---

Q u o t e:


I've seen this question come up from time to time and it doesn't really make sense to me. Yes, lower level gear gets easier to get as time goes by, but the general point of getting the items is to get them quickly to avoid being left behind.

I think you could compare this to many items in the real world, you could wait to see if it goes on sale in the future or get it when it comes out. If waiting is your style and you are okay with that level of gear, then it's up to you when you want to play and get the gear. If you want to get the gear as soon as possible, then keep an eye out for when the patch launches and good luck!

---

Just because you and the development staff find it hard to understand, Does not mean we the players find it hard to understand.

The other part that more and more seemingly the wow development staff doesnt understand is indeed its playerbase.

I have no problem with casuals getting welfare gear, but what I would really love to see, is blizzard to take back Epic and have it mean something again now once you are level 80 EVERYONE is in "epic" gear, a lot of which isnt very "epic" I would suggest that at every new patch inwhich a new tier gear is launched all previous gear gets relegated to a Rare quality. Lets be honest its no longer "epic"

Dasinga

---

Q u o t e:
I have no problem with casuals getting welfare gear, but what I would really love to see, is blizzard to take back Epic and have it mean something again now once you are level 80 EVERYONE is in "epic" gear, a lot of which isnt very "epic" I would suggest that at every new patch inwhich a new tier gear is launched all previous gear gets relegated to a Rare quality. Lets be honest its no longer "epic"

Dasinga

---

The worst thing Blizzard ever did was name the different quality tiers of gear.

Ok, make that the second worst thing they ever did. There's still that whole Arena thing that they need to answer for.

---

Q u o t e:


Just because you and the development staff find it hard to understand, Does not mean we the players find it hard to understand.

The other part that more and more seemingly the wow development staff doesnt understand is indeed its playerbase.

---

... this couldn't be more wrong, and the proof is the new badge system.

The previous model was the accessibility was basically determined by time played. To see tier n, you had to spend x hours farming tier n-1, and that's all there was to it. When tier n+1 shipped, it just added more time to the total.

Now, to see tier n you can:

Jump straight in if you've already farmed out tier n-1.

Get badges and gear from any lower-level endgame content, including heroic 5-mans, and then jump in.

Wait until tier n+1 ships, get 'over-level' gear, then rock your way through.

... and if the 25-man stuff is too onerous, there's always the 10-man content. People have been successfully pugging the 10-man versions of new content within weeks of it shipping... where's the downside??

Content expires, that's true now, and it's always been true. Forcing people to work their way through all previous content before they could see the new stuff was a sub-optimal model. That is especially true when the final(?) tier of content is the centerpiece of the whole of WLK's PvE content.

---

Q u o t e:


Nothing personal, but I don't think you are a new player, heh. We used to force players to work their way up the ladder and it lead to barely anybody seeing the newest content along with a bunch of complaints about the content being too hard/inaccessible.

I think it's safe to say that while we want the content to be accessible, we don't want it to be forced and we are okay with players eventually leaving it behind to see new content. The weekly raids will probably help a bit for visiting the older raids as those are for emblems of frost, not triumph, and in my experience people will do almost anything for the highest emblem-tier.

---

This philosophy also allows us to recruit based on skill and personality since we know gear will be really easy to get. I hope how it looks for t9/t10 carries over a bit better into Cataclysm, with a low level entry set for each tier of raiding, allowing us more flexibility in recruitment and gearing going forward. Its cool to have the best gear coming out of the current content, but being able to get adequate gear by farming badges will be a great boost.

---

Q u o t e:


I'm not entirely sure what the problem is here, but yes, with the way the emblems change from patch to patch, we don't want to force players into months of Naxxramas/Ulduar/etc. just to set foot in Icecrown Citadel. While badges may not cover every slot, they are a good boost and often players (at least currently) still run some Naxxramas and/or Ulduar when they want to gear up faster.

---

Bornakk - IMO you guys should make raid bosses that drop the current 'grind badges' drop 2 or 3 badges per boss, and maybe allow the tier bosses a chance at dropping higher tiers (lets face it, getting a tier 7 drop in naxx 10 doesn't help someone progress all that much).

I mention this, because my shaman that is in the early stages of gearing up at 80 can't find a Naxx group to save his life. I was in lfg all weekend for it, and the only group I saw actually go was a group shooting for the undying title, so my shaman wasn't fit for that obviously. So really I'm kind of cornered in to grinding heroics hard for the next week or two, until I can buy enough badge gear to be able to join VOA/ONY raids and a little later TOC. It kind of bums me out that Naxx isn't much of an option like it was 3-4 months ago.

If you have Naxx, Ulduar and Malygos bosses drop 3 badges per - it actually makes the time spent worthwhile. That would be 40 something badges for a 3-5 hour Naxx run, right? That's basically one piece of gear...so I can't imagine how that would be overpowered. When we did full NAxx runs before I usually got 1-3 pieces for my time spent. And what it would do is bring many more players to the lower 80 raids, but at the same time still allow the heroics path to gear up for the players that choose to do that.

---

Q u o t e:

---

Q u o t e:
Threads like this make me happy that I'm a "casual".

---

---

Casual or not. Where's the fun in fight a raid boss, finally beating him, and getting one person in the raid an item thats not as good as you could have gotten for everyone from just farming heroics?

I really don't understand this rant.

What's the point of playing the game, if all you care about is the iLevels and stats?

I was under the impression that raiding Dungeons was something supposed to be fun, not something you do just to get more e-viagra.

---

Q u o t e:
The item can fill in a particular slot and you can then focus on spending the emblems on other slots that are in worse shape.

---

Can, but most of the time does not.

There are simpler ways to get shards as well.

I wont be going back to Ulduar for a long while. People are just not interested in it when T9 (and soon T10) is being handed out like candy at Willy Wonkas. Perhaps later when everyones bored enough to finish the place off for the achievements.

---

Q u o t e:
I really don't understand this rant.

What's the point of playing the game, if all you care about is the iLevels and stats?

I was under the impression that raiding Dungeons was something supposed to be fun, not something you do just to get more e-viagra.

---

Sure do have a lot o' epics for someone claiming that gear shouldn't be a factor in enjoyment of the game. Why aren't you naked (a question that has gotten me into trouble more then once)?

---

Q u o t e:


This philosophy also allows us to recruit based on skill and personality since we know gear will be really easy to get. I hope how it looks for t9/t10 carries over a bit better into Cataclysm, with a low level entry set for each tier of raiding, allowing us more flexibility in recruitment and gearing going forward. Its cool to have the best gear coming out of the current content, but being able to get adequate gear by farming badges will be a great boost.

---

While this is true, there is also a downside to it. I'd rather go through the trouble of running new recruits through old content on one night to get them some gear or an attunement than having to stop raiding because people aren't enjoying it anymore. Our guild had to close its doors because we couldn't find enough new recruits to fill the holes left by our long term members who quit because raiding was too easy/boring/not rewarding/etc. Those people have been raiding since day 1 and witnessed the slow decline of "epic raiding". The system seems broken to me and I hope that Cataclysm will bring some much needed change.

---

Q u o t e:
I really don't understand this rant.

What's the point of playing the game, if all you care about is the iLevels and stats?

I was under the impression that raiding Dungeons was something supposed to be fun, not something you do just to get more e-viagra.

---

To be fair - it was the devs decision to make this game all about gear. Obviously it was a good decision, given WOW's popularity. But don't blame players for going down the path that Blizzard led us down.

---

Q u o t e:


I've seen this question come up from time to time and it doesn't really make sense to me. Yes, lower level gear gets easier to get as time goes by, but the general point of getting the items is to get them quickly to avoid being left behind.

I think you could compare this to many items in the real world, you could wait to see if it goes on sale in the future or get it when it comes out. If waiting is your style and you are okay with that level of gear, then it's up to you when you want to play and get the gear. If you want to get the gear as soon as possible, then keep an eye out for when the patch launches and good luck!

---

OMG i did not think that logic was allowed in these forums!!! How did this happen??

---

Q u o t e:


I'm not entirely sure what the problem is here, but yes, with the way the emblems change from patch to patch, we don't want to force players into months of Naxxramas/Ulduar/etc. just to set foot in Icecrown Citadel. While badges may not cover every slot, they are a good boost and often players (at least currently) still run some Naxxramas and/or Ulduar when they want to gear up faster.

---

If people have terribad gear then the odds are that they haven't been in Uld 25 or ToC yet. So why do these people need to go straight into Icecrown as soon as the patch comes out? Let them run ToC for a while before they go to Icecrown and upgrade their gear that way. The odds are it would be new content to them so they shouldn't be bored. I don't see the problem?

---

Q u o t e:

Nothing personal, but I don't think you are a new player, heh. We used to force players to work their way up the ladder and it lead to barely anybody seeing the newest content along with a bunch of complaints about the content being too hard/inaccessible.

---

Why does it ned to be all or nothing. You can still require people to work their way up the ladder and make it a little easier without making it completely unnecessary or trivial.

---

Q u o t e:


I'm not entirely sure what the problem is here, but yes, with the way the emblems change from patch to patch, we don't want to force players into months of Naxxramas/Ulduar/etc. just to set foot in Icecrown Citadel. While badges may not cover every slot, they are a good boost and often players (at least currently) still run some Naxxramas and/or Ulduar when they want to gear up faster.

---

No, we're not forced into Naxxramas/Ulduar/etc.

But we are forced into heroics.

I really don't see why farming heroics a year after the expansion's release is alright, but going back to Naxxramas is practically unheard of. I finished running heroics 9 months ago, why are they more lucrative than Naxx+Ulduar and (in 3.3) TotC for less effort?

At the very least, the badge count of some old raids could simply be bumped up or they could be more rewarding in other ways. If we want to run these raids, they shouldn't feel like a gigantic waste of time from a badge perspective - and right now they do because you can simply get badges much faster by running heroics (and this will be even more true with the new LFG system in 3.3).

For the record, I absolutely hated it that I was still in Karazan two years after BC's release. I understand why it's important to allow new players to catch up fast, but why do old players have to do the same content as people who just hit 80 in maximizing their end-game gear?