WoW is balanced.

Q u o t e:
Most people are just angry becuse 1 setup counters them totally and then they say wow is unbalanced.

WoW may not be perfectly balanced, but it is most surely not as bad as some people are trying to make it look. :-)

It is human nature to blame the game if you have a hard time succeeding in it. if you often lose to certain classes or team combinations, then it seems only natural for many to cry “nerf” or claim that the game is broken. It is important to emphasize that the game may not be perfectly balanced and that it may indeed have some flaws that need to be addressed, but one thing is certain however, and that is that the perception of balance (or the lack thereof) is a very subjective thing as it is very different depending on who you ask. I think that many people sometimes do not realize that when a game is balanced, it means that they will not lose a lot, and this may very well lead to a perception of balance that is often not corresponding with the real state of balance :-)

It is true that some classes require more skill than others, which is something that can be seen if you spend some time looking at lower rating teams and not just the top 100 teams. In lower rating games you will sometimes see that some classes are having a low representation because those particular classes aren’t very effective because they are harder to master, but as soon as said classes are being played by skilful players, they are suddenly deadly and suddenly also represented quite well in the higher rating games. It is often in these cases that the question of balance (or the lack thereof) comes into play, because this is often where people will disagree greatly. Some will feel that if an expert player can do well with a certain class, then that means that the game is balanced and that everybody else just have to L2P. But others will feel the opposite as they believe that it is unfair if the demand of skill for one class is much higher when compared to the demand of skill for other classes.

I guess my point with this wall of text is to highlight the fact that balance is being perceived very differently by people, which is why we often see then “nerf this” and “QQ that” threads.

Taking time to analyze defeats in order to improve any shortcomings is an important thing to do, and if done properly it will eventually lead to more victories than defeats, but balance does of course have a great influence. :-)

We do not actually aim to balance in an extremely rigid and strict rock-paper-scissors type game, where class X must always be able to beat class Y, but in return must always lose to class Z, because we feel that a game balanced like this is not really much fun. It cannot be avoided that some classes will have advantages over others due to the way the class mechanics work, but then again we do not feel that this is a major problem though… as long as it keeps things interesting and that people do not feel that the game is over the very moment they see who their opponents are.


[edit] Just fixing a few typos and clarifying a few things :-)