I'm a little late to the party here, and I'm admittedly not contributing much to this discussion when I make these points, but here it goes:
1) Anecdotal evidence of how long/short a charm lasted isn't extremely helpful, nor is anecdotal evidence of how long someone's charm lasted in 1999-2002. Unless we compile and analyze some rather huge data sets from some time in 1999-2002 and come up with probability distributions of how long charm lasted, we're not going to accurately describe how things worked in the old days.
It seems like these changes are being made based on anecdotal evidence and argued against based on anecdotal evidence. Although it's all we have, it's not very fruitful.
2) Mostly an iteration on point 1. Since players use different tactics on this server than on live in the 1999-2002 era, we are comparing apples to oranges. Cliche description, I know, but that's exactly what it is. Until we either have the original source or some extensive data to interpolate how long charm should have lasted, there's no rigor in anyone's argument.
If the goal is to balance the game, then the devs can do whatever they want. If the goal is to emulate 1999 exactly, we need to send some statisticians back in a time machine. Otherwise we're just turning knobs until the picture looks clear.
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