Cataclysm

[Ingmar]

I thought I explained this like 10 times before. Your hate against GC is misplaced, you want to hate the Evil Kalgan.

This.

[Paelos]

Ghostcrawler gets it. He fully understands why things went wrong. He just doesn't LIKE why it went wrong, thinks the players are total retards for not accepting the grand vision, and he thinks the game sucks more now for having to cater to them.

But he WILL cater to them because he's been forced to. Because he does understand that you can't abuse your player core with impunity, no matter how many money-hats you have. Face it, they got arrogant and they paid a large price for it. When you take it down to its core, Ghostcrawler isn't sorry about Cataclysm. He loved it. He thinks the game was better for it. He believes that everything they did was for the greater good of WoW and the customers got in the way.

Nothing he says now will turn me off about the game. In fact, his post is like drinking in delicious sweet tears. He KNOWS that the ideas he, Kalgan, and the rest of the hardcore-obsessed-devs dreamed of implementing were proven to be total shit, designed for a loser community that cannot support the product. And now, like any douchebag who gets caught, he will never really admit he was wrong. He will make hedging rationalization posts over his failure to understand that this is a business. And I will eat up every little word for one simple fact.

We owned his little dreamworld with our big wallets. Right in the fucking face.

[luckton]

Ghostcrawler gets it. He fully understands why things went wrong. He just doesn't LIKE why it went wrong, thinks the players are total retards for not accepting the grand vision, and he thinks the game sucks more now for having to cater to them.

But he WILL cater to them because he's been forced to. Because he does understand that you can't abuse your player core with impunity, no matter how many money-hats you have. Face it, they got arrogant and they paid a large price for it. When you take it down to its core, Ghostcrawler isn't sorry about Cataclysm. He loved it. He thinks the game was better for it. He believes that everything they did was for the greater good of WoW and the customers got in the way.

Nothing he says now will turn me off about the game. In fact, his post is like drinking in delicious sweet tears. He KNOWS that the ideas he, Kalgan, and the rest of the hardcore-obsessed-devs dreamed of implementing were proven to be total shit, designed for a loser community that cannot support the product. And now, like any douchebag who gets caught, he will never really admit he was wrong. He will make hedging rationalization posts over his failure to understand that this is a business. And I will eat up every little word for one simple fact.

We owned his little dreamworld with our big wallets. Right in the fucking face.

[caladein]

I don't know what's more disconcerting recently, that post or Kageru's "trust betrayal cycle" post.  Like, really guys...

(Who am I joking, it's every other post about Diablo III over on Elitist Jerks by a landslide.)

[Ragnoros]

So, Paelos, now the voice of reason in the WoW sub-forum.  This must be Thursday. I never could get the hang of Thursdays.

[Maledict]

This thread has gone completely off the deep end. Between people completely not reading posts, people apparently now having mind reading powers and the overall weirdness of obsessing over individuals it's actually quite creepy.

I built my gold from scratch and raid led every week for 7 years. I quit WoW because I didn't like the way the game had gone and it wasnt fun anymore (I hate heroics and the concept of them). I don't need to spend time obsessing over which Blizzard designer was responsible and leading some sort of crusade to get them fired or to eternally stalk them. Come on guys - cant we not just move on when we leave the game?

[Wolf]

I feel the need to start replacing the word casuals with bads, just to compensate a bit for the way the thread has gone the past couple of days 

[apocrypha]

I also find the GC hate is getting a bit weird.

Currently the game seems to offer things to all levels of play - I've got friends in hardcore raiding guilds who still find there's challenges for them (although mostly they're reaching the end of content now and waiting for MoP) and me an a mate resubbed this week and within 30 mins of logging in for the 1st time in 4-6 months were running brand new dungeons which were dropping loot 20 iLvls higher than we had on and having no problems and a lot of fun.

I no longer care what I imagine which dev thinks what, nor what they've done with the game in the past. Right now it feels incredibly casual friendly whilst still offering things to make the more hardcore players feel that there's rewards for them too.

Plus, monkey pet. With a fez. 

[Ironwood]

This thread has gone completely off the deep end. Between people completely not reading posts, people apparently now having mind reading powers and the overall weirdness of obsessing over individuals it's actually quite creepy.

I built my gold from scratch and raid led every week for 7 years. I quit WoW because I didn't like the way the game had gone and it wasnt fun anymore (I hate heroics and the concept of them). I don't need to spend time obsessing over which Blizzard designer was responsible and leading some sort of crusade to get them fired or to eternally stalk them. Come on guys - cant we not just move on when we leave the game?

The fact that you're posting here, in this forum thread, suggests not.

[Fabricated]

I don't know what's more disconcerting recently, that post or Kageru's "trust betrayal cycle" post.  Like, really guys...

(Who am I joking, it's every other post about Diablo III over on Elitist Jerks by a landslide.)

Not quite getting your point. We're not exactly pulling the belief that Ghostcrawler is Kalgan's ghost out of our asses. He literally made a big blog post that said basically, "Stop being so bad at my game!!" and then something happened and a wave of nerfs came through.

[Paelos]

I also find the GC hate is getting a bit weird.

Ok, I want you to imagine something. Imagine you've been involved in a sports team for 5 years. It's a casual league for people down at the YMCA, and it's mostly just a bunch of late-20s-early-30s people who like to get together and kick the ball around against each other. Then, the head of you league sends out an email saying that he's gotten several complaints that the league isn't competitive enough, and he just happens to be on the team that always takes the league way too seriously. They win most of the championships because they recruit for it, while the rest just play with friends.

So, this leader opens the door for semi-pro teams to join your friends and family league, and he requires a skills test in order to form a team. After 5 years, the people on your team, of which you are a leader, are openly appauled. Some are fat, some are slow, and some simply don't know how to play very well. However, you've always had fun with them win or lose, and you enjoy shooting the shit with them before or after games. After all, they are a social part of your day as well. Now, this uppity shit that's leading the league is driving them out, and your friends would rather leave.

You can just leave the league and be pissed that this guy shot something successful in the foot. Or, you can fight him and use whatever movements you have to prove that he is ruining what was one of the best community leagues in the city. I will always choose to fight.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Are we talking about Ghostcrawler or Wolf?

[Paelos]

My point is that when somebody at the top decides to go against the grain and ruin your friend's game, I tend to get openly pissed about it, even if I could compete under the new rules.

[Lantyssa]

We're guessing when we say 'small number' and 'majority of subscribers'. They haven't lost over half their subscribers, by all accounts.

They lost enough they're doing things differently.  Certainly more than any other period in the game's history.

[amiable]

http://us.battle.net/support/en/article/scroll-of-resurrection-faq

Auto-80?  Wow (for WoW).  They must actually be hurting.

[apocrypha]

Paelos, I've been playing WoW since the start, since beta. I've had a lot of friends come & go throughout that time, I've unsubbed myself for 2 long periods - one of over a year, last one of ~4 months. I get the hate, I've been there, it's just that it's gone on too long and it's starting to make you sound a bit... obsessed.

This isn't meant personally and please don't get insulted by it, but it makes me think of christians and gays. It's like... really? They're still going on about that? Enough already, move on.

People are reading into that post from GC things that just aren't there. He specifically says that they realise now that they should have had more granularity between difficulties in Cata dungeons & raids and that moving on that's exactly what they're going to do. The current set of dungeons are really, really easy. They've nerfed the crap out of the old dungeons. They've introduced a new super-easy raid difficulty level called LFR and it's the most popular raiding they've ever had. They can't turn back time but they've come as close as humanly possible to do and openly said so.

Just let it go now, move on.

[Jayce]

I also find the GC hate is getting a bit weird.

Ok, I want you to imagine something. Imagine you've been involved in a sports team for 5 years.

This is a great metaphor and point, but it does leave one thing out, I think. It seems to me that at launch, the average difficulty of instances and quests (especially quests designed for a group) was medium-high. At BC, I think it's fair to say that the heroics were grindingly difficult at any but the highest level of gear. Then in WOTLK they took a left turn at Albuquerque and made the heroics mind-numblingly easy, especially at high levels of gear.

So I feel like your sports league may have only formed in the fairly recent past, and many of the complainers were those who liked vanilla and BC better than the WOTLK endgame. Of course it's best if both styles of play are possible, but encouraging anyone to play at less than MAX REWARD is a trick to pull off, though it seems like they are getting there with the raid finder.

[Wolf]

I also find the GC hate is getting a bit weird.

Ok, I want you to imagine something. Imagine you've been involved in a sports team for 5 years. It's a casual league for people down at the YMCA, and it's mostly just a bunch of late-20s-early-30s people who like to get together and kick the ball around against each other. Then, the head of you league sends out an email saying that he's gotten several complaints that the league isn't competitive enough, and he just happens to be on the team that always takes the league way too seriously. They win most of the championships because they recruit for it, while the rest just play with friends.

So, this leader opens the door for semi-pro teams to join your friends and family league, and he requires a skills test in order to form a team. After 5 years, the people on your team, of which you are a leader, are openly appauled. Some are fat, some are slow, and some simply don't know how to play very well. However, you've always had fun with them win or lose, and you enjoy shooting the shit with them before or after games. After all, they are a social part of your day as well. Now, this uppity shit that's leading the league is driving them out, and your friends would rather leave.

You can just leave the league and be pissed that this guy shot something successful in the foot. Or, you can fight him and use whatever movements you have to prove that he is ruining what was one of the best community leagues in the city. I will always choose to fight.

That doesn't work on so many levels. First of all, you need to imagine you and your friends are playing in the same league as Barcelona and the same rules apply up and down. We want a 20m field, 15 minute halfs, 6 people per team, not a lot of contact, don't kick the ball really hard because, fuck man, Fred has to go to his bank job tomorrow and he can't have a blue eye from a stray. Barcelona wants 100m field, 45 minute halfs, 11 people per team and no restrictions on how hard they're allowed to kick the ball. You know what? We are not in the same league - we're in different leagues and the game allows for both groups to play and enjoy. Some people enjoy watching barcelona play in that scenario, most don't care and just get together on a sunday to kick the ball around. As long as the game allows for both, why would you care if barcelona exists? We're at a point where, if Blizzard doesn't fuck up hardcore with Pandas, that can be achieved. That wasn't the case in BC, WotLK or Cataclysm.

I just don't get how this is a conversation? Do you think Blizzard wants to lose the OTHER half of their subs if they go hardcore on the EZ scale?

[Rokal]

Ok, I want you to imagine something.

The big difference in this situation is GC was not responsible for the Cata difficulty change, despite being the public face of the developers. He was the class designer when Cata launched iirc (though according to this blog post he is the lead systems designer now). Every time I see these weird GC hate posts ("Fire GC!"), it makes me embarrassed to be an gamer.

Your giant conspiracy post "they wanted to make a game without bads, but they just couldn't have it!" ignores all the casual-friendly changes that were made in Cata. They didn't attempt to simplify/consolidate talents, ease glyph collection, simplify primary/secondary stats, and make smooth out class progression (pets at level 1) because "fuck the bads!". They made those changes, just as they made the difficulty changes, as a response to feedback and/or because they thought it would make a the game better. And btw, those class/system changes are probably the ones GC is actually responsible for given his role.

Not quite getting your point. We're not exactly pulling the belief that Ghostcrawler is Kalgan's ghost out of our asses. He literally made a big blog post that said basically, "Stop being so bad at my game!!" and then something happened and a wave of nerfs came through.

Blizzard saw that a lot of PuGs were failing on the new heroics, many wiping because they weren't following pre-Wrath basics like using Strategy. The "Dungeons are Hard" blog post reminded people about these basics, for those that started playing in Wrath. It also announced that some nerfs were coming, and admitted back in January that there was not enough 85 content for people that weren't ready for or didn't want to do heroic 5-mans. I'd recommend reading the blog again here, it's not as sinister as you've built it up to be in your head. People had a negative reaction to the post simply because it didn't say what people wanted it to say "We're going back to Wrath difficulty next week!", regardless of what the post actually did say.

[Merusk]

I just don't get how this is a conversation? Do you think Blizzard wants to lose the OTHER half of their subs if they go hardcore on the EZ scale?

The current thinking is "You stayed through WOTLK.  You bitched on the forums, but you stayed.  Meanwhile in Cata you stopped bitching, but everyone else fled.  We'll take the WOTLK mode instead and just deal with the whining."

See, Hardcore always stays with the best raid game. For the long forseeable future that's going to be WoW. TOR was the last great hope and instead of embracing the game, that demographic has spent a lot of resouces and time tearing-down it and RIFT.  Guess where that leaves them now?

Meanwhile the casual gamer will go where they find the most fun.  For a long, long time that was WOW.  Then WOW shit on them and they've hopped off to TOR and RIFT.  WoW misses that money and is trying to get it back.  We'll see if they succeed.   If they don't, they may well tack to the hardcore again.  

I wouldn't hold my breath, though.  Blizz is expending a lot of capital trying to tug those folks back and it looks like it's working at least in part.

[Wolf]

the way they're selling Pandas, especially the challenge modes and with the current raid setup, they are catering to me. I even hated the cata heroics, it was an issue for me. If they mess up the raid difficulty, however, and heroic raids are clock in, get epekz I just won't bother. And I'm the only crazy person in guild willing to invest the extra time to keep shit moving, so my guild goes with me. I'd wager there's a big portion of 10m guilds in the same situation and the 25m scene is more or less dead at this point.

[Nevermore]

This thread has gone completely off the deep end. Between people completely not reading posts, people apparently now having mind reading powers and the overall weirdness of obsessing over individuals it's actually quite creepy.

I built my gold from scratch and raid led every week for 7 years. I quit WoW because I didn't like the way the game had gone and it wasnt fun anymore (I hate heroics and the concept of them). I don't need to spend time obsessing over which Blizzard designer was responsible and leading some sort of crusade to get them fired or to eternally stalk them. Come on guys - cant we not just move on when we leave the game?

Wow, talk about going off the deep end.  There are a lot of people here who seem personally offended that issue was taken with what Ghostcrawler said in that blog post.  So much so that they've projected an awful lot of things into those negative posts that just weren't said.

I can't speak for anyone else, but here's what I said:

Based on his blog post, Ghostcrawler doesn't get it.
When confronted about that opinion, here's why I think Ghostcrawler doesn't get it.

Here are things I didn't say:

Ghostcrawler was responsible for the whole dungeon fiasco.
Ghostcrawler needs to be fired.
A particular person needs to be blamed and held responsible for the direction Cataclysm took.
I stalk and am obsessed with Ghostcrawler.

You want to know why Ghostcrawler was a target?  Because he made a blog post that contained a stupid statement.  I for one at least didn't post some random non sequitur Ghostcrawler hate post out of nowhere.  I was responding to a specific thing I thought was stupid.  The fact that he inevitably engenders that kind of response when he posts might be an indication that he should stop posting, because he's terrible at it.  If he wants to make himself the 'face' of Blizzard devs, then he needs to either learn how to communicate better (ie: stop hedging on things that were obviously a huge mistake) or grin and bear the rotten tomatoes thrown his way.

[Ironwood]

Yarp.

[Fabricated]

Blizzard saw that a lot of PuGs were failing on the new heroics, many wiping because they weren't following pre-Wrath basics like using Strategy. The "Dungeons are Hard" blog post reminded people about these basics, for those that started playing in Wrath. It also announced that some nerfs were coming, and admitted back in January that there was not enough 85 content for people that weren't ready for or didn't want to do heroic 5-mans. I'd recommend reading the blog again here, it's not as sinister as you've built it up to be in your head. People had a negative reaction to the post simply because it didn't say what people wanted it to say "We're going back to Wrath difficulty next week!", regardless of what the post actually did say.

I did reread it, and I remembered it correctly. It's literally, "stop being so bad" and "don't give up!! I know it sucks when you get queued into a shitty group that's wiped a dozen times on some terrible boss, and that you'll lose like 1-2 people every attempt until everyone just disbands but suck it up buttercup!" Sorry.

And this:
"We don't at all view the Cataclysm dungeon and raid balance as a mistake."
"We don't at all view the Cataclysm dungeon and raid balance as a mistake."
"We don't at all view the Cataclysm dungeon and raid balance as a mistake."
"We don't at all view the Cataclysm dungeon and raid balance as a mistake."
"We don't at all view the Cataclysm dungeon and raid balance as a mistake."

Funny, a year later, the raid/dungeon guy:

Q. What didn’t work out as planned or expected?
Initially, we started off the Heroic dungeons at too high of a difficulty. The difficulty level rather abruptly changed when compared to the Heroics players experienced at the end of Wrath of the Lich King. This major change caught many players off guard, and frustrated some of them. The difficulty also increased the effective amount of time required to complete a dungeon to a longer experience than we wanted.

Welp.

[Paelos]

the way they're selling Pandas, especially the challenge modes and with the current raid setup, they are catering to me. I even hated the cata heroics, it was an issue for me. If they mess up the raid difficulty, however, and heroic raids are clock in, get epekz I just won't bother. And I'm the only crazy person in guild willing to invest the extra time to keep shit moving, so my guild goes with me. I'd wager there's a big portion of 10m guilds in the same situation and the 25m scene is more or less dead at this point.

Newsflash, nobody gives a fuck about heroic raids except your ilk. That's never been the problem. Stop clutching your pearls. They can literally make those so fucking hard you weep blood, and we will never care.

The problem was they did that with REGULAR RAIDS AND FIVE MANS. I mean after all this time, you need to realize that every single person who considers themselves casual is very very very much in favor of the stratification of content along regular and heroic lines when it comes to raids. What they aren't ever in favor of is people fucking with their 5 mans.

[Xanthippe]

Paelos, I've been playing WoW since the start, since beta. I've had a lot of friends come & go throughout that time, I've unsubbed myself for 2 long periods - one of over a year, last one of ~4 months. I get the hate, I've been there, it's just that it's gone on too long and it's starting to make you sound a bit... obsessed.

This isn't meant personally and please don't get insulted by it, but it makes me think of christians and gays. It's like... really? They're still going on about that? Enough already, move on.

People are reading into that post from GC things that just aren't there. He specifically says that they realise now that they should have had more granularity between difficulties in Cata dungeons & raids and that moving on that's exactly what they're going to do. The current set of dungeons are really, really easy. They've nerfed the crap out of the old dungeons. They've introduced a new super-easy raid difficulty level called LFR and it's the most popular raiding they've ever had. They can't turn back time but they've come as close as humanly possible to do and openly said so.

Just let it go now, move on.

No, see, here's the thing, for you and other people who say "I don't get the GC hate" and "why can't you just move on and forget about all this?"

Paelos expressed, very well, the problem those of us who h8 GC the GC h8 - mind you, after several people said "I just don't get it." (That's kind of like asking for clarification, no?)

Surely by now you understand how he feels, although maybe you don't agree with him. Fine, it's an opinion, we all have them. But jagging on Paelos (and others) for continuing to post is silly. Paelos posts for the same reason other people do. You don't have to read his posts nor respond to them (as with every other post on F13 and the world in general).

FWIW, I think Paelos is spot on. GC has been a twat, he's always been a twat, and continues to be a twat. After reading years of GC's posts (and disagreeing with his analyses on what people want), it's delicious to see the changes that have been made, and the post-mortems acknowledging same. But GC is still a tw... anyway. He should not be the public face of Blizzard because he's really, really bad at it.

[Fabricated]

Well, I do want to say I'm kinda confused as to why they're having that stacking debuff apply to Heroic Mode Dragon Soul. I mean, I know we're at the end of the expansion and who gives a shit, but the heroic raid is for people who want to hit their balls with a hammer. Let them, and nerf it if it's basically impossible or really fucks over people who like to play a specific class or set and they keep getting benched regardless of how well they can play.

[Miasma]

I understand and agree with gc hate up to the point people point out he was wrong, made terrible decisions and stubbornly refused to admit to cata's failures but some people seem to think he's sitting behind a desk made out of human bone wringing his hands with delight at the tears of his userbase.  I think he sincerely thought that people would like the changes and after changing their habits to adjust would get more enjoyment out of the game.  It was an absurd, foolish plan that the vast majority of people could have (and did) point out wouldn't work and was doomed to failure but he didn't do it out of spite or hatred.

He made a bad decision, he's not evil incarnate.

I would love to know if the final changes back to casual were his idea or rammed down his throat by his bosses though, I have to assume the latter.

[Nevermore]

I understand and agree with gc hate up to the point people point out he was wrong, made terrible decisions and stubbornly refused to admit to cata's failures but some people seem to think he's sitting behind a desk made out of human bone wringing his hands with delight at the tears of his userbase.  I think he sincerely thought that people would like the changes and after changing their habits to adjust would get more enjoyment out of the game.  It was an absurd, foolish plan that the vast majority of people could have (and did) point out wouldn't work and was doomed to failure but he didn't do it out of spite or hatred.

He made a bad decision, he's not evil incarnate.

I would love to know if the final changes back to casual were his idea or rammed down his throat by his bosses though, I have to assume the latter.

Could you please point out where someone said they thought he was evil incarnate?  It seems that the people who are engaging in hyperbole are the 'I don't get it' people.

Of course he sincerely thought people would like the changes.  It's that and his hubris in still thinking, even in hindsight, the dungeon difficulties were fine is why I think he just doesn't get it.  It's not 'evil' or maliciousness, it's cluelessness and an inability to look beyond himself.  He thinks it's fun, therefore everyone else should as well!  Just keep trying harder, you'll find the fun!

[Xanthippe]

"The problem was that we had this whole group of players who felt like they couldn't make any progress on their characters. Even if they wanted to end up raiding with their friends, they couldn't earn the gear they needed to get into those raids (especially in the absence of Raid Finder). I don't believe that the instances were too hard; it's obvious there are players who enjoy that content. I believe the problem was that there were no alternatives."

This is why I still don't like GC, why I think he doesn't get it, and why I think the changes were forced on him.

It's like he was telling people that it's their own fault if they weren't having fun, just keep at it, eventually it'll be fun, really it will be - despite all evidence to the contrary. And he has to eat those words now, but still they aren't going down easily.

[Miasma]

Could you please point out where someone said they thought he was evil incarnate?

First you point out where I claimed anyone actually said that.

This is the second crazy ass reactionary post you have made with the assumption that every post must somehow be in response to something you said.

[Nevermore]

Could you please point out where someone said they thought he was evil incarnate?

First you point out where I claimed anyone actually said that.

This is the second crazy ass reactionary post you have made with the assumption that every post must somehow be in response to something you said.

Sure, since you couldn't be bothered to quote my whole post...

He made a bad decision, he's not evil incarnate.

...Certainly implies it.

But I'll take your lack of an answer as you just puling that out of your ass to be overly dramatic.  And I'm certainly allowed to make my own 'crazy ass' response to your post without assuming it was somehow directed at me.  Good job with the personal attack, though.  Shows real maturity.

[Paelos]

Play nice, yall.  

In any case, I've said before I think Ghostcrawler believes he's doing what's best. I don't think he's trying to fuck over anybody intentionally, he just can't stand the idea of people laughing at how easy his game might be.

[Wolf]

I'll clutch my pearls as hard as you do yours, thank you very much.

The stacking debuff is good for us, the casual-er of the people that do heroic raids. It helps you do fights without hard-forcing you into comps you cant field, it helps you keep the warrior that refuses to use any addons and the paladin that's maybe not really cut out to do heroics, but wants to help and is always there. And it helps you complete shit while still having a 7-8hr week, since it gives a bit of margin of error, without clocking in the wipes needed for perfect execution. MY GOD THE HARDCORE ARE NOT ALL PARAGON RAIDING 50 HOUR WEEKS. STOP THE PRESSES.

[Paelos]

I don't think you are all Paragon people. The truth is that people who are chasing world firsts or can clear high level heroic content in early rounds don't post on forums. They don't complain at all. Hell, 9 out of every 10 people that I saw posting on the forums complaining that people needed to L2P were those who had cleared regular dungeons and declared themselves done.

The fact that you go into a heroic raid at all with the prospect of success pretty much puts you into the catagory that won't understand what I'm talking about. Nor will I understand what you're talking about.

Just know there's a ton more people that fall into my camp, and let's be done with it.