Should gear become obsolete after every expansion?

I recently read a post on another blog that discussed how WoW is a gear oriented game, and yet most of the gear we get becomes obsolete with every expansion that is released. This post was written during the Burning Crusade, and with the news that Blizzard wants to try to release expansion packs more frequently (about one a year), it is an even more relevant point now, since our gear stands to be viable for even less time. The main question posed in the post is, is it worth it? Is the time we spend grinding reputations and money to get geared up for raids worth the short amount of time we get out of our gear? This begs the question of why one should even raid in the first place, but I already considered that at the end of my post on why end-game isn't better than leveling (skip to the fifth to last paragraph). To recap, I said that raiding is more challenging, social, progression-based, and satisfying than regular 5-mans, which is why people do it, and that gear is a poor motivation to raid, as Daddy Gamer brought up.

Gear, however, is still what keeps people coming back to raids. I think it was wow.com that did a poll on whether people who run 25-mans would run 10-mans instead if they offered the same gear, and it was found that most people would run 10-mans instead in such a situation. Still, can it really be the gear that keeps these people running 25-mans? The gear may be better, but as I have said before in previous posts, gear only serves two tangible functions: allowing the player to access more difficult raids and representing the satisfaction that comes with beating those harder raids. The former is important in considering whether gear should become obsolete or not with each expansion pack.

Gear basically serves as the gate-keeper for keeping people from running into raids the minute they hit 80 and breezing through them. Gearing up forces you to put some time into your character before you can use him to see the game's content. I suppose that's really the true purpose of WoW's gear grind: to get you to spend some time on your character. It's an artificial barrier, sure, but it does allow you to practice before you go into raids so you don't make a fool of yourself. But what if you are already a veteran WoW player and already know how to play? Should you be forced to grind for gear in order to raid?

It's worth noting that the amount of time it takes to gear up for a raid without entering an instance is much greater than the amount of time it takes to gear up for heroic 5-mans without entering an instance. It's quite easy to reach the level of gear needed to enter heroics, and you can use heroics to gear up for raids while still seeing new content, so it isn't completely necessary to invest a lot of money in starter gear for raids, unless you want to start raiding immediately. Then again, starting with raids rather than heroics means you'll miss a lot of the game's content, so that's your choice.

Still, regardless of whether you get geared up for raids outside of heroics or in them, you'll still be investing a lot of time into getting gear for raids, gear that will quickly be replaced. In fact, that can be said of all gear you get once you hit 80; you'll invest a lot of time in getting it, but it won't last you very long if you continue moving up the raiding ladder. To quote Daddy Gamer, "If we should be inspired to try to get better and better equipment we need to feel the investment (of time) is worth the outcome (of gear) in accordance to its longevity (time to update making it obsolete)." It's a good argument, but if raids don't offer better gear, then they need to offer something else to keep raiders coming back. As much as I love raiding for the stories and the fights, those motivators won't keep me coming back over and over again. That's the role of gear.

If players like Daddy Gamer want their gear to have some longevity, then gear needs to last beyond individual raids. Many pieces that drop from Naxxramas have direct upgrades in Ulduar, which have direct upgrades in Trial of the Crusader, which will probably have direct upgrades in Icecrown Citadel. That gives most gear a maximum longevity of one major patch. The problem is that gear acts as the effective gatekeeper to make players run raids multiple times before they move on to the next. Should this be the case, though? Should raiders be forced to run raids multiple times? I'll probably muse on that question in another philosophy post, but for now, lets assume it's a good idea.

So, let's say we want gear to last us longer than just one raid. For starters, bosses would need to have much smaller loot tables, since players wouldn't be looking for upgrades at each boss. Perhaps each boss could have one drop that reflects their nature and is a guaranteed drop each time. That seems to be more realistic to me than the way it works now, but it would mean that players would need a way make their characters better so that they could move on to new raids at a reasonable pace. Blizzard could use skill as a gatekeeper, but that would make raids more difficult to balance. Some other system is in order

One way Blizzard can add a non-gear gatekeeper function to the game is to add a new leveling function by which raiders gain levels as they go through raids, and with those levels, they get better stats. This could be seen as giving raiders an unfair advantage in the leveling game when expansions come out, but Blizzard could make it a sort of level-plus system, so that everyone starts on the same footing when an expansion comes out. Basically, players would run heroics to get to level 80+, then Naxx to get to level 80++, Ulduar to get to 80+++, and ToC to get to 80++++, which would be the maximum since that would be enough for Icecrown Citadel, the last raid of the expansion. Blizzard could make it so that only heroics and raid dungeons grant experience for these new levels, and it would be a way for players to improve their character that wouldn't be dependent on random drops or costly crafted items.

These plusses would go away when a new expansion came out and everyone started leveling again. Why? Like I said, it prevents raiders from having an unfair advantage and getting to new content first. From a lore perspective, the idea would be that your experiences with the horrors of Northrend couldn't possibly prepare you for the challenges of the sundered world of Cataclysm. Those challenges were unique, and the lessons you take from them have no use in this new world.

Gear drops would play a minor role in this system, providing side-grades more often than upgrades. Such side-grades could include armor with procs on it, like the Signet of Edward the Odd, with the procs becoming more interesting with each raid. It could also include trinkets with more interesting procs or effects, and ditto for relics (the ranged-weapon-equivalent for Druids, Paladins, Shamans, and Death Knights). Tier gear could also have more interesting set bonuses, with intro-raid tier gear having flat damage bonuses and more advanced raid tier gear having ability-changing bonuses like those set to appear on tier 10 gear. In this case, the tiers of gear wouldn't really have improves stats but would just have better bonuses, allowing for more flexibility in gear choice.

To summarize, the point of this system would be to allow gear to serve a player for longer, which would alleviate some complaints of short longevity of gear. That said, under a system like this, gear would still become obsolete after each expansion pack, and that's exactly the complaint Daddy Gamer was writing about. I think Blizzard took a step in the right direction when they didn't make Wrath of the Lich King gear us much of an upgrade from Burning Crusade gear as Burning Crusade gear was from vanilla WoW gear, and with the level cap slated to rise five levels when Cataclysm is released, rather than ten, there is a good chance that our gear will last us even longer into the new content.

But what if Blizzard made it so that gear didn't get better with each expansion, which seems to be along the lines of what Daddy Gamer wants? What if the heroic 5-mans of Cataclysm dropped i-level 200 blues and epics? Would you really play through them? Probably not. I hate to say it, but WoW players like Daddy Gamer will just have to put up with the fact that gear in WoW will always be replaced. If you want to be able to acquire permanent best-in-slot gear, then maybe an MMO isn't the kind of game for you.