Wow, just, wow.

I don't like doom and gloom, but I saw two things on the forums today that make me very worried.

****

First, lets start with a Ghostcrawler moment.

-Quote about Glyph of Lighting Bolt, and how Blizzard has said they dont want to have glyphs just be static increases to spells, but instead significantly change the spell.- This has already been asked multiple times. It puzzles me why someone intersted in Elemental shaman concerns wouldn't have already known about it or would have been unable to find it. Usually I conclude the poster is just trying to be argumentative. But in the chance that isn't the case, I will restate that we compared the benefit that various dps specs were getting from glyphs and found that Elemental was getting the short end of the stick. Rather than nerfing everyone's glyphs, we buffed the Lightning one. I'm not sure why you'd be complaining about a buff, but I guess it's a nice change of pace. :)

(Source) Catch-up time! Glyph of Lightning Bolt is getting changed; Pre- 3.0.8: Reduces the cost of your Lightning Bolt ability by 10%. Post 3.0.8: Increases the damage dealt by Lightning Bolt by 4%. There are several problems with his response. First, it completely lacks tact, and though the nice smiley face at the end is supposed to mean 'I'm not bothered, and you shouldn't be either,' it comes off instead as 'I am actually really starting to get upset, but I want to hide it.' In addition, the question was legit, regardless of whether the poster knew about the glyph or not! There are two major former statements that make this glyph seem wonky, one is that, as the poster mentioned, Blizzard doesn't want glyphs to feature a static increase in spell power, they don't want any glyph to be a must-have in terms of min/maxing. The other is that, just before WotLK was shipped, Elemental shamans were lacking in overall dps. Ghostcrawler said that, and I paraphrase, 'Level 70 dps equivalency is not important, because once people get 80 is the important part of the game. At any level that is not-max, the dps differences across classes are lost in the leveling noise.' But the change to the Glyph only came after WotLK, when all shaman glyphs were reviewed and elemental was getting 'the short end of the stick'? Ghostcrawler also said, during that time just before WotLK, that (paraphrased,) 'fire will be a major part of elemental DPS at 80, this will make Lighting Bolt spam a thing of the past.' And while this change does in no way make LB spam the law of the land, it doesn't help reinforce that. My theory is that Ghostcrawler is flat out lying. I think he believes that this issue is something no one could understand. The issue is that glyphs serve two purposes (three, counting cosmetics.) One, is the publicized version, that glyphs significantly change the rules of the spell. At first, it was things like adding knockbacks or, really, adding anything, but increasingly it means removing an annoying aspect of a spell for raiding use (there will soon be glyphs to remove knockbacks from every spell that has knockback, trust me.) The second use for glyphs is pseudo-talents. But this is dangerous, GC knows he cant tell people this, the reason? Only those class specs that have 'full' talent trees need glyphs to serve this function. In other words, if a spec has used all the 'talent budget' getting them to, say, 95% compared to other class/specs in the same role, then that last 5% will have to be gotten from glyphs. Elemental Shamans are in this position. Glyphs are propping up this spec, without them, can they compete compared to their unglyphed counterparts? So, its kinda a good-news bad-news situation. Bad; GC is lying, and Elemental Shamans are required to spend glyphs to break even with other ranged dps. Good; at least they are going to break even... Maybe.

****

Remember, I mentioned 2 things. Here is the other. Yep. Ads on the forums. But, I am going to do some PR cleaning for them, because Blizzard seems completely unwilling to communicate. This change has nothing to do with WoW. I believe this change is a precursor to the unified Battle.net or Blizzard accounts, whatever they end up calling it. There are ads in WarCraft 3 and Diablo 2, when you log on to Battle.net, its how they offer Battle.net for free. (And, be honest, Battle.net is a fantastic service, no other gaming company has such a good match-making and community service that is free of charge. Soon, we will have Diablo 3 and StarCraft 2, these games will use the new unified blizzard accounts, and although WoW is under a different model (pay-to-play) they are going to start piggy-backing the community services onto this new unified account system. Ads will pay the way. Besides, if all else fails, you can do what I do. Completely ignore your fellow gamers, and spy on Blues with this service. So, I'm not worried about why the added the ads. But, their handling of it is crappy. Plus, its the player reaction that's the problem. I'm beginning to think that much more forum non-sense, and Ghostcrawler will crawl back under his rock in the middle of the bay. I like to eat crabs, I'm afraid if he is out there, Imma catch him and eat him.