I think Rogues and Warriors have been buffed, nerfed, buffed, nerfed again (balanced) more times than any of the other classes in the game. They are two of the most popular classes, also, and a lot of people put a large amount of time into mastering them for PvP, as the two represent melee in the game. Good paladins have always been known for their healing and support skills; Retribution is a novelty and despite all of Blizzard's attempts to integrate it, both in Arenas and raids, the majority of the playerbase will always view Ret Pallies as jokes and those who play them as retards. Is this a problem? Yes. Is a disgusting buff that makes them the most powerful class in the game going to solve that problem? No. It's just going to give them more bad publicity. For all their talk of balance, Blizzard only succeeds when they're making a class ridiculously powerful or pathetically weak.

 

I went out to vote around 10 AM this morning and decided to stop at the
old Burger King for a quick bite of breakfast. Got like 15 French Toast
sticks and two of the big ass Enormous Omelet Sandwiches. I wasn't
completely full but I figured it would hold me over until after I got
done. So I drive down to the firehall where I'm voting, right, and
there's a god damn line out the door; luckily I brought volumes I-III
of Proust's La Recherche du Temps Perdu.

By the time I was within
striking distance I had already eaten through Swann's Way, and suddenly
there was a great gaseous rumbling in the pit of my bowels, the sound
of a vat of hot oil bubbling before being overturned to thwart
besieging Vikings. I clenched my ass cheeks to the point of immense
physical discomfort, and unable to walk normally, I had to shuffle
forward with tiny steps - much to the chagrin of those in line behind
me. Unfortunately for them, that was only the tip of the iceberg: a
minor precursor to the howling storm that was to follow. My glutes were
unable to restrain the tide of egg, cheese, bacon and French Toast
stick that had apparently gone straight through my system without being
digested. My ass let out a ripping roar like some terrible furnace
wind, a breath of Hell, and I prolifically **** my pants. Because of my
ass cheeks, the friction felt as though I was giving anal birth to
Ragnaros himself, such was the indescribable heat. I abandoned
democracy and raced home, but it was too late - the inside of my boxers
looked like someone had smeared them with chunky peanut butter. I'll
probably have a righteous crop of ass pimples, the big ass ones that
look like mountain ranges; such is the effect of prolonged fecal
exposure.



Anyways, I hope you guys are a bit luckier than I am. I might go out
and try again once my body has acclimated and begun the healing
process. In any case, don't shirk your patriotic duty; vote, vote with
pride and with the knowledge of the issues, vote with the actual
platforms of the candidates in mind; do not succumb to word-of-mouth or
glib advertising, do not vote this way or that way because of your
parents or your religion: think for yourself. Above all else, do not
stop at Burger King on the way there.

 

As far as the question of hardcore "cut-throat" PvP-centric games is concerned, it's just not commercially feasible. The first and last pure example of that genre is Ultima Online. The Everquest franchise was notoriously tame in comparison, and Dark Age of Camelot, while having some of the best PvP in MMORPG history, did not share the ruthless penalties that UO was infamous for. Shadowbane was another good example of a great idea which fell short of the mark, and Age of Conan was the same; whenever games promise hardcore PvP and nothing but, they fail to deliver. World of Warcraft was originally billed as an almost entirely PvP game, if you recall the first few announcements; after developers like Tigole and Furor signed on, the game acquired a business model that featured both PvP and PvE in heavy focus, thus appealing to a broader audience. The hardcore, bloodthirsty gamer will always feel most at home in the FPS genre, and thusly either on a console or playing Counterstrike, Call of Duty, etc. An MMO has to appeal to a majority or it will inevitably tank.

 

Useful tips for playing a Zombie:

-Equipping/unequipping your Ranged Weapon will heal you to full. It's easier if you have two ranged weapons (guns, wands, etc) to cycle through.

-If you're melee, remove all of your gear (including weapons) before you transform into a Zombie, and re-equip it after you've transformed. You'll get the AP of your gear and the weapon damage from your weapon.

-Duel a friend when you're both infected, and wait until you both transform into Zombies. Have someone forfeit the duel, and make sure you both have Lurch up when the duel ends; this will give you the Lurch runspeed permanently.

 

No joke. All of my friends were on the AoC bandwagon, and I guess I was too for a while. During one of my sabbaticals, when I was ascending a mountain in the Himalayas and just a bit too high for wireless access, my whole crew tried Conan out. At that point, I was still envisioning the game I had been dreaming about: a stark, gritty and realistic take on the fantasy MMO genre, suitable for a mature playerbase with cut-throat mentality. Ultima Online with updated graphics, basically. When I returned, everyone had already quit AoC and were back on WoW. After reading a plethora of reviews, I have come to realize that AoC is the gaming equivalent of The Love Guru - grim, disappointing, rushed and lackluster beyond belief. I'm glad I didn't pay for a new PC in order to run that piece of crap.