Another lost level 60

[Raelynn]

Option 2) This is a time-consuming endeavor that personally doesn't appeal to me but I can understand why it does to some.  I think the problem with the never-ending quest to find phatter lewt is that it IS never-ending.  There will always be something cooler to find, and as the game progresses it will require more and more time to get that cooler item.  Having 2, 3, 4 characters that can run level 60 stuff is more appealing to me than having 1 ultra-decked-out uber character.  But MMORPGs REQUIRE this to be a time-consuming process.  Casual players simply cannot be allowed to get this loot, because casual players will not stay in a game.  You are leaving because there isn't enough content at the high end to keep you satisfied, but that's the point.  If they made uber loot easy to get, the hardcore 8-hours-a-day players would leave, and those players form the addicted subscriber base that MMORPGs are built on.  Casual players find themselves at level 60 being unable to get the best stuff in the game and quit.  If Hardcore players at level 60 found that the best stuff in the game was too easy to get (and thus there would be nothing to make them stand out from the casual player), they would quit.  Since casual players will eventually quit anyway, Blizzard has no choice but to cater to the hardcore crowd and try to find some way to keep a casual player happy...

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I understand the issues with letting uber gear come too easily, but I have to agree with Alarick that there isn't any game the seems to equally reward time in the long run. Someone that plays 200 hours in 3 weeks can get amazing gear, but someone who plays 200 hours in 12 weeks will never even get close to the same gear, evne though the time put in is the same overall.

I would like to see something that gives good gear, not even uber, but stuff that might even be above the blue sets, which can be done in chunks of an hour or less. These would most likely be the life quests that were talked about. I want something that the hardcore people could blow through in a few days of course, but it would allow the people who don't have the time to put into 3+ hour instances to get somewhat decent gear. Without this, since the end game is gear dependent, you're basically giving up on a somewhat big subsection of the players. Like I said before, I might be headed the same way as Alarick come the middle of the summer.

I think the Battlegrounds comment you made might be all too true as well. Not so much for the CTF, but definitely for the Alterac Valley one. People will have a juge advantage just based on them having better gear and most likely with that gear a better understanding of the game. As I've heard from the test realm forums, pickup groups are bad in battlegrounds. All I see is certain guilds who already have amazing gear and players dominating the battleground against pickup groups and only seeing some competition if they happen to set up a meeting with a major guild on the opposing faction. This will also have the after-effect of bumping them up in the PvP rankings, giving more of their guild access to the great pvp armor and weapons, which as of the coming patch are a HUGE improvement over even the epic PvE sets.

This is all without playing it and things could be different, but I see Battlegrounds as being better for the people who are in an "uber" guild which can field 40 people who know how to work together.