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WoW nerfs, War burns, and what are devs doing?

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Today I'll be comparing World of Warcraft and Warhammer Online, in a way that you might not expect: raid nerfs. In major World of Warcraft news, WoW Stratics is reporting that many Burning Crusade raid bosses have had their HP nerfed by up to 30%. Players were beating them, but coming up with some innovative strategies to do so, that weren't in line with the direction the developers wanted to go. Instead of nerfing the tactics, the developers have nerfed the bosses down to what was intended.

Simultaneously, over in Warhammer Online reports are coming in that the endgame RvR content, which developers previously thought would not begin occuring for another month, has already kicked off due to apparent glitches. Apparently, the final Fortress that preceded the city siege, was captured in a mere 5 minutes by a group that wasn't yet Rank 40, nor had top-notch gear. The exact play by play can be seen at Wizards and Wenches.

Comparatively, this is two sides of the same balance issue. WoW had their content too hard. Warhammer had it too easy. Blizzard took the step of making their content easier by reducing boss HP. What will Warhammer do? Presumably, they could make the end game content harder, by increasing the HP or resists of the various bosses, but will that necessarily solve the problem? Consider: WoW is (for raiding purposes) a PvE game. Warhammer is (again, for raiding purposes) an RvR game. Blizzard's actions in WoW addressed PvE balance by nerfing the "E" side of the equation. But that won't necessarily fix the problem in Warhammer -- the problem there lies on the "R" side of the equation. It's been noted before that Destruction is far more popular than Order, something that interestingly echoes Blizzard's past problems with the Horde being more popular than Alliance. Reports that Destruction outnumbered Order more than 2-1 in the raid show that the balancing act needs to come from the player distribution; something that Mythic may want to look to Blizzard's history for inspiration. As for the other reported issues: that around 30 players, below the level cap, without a ram, were able to sneak past guard patrols and kill the lord in minutes, Mythic may need to do some traditional tweaking there.

Now, in closing, the intent of this post is not to say "WoW good, War bad." Indeed, that's contrary to my personal opinions of the games anyway. Rather, the intent is to show that applying a single kind of nerfbat across various games, just because someone else is doing it, simply won't work. It's up to developers to take a long, hard, and honest look at their product and really figure out what kinds of changes need to be made, rather than making a kneejerk reaction and nerfing players for being successful. Remember: round pegs, and square holes, don't mix.





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