I've seen a lot of threads revolving around TBC talents and how TBC will impact raiding, this isnt one of them.

If I understand things right; with the upcoming TBC levels and itemisation changes (rating etc) the items we're currently farming will become near to useless at level 70. I've even seen a blue comment (sorry I lost the link) that mentions that tier3 is laughable at level 70 O_o

Is anyone finding the above to be somewhat demotivating to farm current content and seeing it have some impact on raid attendancy? I've even had some m8s talking about selling their current accounts with mass epics and gold, whilst its actually worth something, and getting some twink leveling items for the character-type that they've always had high interest in to make a level-burst to 70 on a new account. I'm alliance and most of my alliance friends are somewhat intrueged by the Shaman dual wield and other talents, and getting a second account ready to level-burst...Funnily enough I've seen the opposite reaction from Shamans, who are planning to level Paladins ^^

Is this an issue that has been discussed by others a lot? How big will the impact be on current items and how has it effected your guild's current farming? Share your thoughts ;]

yeah whats the point of anything though right

I think the general response will be along the lines of:

The people who play this game (the raiders, i mean) play to learn new encounters, have the best possible gear now, and enjoy the idea of raiding.

It's the nature of the game (genre, i suppose) that the items you get now, will be obsolete in 3-4 months time. Nothing new, that's just how MMO's work.

I think the biggest problem a lot of people have is that TBC is coming so soon after Naxx.

By the time TBC comes out, DnT will have 8 or 9 kills of Kel'Thuzad, and would be lucky to even have a ring for each class or get all the drops off of KT. Guilds like mine or EJ will have only a few to a half dozen kills of KT, and most guilds that had AQ40 on farm mode when Naxx come out, and BWL on farm mode long before AQ40 came out, and MC on farm before BWL came out, will not even be passed 4H.

So, my guild will go and kill KT a few times then TBC comes out. Will we return with our >60 characters and clear naxx? Depends on what people are finding in Kharazan/BTemple and how long it takes to 60, but if things are progressing as is, it would be worth more time (let's say it takes 10 hours to clear Naxx at that point, that's 400 man hours, and probably closer to 600 including the farming and extra shit), to do Naxx or to level? Probably level.

So we're not really seeing the full swing of Naxxramas, we're kind of skipping it for the most part. Very few people will get the chance to get Ashbringer, and very few will get 8/9 of a set.

The Christmas time is unavoidable, but it would have been nice to release TBC several months later.


The other problem is that for many classes, Naxx set items make for poor leveling gear. Priests, paladins, druids and warriors I know aren't leveling in Naxx gear, they'll be using AQ40 gear, so the idea of farming for Naxx gear that I won't use in TBC is disheartening.

If all you care about as far as raiding goes is getting loot then stop playing until the expansion releases.

Uh we keep killing stuff because it's fun and we like each other? Plus it will help us when leveling up in some form.

a greedy player

I guess most guilds avoid discussing this, because it is really demotivating. If you are a guild with a shot at killing KT, 4h or other meaningful bosses, it should not be a huge issue, because i assume those people are there more for the challenge and the achievement than anything else.

Certain raid groups are gear oriented. The players are more concerned about what items are dropping than the social relations between them. These are the groups suffering the most. Guilds filled with friends are not going to have a lot of problems now, but when the raids get cut to 25 man, a new issue will rise for them.

My guild is kind of misinformed, so they have no clue about this. They really believe that aq40 and naxx gear will be standard lvl70 25 man gear. With that in mind, we have had no problems concerning attendence mostly because of this. If everyone was well aware of this i think it could have already collapsed.

As the expansion release date approaches, with more information available, this may turn into a serious issue for a lot of guilds, including mine.

Defeating Naax content while a 60 is something that few people will be able to say (causals can come back at 63 or higher can have a easier time), that is an something to be proud of.

A quote from Drysc sort of sums up my feelings:
The amount of people that have passed through them (he is referring to the 40 man raids), the fun that’s been had; it’s all validation for the time and effort that went in to creating them.

Is it really? I remember when we did things like Ring of Fire etc in EQ after they revamped Inner Acrylia. A few of the guilds got a chance to farm the keys, and screw with the content, but instead of going, HEY LOOK WHAT WE DID, it left us all with a very bitter taste in our mouth because of how worthless the zone was and how quickly it turned obsolete.

I don't necessarily think Naxx will run this course, but there is a bit of bitterness toward saying, Hey we killed KT before we came to TBC, how bout you guys? Well, we didn't, have you seen our MTs new uber loot? Yea, make's Widow's Remorse look like crap.

The way progression goes it does kinda let a bit of the wind out of your sails to know that you did a ton of work previously for a zone most won't end up touching.

My gear concern is about PvP/Arena gear. On one hand, Tier 3 groups vs Tier 0 groups in BGs was unbalanced, but on the other completely seperating PvP and PvE obtained gear from each other is just...too much, IMO.

It would have been so much better if Blizz had managed to just pit Tier 3 groups against Tier 3 groups. Not being able to bring your PvE everywhere kills half the excitement of getting it. Conversely, what are you going to do with all that PvP gear if you finally finallly get the equivalent of R14 in the expansion and have everything you want, but can't bring them outside to replace your greens?

When was it announced that Arena gear stays inside the Arena? I don't remember hearing anything as silly as that.

As much as I like raiding, this

4,123 Dreamfoil
2,400 Gromsblood
427 Elemental Water
700 Mountain Silversage
500 Icecap
1,152 Stonescale Oil
202 Black Lotus

Isn't fun.

I think Drysc was more referring to the fact that unlike the 5-10man's that include questlines (for levelling), the current "end-game" content now, is going to be almost totally excluded and never touched once the xpac comes out.

From a design point of view, this would seem like a waste (spending so much time and effort in to dungeons that have a limited life time) but from what it looks like Drysc is just trying to justify it.

I'm still hoping in a patch post-expansion, that current raid instances (ZG -> Naxx) will get the Difficulty settings.

To be honest, it would be the best way to make sure that these instances are actually used post-expansion. Blizzard could probably even retool them as 10/25 person raids if they wanted to have consitancy.

You're going to shard the gear eventually. Does it matter that it was because you hit 70 instead of hitting Naxx 2.0?

In theory, anyway.

Please help. Tell me it's ok to shard Nightslayer. Every epic I've ever paid DKP for is stinking up my bank! In a way I'm glad my raid guild fell apart, otherwise I was going to run into some interesting logistical challenges with Yet Another Tier of Raid Gear Banked.

all i know is that shits gonna hit the fan when the 70 instances are opened in the beta and/or a PTR-type open beta is done, its gonna get bad when all the new items are leaked and people don't feel like farming for naxx anymore.

they've actually done a great job so far, lots of people still believe that tier3 gear will be useful at 70. you see constantly posts about how high iLevels tier3 is and how it'll help grind, etc. it would be dumb for blizzard not to force a level playing field around level 65.

arena teams quickly match up with equally "skilled" teams (similar win/loss ratios) so that will equalize the gear differences quickly - teams in top gear will rise to the top and play equally geared (or extremely skilled yet undergeared) teams.

MC and BWL will probably fall by the wayside, but Naxxrammas, and to a lesser extent AQ40, will be kept alive by the legendary quests - everyone's going to want Ashbringer or Atiesh.

Well I doubt that Naxx etc will be completly useless in TBC; seeing how you need an Ashbringer to start the quest after all. Maybe the T3 stuff will be upgraded with new stamina formulas as well, then it wouldn't compare as bad as it does right now to the leaked blues.

A more important concern imo is how on earth is Blizz going to release the expansion in 2 months??? It seems ludicrous to imagine they can do it at this point, given the minor changes of 1.2.1 have taken nearly 3 weeks and the 1.11 patch that introduced naxx was in testing nearly 2 months itself. Unless they are pushing out a nearly finished beta patch to testers in the next 2 weeks it looks more and more like TBC won't be out till january at the earliest.

What is the cut off date anyways? I would say Oct 1st for all-instances-and-areas-done, Nov 1st for wide open beta, Nov 22nd release. All that is pushing it however, 3 weeks for a final open beta test is a bit crazy and pretty much guarantees massive bugs on release.

You'd be suprised how much content is already done. The problem they are going to run into is they don't have enough time to fine-tune a lot of this stuff, especially class changes.

Tuco said it very well.

Their wil be no open beta, that has allready been announced on Blizzards forums , and a closed beta of 1st of October to 1st of November has been rumored for quite some time. Since some of the content of TBC was allready mentioned in the original Wow alpha so they have been working on it for a long time.The effects of it are allready been felt in that we have had 3 long timers talk about semi retirement till TBC and we are recruiting again.