Over at game metrics blog We Can Fix That With Data,
Sara Jensen has been doing some fascinating
World Of Warcraft balance analysis, examining
which player classes have been fixed, buffed,
nerfed, and various other odd MMO-specific
titles.
But how can you begin to ennumerate
the changes? As Jensen, who works at Spacetime
Studios for her dayjob, explains, a particularly
data-hungry World Of Warcraft forum-goers has
"...listed every class change made since the
beginning of recorded history (i.e. early beta),
and he’s categorized it by buffs, nerfs, bug
fixes, changes, new features, and overhauls."
Jensen has crunched that all into a very
interesting set of graphs, showing that, for
example, the Warlock has the most changes, but
the Druid has been buffed the most in Blizzard's
gameplay tweaking.
In comments, 'Scott' provides some useful
color: "So, the biggest problem is that there’s
no relative weight to the buffs/nerfs, so the
nerf to Dire Bear armor in 2.0 is assigned the
same weight as no longer being able to teleport
to Moonglade while in tree form. Of course then
you start having to assign subjective weight",
adding: "The real interesting data points you’re
missing are of course class population overlaid
on these figures." Good points all!
Copied from Egamerspace.com
