Raid Leader: Shelf life of an Epic

Epics are becoming far too easy to get that they should no longer be called Epic. Let’s face it if your not completely covered in purple within a week something is wrong. That in itself isn’t a problem, we all know there are purple epics and then there are "Epic Purplez". Watching friends and guildies gear up from the level 80 Ding Dong to being raid viable and then hitting top level tier content is a pleasure, but the shelf life of my epics being epic is not.

I have no desire to hold anyone back, nor am I opposed to offering the casual player a chance to get decent gear, in fact the more the merrier, as a RL the better geared people the more resources we have the more progress is made. What I do have a problem with is the current speed that Emblems in heroics and normal instances are being upgraded and that in reality if you wait just 4 months that you can have most of what long term raiders have managed to acquire through hours of learning tactics and actually killing bosses.

In the current situation the kit that I have worked towards getting and spending Emblems on and feel proud of will be worn by everyone before I really get a chance to show off any kind of accomplishment or earn any kind of recognition. That to me is one of the appeals of a game like WoW, being able to spruce your character up like an episode of "Pimp my Toon" and then show them off a bit in raids or wherever.

I enjoy the game and raiding a great deal, so it's not going to stop me playing, but for me it's a part of the game that is fast diminishing due to some of the inherent problems in how far it has gone to cater for the casual. Let's just throttle back a bit and not try to overcompensate and reward the casual while losing one of the important aspects of the game that is important for them as well, that of aspiration.

It's not so bad in the current situation because we are at the last tier of raiding fior this expansion, but do I relish trying to be at the top of my Gear/Gearscore game knowing that in a few short weeks the person who puts less time in will be in the same position?

So what are the main issues that I can see?

Issue 1: The Emblem System

Too fast, the change from offering one type of Emblem being available as a reward from heroics to the next one being available is too fast. There should be a full tier separating the current endgame tier and the tier that is available from the emblems currently being offered. So for instance I believe that offering Emblems of Conquest as a reward for completing heroic dungeons would be more acceptable for patch 3.3 than upgrading to Triumphs so soon after their introduction. Offering one or two of them for completing the daily heroics or random heroics as they will now be called would be fine, but offering them for mass farming is too much too soon.

Issue 2: Boss dropped or vendor bought?

Let’s face it, if you nail a boss you want something decent, if you farm heroics your looking for an upgrade but in all fairness it’s much more common place and you shouldn’t be expecting the same returns. Slap their name on it, cover it in their dripping blood, do whatever you will, but for god sakes please make it so that folks know you have killed boss X or failed big time on boss Y. We used to be able to do this with certain items, when a person had their tier head you knew they had to have been present at a kill for that boss. Maybe we could have a small iLevel difference between those that drop and those that are bought from a vendor. Not enough to give a massive difference so that content cant be completed, but certainly to gain an advantage from all the effort and a little bit of Kudos in the meantime.

Issue 3: Four part expansions

If the plan is to cater to the casual player to such a degree it would most likely be best to have only a 2-3 tier expansion program in terms of content. A 4 phase release over this last expansion has resulted in too little time between content patches and loot iLevel upgrades. Some of the content that people were still working on has become obsolete too quickly because it's most common that people run the content for it's promise of reward. Ulduar was still being worked on by many casual guilds and players when ToC was released, now ToC is a short run but the rewards are very high leaving Ulduar epics out in the rain and the fantastic content inside very much undiscovered for a lot of people.

Issue 4: Take away the carrot and you have a disinterested donkey

While I'm not suggesting that all the raid instances should have hard modes or not be accessible for the casual player, far from it, as a casual player myself (2-3 times a week, including twice to raid) that would kill my progress, I do however think it's important that there is some kind of "holy grail", a mother of all battles, a come on people lets batter some faces, hardcore you know the score content that looms and looks at you like your some kind of kitten and on the menu. Why not have one of these in each expansion, it doesn't have to be very big, can be a duplicate of something, but each time a content patch is released for that expansion unlock another section, or make it get harder, maybe the bosses can be linked to the other raids that come along with the expansion, giving them new abilities or minions to command. Basically give that killer content that makes people wipe for hours as the proverbial carrot, I don't care if I never see it, or if behind that door it's actually solid concrete, what I do want is something to aim for, something to dream about, even if it is out of my reach. Opening up one boss at a time in ToC was a good idea, if only to stall the content from being battered in the first 24 hours, take that idea and expand upon it, it's got more potential than as a once off.

I know this is only my opinion, but I'd like to see what other people think, is the shelf life of your epic too small? Are your efforts being diminished by how fast things are moving or by how far the game is going to appease the masses and is there something that can be done to keep the idea that only the best of the best and the elite players can complete the top level areas? Do you want the ultimate challenge to aim towards?

I'm sure not everyone agrees here and that some folks may find these points wrong or whatever, but it's a subjective experience and that's my tuppence worth

Thanks,

Cybac.

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