Blizzard...fired.

This chapter in my life is now closed, Wow has pissed me off too many times, and I'm done.

I was going to leave it at that, but I've decided to make a rant of this so I'm reminded of why I quit so I'm not sucked in again.

Several times over the years I've found a class I've enjoyed playing in this game and either to be "optimal" I've had to change the way I play that class from enjoyment to work, to be viable, or Blizzard flat out has changed the class to be less enjoyable.  The first time I noticed this actually was with my first toon Crimsonsnow, a gnome warlock.  I had a spec I really enjoyed, but it wasn't terribly optimal for dungeoning or raiding and I was lower on the damage meters, I justified this with "well I enjoy it so, so what" but then you get comments like you aren't doing your job if you aren't doing a certain amount of damage.  So I stopped playing her because I just did not enjoy the "optimum" spec, and I raised a rogue.  A dwarf girl named Annathema.  I actually quite enjoyed her for a very long time, and felt useful with my saps.  I loved when combat daggers was a viable option for dps because I feel like a rogue without daggers is kinda like a fish without water.  But then Blizzard changed things up, combat daggers was no longer a viable build for damage, and then they added in AOE rofflestomp through instances, where crowd control was not used.  So my usefulness with sapping became nil, and rogues don't do aoe damage much, so my damage output was dropped significantly.  I tried a couple other classes that didn't seem to mesh well with me, a pally tank, and discovered I dislike tanking for people I can't throw a shoe at if they dps too soon.  A deathknight, fun starting area, but the play is truly boring.  So I left wow for a year and it was a productive life year.  I went out and did things, I cooked, I built a garden, I walked.  I got sucked back in, but this time I wanted a new adventure, so I build a priest on the horde side, a hot little latino looking blood elf boy.  I discovered the joys of discipline healing.  WOW! That was a lot of fun!  I got to prevent damage rather than play catch up to damage all the time.  Mana regen was lovely, and even though it was a whole new learning curve, I really liked it.  Then Cataclysm came...  Long story short, they not only nerfed the mana regen abilities to where I was literally having to drink after every pull, they changed the entire concept and play of the discipline priest.  And I hate it, loathe it, want nothing to do with it.

What is hard for me is that when you put the time into a character you have an emotional attachment to it, you might even have a story for it that effects how you play your character, what their motivations are, why you cast certain spells the way you do.  You may even build your character around what is available for builds, and think that seems like a fun way to play and build your character's personality around that, and in some way that is a contract between you and blizzard.  I'm going to put this amount of time into building this character per your guidelines.  And by changing the effectiveness of your character in my opinion they have broken a contract I made with them.  And of course they justify it by saying anything can change at any time.

But here's my point.  Why have all of the options to really customize your toon to your style of play if there is ultimately one optimum spec, certain gear and enhancement options that are optimum, and that anything less, is worthless?  Why let your customers create that emotional connection and pride in a character that you will just make them change under the guise of balance.

The other reason Blizzard is fired is because of their account security issues.  Why do I need to pay $6.50 for an random number generating authenticator so I can avoid being hacked, when Rift so elegantly came up with the coinlock system.  Basically this system works like this:  If you log into Rift from another IP address, your account is coinlocked, in order to unlock it, you only need to go to your email get a number and type it in, that simple.  Coinlocked, basically means that no characters can be deleted, items sold at vendor or auction.  But you can still quest, etc.  So if you're hacked the only thing they can do is do good things for your character:D  I've come to the suspicion that Blizzard is perfectly okay with an account selling, gold selling black market.  My bestie had his account hacked, blizzard was able to restore everything within hours.  So why weren't they able to track down the thief, and the recipient of the spoils and account ban them?  if they can restore the items, they should be able to trace down where each item went, if it was sold, and where the gold went, they just refuse to do it, and as long as everyone gets their stuff back, who cares right?

I do care, because if they really wanted to stop hacking and theft they could, they are a sophisticated company, with intelligent programmers.  It just isn't a priority, and that pisses me off.

So goodbye Blizzard, goodbye Wow, goodbye fine toons who deserved better than to be abandoned into the void, perhaps one day I will write your stories.  Hello Rift and a new set of characters that are reminiscent of the old ones, but still not quite the same.