A pony for each alt you level

There is no doubt WOW's design team want you to level alts; and lots of them.  In fact the new expansion is all about leveling alts.  They are entirely re-doing the the old world so you can experience the game all over again; almost like WOW 2.0.  To make your alt leveling experience as pleasurable as possible they have implemented a number of very important tweaks to the current engine.

1. BoA heirloom items
   Purchasable with emblems, WG mark of honor, and Seal of champions.  Now you can buy shoulders, chests, trinkets, weapons to ease your leveling pain.  These things levels with you and some provides 10% XP points to quest/mob kills.  They are so cheap to get there is no reason why you should be leveling an alt with at least a few.
   
2. Cheaper/faster mounts
   Mounts are cheaper and easier to get.  Gone are the days epic land mount training is 600 GP.  These days you can grab an epic land mount at level 40 (instead 60) for a mere cost of 20 gp. Other levels of mount training is also considerable cheaper (with exception of epic flying) and the none-epic flying mount also goes faster.
3. Some trainings are now BoA
   The 1000 gp you are spending on cold weather flying is now bind to account via a book.  Too bad I had already paid normal price for my first three 80s.
4. Shoulder/head enchants that require rep grinds will be BoA in 3.3
   This just came hot off the press.  They are trying to give us should/head enchants that require northrend rep grind BoA.  This mean if you have a single toon exalted with son of hordir you can buy shoulder enchants for all of your toons.  Woot. 
5. Many special pets are now BoA
   If you have the latest give away pets from Blizzard it is more likely than not it is BoA (i.e. Mr. Chilly, Blizzard polar bear).  This mean every single character past and future will have access to that pet.  The aspect I especially like is I get these pets even if I create a new toon from scratch 1 year from today.

The above are just few examples Blizzard are hard at work to make leveling alts less of an chore.  Still, with these said there are still a lot of annoyances associate it.  Here is a list of my prime annoyance with the current system. Maybe Blizzard should consider offering the following carrots above and beyond what they are doing. 

1. Achievements across account! 
   This is a big one for me.  I have so many toons my achievements is spread all over them.   I will raid with whichever of my toon my guild needs at that moment.  I don't understand why I can't be champion of frozen waste just because I finished the last 2 wings of Naxx on my hunter instead of my priest.  Also for a harder to get achievement such as explorer doing it once is really enough. Blizzard should give option to measure achievement via account rather than a toon. For the people who enjoy grinding achivement on every toon (are there any?) there should be an option to turn it off.
   
2. Flight points
   Isn't it annoying when you start a new toon all your previous flight points are gone forever?  One of the major headache is to have to run your new alt to all the flight points you have previously explored.  Is there really a point to do this over and over again? The capability of having your toons have all the FP is already there, when you start a DK you get all the FP in Azeroth; I don't see why similar strategy can't be implemented for all our alts.
3. Mounts
   I am sure it is a nice gold sink to ask each of your toon to buy a 10K Grand Ice Mammoth.  However more likely than not most people will chose not to buy them for each of their alts.  Since you spent that sort of extraordinary money to obtain it, they really should be BoA.
4. Rare/special Pets
   I started my horde priest 2 years ago. I have collected a lot of interesting feast of strength along the way.  One of my favor pet is the original 2007 Clockwork Rocket Bot. It annoys me to no end I can't take him out unless I am playing on my priest. Just because I started my hunter 2 months later doesn't mean she shouldn't be able to enjoy it.  In my opinion all these special hard to get limited edition pets should be bind to account.

I mean really, since Blizzard want us to bring the person not the toon.  They really should put in as many incentive as possible to entice us to have many alts.  I don't see what harm could come to the game if they give a pony to each of my alts.

A primer on paladin AOE leveling (part 2)

Gearing
There is a lot of confusions about paladin gearing. Blizzard didn't help things when they made plate set with +spell power +int on them. Most of new paladins will blindly pick up these gears and thinking they are good for them. What most don't realize is that blizzard changed how paladin deals damage right before WOTLK where the higher of the attack power and spell power is used to determine the damage. So you are a protection paladin you don't actually uses plate with +spell power on it, although the +INT is useful it has way too many wasted stats. To keep things simplify you should just pickup tanking sets like protection warrior and death knights. Unless you are duel speced into holy there is very little uses for armor that has +spell power in it. Your primary stats for AOE grinding is strength and stamina anway. You won't have a lot of mana but that is okay. You will have Seal of Wisdom to help out.

One of the most important piece of equipment to have for AOE grinding is a good shield. Pretty much starting level 30 you will need to consistently get your hands on blue shields that has good defense stats on them. This is true all the way to 80 with the exception of when you are moving into an new expansion area (i.e. level 58 to outland, level 68 to northrend) where the new green shields will be superior than your existing blues.

Here is a list of blue shields you should consider obtaining. This is by no mean an exhaustive list. These are the ones I really tried hard to get or used on my paladin.

Normal:

• Thermaplugg's Central Core, from Gnomeregan
• Battered Viking Shield, from Uldaman (only available to horde players)
• Aegis of the Scarlet Commander, from Scarlet Monastery, easily obtainable as it drops a lot.
• Aegis of Stormwind, BOE, check on AH

BC expansion:

• Petrified Lichen Guard, first outland blues, sporegarr revered
• Shield of the Void, from Mana-Toms
• Shield of the Wayward Footman, BOE, check on AH

WOTLK expansion:

• Saronite Defender, blacksmithing, very cheap on AH
• Bulwark of the Warchief, horde expedition revered
• Saronite Bulwark, blacksmithing, reasonably priced on AH

You will also need to use the highest level shield spike available to you.

Here is a list:

• Iron Shield Spike, first shield spike, good up to level 30.
• Mithril Shield Spike, a lot out there and cheap, starting level 40 or so.
• Thorium Shield Spike, a good spike before outland if you can find it. No one sells this on my server.
• Felsteel Shield Spike, another impossible to find shield spike. Require rep grind to exalted so practically no one has it.
• Titanium Shield Spike, WOTLK shield spike, runs between 40-50 gp but easily available. You can't use this until level 70.

Since your server situation may vary I would check AH often and see which one you can grab.

Zones, quests and mobs



Mobs that is tightly packed in an area are the best places to grind. Humanoids mobs that duel wields are the best. Although it is a pain for certain humanoids that run away at the end of the fight. Before you have access to Shield of the Templar any mob that casts spells are really bad as they will stay out of melee range and lobs spell to you. Before you have silencing I find grinding packs of mobs are generally easier and more reward. But don't let spell castsing mobs stop you from leveling in that area. If you find occasion mobs that cast spell mixed with other melee types simply kill them first in the group.

You will gain more experience and level up faster if you quest and grind at the same time. Quests where you need to kill x number of things is extremely good for this purpose. What I recommend is that you go to each zone as you normally would and pick up maximum number of quests. Do the quests that nets maximum number of experience while AOE grinding then abandon the quests you haven't completed. Rinse and repeat in the new zone.

I used the list provided by WOWIKI as an starting point. Although by no mean you should limit yourself to this list. I found many additional areas which is great for AOE leveling that is not mentioned below. Experiment with your self and see what you enjoy. Typically any quest hub that has excellent selection of quests gets my seal of approval.

Following is copied directly from wowwiki (thanks to the anonymous authors):

30-31 Hillsbrad Foothills Dun Garok Dwarves

• Watch out for the Priests and Rifleman!

30-32 Duskwood Nightbane Vile Fang

30-33 Hillsbrad Foothills Cave Yeti,Ferocious Yeti

• These guys are located in the cave centered between Tarren Mill and the town of Hillsbrad. They are great for AoE grinding, though the Ferocious Yetis do enrage at low health. Some chance of adds here, but it's still an excellent area to grind in, despite the lack of being able to use a mount.

30-31 Arathi Highlands Dabyrie Militia and Dabyrie Laborers

• They run and pull others which can be good or bad!

31-33 Arathi Highlands Syndicate Highwayman, Syndicate Mercenary, Syndicate Pathstalkers

• The pathstalkers have a ranged attack making them troublesome, after they run they attack at range. You will have to move to put them back into melee distance. The barns provide a good enclosed space to drag them into. And you can use LoS in there to keep them near.
• Also some these mobs dual wield which makes aoeing that much better.

32-34 Desolace Sargeron Hatefury Satyrs

• They are spread out making this a difficult area to grind.

33-38 Arathi Highlands Hammerfall Peons and Hammerfall Grunts at the Go'Shek Farm

• Hammerfall Grunts will Enrage, increasing damage output, and will cast Infected Wound.

35-38 Dustwallow Marsh Murlocs

37-40 Arathi Highlands Cresting Exiles Some aoe frost nova. Loc 66.30

40-42 Badlands Earth elementals, Troggs

41-43 Swamp of Sorrows Murlocs

• Note: The Marsh Inkspewers cast a debuff that lowers your chance to hit by 50%, negating Reckoning and more or less nullifying any HP/mana regen from seals/judgements. The Marsh Oracles are casters that ignore your avoidance and mitigation. There is also a lvl 50 caster roaming in here.

43-46 Feralas Woodpaws

43-48 Zul'Farrak Scarab

• If you run this instance, ask politely for lead when it is finished; when everyone has left the instance, feel free to grind the scarabs pit for some easy xp on your way out. They have low HP and a good chance of dropping uncommons, rares, and even the occasional epic.

45-48 Tanaris Southsea Pirates

• Some of the pirates use ranged weapons and will need to be pulled into the houses or around them. The swashbucklers and the dock workers are all melee, however they disarm.

45-48 Feralas Feral Scar Yetis

• Loads in and around the caves. Many enrage, but all are fairly squishy.

46-48 Feralas Frayfeather Skystormers

46-48 Tanaris Ogres Dunemall Brutes and Dunemall Enforcers

• 'There are multiple camps accross the south west. Some have casters in them but can easily be avoided. Enforcers Dual Wield for maximum aoe ability.'

48-50 Feralas Harpies

48-50 Blasted Lands Nethergarde Miners

48-51 Tanaris Thistleshrubs

48-50 Un'Goro Crater Marshlands Raptors

48-51 Felwood Deadwood Village Deadwood Furbolgs

• While they have a lot of ranged/healer mobs, and a nasty -50% healing debuff, there are a lot of them in a very small area and they're quite squishy.

50-54 Western Plaguelands - Sorrow Hill Skeletal Flayers and Slavering Ghouls

52-56 Felwood - Jadefire Run Jadefire Satyrs

• Usually grouped in 4s or 5s with one caster. Very squishy, and they drop Felcloth which sells fairly well on the AH. If you have a partner, watch for Jadefire Tricker that can mind control.

52-56 Felwood - Irontree Cavern Warpwood Treants

54-59 Western Plaguelands - Dalson's Tears Blighted Zombies, Rotting Cadavers and Skeletal Terrors

• Excellent for large pulls, however they have two diseases: a DoT, and a -4 Sta debuff, which are usually cast too often to dispel.

54-60 Felwood - Felpaw Village Deadwood Furbolgs

• Mostly melee with the occasional shaman. Fairly squishy, and good for Timbermaw rep if you want it.

54-58 Western Plaguelands - Northridge Lumber Camp Scarlet Lumberjacks

• Watch out for the lvl 59 Commander

57-60 Eastern Plaguelands - Northpass Tower Scourge Siege Engineers

• They're just east of the Northpass Tower, around the coords 61,22 (if you use cord-mods). They're all melee, and this spot is featured in the video below, in the Reference section, titled "AoE Paladin using the Force Reactive Disk".

58-62 Hellfire Peninsula - Expedition Armory Long row of Unyielding Footmen

• Large pulls, but low respawn rate. If you pull a knight, be sure to kill it first, as they heal.

60-62 Hellfire Peninsula - Southern Rampart Gor'gaz Outpost Shattered Hand Orcs

• Some casters to avoid, but Berserkers duel-wield.

60-62 Hellfire Peninsula - Ravager Nest on path to Terokkar Ravagers

• Large clusters with fast attack speeds, will flee, perfect for AoE grinding.

61-63 Hellfire Peninsula - The Great Fissure Stonescythe Alpha Stonescythe Whelp

• Avoid the burrowers as much as you can. Best way to do this is to stay on the rock cliffs as much as you can, and either pull with Avenger's shield or dodge around them when you pull the mobs.

61-64 Hellfire Peninsula - Just south of Temple of Telhamat Bonestripper Vulture

• These things are amazing. You can find huge crowds of them, and when one dies others get pulled from a good ways away. You could literally have a ten or fifteen minute pull if you do this right.

68-70 Blade's Edge Mountains - Death's Door Demons

68-71 Howling Fjord - Just outside of Westguard Keep Shoveltusks. They wander around in close packs of 4-7 and only use melee. Need I say more?

70 Shadowmoon Valley Demon Hunter Supplicant

70-72 Howling Fjord - Baelgun's excavation site Inside the cave, two groups of 9 regular Dark Iron Dwarve spawn frequently.

72-74/5 Dragonblight - New Hearthglen Down on the beach there is a ship with dozens of melee mobs. Just off the ship are several smaller 6-10 pull groups which are easily grabable and not too difficult. Just watch out for the other faction doing their quests if on a PVP server, it can be a busy area.

74-76 Zul'Drak - Drakkari Warriors around several alters (which you give offerings to) Dozens of easy to kill melee warriors. Undead outside of the Argent Stand are also good since Holy Wrath can be used on the group.

Guild style and its leadership

I have been a GM for a long time now.  We are celebrating the two year anniversary in November.   For a guild to surviving 2 years in world of warcraft is no simple task.  From time to time I catche myself wondering what type of leadership style works best in my guild.

Kurt Lewin and colleagues identified different styles of leadership in their 1939 landmark article
"Patterns of aggressive behavior in experimentally created social climates" published in Journal of Social Psychology.  In this article they lumped leadership styple into four different areas (Copied directly from Wikipedia):

Dictator Leaders

A leader who uses fear and threats to get the jobs done. As similar
with a leader who uses an autocratic style of leadership, this style of
leader also makes all the decisions.

Autocratic or Authoritarian Leaders

Under the autocratic leadership styles, all decision-making powers
are centralized in the leader as shown such leaders are dictators.

They do not entertain any suggestions or initiative from
subordinates. The autocratic management has been successful as it
provides strong motivation to the manger. It permits quick
decision-making as only one person decides for the whole group, and
keeps it to themselves until they feel it is needed by the rest of the
group. An autocratic leader does not trust anybody.

Participative or Democratic Leaders

The democratic leadership style favors decision-making by the group
as shown, such as leader gives instruction after consulting the group.

He can win the cooperation of his group and can motivate them
effectively and positively. The decisions of the democratic leader are
not unilateral as with the autocrat because they arise from
consultation with the group members and participation by them.

Laissez Faire or Free Rein Leaders

A free rein leader does not lead, but leaves the group entirely to
itself as shown; such a leader allows maximum freedom to subordinates.

They are given a freehand in deciding their own policies and
methods. Free rein leadership style is considered better than the
authoritarian style. But it is not as effective as the democratic style.

By default each guild leader (or by extension the officers) should fall into one or combination of above styles. Through my travels I have put my alts into various of other guilds for the sole propose of observing other guild leader's (officers) behavior.  And from my limited experience it would seem result driven guild (i.e. progression raiding) are more likely to be governed by dictators or authoritarian leaders while social guilds (social, leveling) are  more likely to be governed by democratic or free rein leaders. 

Although I am making a broad strokes with my limited interactions.  My observation dose seem to make logical.  In a progression setting, performance is key, the common goal is to down the boss with coherent effort. People need to be at the top of their game, understand the fight, bring the supplies, show up on time, shut out their family, put in the time and gear up their toons.  If they are not good at doing these things boss won't drop and leadership performance is questioned. Much like a drill sergeant in the army, the authority of these leadership can't be questioned and their every wish must be obeyed.  On the other hand, in the social guild where it is more structured like a country club, the leader is more of an organizer of the activities instead of an absolute leader.  Everyone is there to socialize and there is no performance to criticize.  In these settings the leader's performance is measured by overall happiness of the the populaces instead other measurable result such as world ranks for boss kills.

I am going back and fourth with these leadership style, what is the point I am trying to make? It is this: as people come and go, the nature of a guild can shift.  These cycles are in many cases self reinforced and can't be stopped.  For example, if you are in a social guild that has been doing a great job raiding, more raiders join up to raid.  Social leaning members finds themselves not serious enough for progression minded raiders and become unhappy because their social outlet they once knew no longer exist.  They complain but eventually move on to other social outlets.  As cycle continues until the social guild morphs into a raiding guild.  The opposite can also happen, after a period of heavy progression a raiding guild may decide to  take the game less seriously which resulting in the hardcore raiders moving onto more cutting edge raiding guilds without being "slowed down" by the casual style.   Before you know, the said progression guild has become "casual".

Sometimes these changes are not instituted top down but rather bottom up.  It is possible sometimes for a social guild to slowly morphed into a progression one without a change in the guild leader.  Very often these guilds falls apart because there is an inherent disconnect between its leadership style (founding philosophy) and its members(or by extension officers).  Assume the guild survives, can such guild be successful without the leadership shifting toward dictatorship/authoritarian style of governess.  Now that is a very interesting question.

A premier on paladin AOE leveling (part 1)

Most believe leveling a paladin is best done through retribution tree. Paladin takes most talents from protection tree generally geared toward tanking. What less generally known is that paladin can level equally well (or better ) in protection tree. I have written articles about AOE grinding builds on two separate occasions. What I intend to do here is condense some of the information from the these previous articles here.

AOE grinding build, what is it for?
Paladin is a great class that can level by simply killing many mobs at the time. It is a plate wear class with ability to self heal. A properly equipped and talented paladin can face 6-8 mobs at the same time and end the fight with little or no loss to mana and health. This build is used foremost for leveling. By picking the correct leveling area you can earn huge amount of xp in very short amount of time. This is great for farming material or doing quests. Also, since the build is designed to fight multiple mobs at the same time it is awesomely potent for farming lower level instances. With this build and some heirloom gears I have been able to solo some instances that is fairly close to my level (i.e. I soloed the lower SM instances at level 40).
This build is best picked up around level 30. To grind efficiently you will need a shield, a fast single hand weapon, a good shield spike and a mount. Although these are not the minimal requirements above listed criteria will insure a more pleasurable experience.

Talents
Talent selections are always subjective and always open to debate. WOWWiki has some excellent pointers for a minimalist AOE build. Don't take what I put here as gospel. Design your build around your style of play. I have tried a few different builds and this one thus far have worked best for me. I have broken the talents into three categories: must haves, nice to haves, questionable value but a good space filler. Of course anything I didn't take is something I didn't consider required.

This is what it looks like:

Protection (51 points)

Divine Strength - Rank 5/5 [Nice to have]
Increases your total Strength by 15%.

Anticipation - Rank 5/5 [Nice to have]
Increases your chance to dodge by 5%.

Improved Righteous Fury - Rank 3/3 [nice to have]
While Righteous Fury is active, all damage taken is reduced by 6%.

Toughness - Rank 5/5 [nice to have]
Increases your armor value from items by 10% and reduces the duration of all movement slowing effects by 30%.

Improved Hammer of Justice - Rank 2/2 [nice to have]
Decreases the cooldown of your Hammer of Justice spell by 20 sec.

Blessing of Sanctuary - Rank 1/1 [must have]
Places a Blessing on the friendly target, reducing damage taken from all
sources by 3% for 10 min and increasing stamina by 10%. In addition,
when the target blocks, parries, or dodges a melee attack the target
will gain 2% of maximum displayed mana. Players may only have one
Blessing on them per Paladin at any one time.

Reckoning - Rank 5/5 [must have]
Gives you a 10% chance after blocking or being hit by any damaging attack
that the next 4 weapon swings within 8 sec will generate an additional
attack.

Sacred Duty - Rank 2/2 [nice to have]
Increases your total Stamina by 8%, reduces the cooldown of your Divine Shield and Divine Protection spells by 60 sec.

One-Handed Weapon Specialization - Rank 3/3 [nice to have]
Increases all damage you deal when a one-handed melee weapon is equipped by 10%.

Holy Shield - Rank 1/1 [must have]
Increases chance to block by 30% for 10 sec and deals 274 Holy damage for each attack blocked while active. Each block expends a charge. 8 charges.

Ardent Defender - Rank 3/3 [questionable value]
Damage that takes you below 35% health is reduced by 30%. In addition, attacks which would otherwise kill you cause you to be healed by up to 30% of
your maximum health (amount healed based on defense). This healing
effect cannot occur more often than once every 2 min.

Redoubt - Rank 3/3 [must have]
Increases your block value by 30% and damaging melee and ranged attacks against you have a 10% chance to increase your chance to block by 30%. Lasts 10 sec or 5 blocks.

Combat Expertise - Rank 3/3 [nice to have]
Increases your expertise by 6, total Stamina and chance to critically hit by 6%.

Touched by the Light - Rank 3/3 [questionable value]
Increases your spell power by an amount equal to 30% of your Stamina and
increases the amount healed by your critical heals by 30%.

Avenger's Shield - Rank 1/1 [must have]
Hurls a holy shield at the enemy, dealing [1100 + 0.07 * SPH + 0.07 * AP] to
[1344 + 0.07 * SPH + 0.07 * AP] Holy damage, Dazing them and then
jumping to additional nearby enemies. Affects 3 total targets. Lasts 10
sec.

Guarded by the Light - Rank 2/2 [questionable value]
Reduces spell damage taken by 6% and gives a 100% chance to refresh the duration of your Divine Plea when you hit an enemy. In addition, your Divine Plea spell is 100% less likely to be dispelled.

Shield of the Templar - Rank 3/3 [must have]
Reduces all damage taken by 3% and grants your Avenger's Shield a 100% chance to silence your targets for 3 sec.

Hammer of the Righteous - Rank 1/1 [must have]
Hammer the current target and up to 2 additional nearby targets, causing 4
times your main hand damage per second as Holy damage.

Retribution (20 points)

Deflection - Rank 5/5 [nice to have]
Increases your Parry chance by 5%.

Improved Judgements - Rank 2/2 [nice to have]
Decreases the cooldown of your Judgement spells by 2 sec.

Heart of the Crusader - Rank 3/3 [nice to have]
In addition to the normal effect, your Judgement spells will also increase
the critical strike chance of all attacks made against that target by
an additional 3%.

Conviction - Rank 5/5 [nice to have]
Increases your chance to get a critical strike with all spells and attacks by 5%.

Eye for an Eye - Rank 2/2 [nice to have]
All criticals against you cause 10% of the damage taken to the attacker as
well. The damage caused by Eye for an Eye will not exceed 50% of the
Paladin's total health.

Crusade - Rank 3/3 [questionable value]
Increases all damage caused by 3% and all damage caused against Humanoids, Demons, Undead and Elementals by an additional 3%.

Please note that some talents maybe really good for tanking but not as good for AOE grinding. I am sitting on the fence for talents such as Judgements of the Just. I love how this talent reduces cooldown of the Hammer of Justice but in the same vine I hate its affect on the attack speed. So whether you chose to take talents like that is up to you.

One Spell rotations
AOE grinding depends on a special spell rotation. The overall goal is to maximize amount of attack while taking minimal amount of damage. During grinding the paladin will use two type of seals and two type of judgments. Seals will restore paladin's mana or health via paladin's attack while judgments will restore paladin's mana or health via mob's attack. You can mix and match seals and judgments to control how much mana/health to restore during a particular fight. If balanced correctly it is possible to retain 100% of the paladin's health and mana after a fight.
You should have 4 buffs on yourself at all time:

Greater Blessing of Sanctuary;
Righteous Fury;
Seal of Light(or Seal of Wisdom);
Retribution Aura
It is important to grab as many mobs as possible when you start the fight. You can use your warhorse to do this. If you just run circles around the mobs you can easily get 4-5. Start practice doing 4 mobs and gradually increase the amount you pull. My current record is 8-9 at the same time. Although possible anything more than 6 will take a lot more effort unless mobs span in very tight pattern.

I will start the fight with either a judgment at low level or an avenger's shield at higher level. After the mobs are pulled toward my pally I will lay down consecration + holy shield. I will rotate my judgment from target to target while I am being hit by the mob. There will be a lot of proc of reckoning which makes you hit faster. You will need to alternate between the 2 seals depends on you need more mana or more health. Refresh consecration and holy shield at every count down. To mix things up use spells such as Exorcism and Hammer of Wrath whenever you can.

With some practice you can end fight with almost full mana/health. If things you wrong you have 2 panic buttons: lay on hands (every 10 minutes or so with talent) and Divine Shield or bubble (every 5 minutes). You can bubble yourself up you can cast flash of light(or holy light) on yourself. Have mana pots in reserve if things continue to go downhill.

Continue to gearing, mobs, zones/quests

Rules of acquisition #9

Ferengi rules of acquisition #9 states: Opportunity plus instinct equals profit.

Today is the last day for brewfest, which also means starting tomorrow the drop rate of Tankard O'Terror will become 0!  From the day it started to drop, the price for this cool 1 hander had dropped from over 2000 gp to about 800-1000 gp on my server.  I have stocked up 7 of them between 1000-1200 GP in hope to cash them in for great profit once brewfest is over. 

This awesome level 226 purple is ideal for frost DKs, shammys and rogue. And as far as I know it is the only level 226 or above purples that is BoE.  There is no doubt there will be consistent demand for this as new people gets 80.  With server's supply depletes I will be the only seller on AH with this.  Suffice to say I don't plan to let them go cheaply.

Blizzard's idea of progression

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.