Calm down….

I’ve seen an extraordinary amount of, well, noise to be polite, about the most recent information from the PTR. I’ve seen it not only on the PTR forums but on several WoW sites that try to stay cutting edge in information. What’s causing the crying, in short, is that resilience counters mana drains (including mana burn, viper sting…). Oh, but the Big Drainer (Warlock Drain Mana) got a buff to mana drain. For those not in arenas, the warlock buff increases their drain rate by 50%. Net effect at the top end (capped resilience, etc) which is usually IN arena is still an increase, though it’s “only” about 20-25% depending on which details you include in “net”. And the noise is…

ok. stop. I’m going to quote something from one of the Blizzard people, in the “Read This” posts on the PTR forums. Read it, then reread it, and we’ll go from there.

With the release of patch 2.4.0 for testing, many players have questioned whether or not this is the extent of changes for this patch. Please be aware that we have changed how we are developing and testing this patch by adding to it progressively. What this means for players is that more additions, changes and even the possibility of removals can occur as the patch is tested. The current patch notes will be changing over time and are not finalized in their current incarnation. We have more planned for this patch and would ask everyone to please feel free to test the new changes as we go and provide feedback.

Read it twice? OK, now let me paraphrase.

Hi. Instead of “Big Ball of Wax,” we’ve decided to put out a little at a time, make sure it’s working, then add a bit more.

Now, this is actually pretty standard for smart test patch development. You recognize you have to do a whole bunch of interrelated things. But to simplify error checking and other things you put in one (or a small handful) of changes and see what they do. If they appear to be breaking things you determine whether the break is expected or not. Expected breaks are, well, when you know that if this were the only thing it would break the whole thing, but one of your OTHER parts is a balance, and once it’s in place that’ll fix the break.

Why is this really good? Let’s say you’ve got 100 things that all affect player health. You put them all in, and suddenly almost every warrior in a party gets double health. That includes parties for PVP. Since we had 100 things that affect health we have to test all of them – plus a bunch of things to make sure they didn’t modify something ELSE that modifies health.

Smaller changes are easier to error-check and error correct.

So here’s the deal. Yes, if nothing is done to balance this is highly annoying. And I’m willing to put down good money that even after all balancing is done some people will claim it’s broken everything and they’ll just reroll or quit. But those two points aside, the reality is that there is more coming. Make your complaint, by all means. But gnashing your teeth and acting as though it’s the end of the world is… just a tiny bit excessive.

If it bothers you that much, quit reading about upcoming patch changes for now. Heck, take some time away from your computer – go read a book, or walk a dog, or … seriously. The wild wailing does absolutely nothing beyond making folk wonder about your sense of balance.

It’s a game. Have fun.

~ by Kirk on February 15, 2008.