Turns out there was no “Class hate” in Vanilla class development.
That’s some really damning evidence.
I had been a strong skeptic regarding Paladin, Druid, Shaman hate for a long time. Now I am 100% absolute in my previous stance that there is no such thing as “paladin hate” from Blizzard, or specifically Jeff and Alex.
From what I hear in the interview it was just a failure on the part of the class developer to get it refined in the way he wanted it.
We can totally throw the whole Jeff and Alex hate Paladin’s = ruined Vanilla paladin thing out the window because as I suspected all along it was total propaganda and lies.
Other MMO Inspirations/Concepts Kevin Liked – 1:19:25
Kevin Helps Bring PvP To WoW – 1:27:50
Fun Blizz Personalities – 1:33:30
Having Items Named After You In Game – 1:35:40
Classic WoW Demo – 1:37:25
Changes or No Changes Coming To Classic – 1:40:40
Thoughts On Post Vanilla WoW – 1:46:05
Blizzard Love For Vanilla? – 1:50:20
Thoughts On Classic Leaks – 1:54:30
Will Classic Succeed? – 1:58:45
Farewell – 2:00:30
Memory Lane – 2:05:00
Morhaime/Brack Blizz President News – 2:14:45
Show News & Shout Outs – 2:18:00
TLDR - Warriors were too powerful in Vanilla while Ret/Prot Paladins were not given enough proper tools to live up to the vision players had going in to the game and playing the class specifically.
I’ve been saying for a while now that Jeff and Alex weren’t even class designers, so it never made sense that even if they DID hate hybrids that they had any influence over that.
Everything about Vanilla WoW’s class design screams that they simply thought players would react to class design differently than they did. People weren’t as accepting of a damage dealer that did less DPS but had more utility. Especially in raid when you could just make them heal anyway.
Some people found ways to reduce the gap of DPS or found niche utility like Nightfall, but that information wasn’t quite as wide spread in 2006 as it is today.
Agreed, I just really enjoy and am glad that it was a situation where the classes did not live up to the developers concepts rather than the conspiracy theory that persisted for far too many years.
Just glad that old conspiracy theory can now be put to bed forever, because it always was 100% BS.
Exactly. It’s clear they wanted to at least include some of the classic tabletop approach to classes, but underestimated how much video gamers tend to min/max.
Good to see someone else here who doesn’t hate the former WoW devs just for doing interviews with “streamers” and publishing books about WoW’s development.
Not to derail the thread, but I’ve never understood the hate for streamers in general, other than maybe jealousy. There are legitimately people who have turned their lives around for good by getting into streaming. Stoopz, for example.
Also, I think it’s great the original developers still have enough passion (or at the very least, appreciation) for the game they helped create over 14 years ago to answer a bunch of nerds’ questions on it. It just goes to show Classic is more about the community than the game itself.
Or that maybe the game was so great it spawned a community dedicated to it, and we just want our home – pre-Cata Azeroth – back.
I mean, I started in Wrath, but that was at the very end and I spent a full year stuck in Vanilla’s content due to not having expansion access. I came to appreciate the world as it was before Deathwing broke it, and I can EASILY see why a community formed around it. Easily. Especially since most of the game mechanics were still present then, even if they were nerfed a bit…
With the steamers I don’t like nor hate the actual streamers, but their fanbases are often completely unbearable as they’ll treat the word of the streamer as gospel.
I plan on trying to avoid the servers that have any major streamers specifically because of their fanbases, not the streamers themselves.
The devs I think people just wanted something to blame. They’d rather there be some kind of conspiracy against hybrids than admit that maybe the devs just miscalculated.
I don’t hate streamers, nor do I think their word is gospel despite being a fan of a few. Hell, I actually turned off one of TipsOutBaby’s YouTube vids in frustration because I disagree with him on some things and he was acting like everything he was saying was fact.
I don’t plan on playing on any streamer servers either. Mostly because I know they’ll be busy and I don’t want to bother them. lol
What sort of crazy pills do you have to be taking to believe a video game designer “hates” a playable class in the video game they’re working on, and why would a person so out of touch with reality even be given the time of day?
You would be surprised, it’s a myth I have been trying to dispel for over a decade.
A certain set of Druids and Paladin are specifically hell bent on this myth being true because it legitimized their personal lack of effectiveness in game.
The truth was they were never that good at playing Vanilla or TBC for that matter, and were looking for buffs or broken game states that existed temporarily to justify their very brief moment where they felt “powerful”.
When the real truth has been very simplistic all along.
Was there intentional hate? No not really, there were just a number of design decisions made that sounded good on paper but didn’t work out in practice.
I can’t say I ever believed that any class was “hated” by developers. But it was clear that some of them were rushed, and most of them didn’t have the polish at launch that they needed.
I think you need to look at the classes through the lens of WoW’s “parents”.
WoW was the result of an Diablo II making sweet love to Warcraft 3 in Everquest’s bed.
Compared to D2, all the classes were finished, and all specs viable.
Actually… Diablo II had nothing to do with it. WoW didn’t start getting Diablo-esque design until Timeless Isle came out and then Blizzard started designing expansions with hostile mobs up the wazoo.