Well if you carry the analogy over, you'd be able to buy up to tier 5 with arena points no? I actually would not be against that.

You'd probably be able to sell Shahraz tokens which is miles easier than boosting people who couldn't get past 1900 on the best day of their life.

Then again, this would be a short term problem since S4's advent would remove the rating req on S3 shoulders.

Yeah, a lot of it is a matter of perception, which is why I think it's only truly important for the most recent season of gear, and I believe Blizzard's position on that perception is made clear by the rating requirement on S3 shoulders. I also think that even this change will cause something of an uproar (then again - what doesn't?) about why raiders get everything through raiding and PVPers can't get raid epics from PVP. But I still think it's a reasonable step.

Blizzard seems to be taking some very large steps towards preventing any sort of meaningful gear disparity at all, either between levels of PvP/PvE, or between those two varieties of play themselves. With the much-discussed T6 BoJ loot becoming available at the next stage of the Shattered Sun camp, and this newly revealed PvE->PvP gear conversion, the only significant differences will seem to be people at the very bleeding edge, and everyone else. I won't speculate about whether this is good or bad for the game as a whole, but it is certainly a noticeable shift away from the previous state of the game, in which gear was the only real way to progress your character. If all that progression(in PvP as well as PvE) is removed with each released content patch, I wonder what the benchmark of character progression will be. Idling in Shatt/IF/Org with your awesome epics certainly isn't it, and I'm not sure what it is any more.

Would it really be so bad if PvPers could get T5 tokens through Arena/PvP, if raiders can obtain S2 gear via tier tokens? It doesn't seem like a bad idea at all, since that tier gear is a few steps behind anyway.

Only because you can guy arena points but you can't really buy your way into beating a boss(sure you can pay a guild to take you, but that is somewhat different).

Edit: I'm not saying that I think such a system would be bad, I just think it's different in that you cannot 'lose' your way to PvE epics in the same way you can in PvP. As far as buying T5 and the like with arena points, it's obviously fine and wouldn't hurt a thing.

Well... on the face of it, you'd have the argument that having PVE/PVP gear implies a certain level of skill in that area, so recruitment for raiding guilds or arena teams could be made far more difficult with people in full T5 that have never even set foot inside even a heroic dungeon, or people in full Merciless who've never seen the inside of a battleground.

Closer inspection and a little common sense pokes a hole in that argument the size of Jupiter, since I'm sure we've ALL met plenty of people, in both aspects of the game, who are barely tie their own shoelaces.

Yeah but at this point of the game, if some guy spends 1500arena points to get a T5 token, as a raider, I'd only say, wtf cares. Just like getting S2 gear isn't going to make you a good pvper, getting T5 raid gear isn't going to create a guild to go into T6 content. It'd be fine with it working both ways really.

You could argue about S3 and T6 levels tho, like unless they plan to do S4 on 2.4 patch or soon after, it might be overkill to be able to trade T6 for the best arena gear.

I really think the reason they are providing easy access to everything but the highest level of gear is to close the gear gap before WotLK. If I were a designer I would like to be able to create starting encounters in WotLK that are actually interesting (notice I did not say hard or challenging) to end tier raiders while they level while not making them completely impossible for the average casual. With current gear disparities anything that is remotely a challenge for a group in T6 will wipe the floor with your average casual player.

I'm happy that Blizzard did this since I would be sort of forced to level up in instances only when WotlK came out. I have no PVP gear at all and wouldn't stand a chance against people who level up in their PVP gear.

Thanks Blizz

You still won't, unless you can loot some new tokens :P

Since the EU copy queue is still full and I can't go and check, would anyone mind checking if the Medallion of the Horde/Alliance trinket is among the PvP items that are now available for badges?

This is what they did...here's a screenshot from US PvP PTR:

http://screenshots.lenvik.org/wow/tk...608_145217.jpg

That's the end of the patrol path and the pack down the bottom has been moved halfway up as shown. The two crystalcore sentinels are still at the base of the ramp.

I don't think Shahraz is the boss you want to be ferrying clueless noobs on. They CAN get Fatal Attraction and kill everyone.

It would appear the "t6" badge loot is on the US PVE server at least. The armor appears to all be ilevel 141 and the weapons are ilevel 146.

Check itemids between 34887 and 34953

Here's the first four items, the rest have actual names :p

Edit: went ahead and added the first weapons near the front of the range... there's some more scattered near the end (like 2 more offhand fists and an offhand dagger I think).

No just the armor. Neck/Cloak/Trinkets etc aren't offered.

Season 1 Breastplate = Tier 4 Breastplate Token
Season 1 Legguards = Tier 4 Legguards Token
Season 1 Gloves = Tier 4 Gloves Token
Season 1 Helm = Tier 4 Helm Token
Season 1 Shoulders = Tier 4 Shoulders Token

Season 2 Breastplate = Tier 5/6 Breastplate Token
Season 2 Legguards = Tier 5/6 Legguards Token
Season 2 Gloves = Tier 5/6 Gloves Token
Season 2 Helm = Tier 5/6 Helm Token
Season 2 Shoulders = Tier 5/6 Shoulders Token
Season 2 Boots = 40 Badges
Season 2 Belt = 40 Badges
Season 2 Bracers = 25 Badges

Season 3 Boots = Tier 6 Token
Season 3 Belt = Tier 6 Token
Season 3 Bracers = Tier 6 Token

And as was mentioned earlier, there's a Weaponsmith coming up that will no doubt offer weapons in some fashion or another.

That melee ring is almost identical to the ring from Zul'Aman's 45 minute run, though it has 1 agi more making it better.

EDIT: I type too slow. I'll keep the item link for reference tho.

[Signet of Primal Wrath].

This.

By opening up a gear supermarket in 2.4, Blizzard (a) gives everyone something to do, as 99% of the playerbase have some gear that they wanted on their mains (nevermind alts) but couldn't get before that they can work towards now and (b) can norm the gear and encounter levels around some degree of epic equipment so they won't need to do such a jarring "epics for greens" change in Northrend as they did in Outland to get around the fact that some people were in Tier 3 and most people were at best in MC gear or PvP blues.

Nothing wrong with copying the ZA ring, best ring in the game for ferals ;p

Just confirming, S2 Weapons can NOT be bought with badges(or anything else besides what they cost in the current live patch)?

Not yet, but again there's a Weaponsmith coming up, she's only at 1%.

Edit: Ohh maybe she'll offer Tier 4 Blacksmithing Weapon plans.

Except they can't really do that otherwise people who buy the game after WotLK is out and all the new deathknights would be stuck leveling to 80 in the outlands.

Blizzard already posted that Northrend will almost certainly be a gear reset like Outland, didn't they?