We think it's an interesting phenomenon. A lot of the complaints you see, especially in these forums, don't always jive with who is actually winning in Arena (though to be fair, sometimes they do).

There has been so much discussion about double melee "Cleave" teams and the death of casters while RMP has continued to be really strong if not dominant in 3s. Now maybe it's only at the lower ratings where it's an issue, or maybe players are noticing an up-and-coming trend while the tournaments tend to emphasize groups who have a lot of experience playing together.

I'm not saying everything is perfect, and ideally we'd love to see more mixed comps than RMP so often. But it is interesting when the Internet buzz doesn't always match who is winning.

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Ghostcrawler
Lead Systems Designer

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Q u o t e:
The way I see it is like this: If one person is complaining about a spec, then that person really needs to do some more research about the spec. If 1000 people are complaining about a spec, then something might be just a l2p issue. If 10,000, maybe something is up. However....

If day in and day out over a course of months that posts, threads, complaints, etc, are made about the same specs, classes, abilites, and talents --> them SOMETHING needs to be addresses. If this phenomenon is a regular occurrence on a mass scale, you know...it is a problem. DKs ARE OP AS A CLASS IN WHOLE! RETS ARE STUPID OP WITH ONLY 3 BUTTONS! DISC AND RESTO IS OP! How? The posts say how they are and....its true! CoI IS SPAMMED! DG IS BS! BUBBLE IMMUNITY FOR A DPS SPEC RESETTING A FIGHT IS TOO MUCH!

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I would not mistake quantity of posts for quality of posts. Even if we had 10,000 players posting on these forums, which I can assure you we do not, that is still a very small percentage of WoW players.

You can pretty easily find numerous complaints about Resto druids, Ret, Arms, Destro, Frost (mages and DKs), Unholy, Holy paladins, rogues and Disc priests. I'm sure you could find complaints about every class if you searched far enough. I think that when players see an "overwhelming consensus" they are still including some statements and disregarding others either consciously or subconsciously.

Which is why we don't put much emphasis on how many people say something or how loud or persistently they say it. Or even their use of CAPS LOCK. We focus on the strength of the argument.

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Ghostcrawler
Lead Systems Designer

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Q u o t e:
GC, quantity does matter actually... You can't expect everyone in the game to come to the forums and post about these classes, But to those that take their time and do.. you need to take that into value too. This is like saying players come to the forums to tell you a problem and you just throw it back us saying "we don't believe you". Sure there will always be false arguments/trolls and arguments based on experience which is true, but don't you think that's your job to figure out which posts are right or wrong? I don't want to insult but so far there has been tons of occasions where you have been wrong and would just not listen to the players (eg ret pallies in 3.0).

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The threshold for us isn't that every player of a certain class posts. The threshold is a strong argument. Our job is absolutely to figure out which post is right and wrong. But that means when we sometimes say "We don't believe you" that has to be okay. Otherwise every post is by definition right.

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Q u o t e:
Do you even consider yourself wrong sometimes? Or is it the stuck up attitude of a dev " I design this game so i am always right". People complain about resto druids, ret, arms ,destro,frost mages, dks, holy pallies, rogues and disc priests are right and wrong, but to the people who actually read the forum and pay attention.. you have been ignoring the facts and just looking at your numbers. We both have seen trends of certain classes getting extremely popular and this is also the case with RMP.. but i swear to god there has always been a thing in my heart yelling out Ghostcrawler is extremely biased for rogues and mages and these posts by you are literally screaming the same.

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I don't know what this means. Numbers are facts. Forum posts are almost always opinions, though sometimes backed up by facts. We are wrong plenty. If we weren't, you'd never see balance changes. The rogues and mages are as critical of us as everyone else.

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Q u o t e:
I just hope you're aware of how incredibly poorly people quote RMP representation statistics on the forums.

One person says "RMP has 35% representation above 2.2k!" and a bunch of others start parroting it. But what none of them realize is what they're actually quoting is that RMP has 35% representation of the top 5 comps in 3v3. RMP at 2.2k+ is less than 7%. I don't think you can say that's a huge problem at that level.

The number goes WAY up when you look at the top 100 3v3 teams, but I think that has to do with the skill cap of RMP as compared to most other comps. A lot of really good sponsored players play RMP, because it is good, it is fun, and in general it is more respected than, say, most Cleave comps.

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There isn't a magic number to balance around. It isn't a small tournament, the top 100 players, or only the teams with scores of over 2000. We owe it to even low-rated players to have a relatively balanced PvP experience. It is entirely possible (and I'm sure you can come up with examples) of classes or comps that are hard to beat except by the best players, who trounce them. This means they never show up at the highest ratings, but are ominant down below. Does that mean it's balanced? No.

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Q u o t e:
You realize you are posting in a thread started by a troll? heh.

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That doesn't mean every player who posts here is a bad. The community, IMHO, places too much emphasis on the first poster of a thread. You see all the time good OPs whose threads go downhill and you see trolls in threads that eventually go places. There are a dozen or more threads right now on the MLG tournament. I tend to pick threads on their topic, not the original poster.

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Ghostcrawler
Lead Systems Designer

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Q u o t e:
All of these posts here, have consistently said "Being able to kill people from 100-0 in 5 seconds, with no CC is stupid and faceroll".

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But isn't that basically saying that Arena is all about CC and that classes without very strong CC are by definition not cut out for Arena? We don't give the warrior class much in the way of CC. What they have is mobility, snares, interrupts, some survivability tricks and MS. Faceroll or die?

Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but it sounds like you're saying that a team without a rogue, druid or maybe mage is by definition faceroll and shouldn't typically win. CC is part of the game, no doubt. It's not supposed to be the whole game. (Neither is always killing your initial target in 5 sec.)

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Ghostcrawler
Lead Systems Designer