of the former for some time.
From MMR abuse, win trading, allowing PvE gear (Legendary...) in PvP, the honour gear fiasco, the poor balance, flavour of the month classes, **takes a breathe**, bugs, the return of ring of valor, forcing arena players to do RBGs, the removal of skirmishes for no adequate reason, **takes another breathe**, the shambles that was the WoW Tournament, the enormous cost of weapons, the removal of arena armoury features (match history...), “shut up PvP guy” and that's just some of the issues.
So why don’t we go through the A-Z of why PvP sucks and why Blizzard is to blame and try and catapult PvP and your treatment of the PvP community to standards we both deserve?
Pause for a moment though.
Before we continue with our little chat, I just want to point out some ideas, stuff you should keep in mind while reading this and forever more afterwards:
1. Prevention is better than cure
2. We’re not idiots!
3. Actions speak louder than words
So let’s continue shall we?
[quote][u][b]MMR Abuse and Win Trading[/b][/u][/quote]
Who was banned for either of these actions?
Was anyone in the EU? Nope.
Was anyone in the US? Nope.
Was the 3.6k, clear as day, cheating Russian team? Nope.
And yet you still have the nerve to release this gem of a statement:
[quote="23587636287"]we’d like to remind everyone about the importance of fair play. To be clear, cheating is not tolerated in World of Warcraft, and exploitation of ranked PvP play is no exception.[/quote]
And to go back to point number 3, words Blizzard, your actions say different. You’ve shown at best a passive support for cheaters and at worst, an absolute disregard to fair play. We’ve already seen that no one was banned or had their team reset, but that’s not all folks.
You see the issue of MMR abuse became most rampant the week after the season was extended. If you take a look at AJ you can see a great deal of stories of how people lost rank one and gladiator. Indeed, Hydra—arguably the best Disc Priest in the world, who holds every other rank 1 title to date—lost rank one in this particular week to some win trading double DK Paladin team. This was after holding it for most of the season. But for you extending the season, people deserving would have got their just rewards. Yet, you’ve failed to even apologise for this blunder.
Hell you called it cheating yourself and told us to report it:
[quote]So, as I hinted at before, this really is [i]not[/i] a practice to be encouraged. In the simplest terms, the fact that this ‘tactic’ effectively games the system, in order encourage queuing against specific brackets of individuals (in this case, lower rated teams) for the purposes of boosting team and personal ratings, means that it would be construed as cheating.
To this end, players making use of this type of strategy really shouldn’t expect to necessarily ‘get away’ with such actions, and if you yourself have any knowledge of teams specifically embarked on this kind of scheme then you’re welcome to get in touch with us and provide us with the details accordingly.[/quote]
To be fair, you do always state the end of the season deadline isn’t for definitive. However, there wasn’t a huge MMR bug allowing widespread cheating to occur any other time you said it. Would it have been so difficult to end the season and just have us wait two weeks instead of one for the new season?
No worries though right, the MMR bug has been fixed?
Sure it has, but you started a new season with the bug still in place and only a few weeks afterwards did you fix it. Newsflash Blizzard, it wasn’t some slight bug; you should have delayed the season until you fixed it. I mean Fair play? You launched the season while people could still abuse and still benefitted from their abuse of last season.
Or maybe you believe it our responsibility to police ourselves? I’ll just get on the phone to the exam board and tell them not to worry about students cheating shall I? It’s your job to police things, not ours. Remember point number 1, preventing cheating in the first place is better than fixing it later especially when you have ample evidence it’s occurring.
The old armoury had a match history feature that made it easy to spot and report win traders. The removal of this feature doesn’t support the argument you don’t give a damn about cheating, but it certainly adds weight to it.
Here’s what I hope you’ve learned so far if there’s ever a bug like this in the future:
• Don’t extend a PvP season when there’s a huge MMR bug.
• Don’t launch a new season until it’s fixed.
• Reset everyone’s MMR.
Those aren’t suggestions by the way, they’re demands because anything less is just insanity.
Also when patronising the entire community with a post about fair play and cheating, keep in mind we’re not idiots and can see right through your BS.
[quote][b][u]PvE Gear still in PvP[/u][/b][/quote]
Isn’t this screenshot from the Cataclysm beta interesting?
http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/4707/wowscrnshot110810190806.jpg
What’s this, PvE gear not useable in arena? It seems like Blizzard learnt something from the end of Wrath.
But oh wait, Cataclysm launches and this awesome feature is nowhere to be seen. It was scrapped and no reason was given for doing so.
Hell, maybe it was just a bug and never intended in the first place. However, unlike the MMR bug, it’d have been greatly appreciated if you didn’t bother to fix this one.
PvE items, especially heroic level items, give a HUGE advantage to people who PvE and PvP. It’s one of the main reasons retarded damage is such a possibility. Unheeded Warning...
Also do remember that there’s no longer a higher tier of PvP gear. Someone in the best PvP gear is at a disadvantage to someone in the best PvE based on item level alone.
In Wrath most melee classes had to get DBW to stay competitive. For healers Solace and Bauble were way better than any PvP trinket. Hell, Bauble was completely useless in PvE (side note: would love to see a similar thing made for PvP now).
Separating PvE and PvP items also makes balancing easier. If an item is OP in PvP, but not PvE and you nerf it, you screw one community for another. It’s not the correct way to do things.
Make the change!
You know what other PvE item is useable in PvP?
[quote][b][u]Lessons not learnt: Legendaries[/u][/b][/quote]
A few questions if I may:
Did the Warglaives not give you a slight clue that making another legendary useable in arena might just be a bad idea? Did Shadowmourne not give you inkling that well allowing that damn there staff in PvP might just be a bad idea? It’s arguably the most powerful legendary to date.
You’re going to allow PvE players to have a huge advantage in arena. Some classes just don’t need that much resilience. The benefit of the staff just outweighs the benefit of a PvP weapon by far.
Balancing arena on the assumption people are wearing full resilience gear is a good thing. Force them to do it.
And how about this for a doozy? You increased the cost of PvP weapons to insure that PvE players wouldn’t be forced to do PvE in order to obtain a weapon. Guess what? You’re pushing casters to do PvE in order to get the best weapon! Sure most won’t, but I can guarantee the best will do everything in their power to obtain that weapon and have an advantage.
It has yet to get to the Shadowmourne or Warglaives level (one person has it...) so scrap it now! Prevention is better than cure, keep that in mind Blizzard.
[quote][b][u]Speaking of Items: The Enormous Cost of Weapons[/u][/b][/quote]
Let’s get this straight. You increased the cost of PvP weapons and delayed their availability so the PvE community wouldn’t feel obliged to do PvP in order to keep up on DPS.
Did you ever consider the fact it's easily possible to enter the latest raid and obtain a weapon and a few weeks later obtain the heroic version of that weapon before a PvP player is barely half way to obtaining his tier 2 weapon?
Indeed, the advantage of using such a weapon for say a warrior far outweighs the disadvantage of not using a resilience weapon.
So technically if I wanted to do the best I can as a melee class in PvP, I’d want to hop into an awesome raiding guild and do content I might not really enjoy to obtain an advantage?
Not saying I’d do that, but the best of the best might feel the need to.
Banning PvE gear in arena would sort this issue and make it fair for both sides.
[quote][b][u]The removal of Skirmishes for no good reason whatsoever[/u][/b][/quote]
Haha, sorry I had to get that out of my system. See I just recalled what an abomination of an event the EU and NA WoW tournaments were and couldn’t help laughing. I'll discuss that shortly though.
Ok we got a new feature. We can queue up and play our friends at arena and BGs. Sweet. I’m sure some people love this feature.
However, it wasn’t a replacement for skirmishes. It was basically like removing Random BGs and saying well now you can queue against your friends!
Here’s what I hope you’ve learned so far if there’s ever a bug like this in the future:
• Don’t extend a PvP season when there’s a huge MMR bug.
• Don’t launch a new season until it’s fixed.
• Reset everyone’s MMR.
Those aren’t suggestions by the way, they’re demands because anything less is just insanity.
Also when patronising the entire community with a post about fair play and cheating, keep in mind we’re not idiots and can see right through your BS.
[quote][b][u]PvE Gear still in PvP[/u][/b][/quote]
Isn’t this screenshot from the Cataclysm beta interesting?
http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/4707/wowscrnshot110810190806.jpg
What’s this, PvE gear not useable in arena? It seems like Blizzard learnt something from the end of Wrath.
But oh wait, Cataclysm launches and this awesome feature is nowhere to be seen. It was scrapped and no reason was given for doing so.
Hell, maybe it was just a bug and never intended in the first place. However, unlike the MMR bug, it’d have been greatly appreciated if you didn’t bother to fix this one.
PvE items, especially heroic level items, give a HUGE advantage to people who PvE and PvP. It’s one of the main reasons retarded damage is such a possibility. Unheeded Warning...
Also do remember that there’s no longer a higher tier of PvP gear. Someone in the best PvP gear is at a disadvantage to someone in the best PvE based on item level alone.
In Wrath most melee classes had to get DBW to stay competitive. For healers Solace and Bauble were way better than any PvP trinket. Hell, Bauble was completely useless in PvE (side note: would love to see a similar thing made for PvP now).
Separating PvE and PvP items also makes balancing easier. If an item is OP in PvP, but not PvE and you nerf it, you screw one community for another. It’s not the correct way to do things.
Make the change!
You know what other PvE item is useable in PvP?
[quote][b][u]Lessons not learnt: Legendaries[/u][/b][/quote]
A few questions if I may:
Did the Warglaives not give you a slight clue that making another legendary useable in arena might just be a bad idea? Did Shadowmourne not give you inkling that well allowing that damn there staff in PvP might just be a bad idea? It’s arguably the most powerful legendary to date.
You’re going to allow PvE players to have a huge advantage in arena. Some classes just don’t need that much resilience. The benefit of the staff just outweighs the benefit of a PvP weapon by far.
Balancing arena on the assumption people are wearing full resilience gear is a good thing. Force them to do it.
And how about this for a doozy? You increased the cost of PvP weapons to insure that PvE players wouldn’t be forced to do PvE in order to obtain a weapon. Guess what? You’re pushing casters to do PvE in order to get the best weapon! Sure most won’t, but I can guarantee the best will do everything in their power to obtain that weapon and have an advantage.
It has yet to get to the Shadowmourne or Warglaives level (one person has it...) so scrap it now! Prevention is better than cure, keep that in mind Blizzard.
[quote][b][u]Speaking of Items: The Enormous Cost of Weapons[/u][/b][/quote]
Let’s get this straight. You increased the cost of PvP weapons and delayed their availability so the PvE community wouldn’t feel obliged to do PvP in order to keep up on DPS.
Did you ever consider the fact it's easily possible to enter the latest raid and obtain a weapon and a few weeks later obtain the heroic version of that weapon before a PvP player is barely half way to obtaining his tier 2 weapon?
Indeed, the advantage of using such a weapon for say a warrior far outweighs the disadvantage of not using a resilience weapon.
So technically if I wanted to do the best I can as a melee class in PvP, I’d want to hop into an awesome raiding guild and do content I might not really enjoy to obtain an advantage?
Not saying I’d do that, but the best of the best might feel the need to.
Banning PvE gear in arena would sort this issue and make it fair for both sides.
[quote][b][u]The removal of Skirmishes for no good reason whatsoever[/u][/b][/quote]
Haha, sorry I had to get that out of my system. See I just recalled what an abomination of an event the EU and NA WoW tournaments were and couldn’t help laughing. I'll discuss that shortly though.
Ok we got a new feature. We can queue up and play our friends at arena and BGs. Sweet. I’m sure some people love this feature.
However, it wasn’t a replacement for skirmishes. It was basically like removing Random BGs and saying well now you can queue against your friends!
[quote][b][u]Bugs, Bugs and more Bugs[/u][/b][/quote]
While I could go on and on here about a ton of issues such as spell reflect ignoring resilience, the insane amount of bugs in the “refurbished” Ring of Valor or still been able to fear and trap people behind the starting area in Ruins (seriously how many years has this been in the game), I won’t because, well, I can’t be bothered. Good enough for you?
Instead let’s look at a bug that was fixed and that was applicable to only PvP:
Show Word: Death –This ability reflects damage back and breaks CC such as Polymorph and Blind.
However at the start of Cataclysm something had changed. If you had an ability that absorbs damage up, the damage wouldn’t reflect and the CC wouldn’t break. Therefore, Disc Priests had to cancel their shields before try to use Shadow Word: Death.
How long did it take you to fix this? Was it in a hot fix or in Patch 4.0.6, Patch 4.1.0, 4.1.0a? Nope, it was in 4.2!
There were plenty of reports about it and yet it took you that long to fix it. Can you not understand the frustrations of the PvP community when a bug as simple as this and others just as simple take such a large amount of time to be fixed?
And then you don’t mention it’s been fixed.
Now this is only a limited example, but hopefully it gets the point across that the PvP community has a point when they claim they’re been ignored when it takes you so long to fix such a simple bug.
[quote][b][u]The Return of Ring of Valor[/u][/b][/quote]
Enough said really.
When the only good thing about last season was the absence of this map, it’s not a great idea to bring it back. You’re most certainly aware that most of the arena community despise RoV.
The map has caused teams at arena tournaments to lose! The map alone!
So admit it was a mistake, scrap it and move on! Show us that your listening because adding this arena back, certainly showed the opposite.
TLDR yet? Or was that a good 1000 words back?
[quote][b][u]Balancing[/u][/b][/quote]
Here’s a Tip: Remember we’re not idiots, so telling us you’re “monitoring the situation” isn’t quite believable when week after week we see a plethora of PvE hot fixes and nothing done about PvP.
I think that’s pretty blunt and straightforward to understand? No?
Why is it that your developers seem to believe that class balance is the viability of every spec to succeed in arena?
It’s a nice pipe dream, but it’s never going to happen.
Who knows what exactly balance means? I certainly don’t, but I know for certain PvP isn’t balanced.
Is it the viability of as many comps with 3 different classes to succeed in arena?
Is it Comp A been countered by Comp B, but still been able to win if they play their cards right?
Both those sound like they’d be nice, but they’re only part of balance.
Enough philosophical crap though.
The problem with this game is your futile attempts to balance the game for both PvE and PvP at the same time.
Another newsflash, it hasn’t worked out too well!
It’s created resentment between the PvE community and PvP community. It’s left certain classes unbalanced in arena just because they need to be for PvE reasons. Resto Druids are really strong in PvE at the moment, but suck you know what in 3v3.
It’s time to do it and you do know what it is.
Balance abilities separately for PvE and PvP.
What you did with Colossal Smash shows you’re open to the idea when necessary. CC as well anyone?
So do it! It’s the only way to truly be able to balance both areas of the game without one area adversely affecting the other.
[quote][b][u]Flavour of the Month[/u][/b][/quote]
Moving on...
[quote][b][u]Forcing players to do Rated Battlegrounds to max out Conquest Points[/u][/b][/quote]
A lot of players jumped for joy at the introduction of RBGs. Finally, they had a choice between doing Arena and doing more objective based PvP.
As you said:
[quote="18496914760"]Remember that part of our goal with Cataclysm was to encourage more players to try Rated Battlegrounds as an alternative to Arenas.[/quote]
While a lot of Arena players didn’t like RBGs, they could still get just as many conquest points from arena so everything was fine. People who didn't like arena had an alternative as well.
Yet due to a variety of reasons, RBGs were not the success you were hoping for. So your solution was to reward a higher conquest cap then arena.
Your aim was quite clear; you wanted to force—though I’m sure you’d describe it as “encourage”—people who favour arena to participate in RBGs.
Arena players are forced to do RBGs despite possibly not enjoying them in order to maximise the number of conquest points they can get per week.
Arena players are forced to participate in RBGs while RBGs players are not forced to do Arena and it’s wholly unfair and unjustified. It’s just as bad as forcing a 25 man raider to do arena in order to maximise his or her valor point cap.
They cater to different people and as you originally planned, one should be an alternative for the other.
While RBGs should reward more points per win and cap you faster per week due to the larger group size and time constraints, it should NOT reward more points overall. You should be able to claim the same amount of points from Arena every week as you can in RBGs albeit at a slower pace. For example, while 4 RBG wins might cap you, 20 arena games should cap you as well. This should all be based on whatever you have the highest rating in.
[quote][b][u]Conclusion[/u][/b][/quote]
What confuses me is that this latest communication failure and epic letdown of a PvP event has occurred in the wake of the gear fiasco and the comments of Jay Wilson. In fact, had it been one of my employees who had made such derogatory comments—whether intentional or not—towards a significant section of my customers, I’d be doing my utmost to please them, not taking actions such as this that just adds weight to the argument that Blizzard are showing a total disregard to the WoW PvP community. Every week we’re waiting for PvP balance changes and yet while we get a plethora of PvE hot fixes every week, we simply get the message that you’re monitoring the situation in regards to PvP.
You might firmly believe that you care about PvP and give it all the attention and more it deserves. Hell, I’m pretty sure you do believe that. However, your actions say different so get a grip and sort these problems!
[quote="24868755804"]I am totally serious when saying this. The PvP game in WoW is important, and it does have in influence on game balance in WoW![/quote]
Don’t keep telling us this. Prove it.
Now you might regard this to be highly critical and written in an obnoxious tone, and you’re absolutely on the mark. This isn’t, however, an attempt to troll. Everything I’ve mentioned has occurred or is still in effect. These issues have annoyed a large majority of the PvP community. The ball is in your court now Blizzard. What you going to do about it?
That sure wasn't fun to post having to wait a minute between every post.
Edit: If you'd like to repost this to the US forum or elsewhere, you can find the posts below:
http://www.voomt.com/pvp/post1.txt
http://www.voomt.com/pvp/post2.txt
http://www.voomt.com/pvp/post3.txt
http://www.voomt.com/pvp/post4.txt
http://www.voomt.com/pvp/post5.txt
Lot easier then adding all the formatting again.
Edit: If you'd like to repost this to the US forum or elsewhere, you can find the posts below:
http://www.voomt.com/pvp/post1.txt
http://www.voomt.com/pvp/post2.txt
http://www.voomt.com/pvp/post3.txt
http://www.voomt.com/pvp/post4.txt
http://www.voomt.com/pvp/post5.txt
Lot easier then adding all the formatting again.
http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2504845332
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/726876-Some-things-you-didn-t-know-about-WoW...
