I would be very interested to see if anyone who plays a Prot paladin/warrior or a healing spec for their main is willing to argue in favor of high costs of respecs.

Hi there, I'm a holy pally who respecs ret for funsies every week. I'm more than happy with the way the respec system is set up.

Or if you want to be the god of PvP, you could just choose to stick with PvP, because it's probably not worth it to you to spend hundreds of gold a week to participate in PvE. Which is exactly the choice many players are making, and the problem that Blizzard is faced with. The idea that success is based on sacrifice is only questionably true in real life, and certainly not true in any other game type, so I don't see why it's so pervasive in the world of MMO's. But there it is, popping up in arguments all the damn time.

I don't buy this inflation argument at all. The same thing was argued quite thoroughly before the 2.1 consumables changes, it's trumpeted as gospel whenever anyone suggests a change to mana potions. As far as I can tell, the value of gold in WoW is based far more on the difficulty of acquiring gold than the amount of gold in the system; the number of new players in the game is such that people are willing to pay in the amount of gold they've been able to acquire, and just won't pay if people choose to make the prices too unreasonable.

If there has been inflation, it's been due to daily quests.

And if there needs to be mechanisms to keep the gold supply in check, then they shouldn't be based on factors that affect players unequally, and it shouldn't also be a mechanism that drives a wedge between the community's members. This is common sense.

Essentially false logic. If players are doing daily quests to gain gold for respeccing, then that's over and above the gold they're going to have to spend on other tasks, from repairs to consumables to buying auctions. Opportunity costs. They'll have to spend even more time farming for other things.

I'd even take issue with your number of 50g. You're at least dealing with a unit of 100g (to switch and then switch back), and then if absolutely anything unexpected happens, like being unable to finish your set of Arena games, or just deciding you want to do some casual PvP, then you're multiplying that 100g several times.

Not a pleasant prospect.

I'm actually impressed that you managed to fit in the Golden Trio of:

(1) hard work and sacrifice to earn your epics!
(2) but think about the inflation!
(3) but gold is easy to get!

I've always found these all to be extraordinarily dubious, and even a little bit contradictory. Here they all are in one post!

Well, I asked for it and I got it!

I want to write a #1 Bestseller novel, cure cancer, and invent a car that runs on water. Unfortunately, I don't have the time or money to spend 15 years in higher education, not to mention the research involved in the latter two. The reason MMOs have the idea of sacrifice which is so pervasive in the real world is that they're the only type of game which tries to emulate one. MMOs have an economy, they have a job system (Dailies), they have professional sports (Arenas & BGs). FPSs have... Shooting. And aliens, usually. There is no money system. You have one goal, to beat the level and move on. And once you've finished the game, you're done except for replaying it occasionally if it was really good. An MMO is designed to keep you playing until the servers die.

And because you asked, I'm Balance (as I've mentioned before). I for the life of me can't wrap my head around PvP with Adoriele. I suck at it. So I levelled a Rogue who I PvP with. The two are separate characters with different goals, and amazingly, the system works. I'm also in the process of levelling a Resto Shaman (levelling as Enhance, will probably switch over at 60) so that I can have at least one healer help out with my guild.

Honestly when the expansion originally went into beta, I was extremely surprised that the maximum respec cost was not increased to 100g or more. Two respecs a week can be erased in less than an hour of grinding/questing now. Any more than two respecs a week generally shows a lack of ability to budget PvP/PvE time (or a conscious decision to eat the extra respec costs on the part of the player).

That being said, I do not see current respec costs as "high" or prohibitive in any way. Even without wiping you probably spend more on repairs/consumables in a given week. I've done weekly respecs between arms/fury before, and disc/shadow now. It's really not that big a deal.

About respecs. I think great idea would be being able to "buy" spec for some amount of time (week, month?). That way I could "subscribe" my specs and use them whenever I like (tank heroic now, after that some PvP, then raid as fury).

The way it is now is terrible. I hate being unable to do something I would like because it is just not worth to throw 100g for one bloody daily heroic.

P.S. Yes you can tanks heroics as arms. Yes you can pvp in bg as prot. Problem is that it is not fun experience.

Pre-TBC, respec costs weren't a major source of economic stability, because people didn't respec twice a week unless they were clinically insane. It's quite possible that respec costs have had to step up and take that role in the economy, since the previous main economic stabilizer of repair costs are comparatively much smaller. Maybe haircuts and dances will take up that role in WLK.

You've got to be kidding me. With only kara tanking gear I had zero problems tanking heroics as either arms or fury. In fact I found it more fun as fury than as prot due to rage generation issues as prot. When I only had dungeon blues for tanking, yeah, it was rough without being prot. But on anything other than a brand new 70 (which is a dubious position to be in to tank heroics to begin with) it shouldn't be a problem unless the rest of the group is extremely awful, at which point being prot isn't going to help that much anyway.

Yep, they're not high, and not prohibitive; just a pointless tax which requires you to grind dailies you could otherwise not. It's not fun and doesn't add anything other than "an excitiing minigame" of respec management.

Well from the start of proper raiding in SSC/TK (before dailies) Primals have remained roughly the same value despite the introduction of many new ways of making gold, odd dont you think? I dont know about other servers exactly but I believe they haven't really gone up that much. Come to think of it Ore and Leather type things seem to of kept their value aswell, rare items and epics have also somewhat kept the same from my experience due to the massive influx of more available items - I wonder how DLK/DW BoE's will factor into this.

Could you perhaps expand on what people spend money over different types of players? the other interesting thing im curious about is the potential downplay of craftable BoE items due to the massive rise in available Badge gear which will no doubt become a trend in WoTLK aswell. Im sure there will always be a couple of uninformed players who will still pay over-the-top prices for items inferior or roughly on-par with Badge/Honor items, but the number of them has been getting and will get smaller I think.

How can they really keep up with gold in WoTLK either? perhaps the cost of vendor-brought items (Rep/Badges) should include a larger sum of gold if thats going to be the new availability of them.

This post is a huge fantasy.

A majority of the Prot tree is devoted to generating more threat with less rage, not with tanking considerably less damage. The only conceivable way you could find it easier to tank with Arms/Fury in a heroic is if you were taking loads of damage in DPS gear versus wearing actual tanking gear while specced Prot.

I think that there are three issues here, and that we might want to separate them out.

1. Respeccing for group PvE versus solo farming.

I think this is mostly a non-issue with the introduction of dailies and spelldamage on healing gear. It's fairly easy for even a healer class to farm gold to pay for group PvE. Warrior tanks might need a small boost in solo DPS, but other than that I think everyone is is in decent shape to at least keep their heads above water.

2. Respeccing for two different PvE fights.

I think that we all agree that the scenario where you send people back to the capital and respec, then summon them back to the raid instance, is excessive, and should be discouraged. And I think the current system does this well. While 50g is not a lot of money, it's enough of a barrier that most guilds don't do this unless desperate.

3. Respeccing for PvP from PvE and vice-versa.

This is the big one. The two facets of the game are very different. One entire leg of the trinity (tanking) is missing from PvP. In many ways, it's almost like two different games, and here respec costs hurt people who try to participate in both aspects of the game. In particular, it hurts PvE more, as PvE needs more people to be involved to be successful.

My thought is that we should try and allow respecs for Reason 3, while preventing respecs for Reason 2. Now, how to do that is a more complex question.

Perhaps Blizzard could offer 2 free respecs a week, and all subsequent respecs are 100g or more. That way you could respec for PvP, and then respec back to your PvE spec.

You mean like repair costs?

Either way, the difference in tanking heroics once you're past a certain gear level for any spec is so small that I find anyone claiming it's frustrating to tank them as non-prot to be full of shit.

... or allow you to set an alternative spec for arenas/battlegrounds, which is automatically applied as soon as you zone in. That makes "Reason 3" respecs completely automated (and free), while a "Reason 2" respec would require you to go and reset your the spec on your PvE tab.

In fact, you could allow three different specs based on different types of content:

1) Instanced PvE (5-man, 10-man and raid)
2) Instanced PvP (arena + battlegrounds)
3) Outside world

Each one would be set independently, with a cost to change any of the three specs.

There are actually a lot more gold sinks than people realize. Training costs often are more than characters can afford depending on their leveling habits, and tend to leave characters with a very small amount of cash. All levels of mounts are a huge sink of gold - not just when they're bought, but when people are saving for them. Inflation is not caused solely by an increase of money supply; people have to actually spend that money. The rate at which money is spent (its velocity) is just as important in the inflation of the valuation of commodities in hard currency in a free market. If someone wants to save for an epic mount, that 5k gold is basically gone from the economy already. It leads to less auctions bought (or a lower price for them), and less money for auction sellers. Thus not spending money will drive down prices, and the more money that's put into the system the more many people will just save. The auction house cut takes a percentage out of the amount of cash that flows through it, and probably is a much larger gold sink than most realize. It also works to counteract inflation caused by money being spent faster.

While its true that some people do dailies regardless, a whole lot of folks probably only do them when they need the cash for whatever reason. If respec costs are removed, there will likely be a nearly identical drop in dailies completed such that the total amount of funds spent in the market economy remains fairly similar.

I would definitely like to see the cap raised, but keep the increments low. My respec costs are rarely above the minimum they can go down to because I don't care how well I do when I pvp, and I am loathe to take up a new spec on a whim. Respecing should be something that is fairly rare, and I've felt the whole talent system to be flawed when they didn't raise the cap in TBC. I personally don't like the existence of the cap in the first place - it should get harder and harder to retrain yourself. I consider the use of a semi-permanent talent system to differentiate characters of the same class part of the appeal of the game; when the "semi-permanent" becomes all too temporary, its a completely different system.

If you want to PVP and raid, either pay the price with gold or with leveling another character. Assuming the expansion is coming soon, there won't be a huge gap of getting gear for either type of character. Give your new character the same appearance and a similar name, and pretend they're the same character!

No, not like repair costs.

For a guild who has a particular raid instance on farm, they should be able to maintain a decently low repair cost, and might even be able to turn a profit with 2.4's increased boss gold drops. The better you are, the less you have to pay.

While I suppose one could argue "the better you are, the more you can PvP with a PvE spec or vice-versa", his point was that you can avoid having to pay high repair bills if you don't keep wiping to a boss, but you can't avoid having to pay respec bills between raiding and your 10 games a week.

I for one am far from convinced that the current difference in min-maxing your PvP versus your PvE potential is a bad thing. The fact that you pick what you wish to be good at, and that changing this choice comes at a cost, is something I really don't see as a problem. If you wish to PvP seriously, spec and gear for it. Ditto for raiding. This gives people identity for one thing and it also gives people a real choice of what to do with their time and / or gold. I really like it and find it adds flavor to the game.

Stop me if this is a derail, but I have to take an issue with that last line.

Specifically, the lack of options in actually gearing for PvP. I have a friend who leveled a Druid specifically to play as an arena healer. Immediately upon hitting 70, I found it rather disconcerting that he had nothing to look forward to except weeks and weeks of Alterac Valley and 10 games of basement-dwelling arena.

I put this in contrast with my experience, gearing up for Protection from absolutely nothing. If we discard the whole raiding equation entirely, I had my pick of 5-man dungeon runs (normal and heroic), craftable items, pure gold farming or even casual PvP (to a lesser extent) as a means of getting upgrades.

For my friend, while there are a few isolated cases of resilience-bearing items in dungeons and craftables, those are either quite inferior to the actual PvP items (see [A'dal's Recovery Necklace] and [Runed Fungalcap])or are prohibitively expensive for what they do (see [Resolute Cape]).

I acknowledge the tier token trade-in for Gladiator armor as a good idea, but that really only applies to well-progressed raiders as a means of keeping their interest in an otherwise farmed zone (or even a progression zone with a token that would otherwise be sharded).

Even the rep-based HWL gear is a stopgap measure at best: You'd still be looking at over 100k honor for the remaining pieces, even if you already treat the 5 slots as final and will only replace them with arena points.

So, what are your thoughts on alternate advancement in terms of PvP gearing?

He's just talking out of his ass, so no point elaborating on reality.

People arguing that respec should be removed agree that the cost is nothing but an annoyance, that's it no big deal. They also understand the concept of inflation and removing money from the economy. So why bother asking for free respec? It serves a purpose, is not annoying enough to deter you from respecing(contrary to prebc), and making money with the dailies can be done as any spec. Blizzard is even throwing more money into the world by raising bosses drops, so it'll cover your repairs after 3-4weeks of farming(that's a random estimation) and adding more daillies.

I really fail to see how it's a problem to have to spend a bit of time everyday to do what you want to. It's still a mmorpg, and you're still going to have to do stuff you don't want to to do stuff you want to. That's the concept really, and unless the annoying part outgrows the funny one, it's not an issue. Naxx consumables farming was the wrong way, current respec costs is the right way.[/quote]

You're really on the wrong side of this argument.

If we've established that, at best, it's annoyance, then why are you supporting them? Why this urge to rationalize the current state of affairs? It's plainly obvious that it's a divisive issue to the community at large, and one of those barriers that doesn't really do anything except lessen your enjoyment of the game. You say that you don't care about PvP; that's fine, and you're in a very heavy PvE guild, presumably with friends who feel much the same way.

Other people do PvP quite seriously, and that includes friends of mine. People who aren't on six hours every weeknight, and who just aren't interested in scheduling their week in advance. These are people who would like to run an instance now and then, but don't want to suffer through heroics in PvP spec any more than I want to spend times in battlegrounds or Arenas as a Prot warrior. I don't enjoy logging on at night and not being able to spend time with my group of friends because I'm not willing to shell out 100g for a few hours of PvP, but this situation occurs *all the time* with people who aren't isolated within their PvE-focused guild. With people whose idea of PvP isn't respeccing for two hours a week to grind out some Arena gear.

Now, I guess you probably don't give a shit, and would gladly tell those people to work harder at WoW or whatever happens to fit your idea of how WoW is supposed to work, but I assure you that these are real obstacles affecting a huge number of people in this game, that are preventing them from engaging in half the game. Because they don't want to measure their leisure time in the number of daily quests they're going to have to complete to enjoy it. If it comes to spending 100g to enjoy running an instance or two, then obviously they're just going to stop running instances and stick with the PvP grind.

Frankly, I just don't see how it's so difficult to empathize with people who want to engage in PvE and PvP on the same character without spending a large chunk of their not-unlimited game time doing daily quests.

Is the amount of inflation being prevented by free respecs really as game-destroying as people make it out to be? If the price of services or items on the auction house goes up because all players have more money available, then it goes up for both buyers and sellers at the same time. New L70s with little gold will find they can sell their gem cuts, enchantments, or BoE world drops, for more than before.

You could say that inflation doesn't affect everyone exactly evenly (maybe your profession or free time doesn't involve trading services or the auction house) but then neither do dailies (not everyone does them) or respec costs.

I really liked the idea someone raised earlier about "subscribing" so a spec.

For instance, myself, i work full time 9-5, but i both raid T6 with illidan on farm, aswell as play arena at 2k+ rating. However, i have almost no time what-so-ever to farm gold. But I'd love the ability to play arena for an hour or so before raid (and i cant exactly compete with a pure pve spec and maintain ratings). Why must my play schedule be dictated to only raiding in the week, and only pvping on a weekend, as I can only afford the 100g to pvp spec for the weekend.

If i could just pay 50g per spec per week, that would be great, effectively the same gold going into the economy, but it allows me to PLAY what i want when i want, and not dictated purely by the fact i cant afford to respec daily.

I'm certain i'm not alone in this position, and a huge majority of arena players are in the same position. If they want to encourage people to partake in both pve and pvp, they need to stop penalising so harshly for people wanting to do just that, when it's so much easier to just pigeon hole yourself.