First of all, we all know what Blizzard has done in the past. They’ve built a huge emporium with three different game series, StarCraft, Warcraft and Diablo and most important of all, almost everyone has been satisfied with the games at the time of their launch. Here I will speak mostly about Blizzard’s most popular product, World of Warcraft and its future. For a long time there has been things which annoy all but the most casual players—patches and the length of the seasons been major examples. Prime examples of this are patches 3.3 and 4.3, seasons 8 and 11. The patches were so long for a PvPer, you could literally get your full gear at least four times over. More than several times players have complained about these problems, but Blizzard has hardly shown any signs of listening. But really, to whom wouldn’t shorter seasons and a more active ladder appeal to?

Shamefully, even if one could bear the length of theses seasons, there’s still a problem even more awful. The balance issues. Though it is very understandable that a game of this size and with so many different aspects cannot be perfectly balanced, probably ever, the same game changing issues usually last for the whole half-year patch. For instance season 6 Warriors and Protholy Paladins as well as season 11 Rogues, Shamans and Warlocks. This for one cannot be tolerated in MoP. Indeed, how can a company  believe they can keep their game so disgustingly broken for so long while meanwhile keeping the same player base? The company has so much potential, as we can see from their games. My own assumption is the lack of drive and motivation. World of Warcraft has been running steady for the past, almost 8 years, without much serious competition. All the so-called “WoW killers” have pretty much failed miserably and gone to free-to-play models. That means Blizzard wont, most likely, start doing things differently, until they have to.

Read more

Resilience will fix it has long been a phrase used to poke fun at how resilience is all too often presented as our saviour—the be all and end all solution to all our PvP problems. Even Blizzard themselves have made fun of the phrase, naming an achievement after it in Trial of the Crusader. Yet, while resilience certainly won’t solve every issue with PvP in Mists of Pandaria, the mechanic is receiving a complete overhaul and this has potential to solve a number of long standing issues with PvP.

Blizzard has two main aims behind this overhaul. Firstly, Blizzard wants PvP gear to be better both offensively and defensively in PvP than PvE gear. Secondly, they also want to lower the barrier to entry for PvE geared players to enter PvP and make PvP gear more useful in PvE. They intend to do this by adding an offensive element to resilience and giving a significant amount of classic, damage reduction, resilience as baseline in Mists of Pandaria.

Today we’ll be discussing this new mechanic and why, if handled correctly, we could see the end of PvE gear in rated PvP and the betterment of PvP all together.

Read more