I was surfing the internet on death knights, trying not to get too excited about their arrival sometime in the fall, and I started to fear a few things. I have several characters, one is 70 and a few in the 30-50 range, and I was debating whether or not to level the lower levels up to 68-70 or enjoy raiding on my 70.

I then remembered the launch of BC and remembered how quickly my gear was replaced. I hopped onto the wow bandwagon late and so when my first character made it to 58 I was in Outlands, and the 10% less exp to level/10% more exp from quests was out so I got 58-60 in a day with rested xp. I had run BRD and had several blues from there which I thought to be great, and by the time I was level 60, the only thing I had left that was pre BC was a ring.

I'm wondering how big the difference will be from 70 BC epics to 70 WOTLK greens. I wonder if they will make the 70 epics we are working so hard for now longer lasting, or if people who have all epics will be in all greens and blues by level 72; which raises the question, will someone in full tier 5 or 6 be on the same level playing field as some noob who just got to 70 in all greens by the time they both level up to 71? I think their should be some sort of incentive/reward that makes it so the extra time we're putting in now benefits us when the expansion comes out. Being 4-5 months away, imagine how many more people will have a 70 with all high end epics.

What do you guys think?

BRD gear was replaced instantaneously. The same cannot be said about raiding gear. Naxx gear wasn't replaced by some players untill 70. It is likely this tread will continue and that season2/tier5 will not be replaced untill around 76 as it was in BC.

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Q u o t e:
I was surfing the internet on death knights, trying not to get too excited about their arrival sometime in the fall, and I started to fear a few things. I have several characters, one is 70 and a few in the 30-50 range, and I was debating whether or not to level the lower levels up to 68-70 or enjoy raiding on my 70.

I then remembered the launch of BC and remembered how quickly my gear was replaced. I hopped onto the wow bandwagon late and so when my first character made it to 58 I was in Outlands, and the 10% less exp to level/10% more exp from quests was out so I got 58-60 in a day with rested xp. I had run BRD and had several blues from there which I thought to be great, and by the time I was level 60, the only thing I had left that was pre BC was a ring.

I'm wondering how big the difference will be from 70 BC epics to 70 WOTLK greens. I wonder if they will make the 70 epics we are working so hard for now longer lasting, or if people who have all epics will be in all greens and blues by level 72; which raises the question, will someone in full tier 5 or 6 be on the same level playing field as some noob who just got to 70 in all greens by the time they both level up to 71? I think their should be some sort of incentive/reward that makes it so the extra time we're putting in now benefits us when the expansion comes out. Being 4-5 months away, imagine how many more people will have a 70 with all high end epics.

What do you guys think?

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I think that the Tier 5+ wont be replaced until late 70s, but anything below that will get replaced fairly early

I think people with good gear will make it to about 75ish before they start replacing things. This is all speculation on my part though.

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Q u o t e:
Like BC, the different Tier lvls wont be replaced until certain lvl ranges.

t4 would be around 73-74
t5 would be 75-76
t6 would still be nice gear until around 78

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T6 will last until you start running 75+ instances, at which point the blues will be better.

I saw a sword better than cataclysm's edge, level 75 blue

i was kinda thinking the same thing. i have 2 70s and a shammy on the way. should i battle ground to get the new gear that will be worthless with the new expantion?

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Q u o t e:
I was surfing the internet on death knights, trying not to get too excited about their arrival sometime in the fall, and I started to fear a few things. I have several characters, one is 70 and a few in the 30-50 range, and I was debating whether or not to level the lower levels up to 68-70 or enjoy raiding on my 70.

I then remembered the launch of BC and remembered how quickly my gear was replaced. I hopped onto the wow bandwagon late and so when my first character made it to 58 I was in Outlands, and the 10% less exp to level/10% more exp from quests was out so I got 58-60 in a day with rested xp. I had run BRD and had several blues from there which I thought to be great, and by the time I was level 60, the only thing I had left that was pre BC was a ring.

I'm wondering how big the difference will be from 70 BC epics to 70 WOTLK greens. I wonder if they will make the 70 epics we are working so hard for now longer lasting, or if people who have all epics will be in all greens and blues by level 72; which raises the question, will someone in full tier 5 or 6 be on the same level playing field as some noob who just got to 70 in all greens by the time they both level up to 71? I think their should be some sort of incentive/reward that makes it so the extra time we're putting in now benefits us when the expansion comes out. Being 4-5 months away, imagine how many more people will have a 70 with all high end epics.

What do you guys think?

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People who ran around in pre-BC greens / blues had their gear replaced with outland greens easily by 60. People who had teir 1 were generally swapping it out as soon as they found an outland green by 61 or 62. People in teir 2 generally had to get about 65 before they replaced it with greens. People in teir 3, the best gear pre-BC, generally didn't replace more than a couple epics with greens around level 68-70. That being said, I'm anticipating being in full S4 long before WotLK comes out and I imagine I may replace a few pieces of my epic gear with northrend greens / blues before I hit 80 but I honestly see PVPing at 80 for the first few BGs / arenas in pretty much full S4.

A valid concern, but not one to be worried about.

The change from original release to Burning Crusade was fairly great. Players in T2 and T3 didn't replace their gear until later into the expansion, with a few pieces lasting til Karazhan and I had heard some into SSC (probably bad luck on drops contributed on that). They also reworked stamina and some stat distribution on gear.

There was also a huge gap between haves and have nots when BC came out. If you didn't raid, you were insta-dead in PvP. The gear was amazingly off balance between one another. With BC, we have epics from more sources and badge gear balancing things some before Wrath ships.

On top of that, Blizzard has stated that T5 should last to about 75-77 and T6 will likely last to 80 and into raiding for some pieces.

But you should be getting gear through raids to see the content and have fun, not to work hard and get loot.

The big difference is that stat allocation costs aren't being changed, like with BC. You won't suddenly hit Howling Tundra and see greens with twice the stamina as your epics. Gear will last a lot longer.

Realize, pre-BC never really had lvl 60 blues. Those BRD blues are really lvl 54 at most, so of course lvl 60 items were going to be better.

What I like about this is it puts everybody on an equal level for a while. No more "How Much DPS can you do?", "How much resiliance?" It's kind of like wiping the slate clean. If you have a strong guild with great people then you will grow together, if you have a bunch of loot %!%@%s then it will fall apart.

Well like ever sayd T4 will be replaced easily T5...ect
But you should raid because its fun thats what i think

If you do PvP at 80, you will probably still be using your arena/honor gear until you uprgade it, because chances are the dungeon and quest gear will not have resilience

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Q u o t e:
i was kinda thinking the same thing. i have 2 70s and a shammy on the way. should i battle ground to get the new gear that will be worthless with the new expantion?

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"Worthless" is a subjective opinion.

Would you rather start your questing in Northrend equipped with Outland greens and blues?
Or would you rather do it equipped with epics?

If you can make use of the items, they are not worthless.

Well I enjoy raiding, and I enjoy the story when I take the time to read it. I completed the Green hills of Stranglethorn quest in STV the other day on an alt for the 4th time and I actually read the chapters instead of instantly turning them into 6.8k xp. The story was actually interesting to read. It just goes to show that it doesn't hurt to stop and smell the roses in this game sometimes. Blizzard has put a good deal of effort into the little things.

I like raiding more than PvP because you get to know a group of people really well, and pvp can become monotonous and when your faction is bad at a particular BG it can become beyond frustrating. a couple months back, in my battle group, alliance was good at AB and EOTS, wsg was alright, although generally we lost, and in AV there was a 99% chance of Horde winning it. I find PvP is easier to do sometimes, because you don't have to rely on getting a group together, or setting aside time, but either way it is a lot of time spent to get some really cool gear, and I just hope that time will translate into an advantage in WOTLK.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy playing this game, I wouldn't have a 70 if I didn't, but I value my time and I am feeling reassured my investments in epics now will bear more longevity than I once thought. and thats good because they look cool and I think that the new greens won't look as flashy, but I could be wrong about that. :-P

From what I saw on screenshots, gear doesnt start to match the high end stuff till around 75-76.

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Q u o t e:
Wrath of the Lich King will work similarly to The Burning Crusade in that higher tiers of raid gear won't be replaced immediately and they may help out the leveling process but a person in blues may get upgrades from their first quest completion.

One thing I have been reminding players of is that we don't currently plan to completely redo a statistic this time like we did with stamina. Where in The Burning Crusade players saw items with a ton more stamina that lead to immediate changes to their gear, in Wrath of the Lich King you should more or less be seeing gear that is just higher level.

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So I won't be replacing my epic trousers with "Panties of the Sorcerer"?