http://www.drawastickman.com/

I spent hours gathering grinding researching and watching videos before each raid just so that we could go in with a group that were only half prepared. if our raid leader had been able to assign us to having to “practice” before we could perform I foresee a number of issues to include culling raid groups from the practice sessions.

and… as a person who refuses to be party to raid guilds and the never ending grind for 5 more points of dps or a sexier voice in vent or… well… whatever culling tactics might be used, I have to pug all of my raids now and find the concept of running with raid guilds on practice mode to be a novel concept, and look forward to the challenge that might honestly be much easier and less painful than herding 24 cats into a pin and getting them all focused on the mouse at the end of the gate at the same time.

I guess time will have to tell. as with all things WoW and MMO, there are always gains with the losses and losses with the gains… and if you can’t sort them out then kill ‘em all and let their Gods sort them out.

peace.

So if you did a raid using LFR and then went and did it with your guild, you would get loot from both. You would see loot drop in LFR. If you ran LFR again, you’d see no loot drop. Likewise, after LFR, if you did the raid the normal way, you would see loot drop off the boss (different, higher ilvl loot) and you’d get saved to the boss so you can’t fight the boss again the same week and thus can’t get (normal) loot off it twice.

Now if RFD allowed you to turn on heroic mode then I could see those guilds wanting to practice in here.

As it stands, I think this tool is excellent and here is why:

1) People who couldn’t raid before because of their work schedule or weak server community (some servers just don’t have very many good players available for pugging raids – Aerie Peak Horde is an example) now get to raid.

2) People who run pug raids on their servers can now ask puggees to link their RFD achievements before taking them on. This improves everyone’s fun as it ensures everyone coming in has a basic understanding of how the fight works.

3) People are new to the game or not very skilled get to play in a low pressure raid and develop their skills. 25 mans are generally easier for each individual than 10 mans are and people don’t feel like they’re being put on the spot as much with 24 other people to blend in with.

4) ALTS! Between the new 5 mans and RFD, it will be easy and fun to gear up alts.

Now casuals, they probably don’t have any sigficant amount of Heroic firelands drops, They will get upgrades from raid finder and will be well advised to do both. In addition they wont have spent time on ptr. But guess who keeps asking for the return of seperate lock outs for 10 and 25 on D&R forums…

As for the pet: Blizzard is a money making machine, that’s all it is and has been for a while now. I ran around laughing at everyone who got the lion flying mount and I will run around laughing again and again. And Blizz got me to a point where I will not even think to buy Diablo 3 even though I really really was excited about it. Somebody said in a forum that he doesn’t understand why people are so angry and that Blizzard only gets into the “virtual online business” that gold farmers inherit now to get their share and that this step is only natural. Well, I still think that buying pixels you don’t even really own for real money is bullshit. As long as they don’t sell items that actually have a use in the game I won’t say anything (just the laughing part) but this tradeable-goldmaking-pet is something where they start crossing a line.

If I were to focus on the negative effects, I would say it would most likely have a negative impact on the semi-casual/semi-dedicated raiders. Not quite hardcore league, but the type of guild that might push ‘x’ of 7 regular mode. Where they’re forced to “farm” the LFR tool to practice more and more on the bosses they can’t quite get down.

With that said, I still think this will benefit more people than it will be a detriment to. The guildless, the small guilds who can’t get 10+ people online at any given time, the people who don’t quite have the gear/skill to be raiding normals, or whatever other reason they may not be able to raid.

In regards to the pet, my feelings are very simple: If, for whatever reason, you don’t like it; don’t buy it. In game or with real currency.

I actually did post to General as well, but it seems to not be an “issue” for whatever reason. It wasn’t all that long ago we were forcefully limited to one downing per boss per week, because Blizzard didn’t like us feeling we HAD to run the content on multiple difficulties to stay competitive.

And yet here we go back to multiple difficulties. Not only that, but the gear from RF will be higher than the new heroics. Thus, to be a “good little raider” you’ll need to basically do nothing other than Dragon Soul, either in a normal-mode raid with your guild, or in RF if you get passed over.

As epic as the raid sounds, I can easily foresee the fastest content burnout ever.