Apparently, my feelings on this are either unclear, or I’m an idiot. I’m fine with either, really.
I mentioned in my previous post that, although I HAVE a 70 Hunter, I never had any intention of trying to get this pet. That wasn’t my issue.
The one thing that absolutely bothers me the most about this entire situation, is NOT a failing in my trust of Blizzard. Hey, mistakes happen, miscommunication occurs, that’s fine. Maybe the first round of guys talking about it didn’t know someone else had plans for them, for Shamans to get Ghost Wolves like was mentioned in the previous comments as a possibility. Maybe they cannot be Hibernated cause they are undead, or some other thing, and Blizzard freaked. That’s cool. It’s at least a reason.
No, what bothers me, is Blizzard seems to have forgotten that the product they are providing to us is FUN. They seem to feel that they are in the business to be in business, and keep adding new content, but not add more FUN. It’s been like that for a while, focusing on class balance issues, new raid instances, whatever. But they do not seem to be focusing on adding FUN. The Clockwork Bot stealth nerf, the new Ghost Wolf model nerf, these were actions that removed content that served no other purpose than add FUN. And as fast as they acted to remove them, there has been zero attempt to either add a non-undead wolf model to satiate the Hunter community, provide a fix of the Clockwork Bots, or offer any communication to anyone letting us know that they even give a shit.
My rant is about Blizzard not focusing on providing FUN as a product. And let me tell you, the only reason I play the game is for fun. Not as a business, not as my second unpaid freaking job. It’s fun, recreation, and good times.
And it pisses me off when I see actions that show Blizzard has no problem removing fun… and even worse, just don’t seem to GET IT. We love this game. And when something new, something small, some teensy weensy little new touch of flavor is reluctantly handed to us, or is discovered by cunning players, we freak and mob it, devouring it greedily, and we dream of more.
How fucking sad is it that one of the MOST eagerly anticipated additions to the game in the next patch that I keep hearing people talk about are NEW HAIR STYLES?!?!
Honestly. Blizzard. Wake up. Plan whatever new content you want that your business models show will bring in new customers. Fine.
But satisfy the desires of your existing player base by having someone, some person or small team, do nothing but create new, non-combat fun stuff. Want some ideas?
Gove me two seconds… oh, yeah, ehre ya go…. Let us tame the stupid zebra looking unicorns from the Barrens. CREATE A NEW CRAPPIER COMBAT RANK FOR THEM IF IT MAKES YOU HAPPY. Give us 6 stable slots, and let us tame shit that is weaker than any other animal, but will give us neat looking stuff we haven’t used before. SOMETHING, for gods sake.
Hell, let us tame the little scrub animals that infest every instance and zone, the animals that there is always SOMEONE in a party that has to kill ‘em. I’m talking the little snakes, rats, skunks, etc. Give ‘em total crap stats, but give a Hunter the OPTION of CHOOSING to NOT have a full sized huge combat pet, but instead run around with a two-handed axe and a teeny squirrel pet that will fight alongside him.
Go for the eyes, Boo!!!! Go for the eyes!!!
Are you seriously telling me that Hunters would NOT have at least one pet that did absolute crap damage, but still took their pet siamese cat, or skunk, or rattlesnake along to fight beside them because it was just too fun? Or what about a combat skunk? Give the stink debuff, that did nothing but say you stink, and we would be HOWLING.
I mean, honest to god, it would be fun, and it’s not like a Hunter with a pet skunk is going to be overpowered in PvP or raids.
Okay, end my ranting now. But come on. Is it really so freaking hard to remember why we fell in love with this game in the first place? Has Blizzard really lost touch with the players THAT bad?
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“Has Blizzard really lost touch with the players THAT bad?”
Yes. Yes they have. It’s a little too obvious isn’t it? And not just in regards to hunters.
Well, if I read the WoW forums more than once a month I’d lose touch with the players too.
ALso I think Blizzard is working on fun. I know they have plans to revamp the holiday events. At least I read a blue talking about that.
But yeah. I wish they’d give more hunter petskin options, I don’t mind them all being similair but the more different looks the better.
Allow druid animal forms to look different(I really like the idea of a different color based on which talent tree you go ie: red cat = balance, yellow = resto, black = feral, white = hybrid).
More mounts. Redraw the PVP tier sets so they don’t look like you took the PVE sets and re painted them.
Warlock pet names? or perhaps colors?
More dances, more haircuts. Less human chins.
Testify.
When do we march?
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I was the dude that mentioned long ago that we should get a quest to race in the Shimmering Flats. Like the Brewfest mounts. Yes. MOAR FUN PLZ.
I suspectifies that there be them is Blizzard what be fun, and thems what be not fun. Just like any other big bunch of glumperduggers. Whoever turned off the ghost wolves is Not Fun, but whoever came up with the Headless Horseman event or the two bickering bosses in Arcatraz (fer examples) were Fun. Imagines we will continue to see the effects of both, always.
Dammit Rats.
Why do you gotta be so Zen?
Oh man…preach on, Brother Bear!
LOL…Dammy’s 100% right though…the only reason I’ve never really posted a good rant about the Blizz forums is because that would force me to go back and actually read some of that dreck.
Ratty’s got a great insight there too.
BTW: FUN thing to do (of course, the timer is too freaking short to do this year) is to take your miniature Greench to the SM chapel and let ‘em loose. Can also be done with the lil Yeti you get as a result of a Winterspring quest. Talk about howling good FUN!!
/agree One Among Many
P.S. “Go for the eyes, Boo!!!! Go for the eyes!!!” - I love that game. =D
Ratshag has it for sure, but what we need is them that be fun getting a bit more of the upper hand.
The rocket bot, steam tonks, wolpertinker (or however you spell it) were all fun. But the expectation that we get a non-combat pet with every new event is not fun for me. Too predictable. I’d like em to shake things up a little.
What’s not to love about Harris Pilton or Oprah Windfury? Hilarious! I’m grinning from ear to ear every time I do the Booterang quest for Netherwing rep. I love it! And the comment on the Booterang…”This is your Booterang. There are many like it but this one is yours.” Genius!!
So I think there is lots of wit and lots of fun out there, and I guess if there was too much it just wouldn’t have the same impact. I do believe they try to build fun into lots of stuff.
Because we love it we see opportunities for even more. How about some odd foods that do weird stuff. Ice cream from the vendor in shimmering flats that makes your character shiver and turn blue. Practical jokes you can send your friends through the mail that when they open it it makes them shout “I’m an asshat!” or has some cool effect. I dunno.
But I agree with you BBB, if you take something FUN out of the game, you better damn well explain it, look at why people were loving it, and give them something else instead. I only have a level 40 dwarf hunter alt, but the first thing I did with him was go all the way to the Exodar area to get a cool and unusual pet. 2 stable slots is just so frustrating..
And I want to name my non-combat pets dammit!
I want me a squirrel of Death! ’nuff said.
Chicken of Doom for me, kaithx. And I’ve rerolled 4 times now in the quest for better hair.
Great post, I totally agree.
I think the warlock pet names could use some revamping. My husband ended up with some pretty hilarious ones, but over all a bit more control would be nice.
My personal opinion is that pets who put debuffs on you that simply say “Stink” would be funny for about an hour then largely ignored. Those features belong on critter pets, of which I can assure you there are plenty!
I personally disagree greatly that Blizzard doesn’t put FUN in the product. There’s a metric ton of FUN in the product and I still haven’t discovered all of it.
Case in point, so I’m leveling my pally (got a 70 spriest, 70 war, 66 rogue, 69 pally right now) in Nagrand just this weekend doing my normal quest rotation there. I’m doing the Lump quest and I walk up to aggro him and noticed this great line:
“In Nagrand, Food hunts Ogre!”
Almost every area of new content has at least 5 - 6 of what might be called Easter Eggs stuck in it. Things like the Top Gun reenactment in Ogri’la or the stuff they say during the Netherwing quests, etc.
The difference is that the humor is presented in a similar way that you see in Fallout, situationally, rather than presenting it front and center.
Those who don’t want or care about the little FUN elements can ignore them or play their game without those being involved.
Really - I always thought it would be a cool thing if some obscure thing somewhere was tamable for, like, a month.
But again, the issue isn’t about ghost wolves and it’s not about the forewarning so much either. The only hotfixes we’ve ever got notice about are those involving the client somehow or the few they post in the UI or Raids forums on wow.com. That’s it - we’ve never gotten notice about hotfixes for substantial changes to abilities (which have directly affected me). Now while I can understand the frustration of wasting money on something like that, try having your entire player concept silently hotfixed out of relevance. THAT ruins the fun of the game.
It seems to me that one problem with “fun” is that it’s so ephemeral. If there were a race event in Shimmering Flats, everyone would pile out there for a week or two and then it would be empty again. Everyone had a wolpertinger out, and now how often do you see them? But the “challenges,” Scholomance and LBRS and Onyxia in Azeroth and now Arcatraz and Kara and Gruul in Outlands, those have a much longer game-time shelf life and so maybe it’s not surprising that Blizzard spends more time on them.
I’m not saying they’re right about their balance of fun vs. mechanics. But I wouldn’t have to be the one making the decisions about how to expend limited development and testing resources for the maximum benefit of the WoW community, either.
As for the Ghost Wolves, the more I thought about low-level hunters passing by them and realizing that they couldn’t have one until they were level 70 and met very specialized requirements, the more I wasn’t sure it was a bad thing not to be able to tame them anymore…Although, as I said before, Blizzard did handle the PR aspect of that very badly.
I would totally roll with a Big Red Squirrel! I don’t think I’d ever go back to my cat!
and imagine Kill Command for a squirrel… Sic Nuts…
BBB,
You’re over-reacting massively. This does not make the game less fun in any way. A hard to obtain pet is now super-rare. So what? Some perspective, please.
K
Perspective? Lol.
Now, to see an actual example of an over-reaction, hows about you go over here to Someone’s blog? While it’s still up, of course.
http://someonewowing.blogspot.com/2008/01/goodbye-cruel-wow.html
Actually warlock pet names is ANOTHER fun thing they took out. You used to be able to repeat the last part of the quest until you summoned a demon with a name you liked. Blizzard looked at that and said “no way they’re not using the cool names we came up with, they are using personal choice!”
So warlock pet names they nerfed so you couldn’t choose.
double post
I remembered something else: the policy of suspending players for entering certain zones that you’re not supposed to get to. Such as the troll village in northern kalimdor that you are “supposed to only fly over”
I know many people who loved to explore and try to find new areas, this was a lot of fun to them, and didn’t affect or hurt anyone, but Blizzard again is against fun does not follow the specific plan of theirs.