TLDR:
I addition to the current "kill last boss in instance to be able to activate hardmode", add quests that require you do do hardmodes from the last tier of raids as an optional way to get hardmodes. So good guilds can start right on hardmodes, instead of having to take normal first when they actually overgear that content.
Howdy, now its not a unusual mentality around that WOTLK has been too easy and that TBC was much better with its forced progression (to some extent) and attunements. On the other side most of the hardcore guilds say they have never faced content this hard, and that means its normal to say "come back when you have done HCLK".
I belive i know what causes this feeling of the content being too easy while there is still so much hard content out there is the fact that you have to do it on normal before you can start doing it on heroic, making people sick of the content, and some people being happy with just seeing it. Now attunement quests have been debated in and out, people miss them, but they dont want to go through the pain of attuning every new player the guild gets.
To unlock heroicmode theese days (wotlk) you need to have one guy who has done the last boss on normal. What i suggest it that you make hard raid quests in previous raids (on heroic mode) to be able to open the next raid tier up on heroic instantly when it comes out. It should be bound to your guild AND a player. So you can choose heroic in a guild run if the player isent there, or choose it in a non guild run if the player is there. That way the guilds that want to do the challening mode can go straight to the heroic modes and whipe on the bosses there instead of snoring throught normal first on all bosses with their higher than nessecary ilvl gear just to unlock the heroic mode.
There would need to be an adjustment with item lvls though, so you werent required to farm nromal first to get the gear to do heroic. This could be solved by heroic granting the same itemlvl as the next tier normal mode. Its diffrent than today, where you will get better gear from 25 man heroic than you will from the next tier 10 man normal. But it would decrease the ammout they would have to scale gear each tier. It may keep the heroic players abit too infront of the normal players, and anyone who want to start doing heroic mode has to get normal gear first, from the same dungeon. It would recreate a more sensible raiding path. You would basicly have 4 "tiers" of players. The newly dinged, the badge farmers, the raiders and the heroic raiders. Where anyone can get up to the badge farming lvl, but you would be required to go through the raiding bracet to be viable in the heroic modes atleast ( well its kinda like that today, but the diffrence between normal and heroic would be bigger even tho the itemlvlscaling in the expansion could be slower)
Anyone have any feedback? What do you say? Would you like to compleete pain in the arse hard raid quests to be able to skip farming stuff on normal before you are able to meet the bosses full strenght?
(abit about myself since people WILL ask. Played since vanilla, vanilla progression, twin emps and instructor down. In TBC i progressed as one of the better guilds on the server to the two first bosses of hyjal before i went casual and pvp due to irl issues, joined my guild in later content as backup, saw everything up to and including muuru. Was away first 7 months of wotlk, saw the end of uludar with my guild as a backup, started raiding casually a year ago with some old friends in a 25 man guild, ckilled LK 25 normal with 1 raid a week at 15 % buff, have since done some heroic modes in 10 man with half pugs. So i did get to see the content this exp due to it being easier, but i understand so well what people miss with the linear progression, not going through here, and then lets do it one more time just harder.)