World of Warcraft Players Express Concerns Over Randomness in the Game
Many players of the popular game World of Warcraft (WoW) have been expressing their dissatisfaction with the amount of randomness that certain game features, such as corruption, introduce to their damage output.
Blizzard, the game’s developer, is set to release a new expansion called Shadowlands, which was expected to address this issue. However, instead of entirely removing randomness, Blizzard recently announced that they will implement a small amount of “spell variance” in abilities, making them 5% more or less effective.
One of WoW’s most popular content creators, Asmongold, expressed skepticism toward this addition of randomness during his stream. Asmon argues that Blizzard is trying to combat a perceived problem of players mathematically simulating their characters to maximize their damage output. He believes that less randomness would actually be preferred by most players, based on recent issues with features like corruption.
Blizzard, in a post on their forums, stated that the introduction of variance is meant to bring back some texture to the game and avoid repetitive damage numbers. However, Asmon remains wary of this change due to Blizzard’s past decisions and disconnection from the player base.
According to Asmon, Blizzard often identifies problems in the game based on their perspective as developers, rather than listening to the issues players themselves have. He believes that the majority opinion of active players should guide Blizzard’s decision-making process.
While Blizzard did not provide a timeline for these changes or confirm their inclusion in the final expansion, the strong response from Asmongold and the player base suggests that Blizzard may need to be cautious when reintroducing randomness to WoW.