Patch Day '08

Another patch, another day's worth of barely concealed anticipation while I sit at work waiting with baited breath for the horror stories to start flooding in on what does and does not work, what's OP, what's nerfed, and which additions of content are truly awesome in standard Blizzard fashion.

I remember a time when that sentence would have made absolutely no sense to me.

So far the biggest piece of news prior to the servers coming back up (and it remains to be seen if they'll actually be up on time) is the fact that the patch's class changes are "not complete." There's so much irony in this news that it's honestly hard for me to talk about it without chuckling balefully to myself in my elitist meta-gamer way, but I'll try to summarize.

That anybody actually thinks the changes to classes, all the tweaks and outright upheavals to talent trees, new and revamped skills, and various other mechanics will ever reach a "completed" state are in clear denial of how this process works. I blame console RPGs. You never get updates to the game mechanics of a Final Fantasy. But when was the last time you saw a D&D source book that said "Final Version"? It never ends. It just grows. Such is World of Warcraft.

So people are hemming and hawing, as they are wont to do, about the fact that the patch isn't "done" and therefore is "broken", because we're not getting all the changes we've been reading about - and subsequently hemming and/or hawing about - in beta. I honestly think it's the best thing that could happen, because the scope of the changes in beta is huge. Trying to unload all of the modifications on a community so saturated with veterans would potentially cripple any activity that happens between now and November 13th. Blizzard has some big plans for the game - broad, sweeping plans to reign in what's been left out of control for too long - and it needs to be a phased approach. Pruning the big changes that drop today - spellpower, hit/crit merging, base mana costs - before throwing in all the bells and whistles on the roster is going to give them a much higher chance of getting things working in time for Wrath to come out.

The thing that cracks me up about it is how so many people are quick to jump on the bandwagon of claiming that Blizzard has no idea what they're doing based on these events. But it's typical for those with any strong personal opinions on things they love to assume that if they don't know all the rationale, no one else can. Which is why, even though seeing various QQing and griefing on the forums about Blizzard's lack of organization or instability-inducing changes gives me some aggravation (because I disagree), I still enjoy seeing all of the furor because it's clear that it's coming from a community that's passionate about this pastime we share.

So rage on, nerdragers.

Meanwhile, I will be sitting here waiting in my stupid WoW-less cube for 5:00 to roll around so I can go home and gleefully tear my Poisons hotkey off my action bar, never to be seen again.