Progression Philosophy

[mutantboy]

So the OP has some strange viewpoints. Stratification of the playerbase and earlier raid content being less available?
That is a pretty weird PoV considering what badge gear does.

In the past the playerbase was very much more stratified. Try getting into a top end raid guild with your dungeon blues. try restarting an alt. You needed to be super hardcore to do that. Now - you can go from new starter/alt to badge gear to 10 man ICC and actually contribute at top level in a month of non hardcore work. As for the comment about earlier content being unavailable - I'm not seeing it. I pugged a 10 man naxx and a 10 man ulduar in the last couple of weeks, plus did Toc 3 times on 2 toons. As well as quite a bit of ICC.

So the OP cannot tell the good players in his guild from the bad. Huh?? You don't see who dies and who does damage? Here is a hint: the guys who stand in fires and die are bad... Really - that is the difference. Who cares how they got gear. Who cares what they know or if they are specced right or if they know the bosses. Why are you worrying about that? If they die too often and do crap dps then you HAVE to replace them or you will fail. If they ask for help give it - but that is the key.

The only way to sort out this big issue you have made yourself wonder about is to let people sort themselves out - if they don't then don't nursemaid them. Stop worrying about other people who play the way they do. Make it known you will help - make the expectation that they need to get sorted and if people come to a raid and fail badly then you replace them. It's pretty easy really.

Getting gear in wow has become a token process to enable people to do what matters to them: raid and get better gear. And lets face it - 232 gear is a good starting point for 10 man ICC but thats it. It does what it needs to do - after which you can stop worrying and proceed to weed out those who got to stage 2.

[LeperHerring]

If you want to experience the content you need to be playing when that content is current. Realistically, this game can support active raiding on maybe the two top tiers at the same time. There simply aren't enough people to fill all raid tiers with competent guilds at all times.

In any case, the current emblem system is needlessly complex. The TBC system with one badge type, but better items requiring significantly more badges worked just fine, apart from a few whiners who cared too much about what other people are wearing.

[Doktor Faustus]

Attunement ftw, think of it as an IQ/Skill test beofre the maine vent.

However, business is business so Blizzard need to make WoW accessible to new players or WoW will cease.

The largest proportion of subscriptions are more than likely the fair-weather, casual crowd.

If you cut them out of the fun and they migrate en masse to other games, welcome to the World of Ultima Online Craft.

[jai151]

I think a grand number of you are missing the point on why badges exist. They have nothing to do with casual raiders or with allowing people to skip content so they can see everything in the game. They exist so top end guilds can replace a member without having to stop all progression to gear them up.

That being said, I can give a solution that replaces badges without having to eliminate a progression path or allowing people to "skip" content.

Imagine Wrath starts over. Now out are Maly, Sarth, and Naxx. The dungeons all function identically to the way they functioned at release with the badge system removed. Instead of the badge system is a series of quests that award the offslot items (relics, totems, etc) that they didn't want to appear on bosses, as well as any other gear they want in that quest progression, and act as attunements for the next tier.

On the release of Ulduar, all gear from Nax, Sarth, and Maly are removed and replaced with "Legacy gear" while Ulduar drops gear normally and gains attunement quests like the previous tier. The Legacy gear is identical to what dropped before with one big exception, it cannot be sold to vendors or disenchanted.

This is because now, on all previous tier bosses, instead of dropping two or three pieces of loot they will drop their entire loot table every time. So to fully gear a replacement coming to Ulduar, you need to run them through Naxx, Sarth, and Maly exactly once.

There would be exceptions to the entire loot table every time, of course. Legendary weapons, mounts, and any other special items (Fragments of Val'anyr, for example) would retain their original drop rate and item type.

And there you have it. Take the repetition out of the previous dungeons, cut heroics out of the raid progression almost entirely, and make it impossible to gear up to ICC levels without going through the appropriate dungeons WITHOUT causing undue headaches to guilds who want to gear up a replacement for their progression group(s).

[Doktor Faustus]

I think a grand number of you are missing the point on why badges exist. They have nothing to do with casual raiders or with allowing people to skip content so they can see everything in the game. They exist so top end guilds can replace a member without having to stop all progression to gear them up.

That being said, I can give a solution that replaces badges without having to eliminate a progression path or allowing people to "skip" content.

Imagine Wrath starts over. Now out are Maly, Sarth, and Naxx. The dungeons all function identically to the way they functioned at release with the badge system removed. Instead of the badge system is a series of quests that award the offslot items (relics, totems, etc) that they didn't want to appear on bosses, as well as any other gear they want in that quest progression, and act as attunements for the next tier.

On the release of Ulduar, all gear from Nax, Sarth, and Maly are removed and replaced with "Legacy gear" while Ulduar drops gear normally and gains attunement quests like the previous tier. The Legacy gear is identical to what dropped before with one big exception, it cannot be sold to vendors or disenchanted.

This is because now, on all previous tier bosses, instead of dropping two or three pieces of loot they will drop their entire loot table every time. So to fully gear a replacement coming to Ulduar, you need to run them through Naxx, Sarth, and Maly exactly once.

There would be exceptions to the entire loot table every time, of course. Legendary weapons, mounts, and any other special items (Fragments of Val'anyr, for example) would retain their original drop rate and item type.

And there you have it. Take the repetition out of the previous dungeons, cut heroics out of the raid progression almost entirely, and make it impossible to gear up to ICC levels without going through the appropriate dungeons WITHOUT causing undue headaches to guilds who want to gear up a replacement for their progression group(s).

I'd like to call troll, but I think you actually believe what you just said :O

[rkma]

Many of the changes Blizzard has made to raiding are good for everyone, casual and hardcore alike. I'm not really sure what your problem is with making recruitment / gearing easier. It allows progressed guilds to focus on more interesting content, and go back to old content only if they want to.

In the case of Ulduar, my guild actually did go back and finish the achievements. We recently got Glory of the Ulduar Raider (25 player), and did so because we wanted to, not because we were obligated to do so. This is how it should be.

Remember, people whined that TBC was too casual as well, even though very few guilds ever saw Black Temple prior to the attunement changes. That didn't stop people from raising a huge stink when the attunements were lifted either.

[lilbandit]

probably been said before, but cba to read through what's probably 4 pages of crap about bads v casuals v epox raiders v I'm casual but I'm epic v I'm hardcore but I'm in 10man guild...etc. ..., so here goes

a way to salvage the badge system, and something I hope blizzard implement would be:
-every instance gives you the same badge, whether it be start (e.g. heroics), or end (e.g. ICC)
-as the game progresses, the gear progresses, and the badge requirement increases, e.g. heroic gear costs 10 badges, icc gear costs 100 badges, but it's the same badge
-badges will increase in droprate, i.e. bosses in later instances drop more badges. this avoids end-game raiders complaining because they get crap badge drops and can't get epox

this system allows casuals to get end game gear by doing heroics, it'll just take them a long time. and to all those people who say "well I'll stockpile them", well yeah you could, but you'd need to run like 1000 heroics to get a good end-game set. what would be the point in waiting?

I suppose even bads can get good gear this way, but they just won't stub their toe and fall into T9 epics.