WAR (Warhammer Online)

Massively's sister site WoW Insider is reporting that the upcoming mega-patch to World of Warcraft will include nerfs. But not to your precious Hunter or Warlock ... no, the nerfs are hitting the bosses of the Burning Crusade and Outlands. Major changes to the way fundamental game mechanics work have resulted in bosses that are significantly more challenging than they were intended to be when the BC expansion was released. To combat this, every boss in Outlands has had their health reduced by (in some circumstances) up to 30%.

Blogger Alex Ziebart runs down the numerous 'old style' raid tactics that, now deprecated, the Blizzard developers had to tune for. "Shaman stacking", and "Shadow Priest mana batteries" were just two of the tactics that neccessitated these changes. Alex views these changes as "an absolutely required retuning", and we're inclined to agree. Check out the discussion of the latest PTR patch to World of Warcraft, and plenty of analysis, at WoW Insider.

Why else would they nerf BC content so shortly after WAR came out?   It has seemed to work fine for them for quite a long time and now all of a sudden they want to make the content easier for everyone. 

Why else? Because there is an expansion coming out next month and they want to make it easier for people to do BC content and get to 70 to use the expansion content.

scared? of what?

lol... will you guys every stop imagining bullshit like this?
 

Wow is not threatened by anything... let alone WAR....

war is just another mmo which will have a few hundread thousand players playing... just like lotro and aoc.... that's it...

get used to it...

The wishful thinking of the WoW hate brigade never ceases to amuse.

Originally posted by sgel

scared? of what?

lol... will you guys every stop imagining bullshit like this?
 

Wow is not threatened by anything... let alone WAR....

war is just another mmo which will have a few hundread thousand players playing... just like lotro and aoc.... that's it...

get used to it...

Lol... war is still new... hell it had 900k+ beta applicants? Hell ... and we have a dev team that listens... I can see our numbers doing well pretty soon if they aren't already.

Originally posted by SioBabble

The wishful thinking of the WoW hate brigade never ceases to amuse.

Actually I have played WoW for years but nice try. 

They didn't do this when BC came out.  They didn't nerf AQ40 and Naxx so more people could get through the content and they especially wouldn't do it for that reason only a month before the expansion comes out. 

Sorry guys but that doesn't ring true.  The majority of people who stick with WoW due so because of the Carrot on the Stick mentality.  With new content coming in about 2 months why would they need to increase the availability of Phat loot? 

Only one reason and that reason is they have had decreased server attendance.  They know exactly how many people are logging on how often (which of course is not the same as their 11million world wide subscriber number since that only counts subscriptions and not play time).  If they have seen a decrease in their peak population then yes they would be concerned.  In the past they have always had increased numbers to replace people who have gotten bored.  But within the last year or two they haven't increased nearly as quickly (which supports that they have reached somewhat of a plateu on subscribers) plus you combine that with the siphoning off of some subscribers by the current releases and you have a situation that Blizzard doesn't want to see. 

The last thing they want to see is the start of a decline. 

 Blizzard isn't "scared". They realise WAR is the first strong competitor on the market, and are wisely taking precautions in order to lose as few subscribers as possible. Probably more than a little envious and how polished the game is, and how smooth the launch is, compared to back when World of WarCraft launched. But be realistic - while I'll be surprised if Warhammer isn't going to hold at least a couple of million players eventually, Blizzard isn't "scared", and it will not "kill WoW". There's plenty of room for both games, as well as many others.

This isn't the first time they've done something like this. In 2.3 they reduced XP needed to level pre-lvl60, boosted xp rewards from quests and nerfed the "elite" world quests to make it easier to advance your character to get to the high-level content.

Blizzard has nothing to be scared of.

Please, for the love of god, no more pointless WoW threads in the WAR forums.

http://www.wowinsider.com/2008/10/01/raids-rebalanced-for-patch-3-0-2/

No more stacking 6 shaman for their heroism / bloodlust. No more stacking leatherworkers for drums of battle. Shadowpriest mana regen lowered. With these changes, overall raid DPS will go down. The bosses had their HP adjusted for these changes and it was needed.  With all the major changes to the classes and their buffs in the upcoming expansion, I doubt these will be the only changes made to bosses.