Best gear attainable not raids alone?

[Dion]

This thread made me look backwards and think how much design philosophy and goals have changed during the years. How would you react if Blizzard decides that best gear is not reserved solely for raiders? If MOP brought this change, would you still be playing WoW or would you stop playing? I'm not looking to start another elitist vs casuals war, as they could be reward from difficult challenge dungeons for example.

I'm not completely sure about it and I hope it will never happen as I'm quite happy how things are right now. Otherhand, I have been been suprised by Blizzards design changes already and never saw them coming. I would still be playing as I haven't raided at all in whole Cataclysm, not even LFR or Baradin Hold. (do people count it as a raid?).

[KysenMurrin]

Depends how it was available. If high level gear was made more accessible, raids and other content would need to be balanced around that, which means more difficult raids, and more difficult raids mean more pressure to reward raiders so they're not put off (if they already have gear as good as the raid drops they'll lose motivation to complete the challenge), leading into an arms race of sorts. The only solution there is to make sure other gear sources are limited enough that their impact on raiding is minimal.

[Darielle]

Gear's just a means to an end. If raid content was still compelling, it wouldn't matter what people doing X can get.

[benebarba]

Gear's just a means to an end. If raid content was still compelling, it wouldn't matter what people doing X can get.

You'd hope, right? But man there seem to be some very vocal people who don't see it that way.

[Dion]

Depends how it was available. If high level gear was made more accessible, raids and other content would need to be balanced around that, which means more difficult raids, and more difficult raids mean more pressure to reward raiders so they're not put off (if they already have gear as good as the raid drops they'll lose motivation to complete the challenge), leading into an arms race of sorts. The only solution there is to make sure other gear sources are limited enough that their impact on raiding is minimal.

Yes, it can lead to that. I remember the horrific grind of ToC 10HC to get those missing pieces that just didn't drop or were required for our guild to progress in 25HC.

I have never given much thought to idea that best gear could come somewhere else than raids, I always accepted that as natural way how things are in WoW.

[Zobel]

The best gear will probably always be available from a random number generator you can click once per week with a 12% payout per item slot per week. (Click it for three months in a row and you have a 78% chance of filling each item slot.)

Currently that random number generator is raiding. In the future they could switch to a different weekly random number generator.