Blizzard has been trying hard lately to change the perception that they don't listen to their customers. I've noticed several decisions in World of Warcraft which seem to have a basis in customer opinion. Its nice to see that Blizzard is showing attention to its customers and that new changes to the game don't just reflect numerical analysis of abilities.
One of these changes was the reversal of the windfury totem nerf. The shaman boards were flaming so hard about the nerf that several CMs reported actual temperature increase when viewing the shaman forums. The crushing negativity to the nerf eventually made the developers look at several factors besides straight numbers to make the decision. Also another factor that might have influenced the developers was that most other classes were not in favor of nerfing windfury. A very unusually position in class rivalries.
Another change which has long been asked for by World of Warcraft players was the ability for both factions to make paladins and shamans. Its ironic that this change enjoys the general support of most players except for those who play shamans. Shamans feel that paladins will hurt their desirability to end-game raids with their ability to stack multiple blessings. However, more raid centric talents for shamans are being promised in the expansion.
Also coming out in the next patch are changes to the User Interface which mimics popular addons. Thus the following popular mods will see their basic functionality being added into WoW.
Scrolling Combat Text = simplified color coded combat text appearing over characters instead of in the combat window.
Self Cast = beneficial spells are automatically cast on yourself without losing your current hostile target.
Improved "V" Command = name plates can be customized to more easily heal people not in your group
Horde Paladins and Alliance Shamans
Friday, July 21, 2006
Positive Blizzard changes
Posted by Relmstein at 12:46 PM
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
The Broken are supposed to have a Shaman heritage. Nice to see the Draenei bring the concept to the Alliance. I like the idea.
A fair amount of forum's posts and blogs are negative to the change but I found more people supported it then hated it when I asked in game. The ratio was about 4/5 for it on the alliance side and about 1/2 on the horde side. Of course this is just me asking random people on my friends lists.
Most of those that hate it are horde pvp players who enjoy the current advantage or shamans who are afraid paladins will replace them in raids. From what I understand shaman abilites are getting a boost to their PvE effectiveness in the expansion.
Post a Comment