In its 22 years since launch, WoW has gradually accumulated an elaborate ecosystem of metrics and simulation tools allowing players to analyze and optimize their combat performance. That ecosystem grew so elaborate, in fact, that Blizzard ultimately opted—with somewhat mixed results—to restrict how much combat data community developers could access so the studio can design encounters around the capabilities of its players and not their addons.
But according to former WoW designer Wyatt Cheng, not even Blizzard had a good way to know what peak player performance data looked like in the MMO's early days. In a YouTube short, Cheng said designing vanilla WoW raid bosses in the absence of comprehensive player combat data required the tried-and-true method of manually grinding training dummies. And then rounding up. Just to be safe.
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