Get your facts straight. 3.0.8 put level restrictions on gathering proffs back in the game (and removed the possibility of applying ZG chants to heirloom shoulders), which in my mind was a good change (I twink priest and hunter at 19)
The problem with the patch is that anyone who already had maxxed their proffs (or anything above the level cap) did not loose their buffs. So not only are you in a position where some people cannot get gathering buffs on their twinks due to xp problems, but unless you already have the buffs, you cannot get the buff at all anymore. What this means (especially at 19) is that no matter how hard you work at perfecting you twink you cannot ever reach the same level as people with maxxed proffesion buffs.
That's the current controversy, not whether or not it is fair to have the buff at all
This change is nothing but good and it is purely a pvp change.
CC essentially became too strong in pvp with dispel resistance and trash debuffs. A mage could easily get a 5 stack of the frost trash debuff, making it hard enough to remove the one debuff you wanted (root/slow), add to that dispel resistance and it is nothing but wasted mana to try to dispel the CC itself. With this change people will have to use trash debuffs much more to protect their CC but thankfully without all the extra protection of resists.
Anyone thinking this is a bad change haven't played a healer in pvp where you spend 8-20 seconds doing nothing (because you can't), and then some time spamming your dispel uselessly against something you cannot remove due to all the trash you need to plow through.
Blizzard gets tons of cred an loyalty by making a mac version of their games. Just by looking at the posters over at wowinsider you'll see that quite a few of the bloggers play wow on their mac, and overall I get surprised how many people hwo seems to be playing the game on a mac.
StarCraft (BroodWars) and Diablo 2 is also a quite interesting example. Nvidia decided it was a brilliant idea to remove support for 256 colours in one of their upgrades (it happened in 10.5.4) for MBPs, thus essentially breaking those two games. Blizzard on the other hand set out to fix the problem, something which basically entailed upgrading them to handle thousands or millions of colours, even if it wasn't their fault.
Combine it all with the fact that there isn't all that many good games on OS X and it isn't weird that quite a lot of mac gamers plays WoW or other blizzard games.
First of all, the bug is a bug and should be fixed. Any dedicated twink should want that anyway, 700 is on the broken side of strong (500 even, but that'll have to be). Once the bug is fixed, you'll just level your mining to 450 and you're at 500 extra health, good stuff.
Heirloom items scale every level and not per 10 levels, there was a rumor for quite some time that it would only be at every x0 level, but that is wrong. Furthermore, when people say that heirloom items will ruin twinking and that it'll be "oh so strong", do they fail to realize that twink have mains in northrend? I mean if you're getting 450 mining/skinning/herbing (pick 2) you're going to get heirloom items as well in the few instances where they are actually better. I personally think the health change is a good thing, along with the dodge nerf we have seen a general shift towards more offensive stats on people's gear leading to more intense battles as opposed to the 20 minute borefests where everyone has TONS of health but no killing power.
The change is good, nothing else can be said about that. 2.3 will bring normals closer to twinks because good gear with relevant stats will now drop in instances. As long as you're doing the odd instance run when you level you'll get good gear that you can use to compete.
Twinks on the other hand (full out twinks) aren't really getting that much of an upgrade in this patch. Most fully twinked chars get one-two new items they'd like (such as rugged spaulders for rogues/hunters at level 19) and that's it. Healer twinks get the same buff as every other healer in the game. I personally have my eyes set on new gloves and perhaps new wrists if I can convince someone to run me through RFC (I'm alliance). Other twinks have problems with XP and cannot get anything new etc.
Although he has many good points, most of which are (probably) true, I do have one thing to object to:
It's too easy to say developers aren't artists because they aren't the ones deciding what to make. Artist (Michelangelo, da Vinci, Rafael, Caravaggio and so on) have always, all the way up to Manet, painted what people with money wanted them to paint. What's made the old art interesting is how all the art was made, not the image itself
To be honest I think the journalists complaining about E3 are quite sad and that they show a lot of dissrespect towards the fans WHO'D NOT THERE. Most of the people reading whatever the journalists write on E3 would (almost) kill to be at E3, and then all they get to do is read: "oh noes! I'm the first to play this new game! noes I hate it so much, this is so hard work! /wrist" It basically sounds like a bunch of emo kids with all the complaining.
That said, I'm actually quite glad I didn't have to stand in Nintendo's line and I'm also glad someone does. But I really feel the people going there should show some respect to the people who actually makes their living (their readers) directly or indirectly by not complaining that much about how horrible E3 is.
Insider Trader: Twink gathering controversy, updated
Jan 24th 2009 6:49AM (WoW)The problem with the patch is that anyone who already had maxxed their proffs (or anything above the level cap) did not loose their buffs. So not only are you in a position where some people cannot get gathering buffs on their twinks due to xp problems, but unless you already have the buffs, you cannot get the buff at all anymore. What this means (especially at 19) is that no matter how hard you work at perfecting you twink you cannot ever reach the same level as people with maxxed proffesion buffs.
That's the current controversy, not whether or not it is fair to have the buff at all
Dispel resistance mechanics changing in 3.0.8
Jan 13th 2009 6:07AM (WoW)CC essentially became too strong in pvp with dispel resistance and trash debuffs. A mage could easily get a 5 stack of the frost trash debuff, making it hard enough to remove the one debuff you wanted (root/slow), add to that dispel resistance and it is nothing but wasted mana to try to dispel the CC itself. With this change people will have to use trash debuffs much more to protect their CC but thankfully without all the extra protection of resists.
Anyone thinking this is a bad change haven't played a healer in pvp where you spend 8-20 seconds doing nothing (because you can't), and then some time spamming your dispel uselessly against something you cannot remove due to all the trash you need to plow through.
GOOD CHANGE
Lugaru shows why game devs should support OS X and Linux
Jan 2nd 2009 8:52PM (TUAW.com)StarCraft (BroodWars) and Diablo 2 is also a quite interesting example. Nvidia decided it was a brilliant idea to remove support for 256 colours in one of their upgrades (it happened in 10.5.4) for MBPs, thus essentially breaking those two games. Blizzard on the other hand set out to fix the problem, something which basically entailed upgrading them to handle thousands or millions of colours, even if it wasn't their fault.
Combine it all with the fact that there isn't all that many good games on OS X and it isn't weird that quite a lot of mac gamers plays WoW or other blizzard games.
Mining Toughness bug beefs up twinks
Nov 26th 2008 8:01PM (WoW)First of all, the bug is a bug and should be fixed. Any dedicated twink should want that anyway, 700 is on the broken side of strong (500 even, but that'll have to be). Once the bug is fixed, you'll just level your mining to 450 and you're at 500 extra health, good stuff.
Heirloom items scale every level and not per 10 levels, there was a rumor for quite some time that it would only be at every x0 level, but that is wrong. Furthermore, when people say that heirloom items will ruin twinking and that it'll be "oh so strong", do they fail to realize that twink have mains in northrend? I mean if you're getting 450 mining/skinning/herbing (pick 2) you're going to get heirloom items as well in the few instances where they are actually better. I personally think the health change is a good thing, along with the dodge nerf we have seen a general shift towards more offensive stats on people's gear leading to more intense battles as opposed to the 20 minute borefests where everyone has TONS of health but no killing power.
Patch 2.3: Twinks become gods
Oct 29th 2007 6:10AM (WoW)The change is good, nothing else can be said about that. 2.3 will bring normals closer to twinks because good gear with relevant stats will now drop in instances. As long as you're doing the odd instance run when you level you'll get good gear that you can use to compete.
Twinks on the other hand (full out twinks) aren't really getting that much of an upgrade in this patch. Most fully twinked chars get one-two new items they'd like (such as rugged spaulders for rogues/hunters at level 19) and that's it. Healer twinks get the same buff as every other healer in the game. I personally have my eyes set on new gloves and perhaps new wrists if I can convince someone to run me through RFC (I'm alliance). Other twinks have problems with XP and cannot get anything new etc.
The change is good, nothing else
Why games suck
Jun 7th 2006 1:36PM (Joystiq)It's too easy to say developers aren't artists because they aren't the ones deciding what to make. Artist (Michelangelo, da Vinci, Rafael, Caravaggio and so on) have always, all the way up to Manet, painted what people with money wanted them to paint. What's made the old art interesting is how all the art was made, not the image itself
"I Hate You, E3," declares Escapist writer
May 24th 2006 11:01AM (Joystiq)That said, I'm actually quite glad I didn't have to stand in Nintendo's line and I'm also glad someone does. But I really feel the people going there should show some respect to the people who actually makes their living (their readers) directly or indirectly by not complaining that much about how horrible E3 is.
Blizzard's E3 booth tour
May 15th 2006 7:45AM (Joystiq)btw. Please don't take this post as a "MACS rulez over everything!!!!" Blizzard is just good at supporting osx as well