Cynical Brit Leaving WoW :(

[Acherontia]

Details in his daily podcast here.

Getting pretty irked myself with some of Blizz's decisions, but if you want to hear his own reasons, he's explained at the start of that vid.

[zedxrgal]

I agree 100% with his decision and understand. This goes live and I'll probably cancel.

[TygerDarkstorm]

Can't say I blame him really. Makes me glad I cancelled my account a little while ago.

[Lupis]

The change doesn't really affect me much, but WoW is losing interest anyway. Might quit soon too. Sorry to see him go, Cynical Brit is amazing.
Stupid Rift, come out with a Mac version so I can throw my money and life at you!

[Acherontia]

Sorry to see him go, Cynical Brit is amazing.
Stupid Rift, come out with a Mac version so I can throw my money and life at you!

Agreed on both counts--although I'm more interested in GW2 o.o Can't wait to try that!

[TygerDarkstorm]

The change doesn't affect me either (and wouldn't have in game anyway), but it's the matter behind them doing it that irks me. The whole deal with Cata was that it was supposed to bring us more TBC-esque style challenge back, but instead, they keep backing away from that more and more and going back to making things easier and easier.

I look forward to GW2 and SWTOR.

[Novikova]

Is it bad I totally look forward to the Knights of the Old republic MMO because I bloody love Star Wars and story driven games?

[Aeladrine]

Oh, TB, don't go! You're the only podcaster in the entire world I listen to!

sodoesanyoneknowothergoodones,causeidon't

[Lisaara]

That sucks but he says he isnt leaving because of the nerfs itself. It's just a one of many contributing factors.

[Kalliope]

I agree that it's a little disappointing because TBC raiding *was* nice in that the old content didn't get nerfed until the end of the expansion, but this new precedent was established in LK, so I can't say I'm surprised/especially upset about it.

*shrug* I see enough bad pugs in 5m instances to have very little faith in these same people actually stepping it up and learning raid tactics. These people wouldn't be learning regardless of the nerfs.

[Worba]

From what I've seen the entire downward slide in challenge was pretty much kicked off by Greg Street when he came on board and sold management on the idea that Blizzard wasn't getting great return on developer hours in a lot of cases - all kinds of content that developers had worked long and hard on, but that wasn't being experienced by that many players. I'm sure he was not alone in this belief, but just based on the timing alone he does seem like the most prominent champion of the "butts in seats" movement...

Was this belief completely offbase though? Totalbiscuit notes these (latest) raid nerfs are the result of not that many people doing heroics... well, lack of popularity is what got Ghostcrawler going on the nerf kick way back when, so this issue has been with us for a long time. In someways I see the cycle as similar to what happens in department stores, if you want to use price as an analogy to content difficulty: hot new product hits shelves selling for top dollar, gradually demand ebbs, price drops, product gets creatively repackaged and price picks up or stabilizes for a bit, then resumes dropping... and finally it ends up in the bargain bin.

The big question is whether this is just a matter of clearing the shelves for the new 4.2 content or if it's just an overall goodbye to challenge as Totalbiscuit interprets it. That imo is an open question. However looking at it from the other end of the spectrum, solo'ing has become almost insultingly easy - a far cry from the days of TBC when you had lots of outdoor bosses and quests like the dragonmaw race, degrader, etc. This imo could be viewed as Ghostcrawlers general, at least arguably valid initial concerns, being codified with robotically mindless persistence by lower level devs into "if there's even a possibility of failure, tear it up and start over!"

So far I've managed to compensate for the lack of solo challenge with lots of alts - it's still interesting to see how different classes/specs work (though at least half are hunters...), but I sometimes wonder how long that will last.

[AdamSavage]

I don't really blame him, the game has been going downhill in some areas for awhile now.

[Bulletdance]

It was fun listening to him. Personally I don't understand the changes. I don't raid, it takes too long, its too dependent on the skill of others as well rather than your own for me. I think those who don't raid are in the same boat. They can nerf it all they want and I and many others won't bother. those who do raid like to say how good they are for being able to do the hard stuff, they like the challenge and teamwork involved, nerfing it will just make it generally less fun for those who do it. If blizzard is so concerned about everyone seeing the content like the arthas death and things they need to make them some sort of world event for everyone. But all that said they did this with ICC too I don't think it should have come as a surprise to anyone.

[Wassa]

Well, looks like it's wrath all over again. *sigh* I don't blame him, and I'm close to quitting as well. I only play on raid nights and I am not having fun raiding at all anymore, so why play?

[Felidire]

As one of their more well-known subscribers, it looks like he's trying to influence Blizzard to think differently about the way they're developing and changing the game. He's right though, the last few years I spent 70-80% of my playtime doing Arena Skirmish matches, they remove random skirmish queues from the game entirely..

I hit 85 and the heroics are so hard that we're wiping 5-20 times on the first boss in HoO! No sarcasm intended whatsoever, but, I absolutely LOVED it!! - Right now... I'm plowing through heroics, no need for CC, I can tank everything while button mashing! OMG, the group all died on the last boss?! No worries, it may take me 5-10 minutes but i'll just solo what's left of it. They've dumbed down the classes, bad players are far more prevalent now than they ever were in Vanilla/TBC. I can't count how many "heroic" bosses I can solo on a single hand, and when a bad group makes it up to a non-easy boss, there's no teamwork involved! The goal is: "Have these guys do as much damage before they die, to increase my chances of finishing the boss off myself once they're all dead.

Needless to say, the game has become very boring. No skirmishes for me, and I wonder if any of these current raid bosses will become soloable for people. =/

[cowmuflage]

I find the Cata H hard :/

[Saturo]

Sure as hell can't say I blame him. It's sad really, he was awesome, but with everything that's been happening lately, I support him. I won't renew my account either, especially now with the raid nerf.

[Sonata]

Wait wait, I can understand that the raid nerf has people mad but how are Cata Heroics not challenging? Even has me sad, the raid nerf I mean.
I've only seen ability nerfs to classes and not dumbing down in my opinion, I'd like some explanation on this. Okay I might not be up to date on the info.

[Cialbi]

As one of their more well-known subscribers, it looks like he's trying to influence Blizzard to think differently about the way they're developing and changing the game.

More like he grew tired of attempting just that.

[Kurenio]

I Support TB completely if it wasn't for me playing this game pretty much to hunt and tame pets with raiding on the side I'd be quiting to... I use to pvp back in classic they messed that up now seem to be messing up raiding I know its old content... but I mean really the people that would be doing old content just to see it will already have full 359 and probably 4 piece tier it doesn't get any easier then that and it did not need to be nerf if you want to see the content learn the damn fight learn to play your class if you can't atleast do that then why the hell are you trying to raid in the first place. for the love of god it doesn't make any sense to me

/rant