I like that I don’t have to be in a cutting edge guild to get geared. And I like that I’m not fighting with rogues for my gear (at least with badge purposes). I’m sad that I’ll be missing some content, because I know my guild is going to get geared up through badges and skip the hard parts of Ulduar. Most of us are pretty casual, some more, some less. But the people more casual than I don’t want to do anything hard. And the people less casual than I want to be doing the latest stuff they can (meaning Trial of the Crusader). That leaves me stuck out on both sides, and I’m not really interested in joining a different guild on Earthen Ring. If were to do that, I’d probably roll a toon on KT and see if I fit with the Sidhe Devils…or something on Feathermoon for RP purposes.

Hmm, its a tough call. I only have about 3-4 hours a week that I can play so it is helpful that I can run a couple of the dailies to slowly build up my gear sets without having to convince the guild to do a retro run through Naxx or other beginner raids.

On the other side tho, I love playing games from start to finish. On all my console games like Final Fantasy, part of my enjoyment comes from starting off low level and gradually working my way up through the ranks. You have to work your way up to that point and earn your way to the next level of content.

Having seen everyone in BC that ran around Shatt in their T6 and Sunwell gear was a motivation for me to raid harder and research my spec and rotations to make sure I can be the best I can be so I can get to the place where those other people were at. The emblem change is nice, but it is like giving everyone a permanent “cheat code” like the ones in the old console games that you could use to skip to the last level.

I’m happy about it. Our guild is set up for progression in 10-player raids, and as far as that goes, we’re right at the curve. We’ll be ready for Icecrown when it is released, and we’re currently testing the waters in heroic ToC-10, but we have several people still at the Ulduar level and wanting to see and do that content as well. We’ve managed to keep raiding down to 2 or 3 nights a week, and since we’re also a role playing guild, we try not to do more than that to give opportunity throughout the week for other events, and just general guild stuff.

With each successive raid, it becomes harder to get newer raiders geared up to where the guild is currently. By allowing people to gear up for current raid content on their own through dailies and 5 person dungeons, it takes pressure off of me and the other officers to schedule older content raids that most people in the guild have surpassed. A lot of us wouldn’t mind never seeing Naxx again, and after beating our heads against Yogg-Saron for 2 months (we did finally get him, but it was rough), a lot of us took off for ToC and never looked back. So with the emblem system working the way it is, we can work with people to get them gear outside of raiding, so that they can start raiding with the rest of the guild faster.

So really, it keeps us from having too much spread across raid readiness. We don’t have to worry about farming Naxx or Ulduar, which is time consuming, for someone to catch up with those of us in Icecrown. That in turn means we can focus on the current content without worrying about leaving people behind that may be excellent raiders, but they just got started later than some of us.
gmazeroth´s last blog ..Fun with Loot

I’m relieved to be honest – I have had zero time this past month due to RL stuff going on so I definitely haven’t been gearing up my druid the way that I did with my warlock (through lots of Naxx runs). So I get why some people might feel indignant, but I certainly won’t be the one complaining.

I love the gear “resets”.

1. It helps getting new raid members geared to raid with you. Whether you are a casual guild or hardcore you will always need new blood to replace those who leave and the easier it is to gear up new people the easier it is to go back to progressing.

2. I have 5 (almost 6) level 80 characters. It took me about 1 month of casually doing heroics on my non raiding nights (I raid 4 nights a week.) to get my druid geared enough to tank or heal any non hard mode boss.

3. Even if you clear all the hard modes of the current top raid every week it doesn’t guarantee you a drop that you may need/want and the gear resets help fill in those holes that the RNG drop monster prevents you from getting.

4. Whether you are hardcore or casual, the gears resets help you progress through whatever content you are working on even if your characters don’t directly benefit from them.

It makes me happy, and it makes me a little sad.

My main guild is social, and we frequently lag a little behind. We have 2 bosses down in 25 ToC, and even pugging in to fill raid spots, I don’t know if/when we will ever see more. This upcoming gear reset will let me upgrade my gear in spite of my raid. So I’m happy. But the weekly raid quest will likely consume one of our two 25 man nights, so my hunter will probably never see much of ice crown… because I won’t ditch my friends to pug for content. So I’m sad.

I also have a broken arm, which limits my raiding. The gear reset will help me catch up. So I’m happy again.

My progression raiding toon (resto druid) , who exists to satisfy my itch for harder core raiding, lacks 1 ring to be done with her triumph toys. So everything dropping triumph badges won’t be much benefit, and will make it harder to distinguish between an inexperienced raider who needs to be babied and an experienced one who does not. (Note – I don’t mind inexperienced raiders, but I want to know who is going to understand the fight and who is going to drop felfire in the melee. It makes it easier to anticipate heals.) So, I’m sad.

Yes, I worked for my gear, and now newer people will overgear me. But only the ones who work at it will. My social guild has people raiding in blues because they can’t be bothered to get better gear on their own. So anyone who works at gearing their toon to Tier 9 gets my two thumbs up in approval. In the meantime, I’ll be working on my tier 10. :)

I can gear my alts easily. Joy! And it will be easier to pug certain raids when I feel like it. Score!

Overall, I’m happy.

It depends on the extent.

I’m not happy with some if it. When we first hit Mimiron 25 and were battling throught the storm of wipes to bring him down I was not happy to find that a newly dinged level 80, on the same day he dinged, got the 8.5 gloves from VoA (the raid of free epics)

I can having some loot drop to bring people up to speed quickly so they don’t have to laboriously battle through 4 raids to hit current content – but it shouldn’t be on par with end game content.

So, I don’t mind emblems of conquest too much. Sure with emblems of conquest you can get ulduar loot – but you have to grind a lot – and it’s only 2 tiers and a couple of other items. It can get you read for Ulduar and beyond but you need to put some effort in. Just as I don’t mind BoE recipes which a newly dinged 80 CAN save up and buy the mats for. There’s a difference between giving them a boost and showering them with free epics. It also lets you gear alts and offspecs relatively quickly

I also don’t mind tier 9 and emblems. In fact the 3 types of tier 9 are a very good idea. Sure you can grind the daily heroic forever and get tier 9 – and it will give you a boost but there’s still an acknowledgement of the achievement of those who are actually raiding

I do not mind the EXPANSION resets at all – tbc, WOTLK it goes without saying that the loot would HAVE to reset as we got higher levels (if not then we’d just ding 80 in greens come back and faceroll through BWL). In these cases your high end gear helps you level. I was still wearing tier 6 and Sunwell loot when we hit Naxxramas. So there was an advantage but it wasn’t a necessity. When cataclysm comes out I will happily scrap my tier 9/10/whatever we’re on.

I cannot STAND Vault of Achavon though. The bosses in there are ridiculously easy and drop 9.2, 8.5 and 7.5 loot. It’s one thing to help people catch up, but to create a raid that showers people with free epics to this extent is ludicrous. They may as well say “you’re 80 here are some epics in your mail now to let you hit TOTC)”

As to every instance dropping emblems of triumph… well, I can’t say I’m GLEEFUL about it. But, again because there is a scaling tier, if you want the better tier 9 (9.2 – 245 item level) you will still have to run TOTC. So I’m not happy, but I’m not unhappy and I can see the practical advantages. In the end it’s still going to be a GRIND for items that were a drop for us. So I don’t mind it too much. The epics may be Not-exactly-hard but they’re not utterly easy or FREE

Of course there will be a new boss in Vault of Achavon dropping tier 10. That I will most certainly be pissed about

I’m happy for your guild. For me the gear reset is actually the reason why I probably will not see Ulduar in its entirety.

I dinged 80 several weeks ago and recently killed Anubarac in 10-man. There are no problems in forming a raid when ToC 10 is scheduled, however when Ulduar appears in Calendar, suddenly less people sign up and many bring undergeared alts. I’ve seen Ulduar once, we cleared 8 bosses, and decided to continue another day… except another raid during the week was ToC10. And next week nobody was interested in running Ulduar.

The reason? Well, there is no need to run Ulduar, so it’s hard to motivate people to do it. My guild didn’t even kill Vezax yet, but they easilty get their weekly portion of ToC 10 loot.

The gear reset of 3.2 killed off Ulduar, great raid instance, one of the most beautiful places in WoW. Yes, it happens every expantion, but new expantion are supposed to bring new exciting raid dungeions instead. And what did 3.2 bring to replace Ulduar, city of titans? Yes, a shitty stadium

It’s kind of a shame, really. My 2 1/2 week old hunter outgears Bellbell’s DPS set by a wide margin. She’ll never set foot in Naxx; there’s no reason to! Heroic trains are faster and less painful, ToC normal is easier to find groups for and is repeatable, and ToC Heroic drops gear that’s better. I’ve been in almost the same amount of raids on Sugarcake as I have heroics, and her only remaining blue are her pants.

Sure, a gear reset saves time, I suppose. In a week? Less than a week? My hunter was in ToC 10. I didn’t even have time to get my Devilsaur to 80, yet I was in the top end raids (non heroic).

Bellbell has never done Malygos, and never will. Sugar will never see Malygos or any Naxx boss, and I doubt she’ll do all of the heroics; she only has done OS because our guild sells drakes to people. What’s the point? At the moment, I am nearly past the need for Emblems of Conquest. I just have to buy her pants and that’s it. I’ll only need the daily.

Sure, I could do Naxx. But the only people who will/want to run naxx seem to be the people who have not caught on that it is obsolete. They’re also the people who don’t know how to dance, tank, switch polarities or get out of slime. My boyfriend ran Naxx every week for a while before giving up in disgust; very few, perhaps only two, ever got past two wings without crashing and burning and I think only one downed KT.

Gear resets encourage skipping content, and they make it that much harder to screen out people from the top raids. I run a ToC 25 every Saturday that consists of mostly guild member’s alts, but I always end up needing some PUGs. I have a somewhat nonrestrictive gear check; I’m not looking for all ToC 25 gear, or even Ulduar, but I do want to make sure the person can theoretically pull their own weight. Yet we’ve had some truly awful people decked out in very nice gear. Hell, there is a rather terrible hunter in our guild who can barely put out 1k DPS, yet he gets invited into PUG ToC raids all the time to scoop up gear because his current gear is so nice. He shouldn’t be there. But who can tell?

It’s not a terrible idea, the gear resets, but it seems too extreme.

I love the design. I’m not a raider, nor do I play at the level cap, but it’s smart design that lets players of different styles do their thing. If raiders want to raid, more power to ‘em, and they can get their rewards via their preferred playstyle. If players don’t want to raid, they can still progress. That’s inclusive design in my eye, and it’s a good idea.
Tesh´s last blog ..Race Ten Rats

I think my guild is almost the equivalent of your guild, but just horde side. Very casual and we’re still looking at heading into Ulduar presently and spending a little time getting our new 80’s ready for that.

And I think that we are pretty happy about the changes. It allows us to gear up at our own pace while still going through content. All the while making it a bit easier to do… we did two wings with 8 people last week (a ninth joined us later). And when we’re ready to hit up Icecrown (from an “emotional” perspective) we’ll also have the gear to do it.

I like how this high level gear is available to people who don’t get to raid regularly, or just not lucky with the drops, but I’m dreading running heroics day in and day out to get emblems, again. Maybe I’m crazy, but I got 3 pieces of T9 stuff for my druid by only doing daily heroics, at 30 Triumph badges each piece and 2 badges per day, I did 45 straight days dailies! It’s maddening to think how “dedicated” I was.

I don’t raid. I’m not opposed to it, but I’ve got a handful of alts at a variety of levels spread across a few servers that I play with friends & family . . . put that on top of only having hit level 80 relatively recently with my main and well . . . I just haven’t gotten around to putting in the effort to find a casual raiding guild.

But I would or will raid if and when I do find the right guild. I would even PuG a raid just for the exposure to the fights.

With that situation in mind, I have mixed feelings.

First, being able to get geared up means that being “behind” in content does not mean I will never catch up. I can get geared up for content people are running. That is very, very nice. Also from the perspective of being on a PvP server, having decent gear means I can get at least put up a decent showing v. ganksters.

On the other hand. I would like to see Ulduar. I’d like to do Obsidian Sanctum. However, since everyone can and is expected to be geared up for current content, once Icecrown Citadel comes out, doing those raids will become as likely as it is to find a Sunwell Plateau raid now. It’s already moving that direction when groups looking to fill out guild runs or put together PuGs ask you to link the achievment before they let you come along.

I guess if a guild like Sidhe Devils exists somewhere, then maybe there’s hope that a similar one exists on my server (Dentarg). Your plans regarding expanding content seem to fit exactly what I, ideally, want.

I have very mixed feelings here. Having grinded 9 months and doing ridiculous tasks (solo healing malygos when it was the hardest content) to suddenly have people have better loot due to badges was a big slap in the face, it was as if 9 months truly working for progression were wasted in about ten minutes flat. It was my first attempt at more serious raiding, and more than likely, my last given how warcraft is moving.

I see if things keep progressing at this rate, where they try to push the normal, casual player into hard raiding, simplifying instances and raids into being less of a challenge and more gear checks with slight movement (oh no, fire, take a step) and a lot less strategy (remember when you had to keep 4 things cc’d in molten core while fighting? general anybody?) that serious raiding will soon end, even with the achievement system giving a sort of band-aid most serious raiders I know are quickly getting tired of everything they work for disappearing. How many people in original wow saw naxxramas? BC finished black temple? now look at the groups that have finished ulduar and defeated yogg, the numbers would be ridiculously different I think, and -not- just because there are more people playing.

So in the end, I think it’s good for the person with 8 alts wanting to not fall too far behind or spend their life raiding old content, bad for the person that spent endless hours working, trying, and spending countless wipe gold costs. It cheapens progression, serious raiders no longer seem to do the content but more the achievements. When the novelty of achievements gets a bit old I think we’ll see even more of the bigger raiding guilds slowly start to die off.

OMG. Have I put some thoughts into this.

The Good: I’ve seen MUCH more content in Wrath than BC. This is thanks to (in large part) the gear resets. It allows me and our core ‘raiders’ to quickly ramp up enough to help along other members of our raid team. And allows them to get competitive (so to speak) in the PvE game.

The Bad: I’m nowhere near as connected to my toon(s) as I had been. I feel very little sense of accomplishment in seeing the drop. I do feel accomplishment, however, in downing the boss though that feat is soured somewhat by the ‘free ride’ the gear pinata’s eventually provide. I’m also seeing formerly interesting and challenging encounters – such as those in Naxx and sadly, soon to be Ulduar – become much less interesting. Heroics are just something I go through. I have alts and while they are ready to go much faster, they are also in groups that I don’t have as much fun with as everything is OP.

I’ve also noticed that when the pinata bursts, I feel much MORE grind coming. Grind the old dungeons without much fun in the time spent. In fact, the loot pinata seems to indicate that I’m doing it wrong: I should just see the content as early as our guild will allow, then bug out of WoW until the next pinata. The trouble is, as an officer, I know the guild will fall apart.

I think these were meant to bring casual guilds together, that it would make things accessible to the casual player. I think they have done that but also to the cost of the casual-but-serious guild and casual-but-serious player who wants to put the time and and see, or revisit the content.

But its not all complaining, my suggestion for a fix is a currency exchange on the emblems. Say a frost emblem = 5 heroic emblems, 3 valor or 2 conquest. The lower gear becomes relevant again and I can more quickly gear up for, say Naxx, AT LEVEL than to OP it. I suspect we’d see our encounters become a bit more challenging and, dare I say, fun? by simply making it worth spending the Emblem of Frost on EoH gear via the motivation that I can hold onto my EoF for 49 more heroic grinds, or buy an T7 set RIGHT NOW and hit Naxx or entry Ulduar.

I think it sucks. I think it sad that they make old content obsolete like this. If you are not at the cutting edge of raiding, you miss out on major areas of content. If something happens where you don’t stay at that leading edge of raiding, then when you get your second wind you bypass what was the leading edge just a month or so ago.

I dumped my raid group because they were doing 25s all the time and I really didn’t have time and they got all elitist on me. Now that I’m behind and trying to form my own group, the things I want to do to gear them up are old stuff. We’re still going to do them because I want them to see the content and get trained in working as a group, but it makes it odd to use Naxx as progression when we’ll also be doing heroics and grabbing gear that far outclasses Naxx from the vendors. I think how it was in BC was about right. You have to progress to get the good stuff no matter when or with who you begin. The original raiding was too hard for casual raiders and this is too easy. I think BC was as close to the middle as it got and I really wish we could go back to something like that. I’m not sure how much I enjoy playing WOW-EZ.

For me the gear reset helped a lot. It allowed me to gear up quickly and start playing with other guildies. If it wasn’t for the gear reset i would have had a difficult time catching up. This took a lot of work on my part, grinding rep with different factions, a lot of pugs, and a lot of tournament to get basic weapons. If I had leveled up with everyone else and gone to Nax etc I would have enjoyed it a lot more. I remember being level 40 and watching the guild go into Nax and hearing about the boss kills. I missed out on that great part of progression. But I’m thankful that the gear reset allowed me to catch up.

When they said it was about the person and not the class i wonder if they were thinking gear resets and alts when they said that, and not just all tanks are equal.

When people say gear resets are bad they are being elitist whiners, or just plain crybabies. Gear resets are awesome, and if you think they “trivialize” your accomplishments then you’re acting like a petulant little kid. No I don’t WANT to share my achievements! NO NO NO! MY ACHIEVEMENTS! MINE MINE MINE! People absolutely should be given the tools to see these things, and gear is just a stepping stone, not a free pass to end game. What if someone starts playing Wrath right now and really wants to get into raiding? No gear reset means good luck finding a Naxx pug! Much less finding the six or seven Naxx pugs minimum it would take you to get into t7. Oh, and then have fun running Ulduar for a few months! But wait, who the hell is running Ulduar? Even with all these MYSTICAL MAGICAL gear resets I haven’t seen many Ulduar pugs progress much further than Hodir.

And frankly, Holly, people like you are some of the worst whiners of all. Go ahead and post your armory, please, so we can see your guild and how it’s dominated every hard mode, because I’m convinced nine out of ten of the people that complain about raiding being too easy are the whiners who’ve barely finished the stuff on normal. At least if you have then you’d be speaking (incorrectly) from experience rather than some pie in the sky Ensidia fandom. Even Yogg +4 and Mimiron are way more complicated than anything that happened in Molten Core. Let’s compare off-tanking some earth elementals on to managing Yogg spamming cleansable debuffs on the raid WHILE brain linking people WHILE fearing people WHILE people get constrictor tentacles WHILE the tanks have to manage crusher tentacles. And that’s a normal mode encounter, to say nothing of Firefighter, Freya +3, or Yogg +0 or +1, fights many guilds still can’t accomplish today. Or how about heroic Northrend beasts, which is incredibly simply in strategy but horrendously difficult in execution due to Gormok’s insane damage? Trivializing raid content? Only if you’re like a cranky baby who has to have it their way and only their way. Nobody can have a GI Joe doll if you have GI Joe doll, and nobody can have a cookie except you, is that right? People seem to think Blizzard stopped catering to the 1% of the 1% that defined themselves as top tier raiding, and yet the central focus of EVERY patch is a raid instance. How does this equation follow in the heads of the whiners? I don’t get it.

At the end of the day, I raid to see content, and beat bosses. I know I’m speaking in absolutes, but I feel this is the -only- correct way to do it. It’s nice to see a new piece of gear, but if that’s the end-all be-all then I think you’re going to have problems. If you are raiding to see gear, then you are destined to have your heart broken every single patch. Every new raid dungeon, regardless of emblem changes, constitutes some form of gear reset so you might as well quit now and save the heartbreak. Gear is an enabler, not the end result.
Dave´s last blog ..Show #353: INFECTION CURED!

I like it.

Only thing I don’t like about emblem gear is that a purchased item does not feel as good as something that dropped for me from a dead boss after me and my fellow guildies had killed it. The shopping list gear does not have that “wohoo it dropped and I won the roll!”-happiness attached to it.

Other than that, I think emblem gear is wonderful :)
Tessy´s last blog ..Who Dah Shammy?!?

For the most part I’m happy with the system. Blizz said they wanted to bring the player and this does it.
I got caught out in TBC. In order to progress in TBC raid you pretty much had to be in a progression raid. For me, real life struck and I played the game maybe a handful of times in a 4 to 5 month period. I had fallen behind and the progression raiders that I knew didn’t want to come back for me. I completely understand why. So I ended up doing 10 mans till WotLK came out. It seemed to me the whole raid set up was limited to a core of hard core players. It didn’t matter, I still enjoyed the game.
Now things are different. If you fall behind for some reason, you can catch up. If you’re an altoholic, you can still gear out your toons. The raiding community is much, much bigger. I like it better this way. Our guild just had two players return from a break. We took them to heroics and got them caught up. We didn’t have to organize a 25 man Naxx run to gear out two players. Then there is the matter of alts. It used to be that you pretty much had the one main toon for raiding and that was it. You had to be really hard core to have multiple raiders. Not so anymore. I still have one main raider but I have alts that are keeping up on the curve by going to heroics. Many players in the guild are the same way. It seems everyone has a viable sub. So if someone can’t make the raid for a night it is not a huge deal to have someone sub in on an alt. Instead of trying to poach another run’s mains, we pull in their alts. It is just better this way.
There are a few cons. One is that it is not as prestigious to be a raider anymore. I really don’t care. Some do and they’re in the hard core all hard mode all the time progression guilds. Two is that some really bad players get raiding quality gear. Their gear makes them look good but when you actually play with them it becomes clear that they belong on the failboat. This is solved by the friends and ignore lists.

Hey bear, you’ve already seen what I’ve been doing in the guild. I have a ton of alts. On my old server, there are 6 80’s sitting there doing nothing. However, the gear they have is decent, and some of that was only possible because of the emblems and such that have come along. I’ve always been a big fan of alts, and particularly, making what the guild needs, and having it ready to go should they need it. The problem is that if the character is running around in quest blues, then when the guild needs him, he’s a touch useless if what they need him for is some of the higher end content. So the badges and such along with tradeskills have helped IMMENSELY in getting every one of my characters up to scratch, and ready for them to be able to run with my old guild. Now that I’ve moved to a new server with only one of my 80’s, those same badges will allow me to get my youngins geared up so that they will also be useful to the new guild.

I really think that the way Blizzard has their raiding set up right now is the either the best of both worlds or very close. The hardcore cutting edge raiders get to be the first ones with the amazing awesome new gear and the casuals don’t hit the no new gear cause I can’t raid wall. In a world where you can’t please everybody, they are getting pretty darn close.

In regards to those who are worried about never seeing some raid content due to the gear resets, don’t forget about the new weekly raids for emblems. It seems to me (read no data collected other than a general feeling) that the daily heroics for emblems really increased the number of people doing heroics who didn’t need the gear. I’m hoping the weekly raids will have the same effect.

Looking ahead to Cataclysm, I also see these mini-resets as a bulwark against huge expansion gear resets. If everyone (”everyone” as per blizzards idea of a majority of the players) has gear high enough they can put marginally better gear in the 80-85 span and thereby avoid the “OMG I’m still using the same gear” complaints and the “I spent forever to get this piece and now I’m replacing it in the first quest” complaints, all while getting the “I just hit 78 and look at the sweet new gear I got on my first quest” accolades.

I’m a high end raider. I have alts, but I don’t play them. Almost 100% of my time is dedicated to my Paladin – be it PvE, PvP, or Arenas (yeah, I suck at Arenas….). I don’t need the gear reset, and it doesn’t affect my main toon in any way.

Except.

Every once in a while I have to PUG someone, or I run a PUG 25 – and it’s far easier for me to find adequately geared members when there are regular gear resets. If I could only choose from the other top guild on my server to fill my PUG for a H ToC night, or to get some Uld Hardmodes – I’d have a very shallow pool to pick from.

Plus, who knows. With the new LFG system I might put some time in on my alts (once I’ve gotten the 11ty billion badges I need for my main) and the reset will help them.

The drawback of course is that you get a lot of players with decent gear – and no concept of what high end raiding really is. You can quickly sort out the terribads if you have to though – and you’re still working with a better pool of players.

Overall – I like it, and I think it’s good for the game. Not everyone will get to kill 1 light, or Anub’Arak Heroic – but everyone SHOULD be able to see the fights on regular and have a decent chance of beating them (before they’re level 85).
Adgamorix´s last blog ..I must be playing another game

My main is a Paladin. Thanks to raiding 25s regularly, I’m wearing i245 gear in most of my gear slots. Thanks to the badge reset, I am wearing nearly full i232 gear in BOTH my offspecs.

Additionally, my Warlock doesn’t feel so neglected. If my guild does another alt ToC run, I won’t be embarrassed to go. I won’t be topping the meters, but I won’t be weighing the group down, either.

Honestly, it’s about time we saw this level of gear distribution. Afterall, serious PvP players have seen the EXACT SAME THING since Season 3. When Season 1 gear became available from Honor, the serious players were two gear levels above the casual PvPers. With 3.2 we saw the serious Pve players two gear levels above the casual players (ilvl 258 gear vs ilvl 232).

It seems like a solid balance to me.

Personally I like it. We get to gear up alts and new players quicker and this allows us to raid. If it weren’t for the “gear resets” the 5-10 of us in my guild that seriously want to do raid content would have to PuG half of our spots even for ten man stuff (we have about ten total “serious” raiders, but of course not all of us are on for every single raid, and even if we were we don’t happen to be a perfect combination of healers, tanks, and DPS). As it is we can usually fill spots from the roster of our more casual players, knowing that their gear will lat least be adequate.

For the people worried about seeing older content and such, do what we do: We play to have fun. We have a core raid night (two actually) where we do specific content on a schedule, but we do stupid crap for fun all the time. Our progression group got to Mimiron Monday night and several us were RPing (at least I think it was RP, some of our guild is a bit OCD) a deep obsession with the red button (It starts the hard mode for those that don’t know). Of course we’re nowhere near ready for the hard mode, and no one pressed the button during the official raid. So last night several of us got together a partial raid to extend our raid ID (which we were planning to do anyway) and press the button. Sure it’s stupid but we had a lot of fun.

Then we though, “Hey, we have almost a full ten man, lets go kill Sarth!” “Killing Sarth is easy and boring though.. Let’s a get a couple more people and try Sarth25! ”

So we finished the night by ten manning twenty-five man Sarth. We one shotted the bastard too. Couple of people got some off-spec upgrades, we all got emblems (which are never bad to have). It was a good time and several newer people got to see the content for the first time (and lots of people got the achievement for undermanning the raid)

The only problem I have with it is that Ulduar is one of the best raids Blizz has ever made, and now people have no real reason to go in (and speaking as someone who has spent all of the past 2 weeks wiping on Yogg phase 2, you need a good incentive to stick with it). I wish they would just increase the item level of the Ulduar gear, either in acknowledgment of the fact that it’s trickier than ToC, or just because it’s an awesome raid and people should have every reason to go.

Wow, Dave, way to generalize people completely and in the most ridiculous and assholeish manner.

Some aspects of raiding are easier. You want to check my armory? Go ahead. I’m done with everything but 25 heroic Anub, Algalon and 0 light Yogg. I have a Rusted on my main, I’m only missing FL and Dwarves on my alt, and I only don’t have an Ironbound because I missed the times we did Hodir hardmode. I only don’t have Insanity on 10 man because I stepped out for group composition. I will, and can, say: some aspects of raiding are harder now, some aspects are easier, and that includes less CC, less mechanics to manage, less attention necessary for the majority of fights, and that includes gearing up.

Gear resets still trivialize/outdate current content, push people faster than their skill levels develop, and make heroic farming more profitable than actually raiding. It’s not all bad, but stating that everyone who says they dislike them is some sort of achievement whoring selfish whiner is like saying your grandfather is an achievement whoring selfish whiner for telling you that he had it harder when he was young.

I didn’t even completely comprehend how to maximize the play on my hunter before she was (is) almost completely decked out in epics, many ilevel 219, 232, 245. Gear has no meaning anymore. Some of us think that sucks. Some of us aren’t saying it’s completely bad, but that it was maybe too drastic or too much.

I am so sick of people trivializing the opinions and feelings of others because they disagree with the majority mindset, or have nostalgic feelings. I in no way saw a bashing of “casuals” or people who have little time to raid in what Holly said, simply her feelings and some predictions of where she sees this continuing. Perhaps a little negative, but in no way did she outright bash new people.

My hunter (80 for two and a half weeks) now outgears my own Paladin’s DPS spec, who has been 80 for months. She probably outgears my main’s alt raid spec! Gear is trivial to obtain. It means NOTHING anymore, just a theoretical idea of how much DPS/HPS/TPS you should be able to put out.

While I do like it from the sense that it makes it easy to gear up, say, my new up-and-coming shaman, I dislike it a little in that I don’t feel like I accomplished anything. Whereas getting something from a raid or, hell, even a 5-man has a sense of accomplishment with it (”I killed a boss, I got some loot”), getting things for badges just means “I can grind out heroics all day long and buy good stuff.”

But again, my altoholism wins out – I have alts, I’m going to need to gear them, I’m okay with buying good stuff with badges.
Stop´s last blog ..Plans; or, suck it, pirates

I did not raid in Classic, but I cannot imagine having to run an instance 40 times with 40 people just to *hope* that your helm would drop. THAT is the definition of hardcore.

I like heroics; I like to raid. I like getting new gear. I like the emblem/badge system because it allows you to supplment your gear drops. And you gear faster for sure meaning you can get into endgame content or gear your alts, etc.

It seems to me, though, that the planned obselensence creates a disinsentive to run content. Why should I waste time in a Naxx run that takes hours and locks me in a raid ID when I can just go run a bunch of 20-30 minute heroics with whatever guildies or pugs I can find?

I think that the if the badge gear ought to be a real upgrade. So, you ought to have essentially T8 gear in order to shoot for T9 gear. It seems that folks now think they can show up in quest blues and start running Triumph content. On the other hand, there is such a big difference in outputs from gear – a brand new 80 can do 1000-2000 DPS and an end-game geared 80 can do 5000+ (and much more, buffed, etc.). That is just a huge difference. It gets boring to hear that 2800 DPS “sucks”.

My bigger issue, however, is the idea that 25man content drops better loot than 10man. The only thing harder about 25man vs. 10man is getting 25 people together. In 25man, you have spare everything – tanks, dps and healers. In 10man, if you lose a tank, you are probably done. If you are in 25man, there are probably 18 DKs and 12 Pallys that can hop in there to pick up the slack until one of the 7 druids pops a battle rez on the original tank and one of the 9 healers with a full mana bar heals him back up again. I can see 25man content dropping more loot than expected (i.e. 10man drops 2 pieces, 25man could drop 6 or 7) rather than betteer gear.

I have been a raider on and off playing wow for about the life of the game. I do like the concept of balancing the playing levels of hard-core and causal players. The only thing I don’t like about it is that everyone can get the gear regardless of skill. I am going to go ahead and say that about 80% of people on my alliance side server have no idea how to play their class. I would like to see an in-game rating system of people and their ability to play. People group with each other and then rate that person after the group is over with a comments section. Some way to know if the person is worth bringing in to a group or even a guild that is recruiting.

Some would say that meters could tell you if a person is good or bad at their class. I would agree that it does help, but it is not always true. Some people can spam buttons, but might have tunnel vision during the whole fight and make other people work harder to keep them alive. I just think it is harder to know who is good or bad from gear checking nowadays. When you used to see a person in full t4 gear, you knew they were doing something right. When you see a person in full t9 gear you know the person can log on and leech.

I love the new system.

I’m hoping that 3.3 is a bit further out then the buzz seems to indicate, as the last Emblem change feels very recent and a lot of people are going to get caught in a “dang I JUST replaced this” place if it happens soon.

But for me and most of the people I play regularly with, the gear resets allow us to maintain a broad equality in level of content without having invest the same amount of time. One or two days of running new 80s or the finally-have-time folks through Heroics and ToC yields a bunch of solid upgrades and helps to bridge them to the point where they can jump into current content with the rest of us. It has done wonders for keeping gear from keeping our friends from joining in.

I can’t raid the high level stuff on my new minted DK, but just a few hours of time invested by my marvelous Guildies means that she can hold her own in all the rest of the content and help everyone else with their progression.

My main is a level 80 rogue, and I’ve never even done 5-man content. My epics are all crafted or BoE from AH. The upcoming gear reset and the new LFP (Looking For Pug) changes may let me finally see some of the content I’ve been paying for, but never had the time/friends to see.

Dave, meet kettle.

You were looking for someone acting like a 3 year old whiner? That would be you, throwing a temper tantrum in the grocery store where everyone’s seeing it. Seriously, who peed in your cheerios this morning? Holly was being perfectly mature and not bashing anyone, but you had to come in and start throwing crap around and tossing in your opinion to the community discussion in a negative and immature way. Thank you for making this blog such a pleasant place to visit today. /golfclap

As for the gear reset, I’m torn. I kind of agree with… dang, I can’t find his name now, but whoever said that BC was a good middle ground I agree with. They had a good badge system that allowed people to catch up enough that they could get into some of the higher end raids, and eventually step into BT or Sunwell with some elbow grease. I think if they allowed gear to be a stepping stone and not a free pass, that would be great. When 3.3 hits, I think it’ll be a bit easier than I personally prefer though. *shrugs* WoW is getting easier.

Having seen both sides of the coin (a pure casual and a higher end raider), I’m torn. It’s cool to have a system that allows your alts to fill in when needed. But it can trivialize those that put in hours of hard work. I don’t mind so much, I’m just happy with knowing that I did such-and-such boss when he was hard. I don’t really feel the need to show off when or how I did it. Some people like showing off their achievements though, and that’s what makes the game fun for them, and when Blizz takes away that fun, wel… that sucks for them as much as it would suck for me or anyone else if your favorite thing about the game was taken away.

I’m not very happy with the gear resets right now, because I’m _not_ a hardcore raider. In fact, I’m an altoholic in a casual raiding guild that probably has every reason to appreciate the intent of the resets. So why am I not happy?

To start with, every gear reset means I get to start over with the badge grind. Gear that was perfectly acceptable for an alt in 3.1 became outdated instantly with the badge change. People start to look down on perfectly acceptable gear because “you can get much better gear so easily that having sucky gear means you’re not putting in any effort.” True enough on a main, but how many badges am I supposed to collect to keep my alts in shape?

Then there’s the issue of old content. I like rerunning older content. Sure, it’s more fun with alts that don’t overgear it, but it’s still fun to revisit a fun fight to relive it a bit. Gear resets let people skip content for gearing, and then people don’t want to run old content anymore. A new player doesn’t have to do Naxx to gear anymore, but now they might not _get_ to do Naxx at all, much less at an appropriate gear level for the challenge. The point is to let people see the content right?

Lastly, people confound gear with skill. That works one way when you’re trying to PUG and people assume you need a gear score of XXXX, but it also means that people with gear score of XXXXX assume that they’re ready to jump into harder content with no experience. Sometimes it work, sometimes it doesn’t, but try to get them to step down to older, easier content to get some experience (but no new gear) and see how they take that.

I think Wrath launched with almost the perfect system. The tiered badges was a good idea, but Blizzard made a slight mistake with it. Badges should drop that buy gear a tier higher than the drops themselves. Drop iLevel 200 gear in heroics, 213 in Naxx, 226 in Uld. Make Heroic badges buy 213 gear, Naxx badges buy 226 gear, etc. The net effect would allow skilled people (newcomers or alts) to catch up faster (because the badges for your current run level buys gear good enough for a raid two levels higher), it allows “casuals/socials/M&S” to progress through the same raids at a slower pace (because badges allow them to gear higher than their skill will get them drops). And the system is sustainable with no true gear resets to obsolete your efforts overnight.

@Kit:

I think your case is exactly why many people are against these gear resets: your gear is obsolete now.
People now view your item level 200 crafted gear the way they viewed level 160 quest greens a 9 months ago.
Even if item level 200 gear was “awesome” 9 months ago, people are stupid and will kick you from groups for having that same gear now.
It is already happening, a number of my guild-mates have complained about it on their alts, and it only going to get worse.

Ironically, gear inflation is making it almost impossible to PUG with fresh 80s.
In BC, you needed a guild to run you through Kara for weeks to get you geared for high-level raids.
In WotLK, you need a guild to run you through heroics for weeks to get you geared for high-level raids.

Some people don’t see this as an improvement.

I dont mind gear resets. But for when the reset actually happened your perhaps a litle early, based on your class. I was still using some Teir t3 when we killed Prince for the first time. Indeed it was 5 months before I abandoned the last of my t2 when solo’ing, due to the fact that the only gear for holy Paladins was +heal and not +spell power.

But the gear reset internally to this expansion can have funny results, My 4th 80 with 3 days played. I was doing a toc 10 last night and realized I have no main spec ugrades left in their, None outside ilvl 245 gear. One of our tanks has a alt that dinged 80 a month ago, 4 weeks of alt toc, and ony and its now has better dps gear then his DK tank that has the completed the Uldaar Meta and all content up to Totgc Champs.

I like it. I’m in a guild very very similar to BBB. We try in vain to organize progressive raiding, but it turns out people just want to knock over bosses. Once 3.3 hits, we can pretty much get a full tier of content and go back and beat those bosses that gave us such trouble. I am thinking ulduar will still have some decent drops, there is no way you can fill every single piece from emblems. Part of the other issue is that like most, by now I have alot of toons. And I feel they must all be decently geared because I like to do heroics/raids with them. So i run them alot. Whereas some have one main I have 5 basically. So none are all that geared. Yes they can do naxx or hTOC or early ulduar, probably all of them, but none are in really good gear with 200-300 EOC spent. That’s jsut the way it works for me. I’d rather go and do the new 5 mans and get a whole bunch of nice gear easily for all my alts than to slave away for one toon. I’m just that way. I think my guildies are the same way too.

Here’s a comment/question we’re facing. We’ve got alot of new blood who say they are interested in raiding, yet have horrid dps (which is about all we need at the moment). Its gotten to the point where we can barely do normal TOC with most of them, and that’s with a good tank and healer. The officers are all concerned about the new 5 mans and the severity of the gear check (remember these are truely bad dps, like 1000-1400). So we are being a bit more firm in who we take in, and trying to run people and encourage them to gear up for the next level of heroics (IC 5 mans). But my feeling is that at first there are going to be alot of people who think they can stroll into IC and have the other 4 people carry them. So what is everyone else doing to prep for IC? For us, we are making sure we have everything from HTOC and TOC we can get on each toon. When 3.3 hits, we’ll do the IC stuff but I plan to run a bunch of heroics and get the rest of the tier 9.2 set for my toons. My thinking is for very casual non-raiders the IC stuff is going to be a wakeup (finally).

Only people I can see having an issue with it are those people who define themselves by the illvl of their gear rather than their accomplishments.

I have to say i like it. I like that wow has given people options to acquire great gear in a variety of ways. You like to pvp? Great here’s honor points and wg marks to upgrade your gear. You like to run 25 man raids? Ta Da! Here’s your drops and some emblems for gear. Your guild can only get ten man raids going? Congratulations, here’s some decent drops and some emblems for better gear. You hate raiding, but are willing to run 5man content? Emblems, baby, emblems. My only suggestion would be to make the rep grinds also give out comparable gear for those ‘lone wolves’. Blizzard’s success with World of Warcraft is not state of the art graphics or ground breaking gameplay, but making the game accessible to as many people as possible. Options are good!

What I worry about is what will happen when the new expansion will be out. This time we only have 5 levels for the gear reset. I really doubt that a level 85 blue item will be able to compete with ilevel 245 or above level 80 epic.
When you also consider the ease with which you can get that gear by now it makes you wonder if there won´t be any gear upgrades from leveling dungeons, or even blue heroic drops. That would be bad and boring. I really wonder how they will handle this.

I both like and dislike gear resets.

On the high side, it lets me and others that normally would have taken ages to catch up, gear wise, to do so.

On the other hand, it lets folks like me that normally would have taken ages to catch up, catch up very quickly.

There is a certain amount of pride to be had, I think, from getting geared up when it is difficult to do so. That pride is gone when it is not so difficult. I understand the other side of the coin, though. If you force everyone to go through all the leaps, curves, and hoops of the past to get caught up, a new player would take literally years to reach the end game, which is bad for the game as a whole.

I love it and i loath it at the same time.
Love it because my guild was slow in getting into raiding so we could catch up.
Great because if you have alts you wont struggle to gear up because its hard to find Naxx or Uld runs.
Love it because the Good players still get better loot from Hardmodes and the Emblems + 1Badge so they dont feel so marginalized.

Dont like it because..
Im fed up of 5 man heroics! They just getting a little boring now. HoS isnt fun after the 20Th daily there..
5 Mans are trivialized because of all / most players out-gearing them considerably.
This encourages people to play like huntards or deathnoobs because there are very few consequences for bad play because of our out-gearing.

So, coming from the stand point of a raider who has 4 lvl 80 alts; shaman main, rogue, warlock, druid and a DK just for kicks, gear resets are fine. They allow people to catch up quickly and that’s great, but i just wished they would institute a little something for those players like me that are sitting on a treasure chest of badges that I’m never going to use. How about when you do a gear reset, and allow ever one under the sun to mine copious amounts of badges from 5 man content, you throw in a little something for the guy that just spend 4 hours a night progression raiding for the last 3 months, make the badges form previous content bind on account. That way while the new 80’s are grinding there way to all the gear that was top of the line, those of us that have everything our heart desires on our main, and more badges than any one person could use, can show our alts a little love and continue to push content without A) not sleeping, B) quitting our jobs, C) failing out of school, or D) getting divorced. I think that sounds fair to me, maybe just me

I like it, as it provides newer players and alts the way to gear up to content levels without having to try and find groups for raids that arent run much anymore. I do believe that this is good for the game. Do I get a pang that I worked hard up through each raid level to get the gear I have and this newer player wont have to? Even that my rogue wont have to? Sure, I do. That content is part of the game, after all. It also increases your skill, the more encounters you learn. The end-game hard-core types will hate it, they usually do, and I can’t say they are wrong in their opinions, but if the game doesnt allow for this, your pool of high-end geared people is going to dry up eventually. This keeps those same high-end guilds from having to go back and help new recruits fill in the holes in their gear, so it benefits them as well. So I am in favor. Someone who is smart and willing to learn WILL do just that, after all.

There is good and bad. Weather we like it or not, gear reset = content retirement. Sure you can go for “grins” etc, but with the reset, most raid content before it, dies.

My biggest grief with gear resets is it removes the obvious “Training wheels” from toons that are not ready to raid. Everyone and their uncle, all of the sudden, have the gear score to justify their presense in progression raid, but the bulk of the populous skips the prior content which results in good gear with low skill. It does dumb down the raiding experience for some, but also levels the playing field for others. It frustrating for Raid Leaders to have to sort out who’s who again everytime gear resets. There was a time when gear scores spoke to player skill, that time has passed, and leaves “proper” raid management dead in it’s wake.

Guilds that fill out raids in-house everyweek will continue to progress as they have and ultra casual groups will progress faster than before. Its the folks that fall somewhere in the middle that get hit the hardest with gear resets. End result, imho, is +gear / -skill.

I agree with your assessment much for the same reason. I have a shaman going through northrend who will probably be 80 around when 3.3 drops and a shadowpriest in outlands. My paladin is geared to tank about any heroics but I don’t want to tank anymore so 3.3 will give me a chance to acquire gear so that I can heal or DPS in a raid environment and not hurt my group. My guildies will take me either way because we’re friends, but this gives me the chance to be more of a contributor than having to basically be carried for an extended period while I “gear up”.
Fish´s last blog ..Gathering vs crafting and more on altaholism. . .

What you are seeing now is Blizzard making the PvE gear more like the arena gear. With every season, new gear is released and the older gear becomes easier to obtain. You will never be undergeared, but if you aren’t on the cutting edge of content, you will never have the best stuff. I personally like the fact that there’s going to be a weekly raid, it means that old content gets revisited and people can easily move on to Trial of the Grand Crusader and Icecrown Citadel. Blizzard isn’t dumbing down the game, they’re simply making raiding easier for casuals.

Actually, thinking about it from a Feral druid standpoint, there is one type of “gear reset” that does upset me rather a lot – it’s the soft reset they did with WOTLK to force Bears to use rogue gear. Dumbest thing Blizzard ever did. EVER. And that includes screwing up PvE in reponse to issues in Arena PvP, specifically.

Have to agree with you there Flaime. Also, what guild are you in? I’m on the ER server too.

BBB my guild has, over the last 6 months, moved from pottering around in raids to being not only progression focussed but capable as well.

Most of our core 25-man raiders are kitted out predominantly in 245 gear and we’re begiining to work through ToTC 10 and 25 Heroic for the challenge. We raid 4 nights per week, 2.5-3 hours each session. By many measures we’re fairly serious raiders. We’ve come from very very casual roots in Kara and ZA and a solid core of competent people has drawn in more like-minded people.

Everything but the very top-level 258 gear is readily available to us and even that will be within our grasp in the next 3-4 weeks.

Mostly our attitude to the gear resets is positive. It’s great that people can gear up and catch up with those of us in a lucky position of being able to raid that content when it’s released.

Guilds like ours will always have access to the shinies a little sooner than most on our sever and a while after others who are more skilled and focussed.

Denying others access to them eventually is pretty chilidish and seems to me only an effect of people believing that they are special or entitled. Things are probably balanced about right now.
Ulv´s last blog ..Trial of the Grand Crusader 10 – Jaraxxus is Dead!

Overall, I’m happy about the availability of gear to more tiers of players. As a raider with limited play time in general (like 2 nights a week), I’m often scrambling to get in enough heroics during ‘off-time’ to gear up if I don’t see gear drop for me in the raid. Collecting Triumphs 1 or 2 Heroic dailies a week = too many weeks for just one new piece of gear (like 2 months for an idol? sheesh). It means despite being in every guild raid, I’m still falling behind my team in gear. The gear reset will help relieve that.

The downside for me is that it makes it much harder to pug anything other than the last level of raiding. It is already getting hard to find Ulduar PUGs on my server – everyone has jumped into ToC. (Personally, I find doing every battle in the same arena is boooooooring.) But Ulduar is gorgeous, varied, interesting!!! Come back, come back! I fear that Ice Crown is just going to make this worse. The upside is that at least we’ll be out of the arena.

As to whether your accomplishments lose value when the gear is available otherwise, ummmm no. The accomplishment is the accomplishment – it’s only value is to yourself and your teammates who shared it – that was always true even before the gear reset. The only difference is now you won’t get the epeen from lording the gear over other players. Epeen does NOT equal accomplishment. But hey, if epeen’s all the fun you get out of the game, maybe it will be time to move on.

;)

K/K of Bladefist

The poster who said that gear resets “remove the training wheels” has captured my opinion perfectly. Just last night, for example, we were trying heroic Faction Champs, and had to include a couple of prospects. We had a rogue prospect BEGGING us to be let in. “I have 245 gear!” he says. “I’m geared well enough!” Maybe so, but when he literally asked what Vanish did in the middle of our first attempt … yeah, it makes me hate the availability of gear. Too many people think it’s a substitute for skill. It’s really, really not.

However. Gear will always reset. What bugs me more is the continuing availability of titles when you can waltz in and get them with 245 gear, and I busted my ass in my 213s. That’s more of a slap in the face than any kind of gear reset, to me.
CC´s last blog ..The Northrend Beasts Heroic, or: An Ugly, Hairy Learning Experience

I am kinda upset about the whole situation. It really started with TBC release when epic felt like a good green or decent blue, and not “OMG I GOT A PURPLE”. Yeah its great for alts that want to gear and raid fast, but I prefered the setup where it was clear you were setup for a certain tier and needed to work a little more. This made me feel more accomplished then Oh I hit 80 and within the first 2 weeks I am fully epic’d and ready to tank or dp or heal top end game content. The slap in the face for me is that I have been raiding on my druid for a long time in wrath and some guy/gal can ding 80 today and in a very short period be at the same level of gear(or better depending on luck) as I have been for a while.

They kinda had it right at the launch of wrath where 10 and 25 had different badges and showed what content you were raiding. But now someone can run fresh 80 content and get t9 level gear pretty fast. Blizzard was complaining about flying mounts in wrath and how people could skip thier content, yet now they are setting it up for new players to skip 2 full tiers of current expansion content. I for one am glad I was there and experienced that content, and I do enjoy to grind from one tier to the next. When TBC came out I truly did enjoy struggling in kara/gruuls/Mag and when finally getting the gear from those struggles it made the content easier and then we moved to t5 where it started all over again. Yeah the wipes and growing pains hurt a little, but it made you a better player and appreciate what you had more. So when we finally got to t6 we could all look back and say man what a ride, and enjoy the top level content with pride and accomplishment. Sadly nowadays this game seems to be all about instant gratification. “Ok Im 80 now Blizzard, now give me all top level epics plox so I can steam roll top level content”. /rant

Ulduar is my top favourite dungeon so far. Not only is is beautifully designed, but I feel more engaged with it than with any other content. The night the Ulduar patch hit, I was logged off on the front steps, and I was in there soon as possible the next day with a 9 man guild group who accidentally triggered FL four tower mode and thought it was the funnest thing ever. Then we went through those exciting early days, pre-nerf, when Ignis was terrifying and Razorscale and her nasty friends made life very sad for a resto shammy. Happy memories.

Unfortunately, my guild had only cleared Uld 10 once and was 2 bosses short of a 25 man clear when TOC hit. Naturally for a lot of people there was little incentive to run it any more after that. (Unless you’re someone like me who is very much in touch with your inner Brann Bronzebeard and longs above all else to visit Algalon). I can see their point of view. TOC seems like the McDonalds of raids. Quick, easy (well on normal anyway), cheap and dull, but oh so convenient.

That’s the only real problem I have with the new gear system. I really like the philosophy that it should be quite easy to gear enough to at least start raid content. A guild where raiders have several geared and useful alts able to step up to the plate as needed is a guild that doesn’t necessarily have to cancel another nights raiding because they just don’t have the right mix. But if Blizz had only set TOC level gear as a sidegrade, or slightly below Uld level, I think it would have worked better. Easy epics for those who don’t have the time or interest for a longer raid, or have many alts to feed. Ulduar for those who want something a bit more involved. Maybe even with the T9 now dropping in Uld, and the T8 moving to TOC. For the higher end raiding guilds who had progressed past Ulduar, the TOC hard modes would drop super special shiny stuff that proclaims how awesome the wearer is, so those at the top end of the raiding scale are also happy.

And that’s another thing. In a world where everyone and their dog is fully purpled up, wearing near-identical looking armour, let there be a level of epics that really are epic. It’d be nice to go back to the old days when you’d see someone in the bank with the warglaives or Sunwell gear and get all excited. Maybe the option for mega-epics that actually DO need the wearer to have worked through previous content and built on it, such as upgradeable tier sets. Personally, I don’t mind if I have only the faintest chance of getting them myself, but it’s good to have something to admire and work towards.

See I remember the days when getting a decent blue made me ALOT happier then getting a purple in BC or wrath. Sadly heroic gear vs non heroic gear has such a slight difference, it makes you wonder “do I need the 1-50 extra dps? or should I just farm reg toc 25 to complete my offpieces instead of wipefests in heroic”. It is sad that you can full clear 10 and 25 t9 content in about an hour depending on your raid group, leaving your guild bored and restless from 8pm tuesday night til the reset so you can do it all over again. Personally I can agree with skiannach that Ulduar is much better then ToC and in some ways harder. Yogg was alot rougher to do then anub by a lot.

In wrath I have always been ahead of the game in my guild’s raiding progression. Always had the best gear on server. Until toc came out and screwed up wrath. I know a lot of people work on alts and want the gear to progress but I’ve spent countless hours getting bosses down each “gear reset” aquiring my raider proto drakes just to see that the gear resets. I hate that everyone starting new 80’s that have never seen maly/sarth will never see them… No one runs those raids anymore. At least in BC everyone pugged every raid throughout BC. Blizzard is crapping on hardcore raiders and giving this game to casual players and it makes me sick. I quit right before toc because I heard about the emblem change. Since then I came back JUST to pvp on a mage but i go back to my hunter to try to slowly get gear. I ran a toc 10m pug today for the first time… we 1 shot all the bosses except twins and the last beetle boss. I didnt know anything about the raid and only died during wipes.. this came is just getting ridiculous. WTB cod6

i just wish more people saw 3d 10m sarth and all the ulduar hardmodes before they were nerfed to nothing. those were incredible fights that tested my skill.