Another GCD post

Community General Discussion
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This is not a complaint or rant, I’m just curious… What is the reason for having a GCD? And, why is it 1 second?

It seems like most players don’t like it. And I don’t want to hear “Blizzard doesn’t want us to have fun”. That’s nonsense. Has Blizzard come out and explained it?

I wonder if it has to do with class balance? Something that bugs me on my Warrior is … I have a spell called Sweeping Strikes. It allows me to hit an additional nearby enemy for 12 seconds. However, because of GCD it seems like it’s really 11 seconds because I can’t use my next attack until the GCD expires.

So I ask again, why do we have it? There must be a rational reason, even if the payer base doesn’t agree with that reason. Anyone know?

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GCD was originally for preventing overloading the servers.
If you could activate powers as fast as you could click, the commands to the servers would get overloaded and there would be issues.

So GCD was there to throttle that.

I don’t know if that is still valid now with newer equipment.

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I was under the impression that a GCD keeps things “turn-based” so to speak.

Which is why Blizzard thought it was a good idea to load everything on to the GCD.

“If we can make WoW play like a card game…”

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Without the GCD, abilities with no CDs could be tied to macros and one shot every boss. That part has nothing to do with server load.

As for OP’s question about things like Sweeping Strikes, yeah, Blays above me has the right of it. Blizzard wanted things to be telegraphed more (ie: kinda-sorta turn based, not really) to allow room for counterplay in PvP.

They tried to state that it somehow lead to more interesting “choices” in a PvE setting too, but that’s donkey piss, still pretty sure they added more stuff to the GCD primarily for PvP.

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@ arschott Thanks for the response. I’m curious where you read/heard that? I’m not trying to be confrontational but I have a lot of experience with network architecture.

Processors have a measurement called MIPS, it means “Million Instructions Per Second” so as the name suggests processors can handle a lot at once. It’s hard to imagine that even in 2004 during launch of WoW, that the servers couldn’t handle the load.

I think the reason has got to be game related. Not because of limited hardware.

@Vivikaide @Blays This makes sense. I can understand their reasoning. Even if I don’t like it. Thanks.

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Without a GCD anything that doesn’t have an inherent CD could be cast as fast as the computer could process the input.

So like all of your stuff at the same time and 10,000 of your unrestricted builder skills.

:confused:

Not good lol.

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If there wasn’t macro wouldn’t just be a better way to play. It’ll be a requirement to play and the game end up have like 5 buttons to press.

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Moonfire spam would certainly get a new and somewhat more lethal meaning.

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If you ever went to Ironforge in the days immediately after the initial launch, it was a slideshow (extremely low framerate) due to the load.

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@ Aarschott I remember Ironforge being packed with people (good times :blush:), but I never experienced low frame rates. That would mostly be due to end user hardware, specifically your video card.

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Their answer to our concerns is “You’d get use to it.” And they said it was stop people from stacking buffs and “one shotting” players.

It’s been almost a year, and honestly as a healer, it’s still painful. I still haven’t gotten use to it.

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Dat character name, tho.

That is all. Continue with your GCD discussion, or … whatever.

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I remember a video of a moonkin vs. Chuck Norris.

Edit - found it!

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