Well, you got nothing But ponies this xpac. And one bee.
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Yeah, but they were from Ion. I want the Pony that Ghost Crawler promised me.
We got a ghostcrawler pet so gotta be satisfied with that.
GC was a delight to read. His writing was top notch. He wrote huge posts about complicated mechanics of stuff I had no idea what but he kept me reading. That much was my most awe-stuck memory of him. He wrote like he was talking directly to you, if youâre any kind of reader, you wouldâve appreciated him.
Yeah, /miss.
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I was here during GCâs tenure, and let me tell you this; even though I disagreeâd with some of his decisions, his feedback and interaction with the community were a breath of fresh air, compared to the 0 feedback or interactions we get now.
Also, under GC, there were no leakers telling the community about people crying under their desks. Long time developers like Mike Morhaime were not bailing left and right. There was no former developers making videos on Youtube talking about how bad the current design is. There was not this huge push for esports. There was no incidents of Blizzard siding with China over human rights abuse (although the HK protests werenât happening then).
Content was not being cut. Wrath is considered the pinnacle of WoW, and it had 12 million subs. Look at the sub count now. It is so low, Blizzard wonât even divulge the numbers, and if that former dev leak on Twitter is to be believed, it was under 1 million before Classic launched.
GC, talked with us, and actually discussed his design ideals in âDeveloper Watercooler Chatsâ. Iâve never heard Ion speak except a few instances;
(1) Blizzcon (this includes related interviews by Preach etc)
(2) The Blitzchung banning announcement that was obviously half written by the Chinese arm of the company.
(3) The super rare âpuff pieceâ Q&A videos, that never touch, or gloss over high controversy topics like PvP vendors and faction balance. These interviews never give definitive or satisfactory answers.
Ion & his ilk are a complete group of idiots, and are not fit to carry GCâs golf bag.
In short, please come back GC, we miss you!!
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The aesthetics were hated. The talents were hated as a continuation of cata. Raids, classes, dungeons, And pvp were received well.
dramatic eyeroll Some of you need to get more fresh air in your lives.
Ghostcrawler gave classes that were mostly ignored the overhaul they needed (Prot/Ret Paladin), and polished others (BM Hunter, Affliction and Demo lock). They didnt start obliterating Classes every. Single. Expansion. Until he left.
Specs were min/maxxed and locked into a rotation before he showed up, they were treated the same while he was there, and theyâve been treated the same since he left. Min/maxxers have always and will always exist, no one can get rid of them. Get used to it, and donât let them effect your gameplay. At least thatâs what Iâd say if we still had any measure of relative flexibility in the way we build our classes, but talents are gutted, inscriptions gone, and a bunch of things hollowed out since he left.
Gearscore was originally a player made addon adopted by raiders. It was the RaderIO of itâs time, and not integrated by Blizzard until he left.
âTO THE GROUND, BABY!â Was a player driven meme. Itâs not a phrase he coined, and in the context he used it was probably a jab at the knee jerk reaction of any player to any given nerf to their class. Not actually nerfing anything to the ground.
Basically your entire bullet point list is a pack of BS.
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Pretty sure the game started to go downhill when he showed up. From my understanding everything after Ulduar is his work. He was the one responsible for making wow more âaccessibleâ. Iâm pretty biased towards him and his work to be honest, I would not enjoy his return.
Iâm asking you.
Ret was fine previous to WotLK and the lazy addition of âNot combo pointsâ. Affliction was also 100% fine previous to GC. Demo lock only needed an overhaul down the line because of him. I would know since I actually played Warlock and Paladin from Vanilla through Cata. The only thing GC did well was create active mitigation, but even that was shoddy and only a slight improvement over what TBCâs tank design was up until MoP.
Most certainly not. Ability rotations may have been theory-crafted previous to WotLK, but GC was the one who went in and specifically started to buff, nerf, and remove based entirely around a single playstyle. Anything that aberrated from that rotation was nerfed or outright removed, like Immolation, Incinerate, and Searing Pain. Things that werenât âoptimalâ were stripped out of a spec.
Wrong. It was added specifically by him in 3.2.
Wrong. He specifically stated that Ret wouldnât be getting massively nerfed and he would try to find a good footing for it, only to neuter the spec into a completely garbage state for a third of the expansion. This trend of âbalancingâ continued well into Cata. Players mightâve turned it into a meme, but GCâs inability to refrain from his FotM balancing act drove it to that status.
You either didnât play during the early days of GCâs reign, or youâre outright lying. This game suffered extensively under him, to the point that the game bled so many players during WotLK that Blizzard refused to report subs for the first time since WoWâs launch.
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Yup you nailed it.
I will say one nice thing about GC and that was during Wrath he overbuffed destruction to the point of being OP. That first week I spent in the battlegrounds gibbing melee with conflag/chaos bolt was pure magic. For that I am thankful.
So if he wants to come back and make destro stupidly OP again Iâm down.
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very much soâŚ
You do realize that he was the lead systems designer and not class designer right? He also wasnât the overall design head⌠That was Chilton. He was just the face that had enough guts to communicate with us.
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Here,:
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I love you! I love WOD!
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I know his title, yet he himself admitted to most of what I said in his post-Blizzard interviews, which is when it became readily apparent that all this was due to him, almost specifically.
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He made statements to that effect.
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Only in regards to the amount of vitriol he receives. He never had the decision or directional power of Ion.
Who hated him? Warriors who wanted to still be invincible from Vanilla? The top 1% mages who did sunwell?
People lashed out on GC - I did too, but I was younger and, I believe, more foolish than I am today -, but the truth was that Blizz has always been lethargic with balance patches. Something to do with how it works inside the company, I suppose. I agree, however, that it is way more lethargic now, and less communicative as well.
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