I've following the various threads on consumeables, issues with overtuning various endgame encounters (Gruul, Mag), etc. lately. And one thing which I've seen mentioned in passing, but rarely ascribed any greater significance is the impact of pvp balancing on the pve endgame.

It's my opinion that the majority of problems in the endgame as we see it today stems from pvp balancing issues, more specificially pvp balance as it relates to gear.

The Issue at Hand: "The Gear Gap" => "The Gear Plateau"

We have seen a change in the gear progression with TBC. If you compare loot from 5-man instances in old wow with loot from end-game instances, the difference was much larger than it is now. Also the different end-game instances (in most cases) offered marked improvements in gear over previous instances. In TBC we've seen a much flatter progression, almost a plateau. The difference between the Dungeon 0 of TBC and the tiered loot of end-game instances is very small. The difference between (relatively) easily-accessible crafted loot and end-game gear is close to nil. The difference between pvp (arena gear) and end-game gear is in some cases in favor of the pvp gear.

It's assumed this change has come about to address the issue of gear superiority of raiders vs non-raiders in pvp. With the introduction of competitive, ladder-based pvp in the form arenas, Blizzard have attempted to minimize the advantage raiders have over non raiders, in order to give a greater emphasis on skill as opposed to gear. Basically a gear plateau of sorts has been established, almost eliminating any gear progression from endgame raiding. An exaggeration of course, but not too far from the truth.

This is however, I claim, is immensely destructive to a vibrant endgame. WoW is an item-centric game. There is no progression available post 70 beyond items. There is no 'AA'-like mechanism. The endgame is structured as series of progressively harder encounters/instances. Previously gear was a major part in gaining "access" to the next tier of endgame content. But now the designers cannot assume a marked improvement in gear from one raid tier to another. This leads to the only viable tuning mechanisms for difficulty being more difficult execution and randomness. It also compounds the consumable issue - as the 'plateau'ed level of power must include consumables to make sense, when designing an encounter. There is no longer the possibility of gaining gear upgrades which has the equivalent power of consumables.

I think the introduction of keying requirements, flagging based on previous tiers of raiding, etc is related to this. The difference between tiers of gear is so small, that without keying, a hardcore guild fully loaded up on consumables could conceivably skip large amounts of content.

The thing I am trying to get at is this:

The lack of progression in raid gear has very adverse effects on the endgame, namely:

* Greater emphasis on consumables / no ability to outgear them

* Lack of mystery from the viewpoint of the 'lower' progressed player. Naxx wouldn't have been quite as interesting to people, who would never realistically claim the place, if the loot had been a minor upgrade from UBRS. This makes the game world seem much smaller.

* Lesser skilled guilds can no longer make up lack of skill with "out-gearing" content. Some guilds in vanilla really did need every single upgrade from MC and ZG they could get there hands on before they could defeat BWL, while more skilled players could easily progress with a raid which wasn't fully geared up yet.

* Need for stricter keying chains, since the difficulty differential between tiers of raiding will be smaller, since there is a 'hardcap' on execution difficulty. Numbers and luck are the only two remaining parameters for tuning. Luck cannot be used excesivelly without pissing off people too much. Numbers can only increase marginally because of the gear pleateau.

* Skewed effort/reward ratios between raiding and pvp. The cost and effort needed to gear up in arena gear is so much lower than what is needed for raiding. This is demotivating for many raiders and lowers the pool of available recruits for raiding guilds, since some will opt to go for the path of least resistance in gear up pretty much exlusively in pvp.

I think solution is to increase the gear differential between tiers of content. Not just a little. But a lot. Not +1/+2 tweaks, but boosts of 10%-25% in gear 'power'. It is my claim that without this the endgame will become much less interesting, much more demanding, and basically a lot less fun.

I don't really know how to respond. Keying isn't inherently a problem. It's good for forcing a progression path. The whole Nightbane thing is clearly a progression path that Blizzard wanted to force us to take. Fine. If gear can't mark the path, I'm totally fine with quests doing so. "Mystery" of end-game lost, because gear isn't that great? Perhaps to the 9 year old, who cannot focus on anything else. But for me, the lure has always been the content. When the most complex encounter you knew was Gandling in Scholo, watching videos from Naxx was like out of this world. You have some points granted, but I think you have the wrong approach on them for the most part.

And really, it's all been said (a million times by now) in the TBC Raiding thread.

Good post. I have often wondered myself how much better WoW could be, if the designers would admit to it that it is primarily a PvE game.

The gear gap vs. gear plateau thing you mentioned is one of the more obvious manifestions of fixing the PvP Balance at the cost of PvE enjoyment. Like you've said there is no char progression beyond the level cap in WoW but items. Let's face it: we're all loot whores in this game. That's the way it is desingned and it is fun as long there is something worth to be whoring about. Take the loot incentives away and you are taking most of the endgame away. Challenging encounters may be fun for itself to a certain extent for a while, but this goes only so far.

But there are impacts of PvP balance on PvE enjoyment beyond itemization issues. Looking at the WoW forums, most whine posts there are about class balance in regard to PvP. You can't give class A a new, strong and intereresting ability without class B crying murder. So you have to very carefully even out the classes, leading to blandness and homegenization. Who yould care if mages would be able to one shot you if there would be no PvP, who would care if priests could live up their destiny of being healing masters and easiliy outheal any player damage? But with PvP everything has to balanced against each other and this leads to a certain overall mediocrity in class design.

Without PvP, you wouldn't have to differentiate between Alliance and Horde. There would be just ten races to choose from, while you were effectively doubling the player pool as well as improving the economy of a given server. But no, we are'nt allowed to interact with each other, because they are "the enemy" by Blizzards definition, whether one cares about it or not.

From my experience a MMOG is almost always better off being openly PvE or PvP centric, instead of trying to melt both design concepts into one. I tried to already explain why WoW is bound to be PvE game by it's very design in this thread -> WoW: Taxonomy of a MMORPG and I'm pretty sure that the designers are fully aware of this, but scrapping PvP is unthinkable as big portion of WoWs playerbase fools itself into thinking they are playing a viable PvP game.

Hmm... I think I'm maybe not being clear enough in my main point:

If tier 6 is a big improvement over tier 4 - who will dominate arenas? Tier 6 equipped teams will.

All things currently point to Blizzard wanting to avoid this issue by reducing the power differential between different tiers. So we arrive at:

If tier 6 is not a big improvement over tier 4 - what does this mean for the endgame? Many bad things.

The main point I am trying to make is - trying to balance the gear gotten in pve so that it doesn't affect the balance of power in arenas is fundamentally flawed with respect to creating the best possible pve endgame.

Edit: DeusEx - just saw your post after posting this. And I agree - I think wow be a much better game if it openly acknowledged it's pve bias. I would also much prefer to have the entire horde/alliance division removed, and having a more elaborate faction system take it's place.

You are asking for things that will never, ever happen. Blizzard has put in a faction system to support years and years of lore and storycraft, that will never be removed and they have said so repeatedly.

It was an immensely unfair system previously where Naxx geared groups steamrolled more casual groups in PVP. Arena removes this issue by matching teams, the assumption being equally geared teams will rise & fall to the same ratings band. I don't know if they have plans on a matching system for the battlegrounds, anyone?

The motivation for raiding is a mixture of items, progress, social interaction with friends, "beating" the computer, and probably half a dozen other things. DnT, Nihilum, etc care much more about progress and defeating content than getting new items. I myself am, frankly, much more interested in the little kid mentality of "I must collect it all!" and getting my character the absolute best items in every slot. No real idea why. I realized TBC raiding is simply not for me, as the best in every slot from raiding is a trivial upgrade over 5 mans, kara, and crafted loot and not worth anymore the huge effort involved.

I do not think raid drops are going to be significantly buffed, and the itemization difference between tiers will remain minimal. If you look closely at the changes in 2.0.10 they were extremely minor, and most of them involved nerfing 5 man instance drops. There is absolutely no reason to believe suddenly in 2.10.0 that 25 man raid items will get massive buffs. And frankly, they should not.

Blizzard has clearly given a big design decision on raiding with TBC - you raid for the sake of raiding, not to get items so you can go out and kick arse in PVP. The entire gladiator set, new resilience stats, raiding itemization, consumables, etc all flow from this design philosophy.

Look out 3-6 months when the keying process is probably nerfed, Gruuls and Magtheridon is puggable, SSC/TK is nerfed slightly, and they have fixed the consumables process. If you could zone into these instances and treat them like Karazhan in terms of difficulty, not have to pot much, and have a good night of raiding with friends you likely will still enjoy the game even if the drops are minimal upgrades. Its too bad Blizzard overtuned stuff to be too hard, but making stuff too easy could possibly have set up even larger howls of anger.

maybe I'm a lootwhore, but after I beat an encounter solidly, I really see no reason to go there again if the loot table sucks. Would people have farmed MC for month-upon-month if it wasn't for completing their tier1, getting tier2 pants or finally getting the mats for TF? I think not...

while this is absolutely fine from my point of view (hey I can now beat the boss and call it a day), from blizz's point of view it's gonna bit them where it hurts. Because guilds will probably not farm content that only brings sidegrades, and people aren't likely to keep playing if there's nothing to do, right?

Exactly, most people *need* a viable character progression path, with visible progress and milestones to strive for. This is beyond the issue of a gear reaching the point where the [gear plateau power level]+[consumables guild is willing to farm]+[skill level of guild] hits the [needed level] for a certain encounter. Quite simplified I know - but it's no small deal that the ability for lesser skilled players to "overgear" encounters has basically been removed.

As for the poster who mentioned that the Horde/Alliance will always be split: of course, I know that, and accept it. It does have a charm of it's own. I do think though that lore-wise the relationship is quite different from how it works in-game. Where the friendship between Tauren and Night Elves in the game? Where is the issue most races have with warlocks? These have been simplified out for gameplay reasons, and so be it, but I have no doubt that a better solution, lore-wise, with more interesting pve play, would be available was pvp not so big a part of the game.

I am fully aware of this. But this does not change the fact that right now, in-game, there exists a radically different itemization curve than what we saw pre-expansion. And that is what I am talking about. The PvP reward level is in a sense, the gear plateau I am talking about.

It will interesting to see when PvP rewards are updated, whether arena points costs will rise. If they do not - we will get a rather weird situation, where PvE players on tier 4/tier 5 level will use the arena solely to gear up in tier 6 gear to be able to advance beyond their current state.

You are correct, that I have not addressed the fact that if PvP rewards are updated seasonally (in a non-trivial way - this still remains to be seen) then the gear plateau is actually a moving target. But like I said above this has really strange consequences on the PvE endgame, where we may see a situation where staying fully out of PvP will severely hamstring a player's PvE potential.

The worst mistake Blizzard ever made was trying to balance out the two and i don't think we will EVER find a happy medium. Blizzard just needs to admit to the fact that the game is PVE centric and move on from there. They need to come to a design philosophy and stick to it, because what we have now isn't and will not work into the future.

The factions were pretty friendly at the end of Warcraft 3, and still aren't officially at war. If they'd wanted to do a pure PvE game having the factions peaceful and just having significantly lower starting rep really wouldn't have been much of a stretch.

I don't see this at all. Or rather, I can see where you are coming from, but show me why it is, that these two, PvE gained gear, and PvP balance must be intertwined in such a way, that breaking them apart would literally ruin the game? And I don't see the other assumption of your post, that a "happy" end-game requires gear with significant power gains.

They obviously relate, but you could think of a million solutions to this problem. When your OP states that we need to back to a pre-TBC gear like progression curve, it seems to be missing the ball completely. Arenas for example is a neat way to abolish gear as a factor. It's perfectly possible for a team in T6 to suck so badly, they are paired up against people in quest greens. And vice versa. Already there, you have PvP, and PvE gear, existing in unison, without any terrible fallpits as I see it.