For many video games are a hobby just as some, spend money and time on cars, sports, traveling and a lot of other hobbies. The idea of it being lame to seek accomplishment in a video game is flawed. There are a number of professional video game leagues in the US and in Korea video gamers are the among the highest payed professsional entertainers/athlets even. Its a fact that video games are going to over take the Movie industry in revenue in the near future. Is everyone who collects tons of DvD’s a looser with no life?

Now as for the topic, I quit WOW months ago and I am happily suffering through the early stages of AoC. 1 month and my guild is already doing the first raid in all its bugged glory. I raided maybe 3 nights a week at about 3-4 hours and when I quit WoW and my guild had downed Illi for the second time. It felt good to get on at night with people I had been gaming with for a long time and defeat those difficult challenges. While I think the vast majority should be open to everyone, I believe that the most skilled and dedicated should be rewarded for their efforts. IF that makes those people elite or exclusivce then so be it. Not everyone makes it to Div 1 and even less make the transition to the NFL. Yet every sunday I see people in my neighborhood out throwing the football casually and I dont hear them bitching that they are not getting payed big bucks to do so. Some would say theres no comparisson, but there are proffessional WoW pvp teams who get payed to play.

We all play games for fun and throughout the history of gaming those most skilled have been rewarded for their efforts in all styles of games. I think what blizzard is doing is wrong. I could see maybe making the Badge gear T5. T5 isnt that hard anyway. But it really does completley strip away the value of what other players have achieved. So what its only 4% of the player base. They are the top 4% and should be rewarded for that. Maybe you are just as skilled as that player, but they devote the time and effort to show that they are that good and should be rewarded for it. You dont like it play more. As for casual players. Good for you. I am glad your going to get to enjoy some of the higher content that you would never have experienced if blizzard didnt nerf the game. But your just that, casual gamers. So dont chastise the hard core becuase they are upset that your getting a hand out by comparrison. They earned it, you didnt. But now you get your chance. I just hope blizzard is kind enough to raise the bar for the hardcore gamers soon so they have something to look forward to. Hell they earned it. The fall of any great MMO starts from the top. So when that top 4% leaves more will follow. Just ask Sony.

Blizzard had the right approach with ZG and AQ20. Raids for everyone. Isnt that also what Heroics were meant to be? Rewards for casual gamers? Then arena gear? Anyone can get that stuff. You dont even have to be good. Hell I have 5 manned Kara. So thats for anyone too.

-Harcore Gamer.

The badges and the lifting of attunements will make it easier for guilds already in BT and MH to gather together a raiding team. Hell, people who have had Illidan on farm for months can now bring their alts into the raids without their guilds having to go back to Vashj and Kael to get them attuned.

I feel a bit sorry for the people out there who did want to get attuned to BT/MH the old way, and that it’s now been trivialized in a sense. You’d still get the “Hand of A’dal” title if you did it – just so that you’d have a way to prove to other players that you accomplished it, but guilds in general may be less inclined to kill those bosses now that they’re skippable.

The patch hasn’t nerfed BT/MH, they’re not suddenly trivial instances. Karazhan guilds can’t exactly waltz into those instances and clear them unless they’ve got ALOT of skill, and if they had alot of skill they’d have probably gotten attuned already. The reason hardcore guilds exist is because they have to dedicate that much time per week to practicing the bosses, or they’ll never learn. It doesn’t even take a lot of skill, just tireless practice and getting used to the mechanics of a fight, which almost anyone can manage eventually. Unfortunately not everybody has the luxury of dedicating 4 hours per night to raiding, and that pretty much locks them out unless they manage to find a high-end raiding guild that only raids twice per week, and those ARE rare.

Plus, raiders will benefit from the badges – I raid 5 nights a week, I’m progressing through BT/MH (yes, I got attuned before 2.4) and I welcome the new badge loot, it might add a nice item or two to my gear. Raiders whining about the badges are missing the point. Wearing badge loot isn’t going to look as impressive as wearing full tier 6, because every player knows that you have to be doing the hardest dungeons in-game for T6 whereas badges can be farmed from any heroic or raid. But the badge loot can give people a boost or a bit of an advantage. There’s no reason for any raider to feel threatened by it.

I am going to keep it short and sweet – I couldn’t care less if there were no attunements from the start. But the fact they keep bitch slapping the hardcore who muscle through and have to do that stuff and THEN remove the attunement.. time after time… is what bugs us.

If they are going to have no attunements, fine. But if they ARE going to have attunements LEAVE THEM THERE FOREVER so everyone has to achieve the same objectives to get the same progress!!

It’s simple – they ARE dumbming it down by removing them after the fact for the “slower” players.

AGain this article is trash.

the only real complaint that is even viable for raiders is the badge rewards, which I have baisically awnsered with the above. Its best for everyone. now for the pvp/arena gear, you dont need to worry about them. that gear sucks for raiding and most who get the good stuff aint gonna come or want to come to your raids. there are alot of people who find raiding boring and thats why they pvp. there are strats for beating diff classes as your class and beating your class (read wow forums). and winning in bgs/arenas requires strats as well, but with the added variable of the enemy doing something you didnt expect which is part of what makes it great and difficult. so for the pvpers who do wander into your raid, they are fully aware of the concept of strategies and plans of attack.

To the idea that raiding gives a since of accomlishment and has(or as some would argue had) a grad or epic feel to it, id have to say that so does every other accomplishment that people make, in real life and in games. one of the best memories i have is of me fighting it out with a t6/s3 wearing orc hunter and a druid. i was slighty less geared than him but i had a druid with me as well. this fight lasted for a good 5-10 mins until i miraculously won though it was more of a stalemate i guess because we both died from the fight (i got popped by a rogue when i had only 100 health left). nothing felt more grand and epic than that fight. and the since of accomplishment i had when i stood up against a guy with better gear than me and held my own was wonderful.

so the fact that i could hold my own proves that it is true that blizz is making gear less of an issue. and it also proves that skill is most definitely becomng more important in succeeding in the game. is that a bad thing? besides, everyone wants their toon to look cool i think thats why alot of people play.

Zul Aman is a good example of what I’m talking about – nowadays everyone and their mother can go and PuG it, in the other hand you need a well-organized team and perfect execution of all fights, trash included, for a timed run. See? Same content, same rewards, 2 different playstyles!

Heroic vs Normal is also a good thing – casuals can find enough thrill in doing normal mode, while hardcores can push the game to the limits (ok, *could* do it before mass-nerfs ) in heroics.

I hope Blizzard will create more of similar challenges in future – different modes, timed runs, and other additional objectives for us, hardcores to cater our e-peens

k i think i rambled a bit there and lost track of what i was saying, it makes sense in my head tho

ps i just remebered rings and necklaces…but still thats even more runs and that and extends the amount of BoJ’s needed. My point still remains, no casual player will ever have full 2.4 BoJ gear. never. its more likely for a greened out huntard tame gruul as a pet.

Why dont u try that nab? have u tried that in RL? Ever?! dont u know that your will isnt allways sufficent for success? i think you should definetly stop playing wow, because this type of game simply is not ment to be saved and loaded, its a struggle, but rewarding struggle, while RL can be so much of a struggle, and at the same time non-rewarding struggle.
And yea…stop comparing wow ppl to rl ppl, its not discussion about that, its discussion about making some sort of smarter instance balance.

Tbh 100 badges means 100 boss kills on heroic dificulty for pure casual gamers ( no kara, not more than 5 man’s ), so gear up m8, u will get your 750 badges to be geared up like some mh/bt dude in no time….and yes…GL m8!

and the last point i have is, why make instances so difficult at 1st, that only rly dedicated/crazy ppl can cope with them…it is like making them test bunnys or something, give easy instances, study how they are done, and make NEW ones, and make their rewards appropriate. so bt ppl can be bt ppl, and others can have their way according to skill/time they can put in it…it is not unfair to them, nor it is to those who decide to make it a more serious hobby.
I dont get it why should everyone see bt??? why?? why should i experience fallout 2 ending without playing it till the end? i mean, there is more in life than money, blizzard made 5 titles that should make the money objective at least lower than 1st on list, at least thats my point of view.

Anyways, top guilds, pvp or pve make premades, so if u are pugging u wont even meet such low-life no-life no-girl no-sex no-fun no-nothing ppl in game

The losers caught somewhere in the middle of this are the large number of quality players in semi- guilds who don’t spend their entire waking life playing or thinking about WoW. The only thing the truly hardcore guilds have an edge in their religious content crusade, is the ruthlessness and weeding out of retards who most normal guilds will happily carry. That and that they spend their entire lives on-line.

The reason the vast majority of decent guilds miss out is because they don’t get to experience the content fast enough for it to be a fully worthwhile investment of time/effort/reward and also in some cases they only get to content after the nerf bat has been swung.

A 5-man Karazhan sized instance or two would be superb and fill a big gap in the game imo. Free gear is just utterly boring unless you’re the pathetic type who thinks WoW is just about purple pixels.

I’ve been lucky for most of the game, I got to clear BWL, AQ40, Naxx and now HJ and BT, soon, Sunwell. I’ve been around enough guildies in the 3 guilds I was / currently in to see most have an attitude about their gear. And, it has always bothered me. For a long time, I’ve always thought Blizzard should speed up the progression so ALL can enjoy the story Blizzard wants to tell.

I think a lot of the changes we are seeing now with 2.4 is to do exactly with this. To speed the game up so they can tell their story to a much larger audience. I doubt very seriously we will see badge vendors in the new expansion like this, handing out top tier level gear. But, I believe it does lay the ground work for them making attunements easier, perhaps 1 quest. We may also see more 10 mans like Kara, instead of one ten man, we may get two or three. Time will tell. Regardless of what they do, it’s a change many will welcome.

There is also the whole business side to this you have to take into account if you truly want to understand these changes. A good example would be like the movie business. Studios make more money if their movies carry a PG-13 rating, they also make more money at the box office if their movie is around an hour and a half. The same thing applies to Blizzard and WoW and their expansions. I do not know the exact numbers but Blizzards 1st expansion was a huge huge money maker for them. It could still in fact be the number one selling PC title of 2007. I am willing to guess and I think many business savy people out there will agree, that Blizzard wanted to release their 2nd expansion much much sooner than they will end up getting to do. I think they were forced to push things back and open up the game to more people in order to get their story told and not have it wasted on a handful of guilds that could organize raids better than the rest.

You are going to see in the new expansion a lot more people being able to progress faster, have more fun and feel as if they are getting their monies worth. The very small percentage of guilds who organize raids extremely well will end up getting the content done faster. And I can live with that.

I think that the whole discussion’s center is this.

It seems that some ppl has to play WoW to get other ppl talking about them, well i can understand this pow cause i’m an ex-raider, and when u are in a top guild is nice to hear ppl talking about ur guild ur progress etc…btw probably the majority of the ppl arent in a raiding guild, or cant join one cause being in a raiding guild is rly time requiring, and not everyone has the possibility to spend 4-5 hours x day playing WoW.
So, imho, everyone should be able to obtain the same gears and items, ppl playing more should be able to acquire those stuff faster, ppl playing less , slower, but everyone should be able to obtain the same gears\items, otherwise the game become rly frustrating for casual gamers, that even if they are good players, they keep to see they character only as a mid-lvl character for their whole WoW game experience.
Play and have fun, but also let the other play and have fun…
So u got ur imba gears and now u wanna one-click everyone just cause u spent a lot of time with it…well actually the game would begun boring in this way, if there’s no challenge there’s no game at all…

Badge Gear. Here’s the simple truth about badge gear: it’s a perpetual carrot to keep people interested in running instances over and over, even after they’ve gotten all the loot they want from said instances. It doesn’t bring non-raiders to an equal playing field with raiders – not even close. Even semi-hardcore players know that gear doesn’t mean win. Sure it allows room for a little more error but here’s what I consider to be at least as important factors to a successful raid:
1) Skill. (reflexes, multi-tasking ability, focus level, decision-making)
2) Knowledge. (how to play your class, boss strats, what mods/UI to use, etc)
3) Leadership. (at a guild level, class level, and raid level)
4) Dedication. (willingness to read a boss strat, to come prepared with consumables, the patience to wipe for nights on end, to farm gold for repairs/chants/gems/etc)
5) Communication. (articulating – and listening to – tactics, calling out contingencies on the fly, asking questions when clarification is needed, knowing when to keep TS/vent clear)

I’m not saying gear isn’t essential, just that better badge gear won’t get bad players into good guilds. It should, however, help struggling guilds to continue along the crest (or prehaps trailing edge) of the progression wave. Awesome for them! Be ready for some bloated repair bills and a huge anti-climax when you get to the last 3 bosses of BT.

Content nerfs. The OP didn’t really touch on this but this is what irks me. Not because I’m worried that people will have an easier time getting purplez than their predecessors, but rather because it’s a shame that guilds with a late start will only have the opportunity to see watered down content, NOT the content that the designers originally built.

1) Most raiders I know raid for content — to see lore, bosses, play with mechanics. The loot is a side benefit, and necessary in some cases to defeat newer monsters. There is nothing wrong with at least giving people that option, albeit on a delayed scale. Thankfully WoTLK will fix the problem of excluding casuals from major lore figures, or at least so they say.

2) Giving out BT/Hyjal qualityish gear for badges is quick and easy way to build up new players that you may need to progress in SWP. Granted the loot is not even on par with most BT/Hyjal stuff (although there are notable exceptions) . Most of the items are not ‘ideally budgeted’, although they have a similar ilevel. Still the gear is useful, but not “the best” in slot, giving those who obtained it something to work towards.

It also gives raiders who, for some reason or antother, have gotten unlucky with drops an alternative to use to tide them over. Have you ever walked into a capital city, and seen a raider in very impressive gear, and then wondered why they are still wearing [insert lowish level item here]. Now these raiders can fill those holes with decent drops, and now feel like they got screwed by the random number generator.

Trust me, raiding isn’t dying or going anywhere. People who still can’t do a heroic well or coordinate in a 25 man will not magically develop a brain and go kill any t6 level boss (except maybe Rage Winterchill Convsersly, the new bosses in SW25 are incredibly tough, so there will still be a lot for the really hardcore to play with. This opens up a new part of WoW to a lot of people who may otherwise miss it, and anything that introduces new players to the raiding community ultimately strengthens it. Get the gear, weed out the people that can’t preform, and move forward.