Developers' Philosophy on Gear Availability

[Jasari]

Goddamnit, I'm really pissed about the badge change.

I thought they weren't happy with people basically feeling obligated to farm the shit out of kara and heroics to get badges to buy T6 equivalent gear in BC.

And it's not an issue about me feeling like nonraiders shouldn't have access to the same gear as raiders. Hell, I don't even do 25mans. I just don't want to feel like I need to run heroic nexus a zillion times so that I can get my T8.25 gear.

[Nikachelle]

Goddamnit, I'm really pissed about the badge change.

I thought they weren't happy with people basically feeling obligated to farm the shit out of kara and heroics to get badges to buy T6 equivalent gear in BC.

And it's not an issue about me feeling like nonraiders shouldn't have access to the same gear as raiders. Hell, I don't even do 25mans. I just don't want to feel like I need to run heroic nexus a zillion times so that I can get my T8.25 gear.

I'm with you on this. I love running Ulduar for the content. But this basically means I don't need to run Ulduar at all. Wait till 3.2 is released and then farm heroics for a week or so (maybe less since Conquest items don't require THAT many abdges) and I'd be kitted out in almost full 8.25 gear. That's a bit insulting.

[Steve]

And it's not an issue about me feeling like nonraiders shouldn't have access to the same gear as raiders. Hell, I don't even do 25mans. I just don't want to feel like I need to run heroic nexus a zillion times so that I can get my T8.25 gear.

This change is effectively required. You need to raise the ilvl of new raider entry gear if current raiding guilds are going to continue to progress in the face of roster turnover.

In my opinion, this change probably should have been done in 3.1 (allowing 213 ilvl gear through heroic badges).

Essentially, my feeling is you should always be able to obtain gear 1 tier behind the current raiding tier via 5 man and solo content. The ability to do so is necessary if you want a high % of the player base seeing your raid content.

[Jasari]

And it's not an issue about me feeling like nonraiders shouldn't have access to the same gear as raiders. Hell, I don't even do 25mans. I just don't want to feel like I need to run heroic nexus a zillion times so that I can get my T8.25 gear.

This change is effectively required. You need to raise the ilvl of new raider entry gear if current raiding guilds are going to continue to progress in the face of roster turnover.

In my opinion, this change probably should have been done in 3.1 (allowing 213 ilvl gear through heroic badges).

Essentially, my feeling is you should always be able to obtain gear 1 tier behind the current raiding tier via 5 man and solo content. The ability to do so is necessary if you want a high % of the player base seeing your raid content.

But if they haven't even seen Ulduar yet, why should they skip it in order to see something else?

You can easily get geared enough to start running Ulduar by doing Naxx, heroics, Vault, etc all with pugs.

Then you can start doing Ulduar. If you haven't been doing Ulduar and new content comes out, it's not like you have nothing to do. There are always guilds at different points in progression - just look at BC, especially before 2.4. There were guilds in Kara, SSC/TK, and Hyjal/BT.

Ulduar has enough content to keep most guild occupied for a while. Those that already have it cleared and farm should be able to move on to bigger and better things. Those that haven't cleared it don't have a problem with there being a lack of content.

[Nikachelle]

And it's not an issue about me feeling like nonraiders shouldn't have access to the same gear as raiders. Hell, I don't even do 25mans. I just don't want to feel like I need to run heroic nexus a zillion times so that I can get my T8.25 gear.

This change is effectively required. You need to raise the ilvl of new raider entry gear if current raiding guilds are going to continue to progress in the face of roster turnover.

In my opinion, this change probably should have been done in 3.1 (allowing 213 ilvl gear through heroic badges).

Essentially, my feeling is you should always be able to obtain gear 1 tier behind the current raiding tier via 5 man and solo content. The ability to do so is necessary if you want a high % of the player base seeing your raid content.

But if they haven't even seen Ulduar yet, why should they skip it in order to see something else?

You can easily get geared enough to start running Ulduar by doing Naxx, heroics, Vault, etc all with pugs.

Then you can start doing Ulduar. If you haven't been doing Ulduar and new content comes out, it's not like you have nothing to do. There are always guilds at different points in progression - just look at BC, especially before 2.4. There were guilds in Kara, SSC/TK, and Hyjal/BT.

Ulduar has enough content to keep most guild occupied for a while. Those that already have it cleared and farm should be able to move on to bigger and better things. Those that haven't cleared it don't have a problem with there being a lack of content.

I agree. And if content is supposed to become harder as you progress, how are you going to teach a level 80 newbie how to raid by starting in something like T9 content? There's a reason why it's called progression. You need to adapt to easier instances/heroics/raids in order to move on to the harder stuff.

To me, this encourages bad perfomance and gearing. "Why should I bother gearing up now when I could wait a month or two and get all my tier from dungeons!" Ugh.

[Serelynn]

I welcome the badge changes. Bad players will still be bad despite their gear, but good players will be capable in newer content without having had to farm for weeks of old content. On Sentinels, we had 2 Alliance guilds that had cleared Ulduar25, but one recently had major issues and is trying to recruit to field successful 25 man raids again. We have 2-4 other 25 man raiding guilds partially successful in Ulduar, they are on the keepers but most aren't past Thorim. Given that my guild wants to progress on hard modes, we're always keeping an eye out for recruiting as people burn out or have schedules change - unfortunately, our only hope right now lies in cross server transfers. Despite being in the top 500-600ish for the US, it's still difficult picking up capable raiders. :\

[Steve]

Having lived through the problem of replacing raiders in Black Temple with new recruits, I have to respectfully disagree with you. You can't have that kind of barrier to entry for new players if you expect them to keep playing. They need to be able to 'catch up' to play with friends in existing guilds. And existing guilds need these players to catch up to deal with roster turnover.

I respect the reasoning behind your disagreement, though.

[Torquemada]

This change is effectively required. You need to raise the ilvl of new raider entry gear if current raiding guilds are going to continue to progress in the face of roster turnover.

In my opinion, this change probably should have been done in 3.1 (allowing 213 ilvl gear through heroic badges).

Essentially, my feeling is you should always be able to obtain gear 1 tier behind the current raiding tier via 5 man and solo content. The ability to do so is necessary if you want a high % of the player base seeing your raid content.

But if they haven't even seen Ulduar yet, why should they skip it in order to see something else?

You can easily get geared enough to start running Ulduar by doing Naxx, heroics, Vault, etc all with pugs.

Then you can start doing Ulduar. If you haven't been doing Ulduar and new content comes out, it's not like you have nothing to do. There are always guilds at different points in progression - just look at BC, especially before 2.4. There were guilds in Kara, SSC/TK, and Hyjal/BT.

Ulduar has enough content to keep most guild occupied for a while. Those that already have it cleared and farm should be able to move on to bigger and better things. Those that haven't cleared it don't have a problem with there being a lack of content.[/quote]

I agree. And if content is supposed to become harder as you progress, how are you going to teach a level 80 newbie how to raid by starting in something like T9 content? There's a reason why it's called progression. You need to adapt to easier instances/heroics/raids in order to move on to the harder stuff.

To me, this encourages bad perfomance and gearing. "Why should I bother gearing up now when I could wait a month or two and get all my tier from dungeons!" Ugh.[/quote]

While this is true, I remember horror stories about what a severe pain in the ass it was to take people and kill Kael and Vashj AGAIN because 1 person hadn't done it and couldn't get into Hyjal, and thus couldn't get into BT. Whether it's a quest c-block or a gear c-block this allows raids to pick up someone new and get them on par at an acceptable pace without slowing the raid down for so long that it falls apart. Keep in mind that at this point Conquest will be 1 tier behind bleeding edge, as the Gruul's La... er, the new raid will be the new endgame.

This will ALSO allow you to gear up your alts in the event that you have to have a raider switch to healer because one of yours goes all emo and quits or fails his finals and his parents take away his computer, or whatever people who quite WoW do. Keep in mind you can't buy all items off badges, but enough to at least get on track.

Edit: Basically Steve just agreed with me as I was posting this.

[Nikachelle]

Gah Torquemada! Misquoting! I didn't say that! I'm thoroughly against the emblem change!

[Jasari]

Having lived through the problem of replacing raiders in Black Temple with new recruits, I have to respectfully disagree with you. You can't have that kind of barrier to entry for new players if you expect them to keep playing. They need to be able to 'catch up' to play with friends in existing guilds. And existing guilds need these players to catch up to deal with roster turnover.

I respect the reasoning behind your disagreement, though.

In my experience, the biggest barrier to entry in those days was the attunement quests. Once those were removed gearing people up wasn't really that big of an issue... admittedly a lot of that had to do with the 2.4 badge.

Ironically it seems that this change benefits the more hardcore guilds because it makes it easier to recruit. For people like me, who only raid 6-10 hours a week and have only recently cleared Ulduar 10 non-hard mode it makes the gear I've worked for so far almost obsolete and when 3.2 comes out, I'll be heading back to Naxx or heroic Nexus rather than Ulduar in any spare time I have from raiding the coliseum.

[Sabindeus]

The emblem change makes me raaaaaaaaaaaaage

[Sabindeus]

The emblem change makes me raaaaaaaaaaaaage

Rage all you want. I'll be saving up emblems for the changeover and laughing all the way to the bank :lol:

i will rage all I want


raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaageeeeeeeeeeeee

[Jasari]

Well wherever you stand on the badge change...

Now that 10 and 25 man coliseum will drop the same type of badge, do you think they'll drop the same ilevel of gear?

[Nikachelle]

Well wherever you stand on the badge change...

Now that 10 and 25 man coliseum will drop the same type of badge, do you think they'll drop the same ilevel of gear?

Oh jesus. I hope not.

[Flex]

Well wherever you stand on the badge change...

Now that 10 and 25 man coliseum will drop the same type of badge, do you think they'll drop the same ilevel of gear?

Isn't there 5 man, 5 man heroic, 10 man, 10 man heroic, 25 man and 25 man heroic?