Badge Gear and Raid Progression from a Casual’s Point of View

[Thallidomaniac]

The same people would be in your group with ilv178 blues if there was no badge system pulling 600 dps and tanking with 28k HP, healing with 12 k mana.

Would that make you happier?

Thought so^^

I remember tanking crap with just 24k health unbuffed. :P

[Ganoes]

I geared alts in TBC and I ran Kara for one reason and one reason only by the time I leveled my last alt. That was badges. Badge gear + pvp gear and you'd be geared for BT easy. When I joined a BT pug in S4, I passed on the dps plate because my pvp gear was superior.

You are misrepresenting history. When the Sunwell patch hit, badges started offering BT level gear. PVP gear was better. You didn't go Kara -> Mag / Gruul -> ZA. You went fresh 70 -> pvp + heroics -> MH / BT. That was the progression.

[LeperHerring]

Here’s a little story: When I hit 70 back in TBC, shortly before the Kara nerf, I met this guy who was gearing up his 5th alt, and he had geared them all up starting from Kara, through Gruul and Maggi, ZA, etc. up to BT. Good players were still running these raids on their alts, and everyone had to go through raid progression in order to gear up.

I highly doubt that. TBC had pvp+badge+crafted gear which would get you BT ready without having to go through the previous tiers.

That way, it would still make sense to run Naxx 10 and Ulduar 10, instead of just shortcutting via random heroics. Still, casuals who are unable to do Ulduar 10 in Naxx 10 gear could use ToC 5-man and ICC 5-mans to gear up a little before hitting Ulduar. But they can’t just run random heroics for two days straight and emerge in 4T9 + 245 item level gear, which strips away any motivation to still do the lower raids.

It would also mean that good players who took a break, rerolled or just started could never catch up with the good guilds who would be playing at the highest raid tier. What you would end up with is a handful of guilds doing the latest content and loads of failing guilds at the first tier with hardly anything in between; there just isn't enough players to fill in all the raid tiers at the same time. If you want to experience the content you must be playing when that content is current. Once the content gets old most of the people will have experienced it and will move on.

[Cris]

on a low populated server staying on top of the progression line it is nearly impossible if new people would start from scratch. its not really different on better populated but the point is either you recruite from guilds that practiced with the new guys on lower tier and only accepted them because even for midlvl guilds you have to come with appropriate gear or you take the fresh guys yourself when a certain class is low on your server and give them time to develop skill without having to worry about the gear that much.

back then either you had a bunch of good real life friends filling the most important roles like MT OT 3-4 good healers or you simply had to have luck with loyality.

the no1 guild on server had it easy with applications. no2 is the rival and some people apply to those because of competition. after that no 3-x in midlvl never have the chance to get close without having those friends in guild because at some point people get tired of running new guys through content and they leave for another raidguild.
having to find replacements with skill but without gear dosent cut it in alot of cases and it repeats endless until the last loyal key member leaves. i can imagine a lot mroe guilds broke because of that pre wotlk.

missing out the content is an issue of couse but if you think for a moment... what holds likeminded people back following the normal progression and going through nax uld etc?

if its for the content then the badgeprogression doesnt matter to people but obviously its not.
in reality people are more interested in gear progression.
i think the op forgot to find the positive in the badge progression either... now content that PuGs failed on is much easier with higher gear. the higher gear doesnt buy people skill but simply from a hunter point of view if somebody is pushing steady shot only and keeps his pet attacking on auto he can go up to around 3200 dps in top gear 25 men. the same person would do 1.xk dps in startergear. the first number would contribute to clear naxx25 the 2nd would reward him a kick and you not ending nax successful.
the only problem there is people dont want to kill kelthuzad when there is no reward other than experiencing him... the problem slaps you instantly back when the dps is good because of badge gear but who is coming back to kill kel thuzad a 2nd time if they "saw it"? you cant do it right somehow.


the changes though impact on mainchars.
once you were able to play 1 char in the expansion and be satisfied. now the game became so fast and ,in my opinion, easy that at a certain point you are majorly bored of coming online on your main if its not for a raid which you clear in 3 hours locked out until next week. that though is another story not connected to the title of this thread.