- Jun 18, 2010
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World of Warcraft has been successful over the years for a few reasons. The first of which is that it is, at its core, everything that an MMO should be. It triumphed over its largest competitor, EverQuest, by providing a more responsive, changing, interactive, and balanced environment. Sure, WoW has never been completely balanced, but it has always been way better than EQ in terms of class balance. Another leading reason behind the triumph is that WoW has historically been much less buggy, and "exploits" are generally weeded out as soon as they appear. The detriment of all these situations, class balance, bugs, exploits, etc. eventually led to the slow death of EQ.
Today, WoW is generally in EQ's previously retained spot as king of the MMO's. It doesn't really have a legitimate competitor. Take note that it was exactly when EQ was at the top of the pyramid with no competitors that it became lax and unresponsive to its customers' needs, which is when most people quit the game and moved elsewhere with their time. I digress, WoW is top-dog now, and has been really since late 2007. Basically, the further Burning Crusade progressed, the more people transitioned from EQ to WoW.
By the time that Wrath of the Lich King was announced, WoW was at the top of the ladder, sitting pretty at the #1 spot. We are all aware of the results of WoTLK's release, it broke sales records, and set a new benchmark of standards for the MMO community. Bugs and exploits were extremely uncommon, gameplay was generally smooth, and class balance was, for the most part evened out extremely quickly (within the first month or so). However, after the first half-year or so, people started to realize that the game was going downhill. Game mechanics were so "dumb" and similar, with the majority of game mechanics being ignorable if equipped with gear 1/2 of a tier above the content, and the majority of game mechanics being impassible with gear 1/2 of a tier behind the current content, that people generally view the PvE aspect of the game as either being a joke or being extremely hardcore. (fellow raiders, remember the discrepancy in ToC 25 regular and ToC 25 heroic? regular mode being puggable with heroic only being completed by only the most hardcore guilds, etc.) PvP content was also really gimmicky after the initial luster of the first two seasons wore off. Arena teams either globaled you, you globaled them, or one of you were nearly invincible. (think wizard cleaves, melee cleaves, and double healer teams) That was just the way that competitive PvP was played, there was no inbetween in strategy.
These obvious flaws were well known, and the consensus of the community was that Cataclysm is going to fix the game and all will be as well as it was in vanilla and BC, when we all transitioned here from EQ.
So now Cataclysm is out. In the first 1.5 months of its existance, we've seen more bugs, exploits, and the worst class balance that the game has ever seen. Some raids were not only hard, but literally impossible to complete. High end encounters have literally had to be hotfixxed as guilds are working on bosses because certain mechanics were behaving "unexpectedly" and causing the encounter to play out differently than it was supposed to, an issue that is supposed to be fixed in beta testing. Class balance is not only bad, but is worse than ever. I'm not just talking about small discrepancies in combat log output numbers, I'm talking about certain classes being justifiably useless and others being blatantly crazy. (think hunters and priests in PvP, think shaman in PvE)
There are some startling similarities here between where WoW is at now and where EQ was when it fell. Just food for thought
Today, WoW is generally in EQ's previously retained spot as king of the MMO's. It doesn't really have a legitimate competitor. Take note that it was exactly when EQ was at the top of the pyramid with no competitors that it became lax and unresponsive to its customers' needs, which is when most people quit the game and moved elsewhere with their time. I digress, WoW is top-dog now, and has been really since late 2007. Basically, the further Burning Crusade progressed, the more people transitioned from EQ to WoW.
By the time that Wrath of the Lich King was announced, WoW was at the top of the ladder, sitting pretty at the #1 spot. We are all aware of the results of WoTLK's release, it broke sales records, and set a new benchmark of standards for the MMO community. Bugs and exploits were extremely uncommon, gameplay was generally smooth, and class balance was, for the most part evened out extremely quickly (within the first month or so). However, after the first half-year or so, people started to realize that the game was going downhill. Game mechanics were so "dumb" and similar, with the majority of game mechanics being ignorable if equipped with gear 1/2 of a tier above the content, and the majority of game mechanics being impassible with gear 1/2 of a tier behind the current content, that people generally view the PvE aspect of the game as either being a joke or being extremely hardcore. (fellow raiders, remember the discrepancy in ToC 25 regular and ToC 25 heroic? regular mode being puggable with heroic only being completed by only the most hardcore guilds, etc.) PvP content was also really gimmicky after the initial luster of the first two seasons wore off. Arena teams either globaled you, you globaled them, or one of you were nearly invincible. (think wizard cleaves, melee cleaves, and double healer teams) That was just the way that competitive PvP was played, there was no inbetween in strategy.
These obvious flaws were well known, and the consensus of the community was that Cataclysm is going to fix the game and all will be as well as it was in vanilla and BC, when we all transitioned here from EQ.
So now Cataclysm is out. In the first 1.5 months of its existance, we've seen more bugs, exploits, and the worst class balance that the game has ever seen. Some raids were not only hard, but literally impossible to complete. High end encounters have literally had to be hotfixxed as guilds are working on bosses because certain mechanics were behaving "unexpectedly" and causing the encounter to play out differently than it was supposed to, an issue that is supposed to be fixed in beta testing. Class balance is not only bad, but is worse than ever. I'm not just talking about small discrepancies in combat log output numbers, I'm talking about certain classes being justifiably useless and others being blatantly crazy. (think hunters and priests in PvP, think shaman in PvE)
There are some startling similarities here between where WoW is at now and where EQ was when it fell. Just food for thought
Give it time. If enough people complain about the imbalances, the changes will be made soon enough.
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