WoW is constantly evolving. It is very different today than it was a year ago. And it was very different a year ago than it was the year before that. I'm not only talking classes or pvp, but also Blizzard and how it interacted with players. I've always loved Blizzard's games, but sometimes I've questioned the way Blizzard interacts with their customers. Early in WoW was one of those times. Blizzard was still developing the game's major aspects. While they focused on the honor system and new content, smaller issues were often ignored. Races had broken traits (*NOTE - Orc Racials), classes had broken talents, and there were serious issues with balance. Perhaps this wouldn't have been as bad if we had any idea what Blizzard was thinking. Unfortunately, Blizzard felt the best way to deal with players was not at all.

The forums were terrible (my signature at the time was "Fire the retard who made these **** forums"). All threads deleted when they became inactive. Active threads locked at 40 pages and then deleted. Sometimes you'd be unable to log in for days. But even when you could, no one from Blizzard was reading your posts. Or that was the impression they gave. The WoW forums were run by the worst moderators (* a few weren't bad). They almost never responded. There were times Warlocks would go months without any response, only to get "I'm sorry but I can't moderate the Warlock forum every minute of the day." (direct quote) Here's one example. For a short while, Warlock's were able to use their Doomguard and Infernal. For whatever reason, Blizzard decided to break them. The Infernal and Doomguard were the reasons many of us chose to play warlocks. We had waited so long for a fix, only to have them taken away. The warlock community as a whole pleaded for information. Was the change a bug? Was it intended? There were 40 page posts left and right. It took over a month for the forum moderator (Eyonix) to even respond. He stated that there had been no change, and basically we had imagined it. That's how it went. Players wrote long and well thought out posts, hundreds of players added their own thoughts, only to have it all ignored, broken, and deleted.

Forums are created to give players a place to complain and vent their frustrations. But apparently, they did not exist for Blizzard to communicate with players. Eventually we all realized this and stopped talking to Blizzard. Whatever they were doing, they didn't want to discuss it. When players made posts, it was for the benefit of other players only. Many great guides and threads were written, unfortunately these were all deleted. More than guides, there were debates. Frustrated players had no one else to yell at, so they'd yell at each other. They were upset with the flaws in the game, they were upset that no one seemed to listen, and most of all, they were sick of rogues.

Blizzard has stated that not all classes were finished at release. Warlocks were still getting new abilities the final week of beta. Rogues on the other hand were one of the more complete classes. That wasn't the only issue. A lot of Blizzard's original ideas didn't work. Warlocks were based on an idea called risk versus reward. Powerful spells balanced by difficult reagents and complex play. It didn't work at all (*NOTE - Warlocks prior to 1.8). They later removed many of the rewards and left the risks. The stealth class wasn't new, but it didn't work as originally implemented in WoW. Imagine an invisible opponent that could hit when you least expected, prevent you from fighting back, and finish you off before you could say "damn rogue!". The ease at which they could win made the class incredibly simple to play. You could spam a button or two, and your opponents would die. Very easy. Very powerful. Very popular. You'd hear a group of kids at Babbages; "Hey, what class should I be?", "Rogue! They're the best!". Nerds, 12 year olds, retards. They'd all pick rogues. On some servers, one fourth, one third, or more, played rogues. How could you blame them? Everyone wanted the best class. Unfortunately it's difficult to see balance issues when you're on the winning side. It's easier to tell yourself that you're a superior player, and that your opponents are bad. In a game where many players spend more of their lives on Azeroth than Earth, children and morons could become quite arrogant. A table top dungeon master could begin to see others as his inferiors. Let's be clear, WoW isn't a hobby for everyone. For some it can become more real than actually living. A player's avatar can be more important to self worth than work, school, family, or friends. (* this of course does not apply to all players)

Game Pro (fairly sure it was Game Pro) wrote an article after the release of the honor system. They remarked that pvp was being ruled by rogues. They were right. They were everywhere. And they were often rude, offensive, and nasty people. A warlock in their own forum could not mention rogues without being ganged. "Noob!", "Learn2Play!", "Sorry you suck", "Learn to play your class!" They'd insist there were no balance issues. It was all skill. If you disagreed, "Where's your rogue? We'll talk when you have a rogue!" (* most people only had one character). This led to many frustrating debates. Unfortunately most had no clue what they were talking about. You'd hear incorrect statements and theorycraft repeated over and over until it became accepted as fact. One example was theorycraft about warlocks. Very few people knew much about warlocks at that time, and the misinformation was almost mythical. It was believed that Curse of Exhaustion was superior to Crippling Poison (30% slow vs a 70% slow), that a Felhound's Paranio could make stealth ineffective (or more humorously Detect Invisibility), and Shadow Bolts always two shot rogues. Why would anyone believe that? Because they had heard it so often. And of course some people would just make things up on the spot. You can't argue with this kind of ignorance without evidence.

Mute decided to counter theorycraft with a display of real tests, stats, and actual pvp. We filmed the mechanics of a warlock and rogue. He showed exactly how Curse of Exhaustion worked. It's easy to say CoEx will counter crippling poison, but when you see a rogue with amplified CoEx dancing around a poisoned warlock, it's not so easy to accept it as fact. We filmed the effects of Paranio. Before that video, many people did not understand how stealth worked, or how effective it could be. We showed how easily a rogue could prevent a warlock from using fear.

Mute started his rogue during our Scholomance days. And he took over bringing his rogue to our runs when he was like 55/56. We almost never brought druids to our runs (there weren't any), so Mute started collecting Wildheart. Eventually, he had 6/8 Shadowcraft and 8/8 Wildheart, a Krol Blade/Dal'Rend offhand. The second he hit 60, he didn't wait to finish his Shadowcraft, he took off for Ironforge to start pvping. He first recorded the Wildheart pvp. He was combat, because that was his leveling build. He had never respec'd. Then he recorded combat pvp with his Shadowcraft. About this time we did the fear experiment (how long could he keep me from casting fear with a worn dagger), and he was like "I'll try daggers". So we got a Heartseeker/Julies dagger. That's when he recorded his full Subtlety fights (with premed). He didn't like the build, and discovered that you could get both cold blood and prep. So Mute tried that. And that's the build he eventually used completely naked.

We had to discover a lot of this on our own, because who were we going to ask? I honestly didn't like watching rogue videos from that time, because they were so arrogant and annoying. Nothing but trash talking people who were destroyed before they were able to fight back, and then going on and on about how awesome and skilled they were. So Mute learned to play a rogue through his own experimentation, and he was more successful for it.

We had planned to make a single video, but it became apparent there was too much material. We had finished editing the last section first. Guessing we had about enough for 3 videos (we were off), we released it as Episode 3. Shortly after we released the remainder as Episode 2, because you can't call it "Episode 2 and 1", and left Episode 1 as a future possibility. While the tests, points, and arguments were all valid at the time, the game has changed.

The big problem for everyone was Blizzard's honor system. In WoW, no one has better looks or cool cars. Status is your items. Players go through an enormous amount of work to upgrade their characters. They grinded away for weeks for Cenarion Circle badges to get a single trinket. They'll raid Onyxia for months to get that one helm. Or spend weeks gaining rep with a faction for one weapon. It's status. Everyone wants to be that guy people inspect in town. At the top of the honor system was the grand jewel, High Warlord Gear. It was by far the most powerful gear in the game. This was released at a time when Mute still wanted the Headmaster's Charge. Nothing else compared, not even from raiding. Many people did not raid, and the promise of getting a set of the best gear and weapons, and being able to do it yourself was irresistible. It was everyone's dream. And everyone thought it was possible. It was a mirage. Blizzard had not told players how it worked. For 99% of players, it would be impossible, a never ending grind that would only end in disappointment.

Blizzard's honor system was not based on alliance versus horde. It was not skill vs skill. It was free time vs free time. To reach rank 14 required to that you pvp more than anyone else for one fourth to one third of a year. And you were competing against people who shared accounts or had no job. Players would go 3 or 4 months playing 16+ hours a day only to fail at reaching the goal. But after you devoted a month or two, it was extremely difficult to stop. If you took a break for one week, you'd lose so much honor you'd have to pvp for several more weeks just to catch up. If you stopped longer, you lost everything, and your whole grind was a waste. So players pushed on in desperation, often hooked before they understand what they were in for. Many real lives were ruined (*NOTE - Honor System). This led many players to become disinterested and quit the game. A very sad video was put out by Drakedog, who was so sick of it that he deleted his epics and character.

Very few players ever gained significant rewards from that original honor system. Yet because Blizzard would not adequately explain the system, players wasted their time grinding away at an unattainable dream. People no longer pvp'd in the BG they most enjoyed, they pvp'd where the most honor was available. And that was Arathi Basin. No one pvp'd anywhere else. WSG completely died. Because of the flawed idea that anyone could become rank 14, Arthai Basin became viewed by many as the only real pvp. If Blizzard had adequately explained the honor system, players would never have wasted their time grinding away at an unattainable dream. They would have realized that reaching rank 14 was unrealistic for 99% of players, and perhaps pvp'd for the only real reward; fun.

AB had not been designed to be the perfect bg to suit every player. And Blizzard was not going to balance the classes to fit a single battleground. Warriors were the most important class on AB teams. The others were healers, or dps and cc. This led many rogues to see their class as broken. We disagreed that Arathi Basin should be seen as the only PvP. Mute had spent several months grinding honor in Arathi Basin with his rogue (his main by this point). He realized the futility of the grind, and began to pvp where ever he enjoyed. The grind and the system had nearly ruined WoW for us. We had recently started a raiding guild though, and this had kept us interested. We considered making a video about the problems with the system, but decided to focus instead on a different subject.

Mute knew Arathi Basin very well. He had spent several months playing there. He understood the battleground well enough to know rogues were still a very strong class. The screams by terrible and retarded players were so off base, and yet so loud and so very annoying, that Mute decided to make another video. This video was made previous to the rogue review. All other classes had been updated. Rogues had waited until last because their issues had been the least urgent. They were now at their weakest. Mute responded to their claims, and showed that rogues were still very strong.

As they always do, Blizzard eventually fixed the problems. Double honor weekends, multiple ques, and battlegroups brought the other BGs back to life. Server transfers let populations even out, and Blizzard reintroduced World PvP. The original honor system was replaced with a new system that allowed more casual pvp, and players began to enjoy life in WoW again.

There have been many claims about our reasons for making roguecraft. One claim is that we attempted to sway blizzard, and convince them to nerf rogues. As explained, we had no reason to think Blizzard cared what we thought. Blizzard did not communicate with players. Why would we assume they watched player made videos? It's also claimed that we tried to sway players. Why would we need to? Everyone already agreed with us. One of the reasons for the movies success, was that we only echoed what other players already knew. This is why so many defended the videos.

It's been commonly claimed that Mute made the videos for fame. How would we know the videos would become so big? Hundreds of videos had been made before ours, with the exception of Leeroy, I don't know of any other video that became so well known. We made our video for Arthas, we had no idea that it would result in so much drama. If Mute was out for fame, he would have made a flashy pvp video like other rogues, filled with "PWN" and trash talk. He certainly wouldn't have made a video that claimed it was easy. He wouldn't have made a guild called "Rogues Take Zero Skill". This claim is often stated by hateful rogues, who had hopes of becoming famous themselves with their own videos, only to see a warlock release the most successful pvp movie ever. It's easy to see how that might make someone bitter.

The honest truth is that each of the videos were made to counter theorcraft. And I think we did a pretty good job. Rogues may call us liars, but did you ever hear anyone mention 5k shadow bolts afterwards? Or talk about Curse of Exhaustion being able to counter crippling poison? And if it brought a few arrogant players down a peg, that's ok too.

index | next >