02-09-2008, 10:57 AM
Quote:http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/...patchnotes.html
I feel sorry for everyone who paid while waiting for this. You basically got Sunwell + No Attunements + Combat Log changes. Grats.
In addition to no attunements, they're putting T6 quality gear on a badge vendor on Sunwell Isle. And this is a mistake.
As I've said before, I'm not an exclusionary end-game raider. I don't take pride in doing what other people can't; I'm just happy to be doing it. In that vein, I supported SSC/TK attunement removal and I also generally like the way Blizzard nerfs down instances over time to let people in. And the idea of removing Hyjal/BT attunements? My thoughts on this are on the record. I do not think letting people in to knock down a pinata or two (and, unlike Razuvious/Anub'rekhan, some aren't even pinatas if you don't have the gear) harms the game any. Removing attunements is just the right thing to do.
Slapping T6 gear on a badge vendor, however, adds an element that wasn't present in the pre-TBC attunement-free environment. It was all right for guilds to clear easy stuff in Naxx because Patchwerk was there to keep them honest with previous-content clears before they could go on. Similarly, you could knock over some early AQ40 stuff; you wouldn't be going past the Twin Emperors without a clear BWL. You'd eventually need the gear to get past the checks, and that system ensured that you consumed the content available to you.
Sure, some people never got to see Kel'Thuzad, but lots of people killed Ragnaros, lots of people killed Nefarian, a fair number even killed C'thun and had a lot of fun doing it. The important point was that everything incentivized them to go get those kills, so rational players went ahead and did what they were incentivized to do, notching up kills and having truly memorable play experiences that were worth having.
Now, for the first time, you can bypass the need to gear up in earlier-tier content. Tier 6 is right on the vendor, for badges. Suppress your first thought - that this is sour grapes from a raider angry that people can now gear up quickly to kill Illidan. I don't care about that. Work through the logical implications instead.
What Blizzard is doing (and has been doing for much of TBC) is rapidly obsoleting its own content. This is a boneheaded move, especially because content-efficiency and content-reusability is key to why raiding is the end game in the first place. Putting T6 on the vendor obsoletes at least TK and SSC and arguably has a similar, just less intense effect on BT and Hyjal. T6 is what you need for Sunwell, after all, so you can just snap up a full set off the vendor and go right in.
Wait, you say. It's not that easy. After all, badges aren't free. And of course, you are correct. You do have to do things to get badges, and by far the most efficient ways to get badges are Heroic Mechanar and Karazhan. T5 content does not offer badges. T6 content does not offer badges. Any rational actor - and despite the stupidities of the internet, people really are rational - knows what they're doing. Kara for T6 gear.
Because of the way this sets up, Karazhan becomes not just a good thing to do, but the best and most rational use of your time until you enter Sunwell. Whatever the gear costs, Kara is some percentage toward a guaranteed Tier 6 epic, whereas TK/SSC and even early BT/Hyjal are repair costs, organizational overhead, consumable costs, strategy research, and of course, wipe after wipe after wipe, for zero percent progress toward a T6 epic. It has become an inefficient use of time to 25-man raid; almost a complete waste of time. Karazhan is 22 badges in a few hours, and you can't beat that math in TK or SSC because it is always zero badges over a non-zero amount of time.
This hits guilds which raid a limited number of hours in the week hardest. The incentive will be tremendous to use those limited hours on Heroics and Karazhan. Enthusiasm for non-profitable 25-man raid runs will wane. And in turn, people already exhausted by eight months to a year of Karazhan already will simply burn out on the prospect of months more. Given the choice of months more of an old and boring instance, or new content which is difficult and offers zero reward, many rational players are going to pick door number three: time to play a different game.
Even for those who tough it out, what will you have earned? Instead of Kara-Gruul-Mag-SSC-TK-Hyjal-BT (but perhaps not reaching the end), you'll have gotten in exchange Kara-Kara-Kara-Kara-Kara-Kara-Kara-Sunwell (and also perhaps not reaching the end). You'll have killed no major end bosses except maybe Kil'Jaeden; never seen some of the best and most inventive encounters in raid content, and had no more than a handful of those triumphs of group effort that make raiding fun.
And for those who say that they, of course, will still do T5 and T6 "to experience the content" despite the lack of (T5) or significantly reduced rate of (T6) reward? I think we all know that's not true. How many retro-Naxx groups have you run in the year+ since TBC came out? Yeah, I thought so. And Naxx has the advantage that TBC players are 10 levels over the content and can crush most of what they encounter; most, if not all, of the retro-Naxxes that do happen wouldn't have if people had to come prepared with consumables and strat and be prepared to wipe many times to get it done.
Knowing ahead of time that you'll gain no reward has a remarkable effect on killing enthusiasm, and this is going to absolutely cut the legs out from entry TK/SSC guilds. Rather than expanding access to content, it's going to turn huge chunks of current content into wastelands. And while more instances are going to be accessible, people aren't going to want to run them. It won't make sense to. While Blizzard may feel they're helping casuals by giving them a way into Sunwell, what they're really doing is, at the least, taking from them SSC and TK.
Instead, they can have Kara.