This Persistent Life #7

In this installment of TPL, we take World of Warcraft to task again. Has anything changed since our last look?

In the first installment of this column I brought up seven elements of WOW that I felt could use some attention. Well, almost a month and a half later, it seems like it's high time to revisit them. Now, I'm sure you must be thinking that it's a bit early to do so, and normally--given the glacial pace at which Blizzard releases content--I would agree. But while doing research for this piece, I noticed the amount of stuff that's changed ended up being surprising large.

Blizzard is moving pretty quickly with the WoW updates, more so than I had originally anticipated. It's an altogether welcome development, and I truly hope that the areas that haven't developed as quickly as the others will see a similar dose of attention sooner rather than later.

I've quoted passages from the original May 5th piece in the column the follows, with comments on how these issues have developed since then. As always, please send any comments to seriousbidness@gmail.com.

1. Talent respecs are too expensive

"Currently, a seasoned character will have to pay 50 gold in order to reallocate its talent points, assuming it's done so a few times. That equates to about at least an hour or two of "farming"--probably the least compelling way to spend one's time in-game."

Progress report: Nothing's changed on this front unfortunately, though the community is as vocal as ever for change. Tanks need to be able to PvP at least once in a while, and the same goes for healers farming gold. Blizzard has been pretty obstinate about this, but honestly, I can't see them staying denying players this sort of flexibility for much longer. Right now, many players are denied the breadth of WoW's experience, and all this does is engender a sentiment of discontent.


2. Gear shouldn't be a factor in PvP

"If WoW is going to be taken seriously as a competitive game, then all comers need to start on equal footing."

Progress report: Though Blizzard hasn't taken any strides in-game to ensure gear equality in PvP, the World Series of Video Games has taken matters into its own hands with its 3v3 arena tournament. Rather than play with their own characters, teams who qualify for the WSVG tourneys build their rosters from pre-made template characters, all of which are equipped comparable gear. Will Blizzard take a queue from the league, and implement similar changes into the game? They just might. Amped eSports recently spoke with a Blizzard rep at one of the WSVG stops, who revealed that the company is indeed pondering solutions that would enable players to compete on a more even field. The idea is that currently, serious teams aren't able to get enough practice in due to the amount of time required to get a character up to competitive levels. What better solution to this than what the WSVG is already doing?

3. Classes need a PvP rebalance

"Blizzard has a lot of work to do in regards to balancing its classes for PvP, and now more than ever. Before the arena system, you could credibly argue that WoW wasn't necessarily balanced around PvP. But now, it has to be. Blizzard needs to get on the ball, and make the competitive game fair and fun for all comers."

Progress report: In retrospect, maybe the term "re-balance" wasn't the best I could have used to describe what needed to be done. "Retuned" would have been more appropriate. That said, this issue has only gotten worse; the least-fielded classes in 5v5 arena--rogues and druids--are arguably even less desirable in light of recent changes to the game. The PvP trinket change (which now removes all movement-impairing effects for all classes) really hurts rogues in high-end play, and does the same with cyclone-spamming druids. And while warlocks and shadow-spec priests seem to be getting a lot more play these days, it's not because of any meaningful changes on Blizzard's part. Their damage is just more difficult to mitigate by the stats that PvP armor is stacked with. Unfortunately Blizzard still has a lot of work to do in this front.

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