I don't mind having to attune applicants. If they don't have the vials, they don't know vashj and kael so you can see how they perform on challenging new fights (to them). Their screw ups here probably won't wipe you, and you are practiced enough to not need 100% focus to see them on action on these fights.

We've been clearing Illidan since the end of August, and that doesn't mean we've exhausted all useful gear off T5 content. In the pacing thread people mentioned they feel they didn't get enough time to farm the rare drops or things that just randomly haven't dropped; attuning apps through them gives you more chances. An app denied who got an upgrade along the way (on gear that was other wise getting sharded), while probably still feeling bad, can at least point to something positive gained in addition to the experience.

This goes on to complicate the issue further to me. To get into BT, you have to have acess to Hyjal. To get acess to Hyjal you have to have cleared all of SSC/TK. Back to square one. Unless you are also saying that T6 attunements should just be lifted at this time. There are still no other horde guilds in T6 content on Mannoroth and i'm not so sure there ever will be either. Short story we went from 3/4TK to a full clear on T6 content in the time it took one guild to fall apart on Kael and another guild to just now get to a point where they can begin attempts on him. Our server is by far and wide not alone in having this type of monstrous gap between the top and the rest. I'm afraid requiring BT to enter Sunwell will just further this gap if nothing is changed.

When it comes to who does which instances, most guilds fall in one of the following categories:
GROUP 0 ("casual"):
- Full normal 5man and easier (avoiding "hard" heroics) heroics: Non-raiding guilds.
- Any heroic and half T4 ("Prince but not Nightbane"): Kara guilds.
GROUP 1:
- Maulgar farming guilds (Gruul not a "reliable" farm despite having killed, no real chance at Mag): Early 25 man guilds.
- Close-to-full T4 (Kara, Gruul sometimes Mag) and parts of t5 (VR/Lurker): Early SSC/TK guilds.
GROUP 2:
- "Fast" T4 and middle T5 guilds (T4 in hope for a prince weapon/DST - sometimes done on alts): Middle SSC/TK guilds.
- Close-to-full T5 (working on Vashj/Kael): Nearly-cleared SSC/TK guilds.
GROUP 3:
- Full T5, early T6 (just killed Vashj/Kael): Starting BT/Hyjal guilds.
- Middle T6 (on RoS): Mid BT/Hyjal guilds.
- Full T6-clearing: Illidan-clearing guilds. Currently out of content.

Advancing in groups is a hard thing to do and it's where a lot of guilds get stuck. You can't really recruit people from a group lower - they're undergeared or underattuned. Undergeared isn't that much of a problem when you're DE'ing half of the loot, underattuned though...

What a good attunement needs:
1) Minimum exploit potential to avoid completing the attunement as a group
2) Minimal chance to be a problem when odd group setups are required (ie: doable on alt with relative ease)
3) Should not require a guild which is far beyond (half to fully clearing) tier X to clear tier X minus 1 content
4) Should not be too hard to organize a completion; doesn't require many players (and they can possibly be alts), requires a small amount of time or has potential to drop items which are useful for everyone for a above-normal time.

The heroic keys meet NONE of these; Cenarion Expedition can be soloed to Revered, but especially tanks/healers are not very likely to have done so. Some servers are totally beyond normal mode instances to the point where you can't effectively rep grind. Alts probably haven't done normal instances much but often have good enough crafted gear.
The Karazhan attunement by itself meets all of these; a Kara guild wanting to backflag someone could run the attunement instances in heroic mode and a Kara guild should still have some use for badges.
The original SSC attunement met 1 but not 2-4. After the huge Gruul/Nightbane nerf point 3 was the only problem remaining.
The original TK attunement didn't meet any except 1, and even then you could exploit it in various ways (swapping people for the final bosses/Arca mass attunement). Everyone needed their own heroic keys to even think of getting attuned and the heroics were a huge pain in the ass too. In addition, the standard 3/7/15 raid setup did not translate very well into 1/1/3.
The Hyjal attunement only meets point 1. It really gets in the way to the point where raiders are split into two groups - Hyjal attuned, not Hyjal attuned. You need to fully clear both SSC/TK to get a single person attuned so attuning is a huge hassle.
The BT attunement basically comes along for free with the Hyjal attunement and isn't a real problem by itself (altough the 5 man chain part could be pretty hard to do these days).

Solutions which could work:
- Additional guild attunement after killing "checkpoint" bosses in BT/Hyjal, Gorefiend and Azgalor seem perfect judging from wowjutsu. Kill boss with at least X players from guild Y, guild Y is perma attuned. Exploit potential if the whole server joins the same ingame guild (but in different raidgroups still). Doesn't do anything for raiding alliances unless X is very low which would give exploit potential.
- Scrolls in the middle of the instance. Again, Gorefiend/Azgalor seem perfect checkpoints for guilds to stop saying "we don't need anything from T5 content".
- For every 4 attuned players entering a raid instance, one unattuned player can enter as well. Naj'entus and Winterchill drop begins a quest items to kill Gorefiend/Azgalor which give you attunement. Need to make sure that players don't tag along somehow - perhaps make it one quest requiring a kill of both and providing attunement to both. This is basically like scrolls except they need to have actually killed the bosses.
- Zul'Aman speed clear providing BT/Hyjal attunement. The speed clear is supposed to require late-T5 gear and thus should hopefully be doable in 9 people with early T6 and 1 slightly undergeared.




Having that said, what's probably going to happen is that Blizzard hotfixes Hyjal attunement out but keeps BT. My guess is a hotfix after 2.4. A guild would still have to kill Fathomlord and Al'ar to get BT attuned and Vashj/Kael drop some very good loot - and should be a bit easier in a bit of T6 gear.
I'm really hoping they'll learn for WotLK but I doubt it. In particular, AQ was a good thing, it's just the grinding parts that sucked (pretty badly). It wasn't THAT uncommon for early BWL guilds to gear up in really-early AQ40 but it really helped with progress (and gave people something to look forward to).

Why should people have to fight Kael and Vashj to go on? Cthun was a great fight, one of the best yet it wasn't a requirement to get into Naxx. In fact, people would probably mostly agree that it was good he wasn't.

All they have to do is give a reward seperate from attunement that is good enough that people will want to do Vashj and Kael. Its not that hard.

People should be allowed to play the game, if they want Kael and Vashj killed, they will attempt it. If they don't, their penalty is they won't get the experience and gear they offer.

Forcing people to spend an extra month in TK and SSC to kill two bosses to "earn" them the privellege of going on is not fun and totally unneccessary.