wow … was never the same imo after they nerfed conditionals in the macro language …… many many moons ago. because that was all about blizzard making the grind even more grindy, extending the time required to achieve the same bad gameplay stuff in game, making you waste even more time playing the game. lets face it without addons, wow isn’t really wow, but blizzard don’t care about addon developers anymore than the users. users are merely profit margins in a spreadsheet. The individual user is a disposable item within the 12.5 million users or whatever its upto now, imagine someone in the real world had the ability to make dissappear 150 solid days worth of your effort with a whimfull decision, dont leave yourself exposed to that situation, dont invest any time in this game in the first place. Blizzard is an arrogant company FULL STOP. dont give them any money.

for new users > if you dont start something … you want have any difficulty stopping

only play games that have endpoints with 6 hours of continuous play , unlike this game which doesnt end, that might sound great but trust me a final cap to the azeroth story (all stories need an ending to be complete) would be a good idea, but theres probably too much money to be made to ever bring it to an end.

This is my 3rd retort to the blizzard corporate bull-spiel i was emailed as to why region transfer 8 years after the making of the game is still an impossibility ?

Your response was the usual rubbish, I’m not sure why blizzard employ people who have no possibility of garnering the respect of game users, on the basis that as employees they can change absolutely nothing at all ? its just a waste of money to employ such people. it would be better to employ no-one in this capacity, and just say the game is how it is, lump or like it, it would be much more honest … rather than suggesting they have the option of developing another char, in another region version of the game ? oh yes ill just spend another 130 days of my life investing in another online character, so you can tell me its your property !!! christ i can if i want stick my cock in a blender also. I don’t need the nursery level script advice of some corporate monkey paid 30k a year to take schtick from customers.

Long may your company slowly die for the disdane its shows its users, in a way it is gratifying to know that you might never make inter-region character transfers possible, in the sense I also know this means that i will not have to waste my life playing your game at any point in the future, so really your doing me a favour in some perverse fashion, very large companys never perceive their fall, atari, commodore, sega tech history is littered with large vain company’s who didn’t listen to users and see the writing on the wall, but everything … has a lifespan . . . blizzard included.

You may continue to expand into more distant markets, and enslave and waste the productive youth of some of the more possibly productive people the world has created in other markets around the world, including those in the developing worlds, after all why just hamper the affluent west’s youth from achieving anything, except virtual goals to get that new ‘epicz sword’ !, but eventually everyone who sadly desires such life distraction, will have had enough of your psychologically engineered random reward grind formula. then hopefully we can see the back of your company once and for all.

below is the response which caused my venom interspersed with my retorts in italics OTT but hell i like it like that. and then my original email to blizzard corpo machine far far below it:

“Hello Mr ‘name removed” ok so far so good …

Thank you for contacting Blizzard Entertainment Technical Support. My name is Tom and I will be assisting you today. “will be assisting ? thats a big promise ? will you now ? no doubt ‘I does take sugar also’ ? do i give a shit, who you are ? your probably a sophisticated eliza program for all i know, which selects a random name to use, selected from a special country and gender based psychological profile. corporate dipshit is what you probably are, Oh no i’m sorry, you cant be a dipshit if your a program ?”

I apologize for any inconvenience you may have experienced.“hmm that is no comfort at all, compared to providing me, with just a few logical reasons behind your arguments, or admiting that your to fing lazy to code a region transfer facility”

Quality and customer service are the highest priorities for Blizzard Entertainment. “Cough … Cough … choking here … splutter … average at best Bull-Spiel to make yourselves sound good, every corporate Ho in every marketing department the world over, emails shit like that to customers, its as common as air and as solid, therefore … meaningless” Because we cannot guarantee a positive gaming experience for users connecting to servers outside the supported region, we do not support use outside of the designated region.“that sentence is precisely why for those few customers who started their chars on warcraft trials, that were only available in the US at the time from the EU, you should offer region transfers because raiding in the US from the EU is as you say, not a positive gaming experience, US raids startup at midnight EU time, Do you question whether that is disruptive to a normal life ? and a positive gaming experience ? “

I recommend that, if possible, you acquire a localized version of the game for a more positive gaming experience.“wow … No shit sherlock ! … fuck I hadn’t thought of that ! actually … truly I had, but then … I was a little bit wiser than to waste another 130 days of my life getting attached to and investing in, an online character I sculpted, which will of course, by dint of a ridiculous licence agreement, turn out to be your corporate property ?”

At this time “aaargh … now were getting at the truth … in another words were too lazy ‘right now’ to develop such a facility, like we might bother if our customer numbers got real low, but right F****N now the earnings we have, which are greater than the GDP of many small countrys ~ just isnt enough ? money ? to put any people ? on this quite obviously insane region transfer idea you have, not even ‘TOM’ from technical support here’s salary, for instance ? what we would rather do is employ him at 30k a year, to say nothing of any value, in as many a varied & complicated no commitment marketing spiel like ways as possible, to all our customers, via email instead. Because that seems from our giant corporo perspective like a better use of money ?!!?! in relation to our three highly over exploited gaming ip’s ?

And truthfully were just making way too much money, to give a shit about the 130 days of your sorry life, you put in to your fire mage ‘flimflam’ or whatever dickwad name your char goes by ! (you should have chosen rogue) even though if land and building materials costs likewise, weren’t outrageously priced, you could have built yourself a real-world house in that 130 day timeframe, instead of deciding to invest it all, in a virtual epic orange cloak called “the cover of absolute dick mastery +9″, which we will of course nerf the stats on and make pointless, as soon as the next inevitable upgrade comes out, and we will change the textures on your entire outfit so instead of glowing and shining, just some kind of stinky gaseous emanation will float up from it with a few flys now, and also because blizzard only employ cultists, weve decided for a laugh to rebalance your class as a kind of prada wearing jester fag who gets bonus attack points by bending over and playing his instrument, and at the same time you must reacharound and service the boss before his “engage me tenderly timer” runs out whilst remembering to juggle your own balls every third second of every third minute or else your HP will halve on every proc of cockmastery that your cloak no longer protects you from, and also weve decided to program your talent tree to detect when when youve just worked out your perfect build, all invested points will then rotate 67 degrees into a fifth dimension, further to that weve decided to label all addons when your ass twitches or every update whichever comes first as incompatible, because its not like addons are needed to raid or anything! just look at youtube raiding videos no addons visible there ?!?! and the people who write addons don’t contribute to the success of our game in any way ?! (insert deep sense of irony here) their just more f*****s to screw like you the customer who also have no role to play in the success of blizzard ? except in your ability to be addicted in a masochistic way, and therefore no say, but in our genorosity, we decided we will give you the opportunity for 4000 gold to choose to tatoo your character in the face, with a limited 10 million edition “I suck blizzard cock logo” but obviously this mission will only be available to those dedicated players who are prepared to pay 15000 gold and gain 2,000,000 rep, to buy the mount and ride off and meet the challenge in azeroth part 10 : “gain rep with the clan of the cock until you die” prepare to explore the fleshy depths of windy hole and the mighty towering bluffs of gaping chasm and meet your date with destiny and the final final twice removed cousin of the last guy you didnt get to meet : the boss of ultimate cock, who resides in the murderous lair of creaking crack, behind within and somewhere around the box within a box mythology that ties all this crap together, that even we have lost the will to shape in a way, that makes any sense at all, you will of course need a doctors certificate, to certify that your migraine-al myopia and lack of vision beyond the surface of your lcd was engendered by enough warcraft play time, being logged.(logs will be checked) and like the last expansion you will of course be required by agreement in the 30th page of small print to sign over to blizzard corporation, every fourth born child.(how the hell did i get all that from “At this time” ? I think I have some issues ?)( that makes up for all those 1% wipes on all those bosses phew cathartic)

it is not possible to transfer an account or an authentication key between regions. In addition, there is no way to deactivate an account or authentication key in one region to re-create the account in another. Characters and items are non-transferable, as well.“dont tell me, its harder than a nasa mission right ?, you mean ‘no way’ as in its actually beyond the scope of all human endeavour ?!?! i mean you can program for years on end, the entire of world of warcraft, design more content to fill hte game than any other game and do all this unbeleivably mind bogglingly complex crap, but region transfers … man … that’s like catching a fly with chopsticks impossible ? what you actually mean is you don’t want to bother, for whatever perceived financial reasoning … admit it, then i might have some respect for you ? Oh … actually probably not, im having way to much fun to respect you in the morning.”

We highly recommend that you purchase a localized copy of World of Warcraft. “lets get the buy more blizzard shit spiel, in every possible customer email response if we can “team”, why don’t you put a giant advert in this email for all those cross franchised plays sets, lead models, mythology books, replica swords, diorama sets, posters, gaming cards, possibly lycra cataclysm pants as well, because you seem to be capable of wasting F**K knows how much money, on marketing the shit out of us, for such crap, with the supposed money you don’t have, for developing a region transfer facility ?!?!”

You may be interested in the following Localization FAQ: “now your just urinating on me, take a break !”
http://us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?articleId=21464. “spurious article containing words written for people who’ve only just worked out what a mouse is for”

Sincerely,“Oh come on !!!”

Tom L “no last name huh ?, because you might find out where I live and the L means there are allot of people to go through in the phonebook terminator stylee, to get at me for real, lol :)”
Technical Support “I dispute the technical in this line, it didn’t feel technical to me, next time attach a listing or a code print out or something, and ill have a go myself, also I utterly reject the word support, call it noiseful communication if you want, but it was of absolutely no support to me ! except in its major comedic value”
Blizzard Entertainment “youve missed out the words ‘digital crack services‘ and ‘you automatically agree to you rights being severely restricted by reading these words … limited’

http://www.blizzard.com/support

BTW blizzard ill take this off the web one month after you actually write a region transfer routine but not until then ok ? sound like a fair deal ?

Their apparently seperate financial entitys (as if the customer cares what their relationship is ?) that dont talk to each other lord knows why, and they say its so difficult to do. In my reckoning if I can email an attatchment to the states, why the hell they cant send my character file between us and eu regions ive no idea, digital data is the most portable thing on earth, its in its genes to be moved from one place to another, the idea they cant manage this is ridiculous, I whole heartedly support this forum post. I ended up with a US char because the initial trial was only available in the US originally.

And I will not start a char again as mine has allot more than 100 days actual playtime invested, which blizzard thinks nothing of. Because they dont truly understand the concept of character investment, though they think they do. If I invested that time in doing something in real life or earning money lord knows what value of that time might be, but blizzard think such playtime is their input and property hence the agreement which basically says your chracter is their property. I will never knowingly ever play any MMO ever again because of these badly weighted licence agreements until there is an open platform file format and standard for online mmo characters, so that time invested in such games is not wimfully wasted by a corporate whos love of itself and self glorification seems to know no bounds, anybody fancing paying $500 dollars to dine with microsoft employees before going to a computer fair ? lol : aparrently blizzard thinks everything they do smells so sweet, pity they only asked their own opinion, and if they can stonewall, silence, outmarket and censor all descent, then such descent doesnt actually exist ?

The idea blizzard listens to its customers is farcical. I’m also tempted to pay $500 to go to their suck ups dinner, so they can meet a real customer with real views, and why theyre geting it so wrong. Oh but i forgot you cant just pay $500 you have to be so lucky as to be drawn in a lottery for the privilege of being able to pay $500, my bad, and perhaps youd like to pay for all the overmerchandised franchised rubbish they market at you while your at it, apart from the game itself every day of the flippin week we have pushed in our faces, comics, miniatures, fanzines, card games jeesh do they have no humility ? theyre marketing machine is and endless behemoth its like some nasty microsoft acolyte rubbish, everytime they make an announcement its like the “dance monkeyboy dance” video , with same braying game drugees, whooping theyre way more deeply into virtual acheivement lives, with every word the blizz corporate crew spew. Also raiding times are completely incompatible when your on the wrong region which makes high end play impossible, and lag times in tournaments also a problem.

Oh and you cant post on warcraft forums unless you have an active subscription ? ie anyone they kick out or isnt paying money regardless of whether they have previously for years is not entitled to criticise or have an opinion they are effectively instantly censored ! wow blizz are so not interested in customer feedback, blizzard are a horrible corporate.

The thing that wrankles for me is deep unconscious inversion of long held RPG lore ?

old school rules number 1:
You wear cloth you more easily killed, but as compensation you get to do more damage, than the more armored classes.

Knives may do damage but are they mightier than magic itself ?

principles 101:
in front meat wall behind damage casters, healers holding the wall up. wow has fractured this simple principle into many genres, and in a way its lead to a great deal more interest, but because theyve moved so far from that framework, its original philosophy are difficult to square and balance.

From a lore point of view an agilitous half criminal knife wielder ie a rogue being top at dps in downing bosses enshrined in game lore, is like crowning a butcherer with glory, not aesthetic. perhaps on the horde side the butcherer should be king and in pvp most often is, but on the alliance side ? and should the king so often be a rogue i mean if theyre was variation in that list it would be ok, but its pretty consistently saying roll a knife wielder if you want to do max dps.

Maybe its just the end game fights concerned where they come out top ? i think it can be applied generally theyre are certainly fights where melee dps really suffer.

How has it come about, thyere could be any number of reasons.

Is gearing up the reason ?

less comptetition for gear tokens on that class etc. certain classes are easer to epic as they make up less of a percentage in the raid makeup. but randomly unless blizz weight these things have an equal chance to get gear at that lesser percentage makeup. also look a tier token makeup and you will see that theres more chance of gear dropping for multiclass classes druids etc unless this is balanced as they have so many possible gear specs ? theyrefore require more possible gear spec drops, admitadely only recently decently provisioned for but a druid can require for example : leather heal gear, leather caster dps gear. leather feral dps gear, leather tank gear. while say a warlock just requires caster dps gear wjcj can be shared with two other dps clasess. therefore the library of possible drops if not weighted(ie not random) must contain more druid gear possibilities than warlock gear ? also dps casters get a situation in which gear that works for warlocks can work for mages and for shadow priest etc. as class specific caster dps damage exclusive gear has been phased out.(fire , shadow dmg etc) looking at the tier sets here :

http://www.wowwiki.com/Tier_5

you can see that certain classes have lots of tier sets and others few. I am sure blizzard do not rely on random and have a weighted random set based on average raid makeup, statistics they have access to
im sure. For if they have true random then certain classes will really have more difficulty in gearing up. blah blah i need to stop playing this game :) ! lol

1. The graveyard/reserection point should have a force field around it that prevents a team from GY camping ie prevents rogues getting in to close to where people are ressurecting.

2. IF a 10 man team all from the same server go in together against say a 7 man pug team, it should first equate the players eq and build and rate them a certain number points for each player on a team, discounting points to people who are pugging it, then it should add up the difference in value between the two sides, if one team appears massively stronger than the other it should shrink the team which is stronger in man numbers to be equal in potency points value to the other team until their is equalibrium.

3. The racial abilities of alliance chars need improving to balance them against the racial abilities of the horde teams, for instance the gnomish racial ability “escape artist” proves useless in the battleground in comparison to ‘force of will’ that undead have, “escape artist” should at least work against stunlock.

4. Rogue stunlock capability is way too potent in Battlegrounds and must be nerfed! because it is an I win button, if theyve nerfed warlock fear, Curse of tongues etc, then the least they can do is nerf stun, cripple etc likewise, speed stun Melee is too potent in comparison to genral casting in BG’s, it means that if you want to play pvp and win the only class to roll is a rogue. Blizz need to stop booning the horde racial abilities and claiming that they have got everything balanced, when they quite obviously haven’t. If theyre ot going to going to nerf stun then at least make such that if a char resists fear then it doesnt blow the cooldown or diminish the potency of the next cast of it.

5. if you leave a battleground because your in a 7 man pug against a 10 man guild team you should not be penalized with the deserter buff.

6. Battleground statistical analysis should be in place to check whether certain teams or classes are just abusing the BG system for their own benefit, and are entering into the runaway zone(ie their so good its just like free honour and tokens for whenever they enter their chosen BG as a team), where they deny and demoralise other players any chance to progress, thereby eliminating the competition from bothering thereby making themselves endlessly stronger, these teams should get a limit on how many times they can play in a day together to avoid the suffocating the battleground play. ie after 3000 honour and 20 tokens or six victorys each day they can only play once every hour or something. statistical analysis should also check to see how many people are leaving a battleground, becasue this is usually a heavy indicator of an unfair fight. Also if there are long queu times for battleground’s becaseu mainly one faction doesnt want to play, this is a sign the play balance is all wrong.

7. A variable buff to be applied to the underdog side, called ‘power of the underdog’ which attempts to the weaker side to have a better chance if the opposing team has well geared rogues then the buff might give say stun resistance increase etc

8. For Blizz to remember the purpose of people playing battlegrounds in not to be HK fodder, for some overpowered horde team who’ve practically got the bg rigged for them to get free honour and tokens. and like nothing more than the fact that nearly all alliance sides are pugs and all horde sides are pre-mades with only specific classes involved for their pvp benefits, and what theyre aiming for is an unfair fight in other words the reason they play so intently is because they no they can push BG’s into an scenario whereby they know theyre going to get 75% more honour and win 90% of the time then it a makes it much more worthwhile for them to play insanle to egt the rewards and invest all their time in that to rig the game. They should be penalised for not playing game content and just pvp-ing, that is why they play so much if they new that it would require more skill every time they wanted to win than last time it would give them more of a challenge.

9. Im not sure teams from pvp servers should play aginst pugs from non pvp servers when it comes to which realms are in which Battlegroups.

10. All builds should get a fair chance at pvp, whatever of the three specialisations you choose, ie with warlocks I have to spec talent wise for pvp ie (affliction build is the only way to go) becasue instant howl of terror and Curse of echaustion, which means when I wanna switch between raid and BG play i need to spend 100 gold to do so which means theyre forcing me to play raid for a week or pvp for a week at minimum to make the switch worthwhile, which is crap in comparison to classes where the raid build is the pvp build.

11 no durability loss should occur in Bg’s or arena’s

12. A single self Buff for each class should be selectable as auto applied on ressurection similar to the way pets are auto ressed on ressurection.

13. Beef up curse of exhaustion for gods sake ? if I can be taken out of play by rogues until im dead !!!! without a chance to respond, the least you can do is provide a warlock with some talents that negate or improve on the current ridiculous situation. Ie give me some spells that stop or slow opponents that actually come off and work, at least give us spell lock ! or something and stop nerfing the duration of all my spells just for pvp ! and stop every spell we have being bloody dispellable, unless you want to be melee dispellable as well !! Or at least make it so that though since were weak against melee combat make it so that are spells do commensurately more damage than melee classes to compensate for choosing to be casters, after all if im as weak damage output wise as a warrior why the Hell am I wearing cloth ! Casters should be able to outdamage all other classes by quite a way as compensation for the the knives go through us like butter close up and we have hardly any instant damage, and it all takes time, least warlocks have hardly any instant damage which limits us in pvp. certainly none in comparsion to mages who can also add bonus spell damage to instant cast’s too ?

14. If your gonna make the only decent damage spell we have Soul fire take so long to cast and cost a bloody soul shard then the least you can do is let use them for free in pvp.

I think we should have a No BG day, where no alliance sides play in protest to indicate to Blizz how crap the game balance is in this area.

this lists relates to how blizz currently have the class nerfing setup (9_5_07), and relates to chars with equal quality gear and specced for most damge talent wise

1. Draenai Shamans
Much worse gear specced than an equivalent warlock they can still out-damage them by a third on multiple mobs? havent been nerfed yet ?) imagine theyre self healing mages, with mail armour ! that can critical six mobs at a time with chain lightning for 2k each well roughly, only drawback is mana regen time but not a real issue if specced the right way.

2. Rogues
(in PVP they are currently insane in potency, stun lock backstab posion stun oh your dead joy joy etc) weak a bit on the armour front but more than compensated for with insane crtiticals and stun. good against single mobs in raids not so hot on multiple.

3. Shadow Priests ?
what the hell warlocks weaker than shadow priests great ? the bone of a boon thrown to priests for their healing role, was enough to put warlocks in the shadows thanks blizz, and now they role on our gear as well, because they can now justify theyre use of it damage wise, the only bonus of a shadow priests for locks is if theyre in your party, they can increase your damage as a lock by allot (shadwoweaving etc), so dont grind your gears about them too much.

4 Druids :
Specced agilty and strength etc they can outdamage most casters in feral cat form, for one on one damage. Bear they can be tank almost equivalent to Warriors. Druids are a combi class you can quickly switch from being a prot warrior (bear form) to a fury warrior (cat form) or to an average healer caster druid form or moonkin more a dps caster etc. Lots of sets of gear cost an carrying is the only issue, good buffing abilitys.

4. Mages, Higher instant damage than locks against multiple mobs v minor mana regen issues.

5. Hunters and Warlocks can all be about equal in the damage stakes, if a hunter just specs agility, it boons/works with so many other stats they can outdamage a lock. Afflic Locks are good for long boss fights through many dot capabilities, can keep going longer than most other classes mana wise, though cheap pots enable other classes to negate the life tap / siphon life advantage, great for levelling with demonology spec not when raiding, fear is the only real weapon in pvp but its being nerfed next patch, and you are not going to rock the pvp stakes in comparison to shamans and rogues, not great against multiple mobs or instant damage in comparison to mages and shamans, weak armour wise, just like mages in comparison to the mighty shaman.

6. Warrors prot specced, can brick wall the toughest of bosses, fury spec can do allot of damage, but can fall over eventually quicker from damage than prot. some combination specs can do a better job than both straight specs.

6. Palladins : well they can out heal priests and live longer due to plate armour ? apparently theyre getting nerfed, so all you priests can breath a sigh of relief. some combinations of spec can hold as much aggro as a prot warrior and do more damage with it, good buffing abilitys.

7. Priests, healing and tanking is the backbone of all instances and raids, boss fights in which dps can operate, good buffing abilitys.

dont ask me why a caster like a “war-lock” (and evil war based battle caster) is weaker than a shaman or a rogue but if your rolling a char in wow now it is the case at 70 ?

Another note on locks and shamans :
People think locks are still powerfull but its a legacy remembrance from when the game first came out before they got nerfed, I rolled one becasue I thought it would end up being the most damaging class, then by the time I get to 60, they nerfed us so bad and released draenai shamans and made the effort of levelling a warlock pointless. This was cyncial in my my opinion not only do they release new content 60-70 in BC, but in a way theyll get many people to do 0-70 again by creating shamans(the deliberately ready twinked class) to increase the longevity of their game life from a commercial point of view, in my opinion the class balance is only this way for blizzards profit purposes, the more time you spend rolling a shaman and levelling it because its better than an pre BC class the more money they make ?

My reccomendation for rolling a new char :

My reccomendation the way blizzard has the class balance skewed so badly, just roll a draenai shaman on alliance, the advantage this class has is still very palpable (ie the incentive to go buy BC class !), unless of course they nerf them within the time you level this class, its possible i suppose(actually knowing blizz likely but it is depressing to have the quality something you orginally rolled nerfed at their whim, it defeats the point of making a class choice in the first place), though I doubt theyll ever nerf using mail armour, the consequences to great for the already created ones. By the time you reach 70 you wont regret it. This class is the all round class, a party of five shamans have no need for other classes at all, they can heal and tank just, and yeah sure they can dps like a B***H too. Draenai shaman is the as yet the un nerfed all to potent class.