On the subject of general "QQ"Follow

I couldn't think of a better title, I am opposed to the notion of any part of Blizzard (aside from the players) hating another class. While I still stand by this notion this is a very bad thing to try and post. No, not the whole post, read the first line of GC's response.



It seems a bit odd with tthe general state of the paladin community that GC should even be allowed to say that. If that is sarcasm, it's really poor, and a smilie does not excuse that.

I like how my post got defaulted for me gving my opinion of how GC should go about trying to be funny/being relevant.

No class should be an inside joke, aside from things just being silly, Druid "manbearsealpig" form, Blizzard calling Moonkins Boomkins.


Blizzard, no offense to anyone who likes them, takes criticism about as well as a five year old who just lost monopoly. SoB is the biggest one, you could NOT get the most DPS by being a non-be. Seal twisting be damned, Slayton was keeping up with bad BE-Rets by Min/maxing the hell out of his class and keeping a perfect rotation and twisting *something* I think SoR. Yamato was beating the hell OUT OF EVERYBODY.

Ghostcrawler has repeatedly stated that Blizzard's dev team is moving to a more proactive method of balancing classes and specs. Take a look at how Blizzard is dealing with classes in WotLK compared with TBC - they're making more frequent changes to affect balance. On top of that, they've adopted a complete change in philosophy regarding level of hybrid DPS and how raid buffs work and stack so that you will "bring the player and not the class," a philosophy that has only benefited Retribution Paladins.

GC wasn't heading up the dev team for the last 3 years, and is not responsible for broken specs withering on the vine in the past.

I've read a lot of what GC posts on the forums (blue.mmo-champion.com), and he has by far and away been effective at communicating while maintaining a generally respectful and adult tone.


With a few notable exceptions the general paladin community at the official forums seems to be made up of disturbingly self-important idiots who are probably mentally ill.

As far as your original point:

Given the number of threads that were popping up about Divine Storm at the time (~1 month ago, why'd you wait so long to post it?), GC or a CM should have been locking new DS threads on the DD forums.

If there is a problem with an ability, it's more useful to have one unlocked thread for the devs to look through than to have them try to dredge through 40 different DS threads. This also keeps the forum functional for other classes. It's not specific to Paladin -- if you look back, you'll see that in the DD/tanking/healing forums, Blizzard is being more aggressive about locking flaming/redundant threads about any one class/topic than they were in the class forums.

Because all (the vocal) paladins have done since beta is QQ. It's a fair statement, he must be even for tired of it than I am.

And let me tell you, I'm ******* sick of it.

i dont know if Tabstopper is the Blizzard employee/fanatic that keeps rating down people for being critical of the Developers. but if you dont see the farce that the game has become and the lack of ingenuity and understanding the current Devs have then i can only conclude that you dont play the game or are indeed the Blizz-mole.

they launched the patch leaving Ret pallies silly-OP'd, boomkins too powerful, instances too easy, and warlocks QQing. but at least they got the patch out in time. better to have a broken product than a late product. hell, Acura can keep replacing my faulty transmission forever(rentals are fun). i have to admit, this patch was a little smoother than tBC. they didnt push the release forward 2 months every 6 weeks. instead they took the lag, world server down, glitchy, lost-your-mail, world server down, ghost hotfix, longer downtime, unbreaking/rebreaking classes, world server down approach.

back to the thread topic:

GC is the low man on the Dev-pole. he is merely an errand boy for the top. his bosses are still the same dudes that are responsible for tBC being pretty mundane, unfun, and just plain whack. now GC is responsible for scouring(Ghostcrawler? hmm) the WoW community sites and 'stealing ideas'. the he reports back to his masters with his findings. they then attempt to implement the suggested ideas and patch em in to 'see what happens'. then GC comes back to the sites he stole the original ideas from and claims the Devs have 'fixed it'.

Blizzard is a corporation. out to make the most $. out to secure the most subscribers. out to capture the mainstream.

if the mainsteam cries for something long enough, it will happen. Holy, you will get your AOE and your HoT-esque...keep crying.

GC handles himself on the WoW forums way better than I would. I wouldn't be locking threads...I'd be banning people by the dozen.

I'd like to see how some of the people so critical of GC would handle it. Would you watch the same repetitive threads pop up day after day and do nothing? Or is your perspective so narrow that the best you could come up with would be, "No, I'd fix ret pallies!"?

There's a really fine line between being able to read something objectively and not jump to conclusions just because it touches the perimeter of a sore spot with you and using anything and everything you might be able to rationalize as an off-the-cough shot at you as justification to get all bent out of shape. Humor is obviously subjective...some folks didn't appreciate it...it has nothing to do with a hate for the "class".

I'm going to use "you" in the generalized sense here...

GC doesn't hate paladins. If you're the kind of abusive, ignorant, mouthy, immature, irritating poster that makes his job frustrating and thankless, he has a problem with you. Blizzard doesn't need whiners. They don't need people who just cry up a storm every time they don't get what they want. If something is broken, they don't need whiners making thread after thread day after day to...well...whine about it. If there was one thread about Divine Storm started by someone who posted their concerns in a rational manner, and a couple of weeks later another thread inquiring about what (if any) changes Blizzard had in mind for it, there would be no issue.

A number of months ago, Blizzard "nerfed" hunter traps. Up to that point, it was possible for a hunter (especially a Survival spec Hunter) to have two mobs trapped at the same time. This was something that had been possible for months, but then hunters got a bunch of buffs and Blizzard chose that time to fix the double trapping "bug". Obviously, the Hunter community was none too pleased about this. The fraction of a percentage of hunters who actually made use of the double trapping option (along with a multitude of huntards who never used it but saw an opportunity to whine) presented their case to Blizzard and the change was reversed a couple of weeks later.

Blizzard does listen, but listening doesn't mean agreeing. At some point you hope a rational individual will realize that their current argument is getting them nowhere and have the prudence to STFU until they can come back with more convincing evidence. This means waiting a few weeks/months and be able to come back with statistics gathered over time, or reflecting the evolution of the player base over time to show, "Hey, remember when you said it was fine? Look at what's going on now?"

GC is not Tigole. (wtf happened to Tigole, anyways?) GC seems much more active and responsive, and he's more open with what is going on and why. It doesn't mean you're going to like what he has to say or the direction he takes a particular aspect of the game, but you can't please everyone all the time.

the O-boards used to be called The WoW Community Forum. they've since changed it to suit the needs of the Devs. do you know why the O-boards suck so much? it's not the trolling and the flaming. it's not because it's the 1st place a new player goes to. it's not because the posters are there only to post complaints.

it's because the forum is not community controlled like every other noteworthy forum on the internet. a rating system like the one we use here keeps the good posts up and the bad ones to wisk away. now, good and bad are subjective terms. thats why i like forums like Wowhead and Thottbot...you leave ALL the content but the community highlites the most relevant posts.

WoW.com has no real filter, rating, or accountability. this is the creation of the Devs. they attempt to moderate the opinions and ideas of the community on which they feed from.

i will not QQ for GC. if he finds it necessary to lock all the threads that contain the words Divine or Storm then he is a dictator and tyrant. if the Devs rely on the forums community to do their jobs for them, then they need to consider all the opinions and information.

Blizzard has a knack for 'overcontrolling' their product. ask Athene, ask anyone thats visited GM island, ask anyone on the O-boards.

to put it into perspective: this very threat would have been locked and/or deleted had it been started on the O-boards. stiffling discussion is not part of moderation. as much as i may disagree with many posts and many posters, i will always respect them(blatant trolls aside) and the perspective they come from.

Allakhazam and others have been very successful letting the community moderate its own. if GC wanted change he would have applied this technique to the forums he 'owns'. but rather, we get the individual class forums melded into 3 generalized posting areas. this makes room for more QQing and a more convoluted thread structure. we went from community discussions to 'list you problems here'.

/gg GC, you made it - you live with it.

The pendulum swings both ways. The ideal would be for a self-moderated forum where people could express themselves about the game within the context of a particular forum with no admin involvement. The o-boards had swung way too far in the direction of a cluster of complete buffoons dominating it to the extent that anyone who wanted concise, useful information about the game would steer well clear of the o-boards. Why it was allowed to degenerate into that I have no idea, but the decision has obviously been made that enough is enough and it's time to get things back on track. That means a period of over-moderation is entirely in order to drive home the point that random, blatant stupidity has no place there.



Before they could even think about instituting a self moderating forum, they have to drive out the idiots. If you put moderation in the hands of the average o-boards poster now, you'd basically be handing over the asylum to the inmates. Whenever a large group of people is involved, you can't just implement snap changes. You have to move through a transition, and those are sometimes painful.



The bug that let people loot an infinite supply of BoJ from Ahune's chest was something people could "use" within game mechanics. Just keep opening the chest. Just because the game mechanics don't prevent it from happening doesn't mean it's ok. The GM Athene first spoke to about it was likely caught off guard and had no precedent to say that he couldn't do it. After the discussion, another discussion took place amongst the "powers that be" and it was determined that what Athene was doing was not, in fact, what the devs had intended in terms of "legitimate" tactics for earning xp. Sorry. Do it right next time. It sucks, but what did he really expect? Besides...his ego probably needed a rattling anyways.

lol. mainly for style and emphasis. sometimes out of laziness.

however, i use run-on sentences and misspellings from lack of education.