#PullTheRipcord

[Awkward-frostmourne (Awkward)]

@Sentenza-alexstrasza

It’s less Blizzard wanted us to play Night Fae, and more “A lot of people will want to play Night Fae Druid, and will be royally pissed if the most appropriate option to play is not something you can pick and feel comfortable raiding, PvP’ing, or M+'ing with”. Ion literally joked about “Fairy Death Knights” in an interview for instance in a case of why they’ve gone in and tweaked some of them. They didn’t want to encourage people to play obvious flavor mismatches by allowing them to be BIS.

Which is a problem they designed themselves into by tying character power to Covenants.

“You can pick whatever Covenant you want, but there are very clear best and worst Covenants for almost every spec in the game” isn’t exactly a great way to sell a feature that you advertise as a “meaningful choice”.

@Sentenza-alexstrasza

Not all classes have as obvious of a match as Night Fae Druid, Necrolord DK, and Kyrian Paladin. Like, who should Shaman pair with? There’s no one fit, so it doesn’t make sense to encourage one over others. Just let things happen naturally and see what happens.

Again, you’re ignoring the first half of my point, which is that DESPITE there being no class/spec thematic attached to covenants for those classes, those specs are still massively polarized.

Hell, Necrolord Unholy DK’s and Kyrian Paladins (all three specs) aren’t as polarized towards their respective Covenants as much as Fire Mage is, which just picks NF because NF is the best.

@Sentenza-alexstrasza

People stopped playing it when it wasn’t OP anymore, when it was nerfed after Highmaul, so the idea that people played it because they liked it doesn’t add up. They played it because it was OP, regardless of tastes.

The most popular spec is always played because it’s OP.

Or do you think that all the people who really enjoyed BM Hunter in Nyalotha now MM because of the gameplay?

But again. Put yourself in Blizzards shoes. You have the awareness to understand that popularity of any given class or spec is influenced by it’s power. Why would you not apply the same logic to Covenants?

I reiterate my previous point of that’s a TERRIBLE way to design a feature you’ve advertised as a “meaningful choice”.

@Sentenza-alexstrasza

It’s easy to say something was a blunder when enough time has passed and it earns you good will at no cost.

Except Blizzard don’t do that for features that are unpopular that they think are worth it.

Pathfinder is a great example of that.

I’m pointing purely towards examples where they’ve said “yeah, we screwed up, you guys were right”, or in PR Speak…“Due to feedback we’ve received”

@Sentenza-alexstrasza

It’s very easy for Blizzard to say something was a blunder and for you to misunderstand what their intent in saying that is.

What is their intent? Do they make problems within the game purely to fix them later for good PR?

@Sentenza-alexstrasza

And as you said, it happened within a 24 hour window.

No, you misinterpreted what I wrote. I said that the change had happened within the past 24 hours.

Blizzard sent out the surveys in late March/early April and IIRC announced the cloning cost about 2 weeks ago (though I don’t follow TBC news too closely, so it might have been earlier?)

So they sat on the survey data for a month, came up with the price point of $35 and then had to reduce that by over half (to $15) because they’d wildly misjudged the cost that the playerbase would pay.

That doesn’t paint the picture of an organization that is competent with statistics.