Naxxramas

[oldmandennis]

I believe I pay the same $14.99/month as others do.

I'm not sure this is a valid argument. I could be silly and say that people who spend their 14.99 boping field mice on the head in Elwynn Forest get no epics at all. I could also say that as someone who is primarily focused on raiding, I am "forced" to spend a lot of time acquiring gold for repairs and potions. I am also "forced" to do DM in search of librams and class books, strath/scholo for shoulder enchants, my class quest for the trinket, etc. I say "forced" because these things are part of the game and I enjoy them, but if you had a guild full of ZOMG raiders who skipped this content, they probably would not get too far.

Those who prefer to solo, are even in worse shape.

I'm not sure solo is a viable play option in a MMORPG. It's your money, you can play the game how you want, I'm just not sure developers and designers need to spend their limited time supporting a playstyle that goes against the very definition of the genre. I know there were people who tried playing certain levels of Doom "buddhist" style - no killing allowed. Are they entitled to have the rest of the maps altered to suit them? What about people who liked base defense or DotA WC3 maps. Are they entitled to a seperate B.net ladder?

I meant they should on the average be in a position to own 1/2 of the good items as raiders do.

OK, you are a warrior. You get 4 purples from your D2 set. Purple neck from DMF. Unstoppable Force for a big 2h weapon, The Imoveable Object for a shield, Lobotomizer for an offhand. Don Julio's for one ring. Class book for one trinket, maybe Quel for your tanking main hand. Field duty gives you a decent ring, back, purple bracer, and trinket. Buy the MC belt. I think the carapace xbow from strath is endgame gear until you have enough leaf drops that the strikers mark starts drifting down to warriors and rogues. Voila, way more then 1/2 your gear is basically end game gear.

Unless they like PvP so much that they do not mind getting rolled by the same lvl players with the same or worse skills, they should not even bother with WoW as it will just frustrate them.

I have a little more sympathy for you here. If you wander into AB or WSG every now and again with crappy gear and no voicechat, you will frequently get beaten down. AV is a little different - the zerg is usually such a mess that gear doesn't matter a whole bunch. Luckly, the purples from AV are quite reachable.

As far as 1k... I was just generalizing. 1k is when pretty good items on the AH start. Even then they are not *that* good. Bind on equip weapons for example are never even close. The best ones are around 45 DPS one handed, and there is only a handful of them. They are around 2k. It would take significantly more time to farm for 2k than to raid.... and even after that, the items are not even close.

Some of them are worth it. You may need to adjust your feeling of what is proper time/reward. I'm sure its dissapointing to warriors and rogues, who are more dependant then others on thier main hand weapons... but it looks like those are in the 1/2 of the gear you don't get.

I believe that non-raid gear should be completely the equal of raid gear.

Sure, when the difficulty is the same. When you have encounters that will stall the best and brightest sporting the best gear they can obtain for months, and has a combonation of lockouts and deep loot tables that will keep people coming back for upgrades for a year? I hope this is what they are planning for Medivah's tower BTW.

TB, CC, and ZG crafted items require things from raid instances--Cores, Bloodvine, and Obsidian shards *only* drop in raids. Quel'Serrar requires a raid.

The crafted items (and MC bracers and belts) can frequently be found on the AH of my server. It is also not difficult on my server to find a guild that will take you along for Onyxia. While that does require raiding, it's only 1/2 hour.

Maybe WoW is ultimately a raiding game and folks who don't want to raid should just cancel.

Maybe you should take a break. If the new content like field duty and D2 isn't exciting enough for you, well I have seen nothing to make me think there will be alot more coming before the expansion. If I was wedded to the solo/small group playstyle, I probably would have broken off somewhere in Sep-Oct or so.

Don't go away mad though - I'm sure you've had many more pleasurable hours with this game then you have had with just about any other. Even if you throw in the monthly fee, if you devide by the amount of time you spend playing you have probably recieved an excellent value.