Will the future bring new badge gear?

Senador - I disagree with you, and it's because you are using a premise that I don't agree with.

Your premise is that any given player's goal is to gear up as quickly as possible. That is definitely one of our goals, but I think people who are really interested in epics, etc. are people who want to see and defeat content.

I'm going to do Ulduar not because it will have better loot, but because it will be new and exciting content. I remember zoning in to ZA for my guild's first attempt. I was totally out of my head excited to finally be on a guild first raid (I didn't hit 70 until months and months after most people, and hadn't been into raiding before that). This excitement wasn't because of the better loot, but because it was a new and exciting instance. The whole experience was charged with energy and teamwork.

We failed horribly, but that's not the point.

So anyway, I don't care if someone who comes in on the middle of Wrath can get geared up a little faster because they added ilvl 213 items to the badge vendors - I'll be wearing 213/226 by then anyway, and I'll have had some experiences they haven't. And when I'm feeling particularly superior, I'll inspect them and feel smug that the only 213+ epics that they have are from badges, while I'm (hopefully, knock on wood!) walking around with some BAMF shield (or weapon, etc.) that shows where I've been.
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A plague on both houses, they've made a double poster out of me.
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My goal, is to experience content.

However, the cynic in me believes that many people simply want to get free loot; and it is on that premise I make my statements.

I did all of the old content in TBC (Except Twins, M'uru and Kil'jaeden) pre nerf because I wanted to experience it. However, I have seen enough that just farmed Karazhan when they clearly could move on, simply because they wanted the free loot that badges offered. Instead of going into SSC and TK and seeing some of the actual good encounters there (Leotharis, Vashj, Fathomlord, A'lar, Kael, etc) individuals instead chose to spend their raid nights sitting in Karazhan on first one character, then an alt, only for badges, that helped them farm said badges better, only to farm even more badges.

I had a battle with an officer once, who wanted to spend 4 hours, of raid nights sheeping/reseting the first pull in Sunwell so people could loot some free and easy epics. This isn't progression, hell PVP racing in Alterac Valley would offer more character development than that, but it helps to illustrate what I had said, as I doubt that guild was alone.

I would like to see guilds, raids, characters, be able to develop their characters, learn the new skills and advance through content to experience it, instead of complaining how boring Library trash in Karazhan is, 2 years after it was released, and still running it.

I would love to see extra iLevel 200 badge items available for badge of heroisms; and 213s for Badge of valors so those that come later won't have to be victim to the fickle bitch that is the RNG and can gear up more effectively, but I would like to see that gear then be used for progression and to move them up to the current line of content. Because honestly, do you really need 236 iLevel epics to run heroic Nexus every day?

speaking of engineering... I'm very afraid for patch 3.1...

They are going to do SOMETHING to the hunter ammo system, which will either be very good for engineers, or very bad... GC isn't giving any clues as to what it is, except that it is something that is supposed to increase dps and change a mechanic somehow. It pretty much has to be ammo, as he has talked about ammo too much recently..

If I'm not crafting ammo anymore, I'll be dropping engineering on at least one of my toons... (especially if we don't get goggle upgrades with 3.1)
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Hmm... realistically speaking, content-approriate gear from heroics doesn't exist currently.

Think about it: if it makes sense that 25 man Naxx and 10 man Naxx (or any other raid for that matter) utilize 2 different currencies, then why should it make sense that Heroics (which require 5) share the same currencies as 10 mans? Shouldn't heroics drop Emblems of sub-Heroism?

So the only answer is that Blizzard realizes there is some leeway to be had with gear. I don't think any one blanket statement about future badge gear will hold true since there are exceptions aplenty. If there's anything that this expansion has taught us, it's that Blizzard wants people of all playstyles and is willing to bend over backwards to accomodate them.

Whether I like it or not, there will always be people who want to improve their gear but is unwilling/unable to progress past 5-mans. I think it would be foolish of me to assume Blizzard will dismiss those people.

Everyone seems to have forgotten that there were 3 (4?) patches which extended the number (and quality) of items you could buy for badges of justice. We're certainly not worse off now than we were around this time in TBC.

All that is uncertain is how they will implement it in the future.
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If it is weak, kill it before it gets stronger. If it is strong, weaken it.