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What sort of surprises me about the item availability "nerfs" that TBC has seen a lot of is the method in which they're obtained.
I think what annoys people the most is the view that for the most part, a lot of this gear is very literal time = gear sort of items.
No matter what they do, there will be some people who have full S1 (and eventually S2) + Vindicator's (or whatever the next equivalent is) wrists,boots,belt from autorunning in BGs. There will be even more who are equipped like that from guarding the critical strategic spot of the road to the north of the Blacksmith. Similarly, there will be a lot of people with latest gladiator season gear without ever winning a match.
As for badge gear, while probably less of a problem, in the extreme case, a group of people could, starting now, do nothing but kill the two mini bosses in Mech or Attumen once a day and have enough badges for some of the best gear in the game by the time 2.4 badge vendor is opened up. Plus, they can just buy a couple of nether vortices and get even more fun stuff.
The resentment over the gear basically comes down to the idea that gaudy purples should be representative of "accomplishments" in game rather than simply due to "time spent."
I think there should be some "time spent" gear available in the game (I think the early version with just 3 BG epics was good), however, it probably is a bit excessive right now.
What kind of surprises me is that, at one point, Blizzard did get it almost right in terms of how to give professor plums to non-raiders or part time raiders -- the tier 0.5 set.
I'm really surprised that nothing has been implemented like this quest chain in TBC. The heroics especially seem to be a really good opportunity for it. When the tier 0.5 set quest chain came out, my guild was about a dozen or so level 60s and most of us had almost our entire dungeon set (for crying out loud, I even killed the freaking mailman for my boots) the quest chain gave us a really good and challenging series of goals. Strat 45 was fantastic as a "teaching" event for getting DPS up and keeping crowd control up while still maintaining mana efficiency. Beating that was one of my best in game experiences. We didn't do it by paying a BWL guild to get us through, we did it in blues with a couple greens even. For most classes, I think, the tier 0.5 was more intelligently point allocated than tier 1 and was generally better. I think that was fair -- I think the tier 0.5 quest chain was legitimately harder than any of the tier 1 dropping bosses.
The heroics was an attempt to have a situation like this, but I think a problem is that you never actually have to finish the heroic to get the badge vendor gear. I remember in the early days that "3 badge heroic mech" runs were very, very popular.
What if when TBC came out, the dungeon set gloves could be upgraded to t4.5 quality loot by badge turn in, the pants and shoulders by finishing, say heroic SL and SV, the chest with SH 55 minutes and for the headpiece there's some quest chain where you have to go into Kara and summon a special boss to kill -- maybe a living Nightbane that's specially tuned or something.
Then, flash forward to now, with 2.4 coming out, the gloves can be upgraded to t5.5 with badges, the shoulders with a timed kara event of some sort, the pants with a special event in, why not, heroic BM, a chest upgrade token in the 3 or 4th timed ZA chest and the headpiece by killing heroic 5 man kael in some special way or whatever.
Obviously, the examples I gave would be subject to tuning or whatever, but it seems that having gear linked to completing specific parts of the game rather than time spent would go a long ways towards alleviating "welfare epic" complaints while at the same time giving people things to work towards and for in a less than 25 man situation.
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