Oh I’m well aware of what went into it aside from the internet bog standard “requests”. I’ve outlined them before. I was just shooting down your “shot down” remark.
As for leeway, as a non-Blizz dev I read the standard 5 yard range as the padding because it’s 5 yards. 15 feet. I had assumed that was set to provide padding. Imagine 5 yard melee distance in a Souls Game, for example.
Now enter in Blizz’s netcode from back in the day: Out of Range - while trying to attack a target you are literally on top of. This happened a lot in Vanilla, especially with moving targets - which brings us not to a fix for an issue but a band-aid introduced 80% through the life of Vanilla: leeway
Leeway was never a mechanic designed for the game, it was a band-aid created to hide a problem.
In today’s world, we don’t have those same problems that need Band-Aids. Some issues can still pop up but they are infrequent in the grand scheme of gaming, in general. If one company or game has more problems than another - that’s a result of that specific netcode.
Should it be removed entirely? Testing would be the only way to see if it indeed should be removed. Should it be tuned? At the least. We aren’t on dial up anymore.
It’s 2019. People expect a certain level of competence, they expect a certain level of polish.
I don’t consider Band-Aids like leeway to be a core system the game was designed with. It’s the equivalent of adding a big ugly looking cube in the middle of WSG because SOME people fall through the world in one specific spot so instead of fixing it - they cover it up.
The programmer in me looks at stuff like this and cringes. Maybe it was the best solution at the time, but all things considered if you asked me what I believe the core tenets of WoW are - leeway wouldn’t be on that list.
It’s not a defining characteristic of the gameplay and has greater affect on the meta of the game now, when it’s not needed, than it did in the final days of Vanilla. It changes the meta, full stop and provides a greater advantage the better your speed than it did back then - and that was even acknowledged by Blizz.
Removed? All things considered and knowing how ABSOLUTELY AMAZING Comcast is - probably not. Toned down to reasonable levels? What those levels are? They need to be tested.
As for batching, another sticky topic, I’m not fond of my skin being saved by sheer luck but there’s something wonky going on with it that is making everything feel sluggish when it should only affect player to target abilities. Removed? No. Fixed? Yes. Blizz hasn’t commented on it being “not a bug” so I’m going to assume they are working on it.