Ngruk, I think the point is, if you look at the playerbase as a whole, most players have a horrendous track record as far as balance predictions. I completely agree with you.
Take hunter balancing changes though that they recently did to nerf BM. Sebudai (who posts here a few times) posted on EJ that those changes were overkill and would nerf it too far, and that survival was buffed way too much. He also posted exactly what changes they would have to do to get BM to do equal damage to survival and how they"d have to nerf survival.
3 days later, GC says, oops, we fucked up, and they would do x and y changes, which were exactly what Sebudai was suggesting.
Look at the mage changes. Every time they think of changes they would do to mages, Manly theorycrafts the highest dps spec, and how exactly it would play out, and if you look at his WWS parses they are within 1% of what he suggested.
Look at Serennia"s suggestions about PvP balance. If you remove his ideas about AMS removing debuffs ala cloak, almost all his suggestions are spot on and Blizzard already implemented a few really obvious ones.
Most players are awful game designers and their idea of class balance is piling buff after buff on their own class.
A few players are really well ahead of Blizzard on the balancing sphere. Look at Manly"s posts on EJ, Sebudai, Aldriana, and a few accomplished players who theorycraft in high end guilds. Noxn posted a huge all of text about the problems shadowpriests have in arena, and Noxn has been vengeful/brutal glad playing a shadowpriest. Gurg used to post a lot about more general problems with the end-game, but lately I think he mostly talks to developers directly.
I speak from personal experience - back when I still played EverQuest, me and Kirium (another high end mage) used to e-mail Rytan fairly frequently with our own parses and suggestions about game balance, and got a lot of abilities fixed. It is impossible to think that GC could have a direct dialogue with everyone, but pick out a few outstanding individuals, and LISTEN to them. I"d give examples of some suggestions I have given myself, but I enjoy the anonimity on this board beyond those that know who I am.
I can suggest right now about 10 changes that would make the current arena balance much better and wouldn"t have much of an impact of pve. The problem is that to GC I am a nameless player who just throws his opinion in, so he thinks that the playerbase has a horrible track record at suggesting balance changes, because for every good suggestion I give, some other retard will give 25 bad suggestions.
If you look at a few really intelligent individuals and their personal track record for balance suggestions, I think you might end up changing your mind.
PS
I will add that I would only trust players about tclass balance. Balancing CONTENT around what end game players suggest is a sure way to alienate 99.9% of your playerbase.
