World of Warcraft : Buff & Debuff Design

The World of Warcraft blog has been updated with new information about how the team is going about the "buff and debuff design" for Mists of Pandaria. The team is actively seeking input from the community regarding the design process.

First, some underlying design goals, so you might understand where we’re coming from. Our main goals for group buffs are:

Make you feel more powerful when grouped with other players.

Give you lots of freedom to invite whom you want. This gets to be a problem when there are too many mandatory buffs spread out among too many specs. . .

But not offer too many incentives to class stack. If you can achieve every buff with, say, only three players, then there might be a tendency to fill all of the other slots with whoever is best for a particular situation. Some class stacking is inevitable at the cutting-edge level, but to some extent, the players on the cutting edge of raiding enjoy extreme min-maxing. For the rest of us, we try to make sure you can finish all of the encounters without feeling like you need a huge roster of folks waiting in the wings for their one fight.

The World of Warcraft blog has been updated with new information about how the team is going about the "buff and debuff design" for Mists of Pandaria. The team is actively seeking input from the community regarding the design process.

First, some underlying design goals, so you might understand where we’re coming from. Our main goals for group buffs are:

Make you feel more powerful when grouped with other players.

Give you lots of freedom to invite whom you want. This gets to be a problem when there are too many mandatory buffs spread out among too many specs. . .

But not offer too many incentives to class stack. If you can achieve every buff with, say, only three players, then there might be a tendency to fill all of the other slots with whoever is best for a particular situation. Some class stacking is inevitable at the cutting-edge level, but to some extent, the players on the cutting edge of raiding enjoy extreme min-maxing. For the rest of us, we try to make sure you can finish all of the encounters without feeling like you need a huge roster of folks waiting in the wings for their one fight.