World of Warcraft is Perfectly Balanced 

Bit of a slowdown with videos recently as I've been handling some life stuff - should pick up the pace soon here though. Got a Shadowlands video for you next

"Blizzard would balance chess if they could" Karazhan: Have you forgotten so soon?

Blizzard: "We don't want players to make choices to break tier set bonuses." Also Blizzard: "One of the major RPG elements of a game is player choice, and those choices should have consequences, and that's where Covenants come in."

"almost as depressing as my voice" - don't say that, madseason!

the sad part is: MadSeason made it, asmon will react to it, but blizzard won't listen.

I love how people knew exactly what they were getting into and yet they're complaining about things that are never gonna change.

As a game developer, I can totally see how we got to Retail... all of these decisions and designs make sense in a vacuum, step by step. The loot and stat system in Classic is incredibly convoluted, so simplifying that makes sense. But now you massively reduced the variety of loot, so adding a random element like Titanforging makes sense. Oh, and now the power creep us through the roof, so you gotta put in a system to make new players not get just totally bodied in PvP. Removing spell levels, class trainers, pruning out a lot of the fluff abilities, all of it makes the game more streamlined, so it seems like a good idea. Oh, and let's give the player something to do between raids every day, beyond just farming gold, something more varied... All of these make sense as small steps, one at a time, over 15 years and multiple teams and game directors. And none of these just got to where they are now in one step from Classic. It's incredibly difficult to resist making small changes like these, over time, making the game more convenient and homogenized one step at a time...

That mad cat controller analogy awakened some painful childhood memories. Those controllers were the very definition of "you get what you pay for".

"Almost as depressing as my voice." I lol'd

"A balance between the two" Yeah, it's called MoP PvP, the last time it was REALLY good. Everyone had huge toolkits and some downright stupid abilities. But it was FUN. It was your classic "If everything is crazy, nothing is" balance style, but it actually required skill to utilise the full depth of your toolkit well; instead of cheese and procs (both classic/live have this) Most classes had SOMETHING to do in MoP BGs too, instead of live's "why aren't you a demon hunter/rogue, monk?" and vanilla's "why aren't you a mage/rogue, warrior?". Meme MoP all you want, but it was the expansion with the perfect mixture of new/old class design, for the most part.

The "Breastfeeding your 30 year old child" should have shown a picture of Homelander haha.

Loved it. The music in this was just brilliant with your nostalgic but fair view point! Keep up the good work!

Regarding definition of fair: As a player who can only spend so much time playing, I just have to say: .......wait for it..... ...I totally couldn't possibly agree more. I enjoy walking into an RPG and seeing folks who can smoke me in a half second wondering around. It gives me something to strive for, it gives me something to look forward to (if I end up getting to put in the time). I have people in my FC (sorry, my FFXIV is showing) that are extremely powerful characters whom I will likely never catch up to. But you know what, I love looking over their characters and asking them questions about how I can get just a smidge of their power. It's how I am in real life too. I also happen to play the guitar and, often enough, I spend time online watching other guitarists play just to remind myself there's always room for improvement and something else to try to do. It makes it interesting! It makes life interesting! Part of me wonders if it's just part of being older. In school you're generally told that 100% is attainable on all assignments and, frankly, that's where you really ought to be at. Real life.........eh, not so much. I'm a computer programmer. I'm probably 50th percentile in my field or something like that, but you know what? I still get my work done (when I'm not commenting on Mad Season videos anyway). My employer knows my capacity and gives me assignments according to my ability. Folks on lower percentiles are afforded the same thing as are folks above. And yeah, if I got totally lost in programming, like, 24/7, I could probably shoot right up the percentiles. But........ I mean, this is kind of what life is. You just need to figure out what you want to put your time into, accept that you'll never be "the best" and just enjoy the grind. If you can't do that...uh, not gonna have a good time. Sorry :(

Holy shit. I died when you made the "Another turtle made it to the water" reference.

You know what game has "perfect balance"? PONG.

Your music choice is ALWAYS on point, love it man

The 8-bit Falco Amadeus music :'D

I love how the devs were like "Hmmm. Each patch has the power gain of an entire expansion, creating the most egregious item level bloat imaginable, so that a fresh 120 has less than 100k health, but a geared 120 has over 500k. Obviously the solution is to scale the more powerful player's stats down. Not address the issue that has terrible downsides on so many forms of gameplay, not just PvP. Noooooo. Nope. Scaling. That's the ticket" (I'm just using 8.3 numbers as an example btw, I know scaling wasn't added in 8.3)

The thing with the "BALANCE" is and what Blizzard stumble upon, you just can't have it - or at least not have and yet have UNIQUE classes(which is the problem in current/retail WoW), cause that uniqueness came with some advantages, like okay, you can tune it a bit, but generally speaking you can't have absolute balance if you want the have unique classes. If you want a complete balance then in the game should be for example: orc warrior as only playable race and class., so that way you get a complete balance...And that's the problem with a WoW where over the years Blizzard is trying to balance it and casual and even pro players gonna cry that something is OP then Blizzard will nerf it, simultaneously some other class gonna pop up(and be OP) and over again. That led us to the point where really the classes are not unique and players are complaining about it too...

My main issue with the balance in live is how often blizzard seems to lose interest in class themes the instant balance has to cut corners somewhere. Destro lock with a crazy and interesting playstyle and spell usage? Fuck that, turn it into Generic Spellcaster #4 But thats the thing. I don't think blizzard has every really liked the warlock/mail classes. Mail always looks like ass and there's still only two classes that use it, and the warlocks often barely use fel or chaos magic. Makes no sense. It explains why blizzard kept flattening the item progression down to basically just a number. Why don't different weapons have different speeds, etc? Because if you're one of the poor sods who keeps playing classes that get fucked by every little change, you'll be grinding for gear far more than the person who retains a half balanced class. People are less likely to play a class if they have no clue if it'll even be good at the end of the week.

Thanos: “Balanced, as all things should be” *Sees WoW* Impossible

Ohhh the bald boi is gonna have a field day with this video.

Love the golden eye soundtrack you added around 8 minutes. Ahh the N64 days

Dude... the background music.. crazy nostalgia inducing. Its literally the soundtrack of my childhood through and through. I can hardly focus on what youre talking about.

Greetings Madseason! Im early so I just wanted to say I adore your content. Keep up your excellent work!

16:25 I think you're wrong there. I think they would notice that the Pawn was weaker than the others, and then proceed to nerf every other piece into the ground to match its power level. THAT is Blizzard balancing in a nutshell.

omg thank you Madseason for using the james bond music man you brought back some wonderfull memories for me :)

Well come to think of it. When Wow was Classic and everyone didn't know what exactly what they were doing, mainly focused about the adventure and fun stuff, rmb back then, Ian was one of the 1st guy voiced up on strategies and all kinds of coordination in order to max-min the outcomes of game (run dungeons etc.). Fast forward to current WoW, now Ian is the head of the WoW's team, no wonder they are now more obsessed with "control" everything.

Earlier than last time - Greg Deucette

Sup mr. Show - Been watching all your old vods of beta and you leveling through classic. Love your content man. Hope your schedule allows you some time back to twitch sometime soon. 🤘🏼

This is all well said. I am a big believer in the more classic style rock-paper-scissors design as well as keeping content relevant for longer than one raid cycle.

I love this channel. Keep making them please. As much as i love the beautiful spell graphics and character animation I cannot go back to Current Wow any more. I cannot be a slave to those blue quests any more. I just got a Shield from a rogue quest on Classic. As crazy as the loot system of Classic is I love it and keep going back to it even when I try to quit.

"messed up hole" giggity

I enjoy making decisions. I feel like I'm doing more than just leveling a character. I miss the skill tree. You can have 2 exact looking characters standing side by side, dressed the same.... and because of the skill tree be totally different. I miss tier sets, and gems. Those were sweet back int day.

I love that u use that Donkey Kong music, actually i love most of the songs from the throwback games. Everytime i hear it, it hits me right n the soul n gives me the peace of my blissful childhood...

"Times Change" -Garrosh The Orc who did nothing wrong.

"A class you can play with a garage door opener" Hasn't changed in 15 years

I would love to use the salt from the WoW forums to season my steak tonight.

"Doing raids that are as easy as your mom" FATALITY

Loved the video madseason keep up the good work!

If you really wanted 'perfect balance', why even bother having classes in the first place? Why have different gear slots, or different weapons, or different abilities, or different talents? The problem with the idea of balance is that you're no longer rewarded for considering your options, building a diverse team, and finding ways to circumvent your weaknesses. If every decision you made was the right one, and every class could do everything, building your character is no longer engaging or satisfying - just pick a random class and it'll work out! When it comes to identity and immersion in an RPG, your weaknesses are just as important as your strengths, because without them, you're no longer incentivised to gain a better understanding of your character and the way they play. Even if 'perfect balance' WERE attainable (which it isn't), would it really make the game better? Or would it strip the game of its personality, decision-making, team-building, and identity? You decide. EDIT: Plus, I can't be the only one who thinks that there are better uses of development time and resources than obsessively fine-tuning classes.

13:00 we don't want people to feel like you need this weapon type and ignore all the rest, so we'll nerf what makes that one OP and buff the ones that are especially bad so that they're all desirable and make sure that they're all different at the same time we don't want people to ignore these fast weapons, so instead of making them all be slow, we'll simultaneously make fast weapons be useful and not outclass slow weapons while making sure that weapon speed still matters imagine if blizzard did that instead of homogenizing them thats an example of good balance, which contrasts with the examples of bad balance a.k.a. homogenizing everything

every time i here the intro chills lol, Always good content madseason

I enjoy the classic toons you play on your video bro. brings that SNES feeling of a 10 year kids happy with whatever life gave, with whatever happiness . ty . I miss those years . even tho, no one played games around my life and I was the only kid that enjoy in-games and not much of the out doors games LOL. which now I want out door games lol

Intentional imbalance is best for the game, since it'll allow you to make certain classes better fill certain niches in the game. Like rogues are typically thought of as stealthy assassin-types, and so they especially should be good at PvP and single target, with a reasonable disadvantage against plate because high armor values. Which in itself will act as a reasonable counter balance against them if rogue supremacy got too far out of hand. Which would then allow them to paradoxically become balanced, due to their imbalance in a PvP setting forcing a shift in the meta towards their counter.

Sees title: spiffing intensifies

I guess for devil's advocate is that there are VERY niche scenarios where items have an effect and are good like Cut of Death for warrior or the Aszhara Trinket from last tier for mages. I started playing in Legion and always thought it was cool to see specific builds and grinding for stuff like that. I wish they did it more.

RU-vid getting real cheeky with these double no skip ads

Those who saying retail is balanced, probably a rogue or dh player.

Right when Kevin Jordan's talking about world buffs on Allcraft

The chaos that is the class balance in Classic is probably what helps make the game so tantalizing to me. A have some strong opinions when it comes to "competition" (so to speak,) in games, having grown into a rather laid back dude that prefers the experience over "trying/having to win". But Classic, (Alongside my friend whose server I joined,) has ignited something in me that makes me want to carve into pvp to try and trump as many as I can. See if I can reignite that old pvp spirit I once had.

I do agree with the point that classes should have strengths of their own. Having a bit of a niche role was the allure of why many played a class. I actually remember when Shamans started to see their niche being dismantled as many of their "iconic class abilities" were being mimicked and given to other classes and in the same moment have a Dev state "We have decided to not give Shaman's X ability as it steps on the the Druid's iconic class ability. That was an uproar for the ages on the forums and I believe it was in BC. Little did I know it was the start of many classes being homogenized. I left the game for 6 years (MoP) and returned recently and I have tried almost all classes and my thought process is "Oh this the same ability as this class' ability minus this."

"World of Warcraft is Perfectly Balanced game with no exploits what so ever"

9:55 I'll have you know I love your voice Mister Madseason.

I'm not a fan of the bell but yt doesn't want to show your videos otherwise and I can always relax while watching your content. I hope you'll never stop making videos.

I thought this was a video by the Spiffing Brit ,because of the title. Great video as usual Mad.

Can't wait to watch it again with somebody that doesn't have 33k achievements.

"When choosing between balance and fun, always go fun." -Zack Johnson

So basically: "Waaaah, my play to win "fair" pvp doesn't work and I liked it that way"

This video was very well structured and comprised in your argument. I am grateful that the videos you make are complex and supported in what they assert instead of just making another bullshit top 10 vid. You have consistently been one of the best WOW content providers for years. Thank you for your continued efforts and the quality that they yield.

Look at all this gear variety, with random fun procs and stats that haven't had any sense of balance taken into account! But in practice, everyone in Classic runs around in the exact same BIS gear.

As a pvper in retail, everyone hates pvp scaling makes no sense why it's in the game. But I do agree about the gear, gear is boring now days.

My vanilla experience is similar to your buddy, I dont play classic but all these years later I can tell you exactly where to farm crusader enchant from the spellbinders in the tower or on that road to Tyers Hand and other specific details. I remember exactly how CTS looks because I wanted it soo bad on my rogue and eventually got it. One of the best looking swords in classic.

Love your videos, keep it up man! My comments as someone who loves and play both retail and classic: 1. Luckily they are changing gear in a positive way in SL. We're getting tier sets, etc back, so I'm looking forward to gear being more meaningful. 2. I agree with you on the talk about how old gear was more memorable and remembering some crazy cool dagger with a special effect, etc. But I think that comes slightly with nostalgia and the fact it was a young game. I mean I remember all sorts of stuff from classic, like gear, etc. But I also remember events and amazing raid bosses in expansions. I couldn't give a shit about boring classic raid boss fights, because they weren't special. My point is that expansions do add things to the game, but also take things away :(. I think that it would be difficult to go this many expansions and make certain items so special that you'd remember them. That's a lot of raids, a lot of bosses. Time just isn't kind like that and we remember these old special things because when the game was young and unique to us, it meant so much more.

Amazing!

But classic playerbase is dwindling pretty fast : / Wait untill shadowlands comes out too.

100% agree on gear sets. Good stuff. Really loved pvp sets/raid set bonuses and juggling the best gear /weapon speed for situations

Honestly, one of the things they should of done would be instead of giving abilities and making every class just like each other, make many different weapons and armor that have abilities that can be equipped by specific classes depending on their armor proficiency. you know, like the belt my tailor just made to increase swim speed that i gave to all my party members i play with every week who aren't a druid, or the skull that i put on my druid that gives a chance to shadow bolt an enemy in the face for hitting me. I could see a belt that requires people that can use mail armor to equip a belt that does a priest style psychic scream to fear all enemies. or an earring that can get rid of that effect. make us choose what good sh*t we want to wear instead of giving everything on a golden plate because there won't be a smile on our face after day 157 of having the same cheese on the same plate with the same tasting sausage

God, I miss Madness of Deathwing loot. Give me back my Gur'thalak! D:

"It's almost as depressing as my voice." LOL

It's really nice to hear someone else espouse the values of our generation of gamers, MadSeason. Thanks for being around and doing your part to hold the fort. uwu

dude! summed it up so well!

Hard not to agree with all your points really buddy! I'm not playing any WoW just now actually and from what i'm hearing about being able to change all of your skills and approach on a whim in shadowlands, I can't see me enjoying that either. I really can't be assed with learning 400356 specs and styles of play, maybe at 34 i'm old but i just don't like change all that much hahah. I loved classic's simple rotations, i found joy in competing on our dps meters :D Though a friend of mine who's playing classic assures me the min/maxing has gotten way out of hand, to the point things aren't fun anymore.

There's literally no point in looting if everything is balanced

I love how the PvP scaling screenshot (from description) says : "This is new tech which will make PvP better in WoW for YEARS to come". rofl

Awesome vid as usual Mads.

When you finish the video and go to hit the like button only to realize that you already hit the like button at the start so you leave a comment to let you throw a like on to that.

I feel they reached the best balance of imbalance in WOTLK. Those were the good days.

Welcome back madseason, we missed you.

I come to watch these videos for nostalgia and then BOOM. Donkey Kong Country 2 SNES OST is playing in the background.

I read the title with spiffing brit voice LOL

When it comes to balance, I reallly like that in classic that if I auto shoot, I kind of expect a 400dmg white hit. When I crit aimed without buffs, I expect something around 2k. If I see less or more, I can quickly assess what may be the reason and maybe choose to pick a different target on the battleground, because I may be hitting some temporarily buffed up dude. And when I get an upgrade and hit with autoshot for 420 on average, I FEEL the upgrade. I play without damage meters, because I think they should never be a thing in game properly made in 2020, so my main sense of progression comes from the singular hits that I see on the screen. On retail they are so random, there's so many of them and they vanish soo fast, that I cannot get that sense of progression there.

I Agree with your point about loot being unique, but retail does have some of that, even though it's scarce. There is Geti'ikku, a must for melee's in pvp and warriors in general, there are bracers that reduce cooldown on spells, a must for fire mages and so on. I absolutely loved having to chase that Geti'ikku on my warrior, because it was unique. It felt so good using it and it was different from the rest of the weapons.

Man you have so calm and soothing voice, almost makes me sleepy :P

I am the one of these people who some usually call "casual". Not the type of someone who just wants to win with a press of a button. Just "under-average". I'm just the one of these people who don't want to "git gud" when they get killed in PvP for like 7 times in a row. I just rage quit and never return to PvP. I'm not very into social interactions even in games so I mostly play solo which can be crucial in Classic. I don't like the concept of learning boss tactics before the raid so I get kicked because I don't know what boss does. I can't raid in Classic, I can't raid in retail. I can't get a decent gear => someone just one-shots me in PvP. Retail has so many features for unskilled player and I get why people are upset because of some features getting too much balanced. Classic is too hard and tedious for me. Retail sometimes can be too simple and bland for me. I don't know why I wrote this and how at least anything in this comment connects so I'll just say that I'm somewhat casual and many players are just like that.

"because you're filling a nichè and that feels good" more like "you're filling a nichè because that's the literal only thing your class does that gives it any value over other classes and that feels bad"

Madseason, you did a GREAT jobu with this video. Made some great points

I like all your videos .. but the music from falco made them really awesome this time .. thank you

Its like ... why even farm Bis Gear in retail ... it doesnt matter

When I watch these videos I always wonder if blizzard sees those too and just ignore all the comments and views. I really hope they see what this really means to the game and that changes to these concerns would just benefit the overall gamerbase. Also i think it can bring more players back and i think there are a lot who quit because of the problems

More great content from MadSeason. Thanks as always!

It's interesting you mentioned paladins as a stalling class. I've been a paladin in retail from vanilla and despite having to overcome alot to become equal I realized raiding is alot more than just being the best spec; me being a holy paladin for a long time. Its what the player brings to the table at the end of the day but ive always enjoyed my class identity so to speak. Sometimes I feel lost as I come in and out of some expansions and patches but my paladin is still fun to play on retail.

Your voice is far from depressing. I find it calming, relaxing and reassuring.

This has nothing to do with the video but Asmongold is bald.

Hey MadSeason, really glad you touched on the voice thing at 9:55 because I was wondering if I should leave a comment about it.. There are times in the video when you're extremely quiet, borderline mumbling, and it's kinda hard to hear you. Would you mind speaking up just a tad in the next one? Love the videos and I do enjoy hearing your perspective given I don't have the life circumstances to play WoW like you (though I would seriously love and enjoy it!) Keep it up :)

I love that you sneak a Goldeneye tune in most videos but I also hate it... It makes me feel old... Jeez who am I kidding, If you snuck NES or Master system tunes in there i'd still be old... #existentialcrisis

I learned very quickly with vanilla that classes were to compliment each other. That WoW was unique in the fact that Horde had shamans and Alliance had paladins. I spent hour upon hour playing hunters, learning my class for only people to piss and moan that my class was op. Nope i took the time to learn.

Spot on. The part about your friend not remembering his gear hit hard

That Crookid clip still makes me laugh so hard, one of your best video's Show.

“If an orc female hit on you”