Patch overload

There comes a time in a MMORPG player's life when he or she has simply had their fill of patches and game changes. World of Warcraft has been around for so long and it has gone through so many significant class changes that it has afflicted some of us with patch overload. I'm one of those and I'm not even a hardcore raider or PvP-er.

Patches are a good thing when they fix bugs. Change is good when it adds new features, or improves existing ones, or addresses deficiencies.  It seems to me that WoW has been getting more patches more quickly as time goes by. Again, that's not a bad thing. What "bugs" me, if you will forgive the pun, are the never ending balancing changes.

Yes, I've just about had it with this so-called "class balancing". Just look at hunters, for example. Multishot was fine, in my opinion, in Wrath of the Lich King. They nerfed it to the ground in Cataclysm. Now, in patch 4.1, they are preparing to buff it again. Even hunter's resource system, focus, was initially adopted in WoW Alpha, to be dropped in favor of mana, and then to be reverted years later to focus. Nice. Couldn't they have kept focus from the beginning?

It seems that lately I've been in a foul mood regarding WoW. I just feel like I can't keep up with these myriad of tiny class balancing changes which every patch brings. This is especially amplified when you are playing most of the 10 classes. Keeping track of all that information? Fuggedaboutit.

Can't Blizzard just make up their minds and say, ok we're done with major changes to class mechanics? Small tweaks here and there I can understand and have nothing against. But dammit, every time I re-learn how to play my class, there's some big overhaul which requires me to start over. My brain is beginning to overheat, and I'm not kidding you.

Since I'm already on the subject, do you know what I think messes everything up in WoW? PvP. I've disliked PvP in WoW from the beginning but with every patch I'm reminded that this is one of the biggest causes for these major skill and mechanics changes. It's not the concept of PvP itself, but rather the fact that classes have to use the same set of talents in PvP as in PvE. Hence, it is impossible to ever balance this game properly. Hear this: the classes in World of Warcraft will be eternally unbalanced as long as PvP and PvE share the same talent set.

To be fair, I think that Blizzard has also been sliding down the slippery slope of class equality for some time now. In trying to make all the classes do the same damage, heal the same amount and tank with the same efficiency, they've made it such that even a 1% advantage in, say, damage that one class might have over another, is met with endless QQ from the less fortunate class.

Look, I don't give a crap if that warrior is doing 5% more damage than my hunter, with comparable equipment. I'm having fun playing the hunter, he's having fun playing the warrior. Fun should be all that matters here because, after all, it's just a damn game. It's not like someone's paying me to be at the top of the meters.

I vaguely remember that once, long ago, classes were specialized. Some tanks were very good for single targets while others were good at AoE tanking. Some healers were good at tank healing while others excelled at group healing. Some DPS were good at hitting single targets really hard while others were experts at mowing down entire hordes of enemies but in turn were relatively inefficient with single targets. Personally I don't see anything wrong in having specialized classes. These days, we're all "balanced". In fact, looking at any past, present and future patch, not really.

Going back to PvP for a second, I'm of the opinion that there should at least be a separate talent tree for PvP or something that shouldn't interfere with PvE in the slightest. There is no way all in the nine hells that WoW's classes will ever be completely balanced as long as PvP and PvE share the same talents. 20 years from now, if WoW will still be alive, patch 15.3 will contain yet another overhaul of how class X behaves or how certain skills are used.

So yeah, woohoo, I can't wait for patch 4.1... and patch 4.2... and... Wait, no, I CAN wait.