Cataclysm NDA Lifted! Beta Begins! Exclamation points abused!

[Concillian]

What I hope is that Blizz will reconsider how easy it is to get epics. I liked the classic model better. Greens are normal, to be replaced with blues in dungeons (I would include heroics) and epics only in 25-40 man raids (and no silly badge system). Now there's nothing epic about epics, while in classing an epic item actually meant something.

That system is REALLY beyond terrible for every guild that is not leeching recruits from other guilds who are gearing up players for them.

It works okay when "Molten Core" is the primary raiding instance. People can get geared in 5-mans and you can recruit anyone. However once you get to the "AQ40" or "Naxx" of that expansion, you have nowhere to recruit from except other guilds that have fallen apart because of natural attrition.

The result is that the leeching guilds are the ones doing well, and the "feeder" guilds are getting completely shafted, with stagnant progression because they're constantly gearing people, then losing them. Even the leeching guilds are given a much larger pool to pull from when you have "feeder" guilds able to find recruits better.

It's why I KNEW that Blizz would backtrack on it's decision on badges they started Wrath with. They tried to go back to a system like was in 1.x... It doesn't work well, so they backtracked. It essentially makes anyone new progress through all raiding content to be geared for the instance that opens 2 years into an expansion, and very few can actually do that.

If the goal is to "feel epic" well, that's a matter of perception. You can "feel epic" doing anything someone else is not. There are plenty of progression guilds who will be killing things the more casual guilds are not, and they should have plenty of epic feeling for that. The current system does tend to mirror reality to some extent though, with "early adopters" of new technology paving the way for affordability for the "regular Joes". The early adopters have much higher cost which funds the manufacturing cost reductions. While there is no actual cost or whatever in WoW, the model does make some sense, and the advantage is exclusive for some time before it becomes the norm.