A tale of two bloggers!
Faradhim:
Once upon a time, if you did progression content it meant you were raiding heavily. It is like a treadmill, you can't stop running; if you do you fall off and others who you have raided moved ahead both in experience and gear. I heard this was true for vanilla WOW (I wasn't there), I know this to be true for BC. Except a few piece craftable purples at the very high end if you were wearing any epic it meant you were raiding. In BC, majority of raiders got stuck at Kara because of the gear check. Most people didn't have time/energy/gear to raid 25 unless they were really dedicated; apparently blizzard didn't like that.
In WOTLK progresison is different. There are 10 men version of each raid 25 has. Blizzard did this to remove the barrier of entry for people who are in smaller and social guilds that is not dedicated to raid. At beginning Blizzard want to give 25 men raid a different gear progression path, but they did away with that as well, now 10 men raid simple drops gear 1 tier below the 25. Now Blizzard has taken this a step further, since patch 3.2 they have started to give 5 men instance a progression path 2 tiers behind the 25 men. The release of Trial of champion (5 men wing of ToC) is either viewed as the best or worst thing ever happened to raiding. The instance dropped 200 level purples for normal and level 219 purples for heroic. Although I would argue the difficult of H. ToC run is on scale close or exceed Naxx 10 it is still nevertheless a loot pinata. I dare to say this instance is singlely responsible for gearing up a entire generation of raiders for Ulduar who hasn't even seen the inside of Naxx. Blizzard isn't done with this yet. For version 3.3, they are giving us 3 new 5 men instances that will drop gear at 219 (normal) and 232 (heroic) levels.
These changes are interesting in a couple of fronts. 1). If blizzard indeed from now on will continue to step up 5-men contents lock step with raids it means players will now will have a 3rd progression path. Instead doing 25 men and 10 men you can now simplely only run 5-men. 2). Your farmable gear will now be 2 generations (2 tiers) behind the top raider. This is very meanfully in birds eye of things since only the very top tier guild (dedicated players) will be able to afford the top level gears. The messes will now be more or less ready to tackle fair high end content. 3). This also means unless your guild has progressed at the rate of content release there is little points doing the content you are currently doing. Case and point, my small social guild is in Ulduar currently; if they haven't moved out of Ulduar by the time 3.3 hit there is little point doing it since the new 5 men will drop gears better than anything you can get out of 10 men Ulduar. This has already happened to us in Naxx 10. We were struggling and clearing Naxx 10 when 3.2 hit, because of the new drops from Trial of Champion a lot raiders saw little point continue that grind (except for the achievement). 4). Gear can no longer be used by top raiding guild to evaluate players since everyone and their grandmother will have a set i219/i232 gears. 5). If you are in a small/social guild and just want to have fun, you really don't need to have dedicated raiders to help you out. Everyone in theory will have enough resource to over gear the content.
To sum this together, since I take Blizzard's design philosophy of letting the messes enjoy all contents isn't going away; these changes really means there is little or no real sense to be in a hardcore progression raiding guild unless you really enjoy it. For the messes you have time on your side, all contents that the hardcore guilds are beating their head against will be easily accessible and beatable by you and the PUGs in a patch or two.
As a casual player I should feel pretty happy about this since I don't really have dedicated time to raid, but some how I can't quit seem to get my enthusiasm up. Maybe it is because I am really a hardcore at heart but don't have the time/energy to implement it.
Gibster:
I think the dicotomy will always be there, and blizz has taken an interesting approach, something which I hope continues. However, I dont like the fact that they made naxx pretty much obsolete in terms of the big picture. However, if you look at it, there are only a handful of slots that are good for emblems of conquest, and EoT as of now are very hard to get for casuals. For example on my DK I have all the EOC stuff but still have many slots with ilvl 200 or 187 which I just cant find upgrades for (well not easily or cheaply). This despite all the drops from hTOC and all the EOC stuff. So those things only go so far, for casuals you will never have a full set of the best stuff, or even second best, since from some peoples standpoint my DK should be in full ilvl226 by now.
For 10 man raid guilds, you can gear up people simply much much faster than you could if they were casual. You can run a clear of naxx and a clear of ulduar in a week (again these guilds typically raid 12 hours a week or so), and that means about 80 pieces of gear and 30 EoC, so that is enough to gear up a few people from blues. Of course this is more theory, in likelyhood it will take a few weeks for someone to get decently geared, if they are doing these full clears.
Now the 25 mans are interesting. Most are done with Ulduar and are running TOC. Current ToC 25 drops the best stuff in the game. However, they will not run heroics, and they wont run naxx (well i'm painting with a large brush). For these guys, there is zero reason to run naxx, and they probably dont even need EoC stuff, since there are only a handful of slots they can be used for and chances are they already have real ulduar stuff in those slots. So, for the big guilds, yeah its vastly differnt, very few heroics, very few 10 mans, what they do is run UD25 and TOC 25 and Ony and VOA 25. So they have access to all the orbs, all the patterns, etc. Dont forget the tier 9.5 stuff can *only* be bought using EOT AND a special emblem dropped from 25 TOC
Now what is going to happen in 3.3? Exactly the same thing. Ulduar 25 is going to be gone, people will run TOC25 and IC25. For us casuals, we are going to run the new instance, run ulduar, start doing TOC10. However, since the gear sets are different, people are going to be able to jump to tier 9 with tokens (the 5 piece set), and run UD for off-set items. There will still be a need to run UD and so forth, but not quite as much.
Basically 3.3 is going to be better for casuals than 3.2 is, and a little less of a gear spread between casuals and 25 man raiding guilds.
I guess one thing is, for people who just want to run 5 mans, what is enough? Certainly running heroics and hTOC will be enough for the new icecrown 5 mans. Likewise, doing ulduar and TOC full clears when what you really want to do is be able to run heroics is overkill. As of now, for most of my toons heroics are really overkill, I just dont need the stuff there, and I don't need most of my gear to be able to do it. There is just zero challenge there. With hTOC at least it is a challenge. Which is why I like raiding, it is a challenge. Every boss is wipable, even early naxx. Hopefully the new 5 mans will be at least a challenge for people who have played a while and are in naxx/ulduar gear. I think the worst thing a game can do is make content that you outgear so quickly and becomes boring. Which is why I jokingly said there should be two levels of heroics, the normal mode and 'super hard' which drops 2x as much badges.
BC heroics were just *tough*, stuff like shattered halls was tuned for people beyond kara gear. So you really had to know what you are doing. All the knowledge of aggro and crowd control and dont stand here do stand there was lost in Wraith up until ulduar, which is why so many guilds have just a hard time in ulduar, because those skills were never taught. I dont blame the players, I blame the developers.
Overall however, I'd say if you never plan to step foot in a raid, do your heroics and be happy that you will outgear them quickly, but dont think that running heroics is all you need to do to become a successsful raider. You need to have some raid experience and success, not to mention raid loot.
Faradhim:
Once upon a time, if you did progression content it meant you were raiding heavily. It is like a treadmill, you can't stop running; if you do you fall off and others who you have raided moved ahead both in experience and gear. I heard this was true for vanilla WOW (I wasn't there), I know this to be true for BC. Except a few piece craftable purples at the very high end if you were wearing any epic it meant you were raiding. In BC, majority of raiders got stuck at Kara because of the gear check. Most people didn't have time/energy/gear to raid 25 unless they were really dedicated; apparently blizzard didn't like that.
In WOTLK progresison is different. There are 10 men version of each raid 25 has. Blizzard did this to remove the barrier of entry for people who are in smaller and social guilds that is not dedicated to raid. At beginning Blizzard want to give 25 men raid a different gear progression path, but they did away with that as well, now 10 men raid simple drops gear 1 tier below the 25. Now Blizzard has taken this a step further, since patch 3.2 they have started to give 5 men instance a progression path 2 tiers behind the 25 men. The release of Trial of champion (5 men wing of ToC) is either viewed as the best or worst thing ever happened to raiding. The instance dropped 200 level purples for normal and level 219 purples for heroic. Although I would argue the difficult of H. ToC run is on scale close or exceed Naxx 10 it is still nevertheless a loot pinata. I dare to say this instance is singlely responsible for gearing up a entire generation of raiders for Ulduar who hasn't even seen the inside of Naxx. Blizzard isn't done with this yet. For version 3.3, they are giving us 3 new 5 men instances that will drop gear at 219 (normal) and 232 (heroic) levels.
These changes are interesting in a couple of fronts. 1). If blizzard indeed from now on will continue to step up 5-men contents lock step with raids it means players will now will have a 3rd progression path. Instead doing 25 men and 10 men you can now simplely only run 5-men. 2). Your farmable gear will now be 2 generations (2 tiers) behind the top raider. This is very meanfully in birds eye of things since only the very top tier guild (dedicated players) will be able to afford the top level gears. The messes will now be more or less ready to tackle fair high end content. 3). This also means unless your guild has progressed at the rate of content release there is little points doing the content you are currently doing. Case and point, my small social guild is in Ulduar currently; if they haven't moved out of Ulduar by the time 3.3 hit there is little point doing it since the new 5 men will drop gears better than anything you can get out of 10 men Ulduar. This has already happened to us in Naxx 10. We were struggling and clearing Naxx 10 when 3.2 hit, because of the new drops from Trial of Champion a lot raiders saw little point continue that grind (except for the achievement). 4). Gear can no longer be used by top raiding guild to evaluate players since everyone and their grandmother will have a set i219/i232 gears. 5). If you are in a small/social guild and just want to have fun, you really don't need to have dedicated raiders to help you out. Everyone in theory will have enough resource to over gear the content.
To sum this together, since I take Blizzard's design philosophy of letting the messes enjoy all contents isn't going away; these changes really means there is little or no real sense to be in a hardcore progression raiding guild unless you really enjoy it. For the messes you have time on your side, all contents that the hardcore guilds are beating their head against will be easily accessible and beatable by you and the PUGs in a patch or two.
As a casual player I should feel pretty happy about this since I don't really have dedicated time to raid, but some how I can't quit seem to get my enthusiasm up. Maybe it is because I am really a hardcore at heart but don't have the time/energy to implement it.
Gibster:
I think the dicotomy will always be there, and blizz has taken an interesting approach, something which I hope continues. However, I dont like the fact that they made naxx pretty much obsolete in terms of the big picture. However, if you look at it, there are only a handful of slots that are good for emblems of conquest, and EoT as of now are very hard to get for casuals. For example on my DK I have all the EOC stuff but still have many slots with ilvl 200 or 187 which I just cant find upgrades for (well not easily or cheaply). This despite all the drops from hTOC and all the EOC stuff. So those things only go so far, for casuals you will never have a full set of the best stuff, or even second best, since from some peoples standpoint my DK should be in full ilvl226 by now.
For 10 man raid guilds, you can gear up people simply much much faster than you could if they were casual. You can run a clear of naxx and a clear of ulduar in a week (again these guilds typically raid 12 hours a week or so), and that means about 80 pieces of gear and 30 EoC, so that is enough to gear up a few people from blues. Of course this is more theory, in likelyhood it will take a few weeks for someone to get decently geared, if they are doing these full clears.
Now the 25 mans are interesting. Most are done with Ulduar and are running TOC. Current ToC 25 drops the best stuff in the game. However, they will not run heroics, and they wont run naxx (well i'm painting with a large brush). For these guys, there is zero reason to run naxx, and they probably dont even need EoC stuff, since there are only a handful of slots they can be used for and chances are they already have real ulduar stuff in those slots. So, for the big guilds, yeah its vastly differnt, very few heroics, very few 10 mans, what they do is run UD25 and TOC 25 and Ony and VOA 25. So they have access to all the orbs, all the patterns, etc. Dont forget the tier 9.5 stuff can *only* be bought using EOT AND a special emblem dropped from 25 TOC
Now what is going to happen in 3.3? Exactly the same thing. Ulduar 25 is going to be gone, people will run TOC25 and IC25. For us casuals, we are going to run the new instance, run ulduar, start doing TOC10. However, since the gear sets are different, people are going to be able to jump to tier 9 with tokens (the 5 piece set), and run UD for off-set items. There will still be a need to run UD and so forth, but not quite as much.
Basically 3.3 is going to be better for casuals than 3.2 is, and a little less of a gear spread between casuals and 25 man raiding guilds.
I guess one thing is, for people who just want to run 5 mans, what is enough? Certainly running heroics and hTOC will be enough for the new icecrown 5 mans. Likewise, doing ulduar and TOC full clears when what you really want to do is be able to run heroics is overkill. As of now, for most of my toons heroics are really overkill, I just dont need the stuff there, and I don't need most of my gear to be able to do it. There is just zero challenge there. With hTOC at least it is a challenge. Which is why I like raiding, it is a challenge. Every boss is wipable, even early naxx. Hopefully the new 5 mans will be at least a challenge for people who have played a while and are in naxx/ulduar gear. I think the worst thing a game can do is make content that you outgear so quickly and becomes boring. Which is why I jokingly said there should be two levels of heroics, the normal mode and 'super hard' which drops 2x as much badges.
BC heroics were just *tough*, stuff like shattered halls was tuned for people beyond kara gear. So you really had to know what you are doing. All the knowledge of aggro and crowd control and dont stand here do stand there was lost in Wraith up until ulduar, which is why so many guilds have just a hard time in ulduar, because those skills were never taught. I dont blame the players, I blame the developers.
Overall however, I'd say if you never plan to step foot in a raid, do your heroics and be happy that you will outgear them quickly, but dont think that running heroics is all you need to do to become a successsful raider. You need to have some raid experience and success, not to mention raid loot.
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