Naxxramas

[Monkey]

What's wierd with your complaint is that this is almost exactly what they've done with 1.10.  Tier 0 sets are the blue sets like the warrior Valor and priest Devout sets that one can get in the normal 5- or 10-man dungeons like Scholomance, Strateholme, and BRS (lower and upper).  These sets have been in the game since release and have long been outdated.  Finally, Blizzard has has made a way for semi-casual players to upgrade that tier 0 equipment through a series of quests involving new bosses in these instances. 
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The important word there is Finally--I realize my naming conventions for it might be incorrect, but the "Dungeon 2" gear from 1.10 should have been in the game from retail or soon after, just like Molten Core. And yeah, I know about the blue sets, I've been playing since Nov 2004 ;).

In the absence of the 1.10 questlines and full sets of Dungeon 2 gear, Blizzard should have made minor pieces (belts, bracers, etc.) of T1 available to people running BRS/BRD/etc. This should have been in the game at release, not 18 months later. As long as successive raid instances had a similar path for non-raiders, this could have kept raiding attractive while keeping the power curve from being so wildly divergent. Or how about a nice hard 5-man on a lockout with some 85% gear or something?

Now there's no unringing a bell, but one hopes that Blizzard won't make the same mistake twice. There's a great pre-release quote from one of the developers (I think it was Tigole) about how raiders and non-raiders will have access to similar levels of power from gear, Raiders will just get flaming swords with layzer beams or something. That hasn't proven out yet, but maybe it will in the expansion.

I also was agreeing, As Warlock pointed out earlier, that the 'best' stuff by a wide margin for every activity in WoW is available exclusively through Raiding. Which is a only a problem when non-raiders have to compete with raiders...like in PvP. :(

I'm also a little bitter that I like WoW for the solo and 5-man but WoW doesn't seem to like me back. Where's my uber hard 5-man sequel to Dire Maul? And no, the warlock mount quest event doesn't count.