How to gear up a druid at level 85 without entering an instance

Way back in the days of Wrath of the Lich King, I wrote a post about how to gear up a druid without entering an instance due to my own aversion to dungeons and my hesitance to rely on random drops to gear up. Well, now that Cataclysm has gotten underway, I thought I'd write a similar post for this expansion pack. This post is a collection your options for gearing up a Druid before you set foot in any 5-mans. Keep in mind that some slots don't have very good options, and you are probably better served getting gear for those slots from 5-mans themselves, but I included your options for those slots here just for completion's sake. Like last time, I will give you multiple options for each slot so you can pick the one that best suits you. Since balance druids can dip into resto's sections'for spirit pieces with the talent Balance of Power and the two feral druids share many pieces, I tried to avoid redundancy when there are actually different options for each one. In those cases, if you don't like any of the suggestions for your spec, check your corresponding partner spec's section for other options.

Weapon(s):
Balance: Beak of Julak-Doom (drop from a specific rare mob, most likely to be found on the AH), Insidious Staff (Baradin's Wardons/Hellscream's Reach, revered), Elementium Spellblade (blacksmithing), Very Manly Staff (quest in Twilight Highlands) Staff of Solemn Secrecy (world drop)
Feral (tank): Spear of Trailing Shadows (Baradin's Wardons/Hellscream's Reach, revered), Mobus's Vile Halberd (drop from a specific rare mob), Elementium Poleaxe (blacksmithing), Staff of Old Woes (world drop, most likely to be found on the AH), Staff of Draconic Pacification/Torth-Slayer's Staff (quest in Twilight Highlands)
Feral (DPS): Spear of Trailing Shadows (Baradin's Wardons/Hellscream's Reach, revered), Mobus's Vile Halberd (drop from a specific rare mob), Elementium Poleaxe (blacksmithing), Staff of Old Woes (world drop), Staff of Draconic Pacification/Torth-Slayer's Staff (quests in Twilight Highlands)
Resto: Elementium Hammer (blacksmithing), Shimmering Morningstar (Baradin's Wardons/Hellscream's Reach, revered), Gurgthock's Garish Gorebat (quest in Twilight Highlands), Mace of Apotheosis (world drop)

Off-hand:
Balance: Dungeoneering Guide (inscription), Skyflight Beacon/Air Raid Beacon (quest in Twilight Highlands) Book of Origination (dungeon drop, look on AH)
Resto: Heartbound Tome (world drop), Divine Companion (inscription) Bone-Inlaid Sarcophagus Key (world drop)

Idol:
Balance: Tattooed Eyeball (inscription)
Feral (tank): Halted Clock (world drop), Silver Inlaid Leaf (inscription)
Feral (DPS): Silver Inlaid Leaf (inscription)
Resto: Tattooed Eyeball (inscription)

Head:
Balance: Bloodied Wyrmhide Helm (leatherworking), Hood of Lost Solitude (quest in Twilight Highlands)
Feral (tank): Hood of the Crying Rogue (world drop), Dunwald Winged Helm/Shocktrooper Hood (quest in Twilight Highlands)
Feral (DPS): Hood of the Crying Rogue (world drop), Dunwald Winged Helm/Shocktrooper Hood (quest in Twilight Highlands)
Resto: Bloodied Wyrmhide Helm (leatherworking), Wax-Filled Hood/Mechano-Assembler Headguard (quest in Twilight Highlands)

Neck:
Balance: Lightning Flash Pendant/Yellow Smoke Pendant (Wildhammer Clan/Dragonmaw Clan, exalted), Charm of the Muse (dungeon drop), Eye of Many Deaths (jewelcrafting)
Feral (tank): Elementium Guardian (jewelcrafting), Don Rodrigo's Fabulous Necklace (world drop), Acorn of the Daughter Tree (Guardians of Hyjal, revered)
Feral (DPS): Don Rodrigo's Fabulous Necklace (world drop), Acorn of the Daughter Tree (Guardians of Hyjal, revered), Barnacle Pendant (dungeon drop), Brazen Elementium Medallion or Entwined Elementium Choker (jewelcrafting), Nightrend Choker (world drop), Pendant of Victorious Fury (quest in Twilight Highlands)
Resto: Acanthia's Lost Pendant (dungeon drop), Lightning Flash Pendant/Yellow Smoke Pendant (Wildhammer Clan/Dragonmaw Clan, exalted), Pendant of Elemental Balance (Earthen Ring, honored)

Shoulders:
Balance: Spaulders of Rolling Incineration (quest in Uldum)
Feral (tank): Aledrinker Shoulderpads/Cult-Hide Spaulders (quest in Twilight Highlands)
Feral (DPS): Aledrinker Shoulderpads/Cult-Hide Spaulders (quest in Twilight Highlands)
Resto: Mantle of Wild Feathers/Spaulders of the Endless Plains (Wildhammer Clan/Dragonmaw Clan, honored)

Back:
Balance: Ritssyn's Ruminous Drape (world drop), Cloak of the Dryads (Guardians of Hyjal, honored)
Feral (tank): Zom's Electrostatic Cloak (world drop), Twilight Dragonscale Cloak (leatherworking), Shroud of Dark Memories (dungeon drop)
Feral (DPS): Razor-Edged Cloak (leatherworking)
Resto: Cloak of the Dryads (Guardians of Hyjal, honored)

Chest:
Balance: Chestguard of Nature's Fury (leatherworking)
Feral (tank): Assassin's Chestplate (leatherworking), Sly Fox Jerkin (Guardians of Hyjal, honored)
Feral (DPS): Assassin's Chestplate (leatherworking), Sly Fox Jerkin (Guardians of Hyjal, honored)
Resto: Chestguard of Nature's Fury (leatherworking), Robes of the Loving Ursine (world drop), Wrap of the Fallen City (quest in Uldum)

Wrist:
Balance: Bracers of Caustic Purification (world drop), Keg-Stealer Bracers/Alefire Bracers (quest in Twilight Highlands)
Feral (tank): Bloodied Leather Bracers (leatherworking), Flarefire Bracers/Buildingblast Bracers or Whirlpool Bracers/Dragonheart Bracers (quests in Twilight Highlands)
Feral (DPS): Bloodied Leather Bracers (leatherworking), Keg-Stealer Bracers/Buildingblast Bracers or Flarefire Bracers/Dragonheart Bracers (quests in Twilight Highlands)
Resto: Bracers of Caustic Purification (world drop), Keg-Stealer Bracers/Alefire Bracers (quest in Twilight Highlands)

Hands:
Balance: Aessina-Blessed Gloves (Guardians of Hyjal, revered)
Feral (tank): Stormbolt Gloves/Liar's Handwraps (Wildhammer Clan/Dragonmaw Clan, exalted), Safecracker's Gloves (world drop), Thartuk's Inimitable Gauntlets (drop from a specific rare mob)
Feral (DPS): Stormbolt Gloves/Liar's Handwraps (Wildhammer Clan/Dragonmaw Clan, exalted), Safecracker's Gloves (world drop), Thartuk's Inimitable Gauntlets (drop from a specific rare mob)
Resto: Aessina-Blessed Gloves (Guardians of Hyjal, revered)

Waist:
Balance: Lightning Lash (leatherworking), Belt of the Untamed/Withered Dream Belt (Wildhammer Clan/Dragonmaw Clan, exalted)
Feral (tank): Belt of Nefarious Whispers (leatherworking), Quicksand Belt (Ramkahen, revered), Belt of a Thousand Mouths (drop from a specific rare mob)
Feral (DPS): Belt of Nefarious Whispers (leatherworking), Quicksand Belt (Ramkahen, revered), Belt of a Thousand Mouths (drop from a specific rare mob)
Resto: Lightning Lash (leatherworking), Belt of the Untamed/Withered Dream Belt (Wildhammer Clan/Dragonmaw Clan, exalted)

Legs:
Balance: Blazewing's Furious Kilt (drop from a specific rare mob)
Feral (tank): Swiftflight Leggings/Leggings of the Impenitent (Wildhammer Clan/Dragonmaw Clan, honored), Shaw's Finest Leggings/Garona's Finest Leggings (quest in Twilight Highlands)
Feral (DPS): Swiftflight Leggings/Leggings of the Impenitent (Wildhammer Clan/Dragonmaw Clan, honored), Shaw's Finest Leggings/Garona's Finest Leggings (quest in Twilight Highlands)
Resto: Blazewing's Furious Kilt (drop from a specific rare mob)

Feet:
Balance: Treads of Revelation/Vision-Tainted Treads (quest in Stormwing/Orgrimmar)
Feral (tank): Flameproof Treads/Heartstone Treads (quest in Twilight Highlands)
Feral (DPS): Flameproof Treads/Heartstone Treads (quest in Twilight Highlands)
Resto: Tarvus's Poison-Scarred Boots (drop from a specific rare mob), Treads of Revelation/Vision-Tainted Treads (quest in Stormwing/Orgrimmar)

Rings:
Balance: Band of Singing Grass/Band of Lamentation (Wildhammer Clan/Dragonmaw Clan, revered), Diamant's Ring of Temperance (Therazane, revered), Ring of Warring Elements (jewelcrafting), Abandoned Dark Iron Ring (dungeon drop)
Feral (tank): Felsen's Ring of Resolve (Therazane, revered), Red Rock Band (Ramkahen, revered), Elementium Moebius Band (jewelcrafting)
Feral (DPS): Terrath's Signet of Balance (Therazane, revered), Band of Blades and/or Elementium Destroyer's Ring (jewelcrafting)
Resto: Ring of the Great Whale (dungeon drop), Ammunae's Blessing (Ramkahen, honored), Ring of Warring Elements (jewelcrafting)

Trinkets:
Balance: Stump of Time (Baradin's Wardons/Hellscream's Reach, exalted), Darkmoon Card: Volcano (completing the Volcanic Deck), Talisman of Sinister Order (quest in Uldum)
Feral (tank): Unsolvable Riddle (Baradin's Wardons/Hellscream's Reach, exalted), Mirror of Broken Images (Baradin's Wardons/Hellscream's Reach, exalted), Darkmoon Card: Earthquake (completing the Earthquake Deck)
Feral (DPS): Unsolvable Riddle (Baradin's Wardons/Hellscream's Reach, exalted), Impatience of Youth (Baradin's Wardons/Hellscream's Reach, exalted), Darkmoon Card: Hurricane (completing the Hurricane Deck) Schnotzz's Medallion of Command (quest in Uldum)
Resto: Mandala of Stirring Patterns (Baradin's Wardons/Hellscream's Reach, exalted), Darkmoon Card: Tsunami (completing the Tsunami Deck), Rainsong (dungeon drop)

What I am thankful for

Just like last year, I missed posting last Friday due to Thanksgiving taking up most of my time and thoughts. I was going to write a post about the things I'm thankful for, but visiting with family and friends just took too much of my time. As such, in a bit of late celebration of the holiday, that is the post I will write today.

WoW-related things I am thankful for:

I'm thankful for the automatic conversion of base weapon DPS to feral attack power. There was once a time when the only weapons feral druids could use were the ones that were specifically designed for us, which had feral attack power as one of their stats (with lowered base DPS to make up for it; we didn't need that base DPS, after all). This lead to us having one or two (if we were lucky) weapons available to us in every tier of content, weapons which were useless to everyone else. Now that base-DPS automatically converts to feral attack power, a whole new world of weapons has been opened up to us: staves, two-hand maces, polearms (which were added to our repertoire the day the automatic feral attack power conversion was added); we can use any of them that we like, and for that, I am thankful.

I'm thankful for the ability to track multiple things at once. Sure, I might not be as thankful as my hunter breathren, but as someone who once had a well-worn macro which, when activated, would cause me to switch between Find Fish and Find Herbs, so that I could go out and fish in pools while still collecting herbs, I still appreciate this change. My combined efforts made the activity quite profitable, but needing to use the macro to switch between my two tracking abilities was quite tedious. Now, it is no longer necessary, and for that, I am thankful.

I'm thankful for Leader of the Pack, specifically the self-healing aspect of the talent. The feral druid has always been a great soloing class due to the fact that it can heal itself and that its healing spells depend upon a different resource (mana) than the resource it uses to attack (rage/energy). We became even better, however, when Burning Crusade came around we got some passive self-healing in the form of Improved Lead of the Pack, an effect now baked into the main talent itself. The passive self-healing afforded by this talent makes solo-ing as a druid even better because it reduces the frequency with which we need to switch out of our forms and heal ourselves. In fact, I often find that when fighting enemies that don't pose much of a challenge to me, I don't need to shift out to heal at all; Leader of the Pack does it for me, and for that, I am thankful.

I'm thankful for Netherwing. That faction gave me some of my best memories of WoW: some of the best daily quests in the entire game, an island that was beautifully designed, the ability to walk around as a fel orc, and a mount which continues to be my favorite to this very day. That content was a great reward for buying epic flying (as if epic flying itself weren't its own reward), back when 5000 gold was serious money and having epic flying was a real accomplishment. Netherwing is part of the reason the Burning Crusade was my favorite expansion pack to experience, and for that, I am thankful.

I'm thankful for this blog (hey, without WoW, it couldn't have happened). It has helped me discover my love for typing, it has gotten me involved in a great community (the WoW blogging community), it has encouraged me to think about the game in ways I might not have considered before, and by writing these posts, I can continually create something I can be proud of.

I'm thankful for the Shattering. Because old-world Azeroth needed the reboot.

Non-WoW-related things I am thankful for:

I'll spare you the usual things like my family, my friends, my health, etc., and skip right to the things I am thankful for that might be somewhat unique to me.

I am thankful for music. It helps to quiet my ever-active mind, it keeps me focused when I need to do mindless tasks, it helps me work through my emotions from time to time, and it is generally amazing in every way. Listening to music has been one of the few things that has consistently helped me throughout my entire life. Through all of the bad spots, whatever their nature, music could either pull me through or, at the very least, speak to me in a way that validated what I was going through. And through the good times, music has been there to make them even better. Music rocks; that's all there is too it.

I am thankful for the internet. Neo-Luddite that I am, I still can't deny the great things this technology has done for me. The internet puts a wide array of information at my fingertips, information I can access with but a few clicks and empower myself in the way that only information allows me. The internet is a great melting-pot of ideas, which has opened my mind to possibilities that might have never been revealed to me otherwise. The internet makes accessing the music that I love so much even easier by making more of it available to me and giving me more means to listen to it. The internet allows me to stay connected with friends I never get to see face-to-face anymore thanks to social networking sites. The internet made this blog possible. Though it may waste more of my time than I wish it did, the internet has doubtlessly improved my life in many ways, ways far too numerous for me to list here.

I am thankful for the people in my life who put up no façade about who they really are, the people who really do act like themselves in all parts of their life, and the example they serve for me. They inspire me to do the same thing myself, and while it isn't always easy, I'm getting much better at it, with them serving as my inspiration to keep up at it.

I am thankful that this blog is as successful as it is. When I got into blogging, I didn't have big aspirations to become the next big thing in the blogosphere; I just wanted a place where I could write a lot, and perhaps someone would read it. Sometimes I go to the stats tab in Blogger's editor and am amazed at just how many hits my blog gets in a day. The most amazing thing to me is that I got this far on my own merit. I never asked other bloggers to link to me, I never shamelessly advertised myself, and I never asked my friends to read what I wrote. I just started writing without any fanfare, and over the years (year and a half, specifically), people started reading me. Not because I asked them to, not because I tried any devious schemes to draw them in, but because they liked what they saw.

Which brings me to the final thing I am thankful for: you. I am thankful that my blog has readers and that my posts get comments with a fair amount of frequency. Knowing that people read my posts has caused me to be more mindful of their quality, and practicing writing with quality in mind has made my writing better in all parts of my life. But most of all, it makes me happy to know that people enjoy what I write (or else they wouldn't read it, would they?), so to all those people who deemed my posts worth their time, thank you.

Where does our pride come from?

This post discusses some experiences I had with a real-life friend of mine who I know reads this blog and whom I make some conjecture about that could be patently wrong. You'll know who you are once you start reading, and if what I say is wrong or portrays you in the wrong light, you have my sincerest apologies. But think about it this way; no one else will know it's you I'm writing about.

I have been playing WoW for more than five years now. I don't say that to show off at all, just to provide background information for the story I'm about to tell. I have a friend who has been playing WoW since the beginning of Wrath of the Lich King (about two years now) and has spent most of that time raiding. As such, he has procured some pretty impressive epics, including the Ring of Rapid Ascent, the Amulet of the Silent Eulogy, and the Gunship Captain's Mittens. Now, he and I have the kind of friendship where we occasionally show off to each other, but never in a legitimate attempt to make the other person jealous; just friendly boasting. As such, one day he logged in to show me his gear. Now, as someone who has no motivation to raid and who is rarely impressed by numbers alone, I wasn't as impressed as he expected me to be, so he asked me to show him what I had accomplished. He should have known better, for he knows I have been playing for more than five years.

You see, when you play for that long, you tend to accumulate various rewards here and there that really add up over time. My friend got the first hint that asking me to show off might be a bad idea when he saw my 4605 achievement points, more than double his 2200 (give or take). We were looking at my armory profile, mind you, so he decided to compare achievements, and his dread became a bit more apparent when he saw that he had many times more raid achievements than I (that was where most of his achievement points came from). Then we logged in to look at my character, and he was greeted by my 85 pets (including my Magical Crawdad, my Kirin Tor Familiar, and my Argent Squire with bridle), my 25 exalted reputations (including Netherwing, Ogri'la, and the Kalu'ak) my Onyx Netherwing Drake, my Chef title, my Traveler's Tundra Mammoth, and my Violet Proto-Drake. See, I'm a big solo player, and when you are a solo player who has been playing for five years, you tend to accrue these kinds of things without giving it too much thought, and at this point, most of these things were just trophies of past exploits, things I hardly even thought about now.

My friend, however, was extremely envious of my acquisitions, and vocally so. I made a point of telling him that everything I had acquired was not difficult to get, just time consuming; of course, having played the game for five years, I had a lot of time to put in to getting those things, but I left that part out. See, this friend of mine is a Kingslayer, something he put a considerable amount of time and effort into achieving, and he is also a raid leader, so he spends more time on raiding than the average Kingslayer. My thought was, if he could put forth that much time (to raid management, the multiple attempts, etc.) to getting Kingslayer, why couldn't he put forth the same amount of time it would take to get any of the things I had gotten? His claim was that he just didn't have the patience to go for something as time-consuming as the Violet Proto-Drake or the Traveler's Tundra Mammoth, so I let it rest at that.

But there was a disconnect about the whole thing that piqued my interest. Here he was, with his epics and his raid achievements, quite proud of them, and here I was, with my pets, mounts, and solo-ing achievements, and I had never given most of them a second thought. They were just trophies of parts of the game I enjoyed playing, many of which I probably would have played even if there was no reward (getting exalted with Netherwing certainly falls in that category), so I had no particular pride in most of them, and yet my friend was quite jealous of them. Why this difference between us?

My first guess was that it was just a matter of his inability to obtain what I had that made him jealous, but I realized that I myself had similarly accepted that I would probably never raid and never get epics and achievements like him. If it were that "forbidden fruit" effect that had caused him to be jealous of my acquisitions, then I would be similarly jealous of his epics and achievements. Yet here I was, sitting back as he showed me the things he had achieved, beaming with pride, and I just sat back and nodded, not at all jealous of what he had experienced and obtained that I hadn't. Of course, I thought, maybe I've just had longer to accept that I won't get these things, so I'm more at peace with it than he is about never obtaining the Traveler's Tundra Mammoth or Violet Proto-Drake.

But I found my potential answer in a comment he made as he was showing me his gear and achievements. When he had sufficiently impressed upon me just how much time he has spent raiding, how much time he has put in to get to the point he's at now, he said only half sarcastically, "I hate this game." It was just a joke at the time, but upon reflection, I realize there may be more to read into in his words than I initially thought. My friend may not be the most honest of people (he's not dishonest by any stretch of the imagination, but as someone who legitimately has difficulty with lying, I can say he's more liable to stretch the truth than I am), but perhaps he was being honest when he claimed he disliked that game at this point. I can't help but ask myself, if he really grew to dislike this game, then why did he keep playing? Perhaps he was one of those players who played for the achievements, the loot, the bragging rights; perhaps he had become the type who plays for the objective rewards.

I, on the other hand, am not the type to play for objective rewards, at least I'm not anymore; I may have been that type back in the day, but no longer. I'm definitively in the subjectively-driven camp now, in that I play for the experience more than the end result. Don't get me wrong, the end result is important to me in some respects, but it's the earning of the end result that is most important to me. Perhaps the difference between how my friend and I view the spoils of our exploits lies in this difference in motivation; perhaps he was prouder of his gear and achievements and jealous of my pets and mounts because he was focusing of the rewards, not the process of obtaining them. I, on the other hand, am not at all jealous that he got to experience raiding--which is how he got his achievements and loot, after all--since I don't enjoy raiding. When I saw those purples, I saw the frustration, the time commitments, the needing to deal with other people and depend on them for your success; I saw all of the inconveniences associated with earning that loot, not the loot itself. When you look it that way, is it any wonder I wasn't jealous?

Gear demotion and justice points

I'm going to write this post at the risk of putting my foot in my mouth due to lack of information, but I will give my reasons for believing what I believe so that if I look like a fool, I can at least look like a reasonable fool.

We already know that, come Cataclysm, the current emblem system will be replaced by a point system to simplify and streamline the process of getting gear from heroics and raids without depending on raid drops. (Which, incidentally, has motivated me to retire the "badges/emblems" tag for my posts and replace it with "gear currency", which reads better than "badges/emblems/points".) In order to finally retire the current badges and emblems, Blizzard is converting most of them to gold when they release patch 4.0.1, but emblems of triumph and emblems of frost are going to be converted into justice points. Not only does this mean our current emblems will give us a head start on gearing up in Cataclysm (though probably not a big one), but more intriguingly, emblems of triumph and emblems of frost are being converted to justice points at the same rate. (2.75 points per emblem)

Now, I am going to make a few assumptions at this point before I go on, assumptions which could easily be proven wrong by the PTR, but I'm going to take that risk. First of all, I'm going to assume that gear that can be bought with emblems now will be purchasable with justice points after patch 4.0.1 is released. While it might make sense from the players' perspective to save those points for Cataclysm gear that we'll use for a while, rather than spending now it on gear we'll likely replace while leveling, it wouldn't make sense from a business perspective to keep players from having that option. After all, I'm sure there are many players play just to see their numbers go up, and denied the option to do so with gear that was once available to them, how would they respond? Not well, I'd imagine.

The second assumption I am going to make is that both emblem of triumph and emblem of frost gear will cost justice points equal to 2.75 times their current emblem cost. Yes, this means I am assuming that a piece of armor that costs 50 emblems of frost and a piece of armor that costs 50 emblems of triumph will cost the same amount of justice points. Were it not for the fact that the two emblems will be worth the same number of points, I would not make this assumption. However, if emblems of triumph and emblems of frost are going to be converted to the same number of justice points each, it's only reasonable that cost of gear would be converted similarly. Suppose someone is limited to heroics and has been saving up emblems of frost for one special item by running the daily heroic each day. Just before he has enough emblems saved for that one special item, patch 4.0.1 hits. Now, if the point costs of emblem of frost gear was calculated at a higher emblem-to-point ratio than emblem of triumph gear (that is, unless the cost of emblem of frost gear were 2.75 points per emblem, while the cost of emblem of triumph gear was less than 2.75 points per emblem, a possibility I'll go over later), then that patch has diminished the fruits of his labor. That patch has now made it so he needs to work harder for gear that will soon be obsolete, and why would Blizzard do such a thing?

Of course, we must also ask the opposite question: why would Blizzard make emblem of frost gear so easy to get this late in the expansion? Elementary, my dear Watson; it's a final gear demotion before the expansion. Gear demotion (a term I made up for this post) has happened before, in the form of heroics and their daily quests rewarding better emblems with each patch after and including 3.2. When patch 3.2 made emblems of conquest the base-line emblems for heroics, gear that had once been exclusive to raiders who could enter Ulduar-25 or ToC-10 became available to anyone who could run heroics. Thus, the gear became less exclusive, which is why I say it was "demoted". The same thing happened in patch 3.3, which made emblems of triumph the baseline emblems in heroics. Why did Blizzard do this? To make it easier to get right into the most current tier of raiding content.

It's my theory that, by converting emblems of triumph and frost to justice points at the same rate, Blizzard is doing one more gear demotion as the expansion comes to a close. At this point, anyone who wants to defeat the Lich King while he's still relevant doesn't have long to do so, so being able to farm heroics for emblem of frost gear will certainly give players a leg up in getting the gear they need to do so. That combined with the more powerful talent trees and the stat conversions should make the process easier, allowing more people to see the content Blizzard put so much effort into designing, and in the end, that's a worthy goal.

Expand your horrizons to conquer the slump

Wrath of the Lich King is in its twilight hours, and many players are feeling bored with the game as a result. There are no new raids to run if one has already completed or given up on Icecrown Citadel, no new heroics or factions to grind reputation with, no new battlegrounds to fight in, etc. There's a real feeling of repetition that seems to permeate our play. At this point, it seems as if there is nothing for us to do aside from all of the things we have already done many times over.

There are, I'm sure, many who would suggest we break up the boredom by preparing for Cataclysm, but the things we do to prepare for Cataclysm are really the same activities we have done many times over dressed up with different goals. Making money for the new money sink? How do you propose to do that? Whatever method you choose, being it grinding, dailies, or playing the auction house, players have been doing it to pay for their repair bills since the expansion debuted. The last time new content was added that enabled players to make money in new ways was patch 3.2, which brought us the Argent Tournament. There's also the option to try to gear up to make leveling through Cataclysm faster, but that must also be done through the same avenues we have already used: heroics, raids, PvP perhaps, the occasional crafted piece, etc. Point is, anything we do in the name of preparing for Cataclysm will likely not relieve the doldrums we feel now.

So how to busy ourselves while we wait for the new content, while there's nothing else to do? Well, therein lies the problem: there is plenty to do; most players suffering from inter-expansion boredom have just dismissed the the things they could be doing to pass the time. And because those players have dismissed these activities, the idea of doing them doesn't even pop into their heads when they log in and ask, "What should I do today?" They are blind to any in-game reminder that these activities exist because those activities aren't within their realm of possibility. They skim past the relevant achievements, forget about players they see bearing the rewards of these activities, all because they once decided, "Nah, not worth it."

Let me ask you something: have you completed WoW? Because unless you are that Taiwanese man who earned every achievement, I doubt that is the case. There's plenty to do in this game, and you know that content is there. Some of it is obvious to you: leveling alts, fighting in battlegrounds, fighting in arenas, raiding, the kinds of things that likely take up most of your time now. But what about the other things you don't think about? What about farming old-world bosses for their rare-drop mounts? What about getting exalted with old-world factions? What about farming for rare pets? What about doing old-world quests? What about just going for achievements? These are all viable options of things to do to pass the time while we wait for Cataclysm to come out, things most people suffering from burnout have probably never gone for and can thus do to pass the time, yet I imagine many players dismiss these options. In other words, there are plenty of things out there for players to do while waiting for Catalcysm, and yet they aren't out doing them.

This probably seems natural to you. After all, who would bother with the activities I mentioned above when raiding can give better gear, dailies can give better money, and the rewards of all of the things I mentioned above are all cosmetic? That's the kind of thinking that keeps people from realizing all of the content that is available to them. But allow me to propose a potentially radical idea: raiding for high end gear and grinding for money through the dailies that reward the most of it is no more productive than any of the activities I listed above, and thus there is no reason for you be dismissive of the aforementioned activities as things to do while playing WoW.

Let me ask you something about that gear you get from raiding: what is it for? The only practical purpose gear serves is to allow you to beat more challenging content, so gear only allows you to move on to beat harder raiders, which allows you to get better gear, allowing you to beat harder raids, etc. I'm not saying that trying to get good gear is a waste of time; what I am saying is that getting better gear through raiding doesn't provide any permanent practical reward at all. The benefit provided by that gear is fleeting, temporary, and only as good as it compares to the current best gear. So why go for the gear? Because raiding is fun (at least, it's supposed to be). The gear we get through raiding is simply a tangible motivating factor to get you to raid if the fun of doing it isn't enough to motivate you to start. Once you do start, that fun should be enough to keep you raiding, since, as I mentioned, gear only provides a benefit for so long. In short, the only reason to try to get gear from raids is to have fun in the process of acquiring it.

And as for money? With each expansion, money has become progressively easier to earn; that's why the gold sinks keep getting more expensive. That has the added benefit of each expansion putting wealthy established players and poorer new players on more equal footing than they would be otherwise. But where exactly do we get all of this money? From the things we would do otherwise: daily quests that award reputation with a certain faction, one-time quests that we do to see the evolving story of WoW, the selling of materials that we enjoy collecting, the selling of items we enjoy grinding, etc. All of the in-game activities that reward money are things that are supposed to be enjoyable in their own right; the money is just a nice byproduct. Now, would there be fewer people putting up ore, herbs, and fish for others to use in their crafting if doing so didn't pay money? Maybe. But the point is that gold is just the reward for accomplishing our in-game goals and activities, not a goal itself. Those money sinks may be nice to have (I can tell you from personal experience that epic flying is a big time saver, and that the Traveler's Tundra Mammoth is quite convenient), but the fun is supposed to be had in earning the gold to buy them, moreso than in having them. It will be more fun to earn them after Cataclysm (more money earned for your effort; newer, more enjoyable content to earn that money from; etc.) than to collect that money before.

The point is, while there are activities in WoW that we view as "productive", they are no more productive than activities we dismiss for their perceived lack of productivity. Their only real purpose is to allow us to have fun, and if that is the only benefit we get out of them, then why limit what we do between now and the Cataclysm to things we consider "productive" and thus rule out other activities that may be fun? The fruits of our labor will only last so long, so the enjoyment of that labor is the only goal worth pursuing. If you are suffering from the pre-expansion slump, I invite you to try some part of the game you had previously dismissed as unproductive or pointless. Go for an achievement. Grind out a mount or a pet. Do some old-world quests. Get exalted with that faction you never got exalted with. Or try leveling an alt or hitting up some battlegrounds if you had previously dismissed those activities without trying them. As long as what you do is fun, then whatever you do in-game is time well spent.

The "naked" button; more useful than you think

I dun goofed up.

What you see above is a recreation of what happened to me when I logged in on December 8th, 2009, the day patch 3.3 was released. Because so many people had logged in, eager to try out the new dungeon finder, my high-population realm was lagging like I had never seen it lag before. I, too, wanted to try the new dungeon finder, but I had the misfortune of leaving my character in Dalaran before the downtime for the patch. The lag was so slow that I decided to fly down to Crystalsong Forest, where there are never any other players, hoping the lag there would not be so bad. I made the ill-advised decision to dismiss Swift Flight Form, hoping to cast it again once I was closer to the ground, as I had done so many times before without incident.

This time, however, things were different. I suspected that the lag would make my recast take a while, but when I started to hit that button to recast Swift Flight Form, my druid kept falling. And falling. And falling. I knew, at that point, that he was going to die, so I started spamming my "naked" button, which removes all of my druid's armor. What happened next was quite tense. My druid kept falling and landed on the ground in Crystalsong Forest, where he stood for about fifteen seconds (did I mention that the lag was really bad?). He couldn't move or do anything; he just stood there... with all of his armor still on. However, much to my relief, after those fifteen seconds were up, a naked Night Elf crumpled to the ground in front of me. I did have to run back to his corpse, but I had saved myself a few gold on the repair bills.

I have had quite a few incidents like this where stripping my character saved me money on my repair bills after dying from a fall I thought I could make, then realized mid-descent that I wouldn't. I know it seems like something that wouldn't be all that useful, but you don't realize its utility until you need it. I may have only used it three or four times to save myself repair bills since I made it, but that's because I can cast Swift Flight Form while falling in most places; a class that can't re-mount mid fall would probably get much more use out of a "naked" button than I do. And let's be honest, that isn't the only use for a button that strips your character of all his/her armor. ;-)

In all seriousness, if this idea appeals to you, then let me tell you how to make such a button for your character. There are certainly addons that will allow you strip your character at a moment's notice, but this method doesn't need to be updated after every patch.

1. If you haven't activated the Equipment Manager yet, do so.
Go to the game menu (escape key), then interface, features, and make sure Use Equipment Manager is checked.

2. Remove all of your armor.
There's no easy or fast way to do this (that is, until you finish this process). Just open the character screen and manually move all of your armor from your avatar to your bags. If you are a bit prudent and don't want to totally strip your character when you use this button, then just remove the armor pieces which have durability, while leaving your tabard, cloak, shirt, and jewelry (you will need a tabard if you don't want your character to be functionally naked when you use this button). This has the added benefit of leaving you with more health when you return to your corpse, since the stamina on your gear will increase your maximum health pool and the amount of health you have when you return to your corpse is a percentage of your health pool, so you won't need to heal yourself as much when you come back to life. Note that if you choose to go this route, you will need to update your button every time your tabard, shirt, clock, or jewelry changes, whereas a purely "naked" button never needs to be updated.

3. Save this "set".
Go to the equipment manager (it's the little button in the top left of the character screen) and click "Save". Give your nakedness a title (I went with the very creative name, "naked". You can use a name like "Panic Button" if you don't want such an obscene title.) and an icon (I went with the icon of the hunter's pet ability Dust Cloud, since it's just a bare face, which I felt captured the way my druid would look after I used this button.). Then click "Okay".

4. Drag your new "naked" button to your action bar.
Place it somewhere where you can click it easily, but you aren't likely to click it by accident. I keep an empty space between my "naked" button and any other buttons on my bars, on both sides, to avoid clicking it accidentally while trying to click something else.

And you're done! Now you too can save five gold when you least expect it. Yes, you will need to do this for each of your characters that you make, so I recommend you do it early on (as in levels 1-10), while you have less armor to remove. Just remember, though you do need to set it up each time you re-roll a character, it's more reliable than an addon since it's an official feature of the game.

Comparing the three WoW's, Part 2: Raiding and Leveling

I have already compared the parallel structures of cooperative PvE and PvP, so today I shall compare the parallel structures of leveling and cooperative PvE and see what conclusions can be drawn from them. If you haven't read part one of this post, please do, for I will be writing with the assumption that you already have, so I don't have to repeat myself.

One thing that makes the two parts of leveling different from the two parts of cooperative PvE and PvP is that there is no objective line between pre-level-cap content and level-cap content. Sure, by the time you reach the Storm Peaks, you'll probably be level 80, or at least very close, so that zone and Icecrown could perhaps be objectively considered level-cap content, but even that is a difficult call to make. After all, you are eligible for all of the quests in Storm Peaks at level 77, and ditto for the vast majority of quests in Icecrown (excluding the Quel'Delar quest chain and a few Argent Tournament quests, exactly three to be exact). And even though you are very likely to be level 80 by the time you enter Icecrown, the fact that nothing in either of those zones requires you to be level 80 means the distinction is blurred, to say the least.

Another interesting point of note is that, aside from the chestpieces awarded by the Icecrown quest Battle at Valhalas: Final Challenge, the best gear you will get from quests that don't require you to enter an instance is ilevel 174 (and the quest above only rewards gear that is ilevel 183). For comparison, gear dropped by the normal version of the original level 80 5-mans (Culling of Stratholme, The Oculus, Halls of Lightning, and Utgarde Pinnacle) is ilevel 187, while the rare-quality gear that drops from the original heroics is ilevel 200. That's 13 ilevels of difference between those three areas of the game, a steady increase. Thus we can see these three areas of the game as pre-raiding tiers, with out-of-instance quests being tier 1, normal mode 5-mans being tier 2, and heroics being tier 3.

Of course, with the inclusion of craftable epic gear and reputation rewards, it is possible to skip normal mode dungeons, and even heroics if you know what you were doing, and go right into Naxxramas. I suppose those craftable epics and reputation rewards could be seen as similar to the current system by which heroics drop the second best emblem in the game, while the daily heroic awards the first; they allow you to skip to the interesting stuff, the stuff that everyone else is doing, without needing to go through old content to get there. They allow you to get to the cutting edge without people needing to drag you through old content to gear you up.

But wait! This is the start of the expansion pack that we are talking about. This is when nothing was "old content", not the normals, the heroics, nor the raids. And yet, these measures (craftable epics and reputation rewards) were put in place from the beginning to allow people to skip normal modes and go right into heroics or into raids, just like how the current emblem system allows people to skip all of the previous tiers of raiding and go right into the most current tier of content. Something isn't right here; similar measures were implemented in both cases, yet the circumstances that necessitated them in the second case didn't exist in the first case. What I mean by that is that the new emblem system was implemented so that people could enter the raiding scene if they got in a bit late and missed the chance to gear up while everyone else was running the lower-tier content, but craftable epics and reputation rewards allowed people to skip new content that everyone would have been running if Blizzard hadn't implemented those epics or those reputation rewards. What gives?

I suppose one explanation is that Blizzard didn't want to force people to run 5-mans if they really didn't want to, but even this explanation is difficult to accept. After all, the amount of time it would take to fully gear a character up for Naxxramas without entering any 5-mans would probably be similar to the amount of time it would take to gear up that character using normal modes and eventually heroic modes. The only difference is that the player could move at their own pace and play at their own convenience while using the former method, while gearing up in five mans would force the player to play not only for themselves but also for those they group up with, and they wouldn't be able to just drop out whenever they feel like it, like they could when they are out solo-ing. But the thing is, those differences are also exactly what differentiate raiding from solo-ing, and those differences only get more pronounced in the raiding scene. 5-mans are like a mini preparation for the demands of raiding, so to want to skip them to get into raiding is like skipping learning how to walk because you want to start running. As such, a player who would chose to gear up for Naxx through solo ventures rather than 5-mans would likely be doing so for reasons that would show that he, as a player, isn't ready for raiding, no matter how good his gear may be.

So who were these craftable epics and reputation reward made for? It looks like they were made for the mysterious brand of player that enjoys solo-ing more than 5-mans but still ultimately enjoys raiding more than either. Or perhaps they were made for those players who have the necessary grouping skills to raid and want to get into raids without bothering with that 5-man nonsense. This is certainly a feasible possibility, but heroics in those days weren't like heroics now. In the days before the Dungeon Finder, it was common for guild members to run heroics together for gear and badges, which would negate the one aspect of heroics that could make them less enjoyable than raids: the fact that they were usually PUG'ed. I suppose these craftable epics and reputation rewards could also provide a source of back-up gear, like that provided by emblems, gear that you could use to gear up if the RNG gods decided to deny you a certain drop over and over again.

But could these craftable epics and reputation rewards also have been made for us, the soloists? We players may say that gear is just a nice consolation prize for the grander experience of playing the game, and we may look down upon those who openly admit to playing for the gear, but gear is still an important factor in all parts of this game. As I have said before, gear doesn't only serve as a gatekeeper to keep us from steamrolling through content; it also serves as a representation of our achievements, of the effort we put in to obtain that gear. Crafted gear represents the time we put in to farm the mats and/or earn the money to buy them off of the auction house, while reputation gear represents the time we put in to reach exalted with the faction that rewards it. So is this gear for us?

Honestly, I doubt it. Crafted gear and reputation rewards were integral to entering heroics and raiding back when Wrath first came out, meaning that obtaining them was simply another step on the path to raiding. After all, raiders had to obtain this gear first, then move on to raiding to obtain better gear, so I really couldn't see Blizzard putting this gear in the game to give us soloists something to work for. To say that those rewards were put in for soloists would be like saying that the first few levels in a single-player game were put in for the people who aren't skilled enough to beat the latter levels. It doesn't work that way; those first few levels (and the craftable epics and reputation rewards) are the stepping stones through which a player moves on to more difficult and more rewarding content, not something put in to stand on its own.

It's the fact that this gear serves as a stepping stone into cooperative PvE that convinces me that Blizzard didn't want Wrath's solo content to be viable, to be able to stand on its own as a unique part of the game; they only want it to facilitate players' entry into raids. Astute readers will notice that I have come to this conclusion before through very similar reasoning, but hey, at least I'm consistent, right? In the previously linked post, I concluded that in the same way PvP (and the entire game, really) was balanced around class performance in arenas, PvE has been balanced around raiding to make getting into raids easier. This fact, coupled with everything I have said up to now, leads me to only one conclusion: the three WoW's aren't solo-ing, cooperative PvE, and PvP, with content done before the level cap and content done at the level cap, heroics and raiding, and battlegrounds and arenas as their respective sub-areas. The three WoW's are, instead, leveling, level-cap PvE, and PvP, with level-cap PvE split into three areas: soloing, heroics, and raids.

So what does this mean in the grand scheme of things? It means I can take the conclusion of my previously linked post a step further: WoW's level-cap solo content isn't just a stepping stone into cooperative PvE content; it exists only to facilitate the transition from leveling to heroics and raiding. Wrath's solo content was, quite simply, not designed to be viable, to stand on its own, which explains all of the points I brought up in On the homogenization of Wrath of the Lich King solo content. And yes, I think that the lack of viability of WoW's solo content is a bad thing. So I wait for Cataclysm with bated breath, to see if the game will go further in this direction, or if it will reverse it. Only time will tell.

Should better gear look more unique?

As I said in my post on the Celestial Steed, aesthetics can be serious business in WoW. It's for this reason that something as simple as the look of the gear that drops off of bosses can create as strong a reaction as it does. As someone who doesn't raid frequently and is just happy to get his hands on whatever gear he can, I never thought about this much until WoW.com did a breakfast topic on the subject of the lack of unique models in the Lich King's loot tables. It's easy to understand where the author comes from; the Lich King is, after all, the final boss of the expansion pack, so it seems ludicrous for him to not drop unique-looking items. But is it really?

As I have said before, loot serves two purposes: it acts as a gatekeeper to determine how quickly we can move through content, and it represents the challenges we overcame to obtain it. Whether the loot has a unique model is only relevant to the latter purpose, so we'll focus on how the loot's appearance relates to its representation of our achievements. (Still, imagine what WoW would be like if how cool gear looked were relevant to both of its purposes: "Look, man, I am proud to be a part of this guild, but our tabard just looks so... plain. It really is in our best interests that I wear the Tabard of the Shattered Sun instead; we've been banging our head on the wall on this boss for the past week, and it may give me the advantage I need to help us kill this guy." "Fine, but once we get him on grind, do you think you could wear our tabard instead?" "Alright; I guess it will help keep him interesting once he's no longer a real challenge for us.")

So, if the look of gear is supposed to be reflective of the challenges we overcame to get it, then the more difficult and significant a challenge is, the more impressive the gear should look. That's why the coolest mounts drop off of the hardest bosses, and that's why people were so indignant about a mount as impressive as the Celestial Steed being available to every Tom, Dick, and Harry who shelled out the money for it. Well, the Lich King is certainly the ultimate challenge of Wrath of the Lich King, so it certainly follows that he should drop the coolest loot in the game. "Cool" may be subjective, but I don't think it's a stretch to say that unique models are the coolest models of all.

Granted, we can't expect Blizzard's artists to be able to come up with twenty of their best models on the spot, but they certainly could have saved their best ideas for the Lich King. As they were going through making models for loot from quests, normal dungeons, heroics, and the first tier or raiding, and even as they were making models for Ulduar and Trial of the Crusader, they could have taken one of two of their ideas and said, "That's one of our best. Save that one and flesh it out for the loot that drops off of the final boss." If they didn't do that this time around, then it's too late to change anything about that, but at least it can be a lesson for the future.

So, the Lich King should drop unique weapons because he is the final boss of the expansion, as well as the greatest challenge of the expansion, and the gear he drops should reflect that visually. Case closed, right? Perhaps, but that's not all there is to it. We must remember that the models of the items in-game take time and creativity to develop. Some artist at Blizzard had to first come up with the idea of a unique model for a weapon or piece of armor, then spend the time it takes to actually develop that model so that we can see it. I imagine that process takes a very long time, and I don't think any one piece made me realize that more than the Conqueror's Nightsong Raiments, which I used to wear on my druid. Just go ahead and go look at the screen shots of that piece. I'll wait.

Back? Did you see just how intricate the design of that piece was? How many details there were? And that's just one model for one piece of armor. The art team has to churn out hundreds of those in the duration of any given expansion, not to mention models for enemies, bosses, the raids themselves, etc. And with every piece that's made, that's one good idea they likely won't be able to use again, limiting their reserve of creative ideas for future models. What I am trying to say is, every single thing in the game was the result of some artist's long work and effort, be it a weapon dropping off of the Lich King, a blue-quality drop from a heroic, a level 68 baddie in Borean Tundra, or just a small plant used to add scenery. I think we sometimes get too caught up on the look of one thing to appreciate all of the amazing artwork in this game.

So the next time you log in, as a favor to me, the design team, and yourself, just look. I don't care what you look at; it could be your character, the raid you are in, the heroic you run, the world itself, or even just an herb you pick or a node you mine. Just take a look, and appreciate all of the effort the art team puts into this game. And whatever you look at, think to yourself, "An artist worked hard to make this, just so I could see it." Gratitude and appreciation, my friends; that's all I ask.

Why should the final boss of an expansion drop gear?

One of the things that continues to amaze me is the vast variety of places that I can find inspiration for my posts. For example, I was browsing TV Tropes a few days ago and came across an article entitled "Bragging Rights Reward", which describes any practical reward in a video game that takes immense effort to acquire, such that by the time you acquire it, you have already proved you don't need it. It's a fairly frequently used trope, and it got me thinking: are there any such rewards in WoW? One example immediately popped into my mind: any loot that drops from heroic Lich King (or Kil'jaeden in Burning Crusade, or Kel'thuzad in vanilla WoW). After all, those bosses were/are the last boss in their respective expansion, so once you defeat them, you don't need better gear. This, to me, begs the question: why should these bosses drop gear?

The Lich King in an interested exception to this case, because with the Ruby Sanctum being released in patch 3.3.5, the gear that he drops on heroic mode will give players a better chance at defeating the foes in the Ruby Sanctum, and considering that everything in the Ruby Sanctum will be side-grades, rather than upgrades to the things dropped in Icecrown Citadel, they won't be bragging rights rewards either. After all, players could go for Halion first and heroic Lich King after that, or they could have already defeated heroic Lich King and will now be trying to best the Ruby Sanctum. Either way, the rewards from one fight will make the other easier, making neither a clear case of bragging rights rewards. That is, unless Halion isn't a comparable fight to heroic Lich King, and is a good deal easier. in which case the Lich King's heroic drops will still be bragging rights rewards. After all, if he is, by far, the hardest fight in the expansion so far, so by the time you defeat him, you have proven you don't need better gear.

For now, I'm going to write under the assumption that heroic Lich King will remain the hardest fight in the game, even after 3.3.5 is released, for this will not only make writing about the subject more interesting, but will also allow me to consider whether there was any point in Kil'jaeden and Kel'thuzad dropping gear. Now, I'm sure one of the first justifications for them dropping gear that one would point out is that their gear helps people level more quickly through the new content released with each expansion, but if your gear is good enough that you can beat the final boss of an expansion, it's probably good enough that you won't notice the difference between having gear that drops off of that final boss and not having gear that drops off of that final boss; you'll probably be mowing through enemies too quickly to notice the time you save. One could also argue that the gear they drop would give one an advantage when one starts the new expansion's raid content, but considering the rate at which gear has steadily gotten better, the difference between top-end gear and second-best gear becomes even less significant when you enter a new expansion's raids.

So where does that leave us in terms of uses for gear that drops off of the final boss of an expansion? I once said in one of my other posts that gear really serves two purposes: helping you advance through an expansion's content, and serving as a representation of your achievements. The real question is, if gear isn't serving one of those purposes, is it fair that it exist only to serve the other, less practical one? Making the models for that gear takes time away from the design team, time they could be spending on other things, like the gear for the new content. More importantly, though, it reinforces the idea that the main goal of playing WoW is to get better gear, and though that is often an important step in accomplishing other goals, it isn't the reason most of us play. Most of us play for the experience, whether that experience is downing a raid boss, winning a battleground, or just getting exalted with a faction; gear just happens to be a nice consolation that also makes future experiences go more smoothly.

But, you may ask, are there any alternatives? Plenty, actually: mounts, titles, vanity pets (granted, people would probably only be excited about receiving one of the first two of those three), all of which serve the purpose of representing a person's achievements without existing solely as a bragging right reward (by the definition above). And truth be told, I think that rewarding regular old gear for defeating the final boss of an expansion is a bit... underwhelming. Gear was just a necessity to get to that point, and to reward more gear almost seems like mockery to me. Think about it: by beating heroic Lich King, a raid has beaten Wrath of the Lich King. They have overcome the greatest challenge off the expansion, and the reward is just more gear? Just more of the same? Now, granted, beating the Lich King on heroic mode does also grant special titles, depending on which mode you beat him on, as well as a mount for one member of the raid, but rather than giving some other members of the raid gear as a reward, why not give everyone the mount? It seems to me a more fitting reward for what is, in essence, beating Wrath of the Lich King, at least more fitting than just more gear. Maybe that's just me, though.

Calm down about the changes to raid loot

What I am about to write will not be as logically rigorous as most of what I write, because this is a piece from my heart, not from my mind. After seeing the furor of indignant responses to the changes coming to raid loot in Cataclysm (namely, that 10-mans and 25-mans will share loot tables), I feel like I need to write a piece in defense of the company that had made the game that has held my interest longer than any other game I have every played. Yes, this post is going to defend Blizzard as a company (not the changes, though), and you may disagree with me. Yes, I am a bit of a Blizzard fanboy, and so you may not enjoy reading this post if you feel more doom and gloom about these changes than I do. With that said, if you are angry by the end of this post because of the optimism contained within, you have only yourself to blame; you have been warned.

Blizzard is a smart company. They have to be to be one of the most successful game companies out there and to design the most successful MMO ever. They've certainly made their fair share of mistakes, but as a smart company, they have likely learned from those mistakes. As such, I trust them. I trust them to make these changes to raid loot without ruining the 25-man raiding scene. They know what a loss it would be to their revenues if 25-man raiders quit the game due to loss of motivation to raid, and they will do their best to make that not happen. They know better than to let 25-man raiding die.

More importantly, the Cataclysm beta hasn't even started yet. Blizzard has many months to observe the effects this change will have on the raiding scene when people start raiding on the beta, and if 25-mans are abandoned by the players, they will do something to make them viable again. Maybe they'll even revoke this change and we'll be able to look back on it as the change that almost killed 25-man raiding. Point is, there is still plenty of time for Blizzard to see exactly effects this change has on the raiding scene and to respond to those changes.

We can speculate all we like, but with the vague kind of information that Blizzard has given us so far about this change, it's hard to say for certain what it will mean for raiding. Maybe the change will drive people to the 10-mans and no one will run 25-man raids; if that does happen, Blizzard will do something to change that. Considering the outcry this change has created, I don't think they can afford not to.

Raiding advice for people who raid infrequently

I am part of a unique group within World of Warcraft: I have a character at the level cap, and yet I rarely raid. I do raid occasionally, but I do it so infrequently that the way I approach raids is fundamentally different from the way regular raiders approach raids. I know I'm not alone in this. Some of us don't raid because our schedules are so inconsistent that we can't commit to raiding with a guild at specific times each week. Some of us don't raid because we play the game to relax, and having all of those other people depending on you performing your job perfectly, ready to pounce on you if you mess up, is anything but relaxing. Some of us simply don't want to repeatedly fight the same bosses over and over again just to earn the right to fight more bosses over and over again. Whatever our reason, we simply would rather not group up with 9 or 24 other people to fight bosses on a regular basis.

That doesn't mean that we don't ever raid. Sure, there are people out there who never do step into the raiding scene, but some of us do dip our feet. We come along when our guild says they need a healer, we PuG a single-encounter raid (like Onyxia or Sartharion), or we may even get bored one night a run a longer raid all the way through. Hell, we may even enjoy it. However, stepping into the raiding scene from heroics can be a scary prospect, which brings us to this post. What follows is advice for people who wish to raid infrequently, just to see what it is like, but don't know how to get started. If you raid regularly or at least have raided, this advice isn't for you. However, if you don't fit into either of those categories and would like to fit into the latter, then to quote Wowhead, "OK HERE IS HOW SO LISSEN GUD."

1. Start small.
The single-boss raid dungeons are good places to start if you want to dip your feet into raiding. They don't require much more time than a heroic, so they will allow you to adjust to all of the other aspects of raiding that will be new to you: the increased number of people, the increased complexity of the encounters, etc. Running those raids also means only needing to learn one boss strategy (or one and a few more simple ones for the sub-bosses). As such, try to start raiding with Obsidian Sanctum, or, if you gear is good enough, Onyxia's Lair.

2. Be realistic about what you can handle.
If you don't raid frequently, you may not have the skills and habits common to most raiders that you need to carry you through the raid. As such, you may need to make up for that lack of skill with your gear. As a casual raider, I can tell you that out-gearing content is a great help when you want to dip your feet in raiding but don't think you have the skills for it. Sure, gear can only take you so far, but it certainly helps. If you just want dip your feet in raiding, use a site like be.imba to gauge the general quality of your gear, then try running a raid that won't offer many upgrades for you. If you get more comfortable with raiding, you can move up into the "upgrade range," meaning you can try running raids that may help you upgrade your gear.

You may be asking, how can one over-gear a raid without ever raiding? Heroics. Heroics these days are an easy ways gear up for raids without needing to raid, helping you catch up with other people in terms of your gear. Even in the days when heroics only dropped Emblems of Heroism, I used heroics to get the best gear one could get without entering a raid, and was more than prepared for Naxx-10. Since then, getting gear through heroics has only gotten easier.

3. Know the strategies
If you don't raid frequently, it isn't worth your RAM to download a mod like Deadly Boss Mods to help you anticipate a boss's attack. As such, you need to know the in-game cues that make raiding without DBM possible. It's imperative that you read the strategies for the bosses in whatever raid you plan on running so that you can be prepared for them. Knowing what attacks are coming and knowing when they will come is an integral part of raiding, and you need to be intimately familiar with the strategies to do that. As a guild I was once in said, casual raiding is not sloppy raiding. You don't get to do this frequently; give it your all. If that all seems like too much to take in, then as Saniel said bellow, ask for a brief reminder of the strategies before each boss fight. Sometimes one little reminder is all it takes to bring back what you read earlier.

4. You are in this for the long-haul.
One of the biggest shocks for a first time raider is just how long the bosses take to kill. Bosses can take anywhere from five to ten minutes to kill, so get used to being in this for the long-haul. If you are a healer, use your mana-restoring abilities early and often and make sure you have enough MP5 so that you don't run out of mana. If you are a DPS, use your cooldowns early and often (unless you need to save them for a burst phase) so that you can cause maximum damage. Above all, don't be surprised when you see how slowly the boss's health meter falls. Also be prepared for how long a raid will take; most non-single-encounter raids will take you a few hours unless you run with a group of people who know the raid inside and out and out-gear it immensely. You probably won't finish the raid in one night, so don't be surprised if your raid leader asks whether you plan on showing up the next night to continue.

What improvements might Blizzard make to the badge/emblem system?

Edit: Blizzard recently announced exactly what changes they will be making to the badge system, so we no longer need to wonder what they will do. Though I didn't anticipate them changing it to a point-based system, they will be implementing a system where there are two types of gear currency, and when a new tier of gear is released, the better type is converted to the lesser type. All I can say is, called it!

The addition of the Emblematic feat of strength in the last patch, sent people into a flurry of speculation about the fate of the emblem system in Cataclysm, but there's one thing we know: it's not likely that Blizzard will simply do away with the emblem system. Instead, they are probably going to change it; after all, we know they didn't like certain aspects of the Badge of Justice system, and we know they don't like certain aspects of the emblem system, so the question is, how can they change gear currency in the next expansion to address the issues that badges and emblems had?

One of the things Blizzard didn't like about the Badge of Justice system was that people could stock-pile badges and buy gear the day it was released. This was not their intention, so they put in emblems with the tiered system we know today. That way, people couldn't run heroics before a patch to stock up on emblems and buy gear the next day; they would have to run heroics after the patch, which was much closer to Blizzard's intentions. Problem is, with five tiers of emblems, things get confusing. Needing to trade down your emblems three or four times to buy heirloom gear is tedious, and it can be annoying to need to talk to multiple vendors just to see what gear you can buy with your emblems. Whatever changes Blizzards makes to the emblems system will need to address these issues.

I have seen suggestions before as to ways to improve the emblem system, but many of these have issues of their own. Some have suggested automatically upgrading emblems to the next tier when a patch hits, but this creates the same issue that Badges of Justice had in that you can stockpile emblems for the next patch. Some have also suggested making old gear be exchanged for the new emblems when a patch drops, but this would prevent your from using the emblems you had stockpiled to buy it. One simple solution is to allow higher-tier emblems to automatically downgrade when you buy something, but this would create issues of its own. People would probably accidentally spend emblems they didn't mean to spend, and imagine the horror of trying to refund them automatically.

Whatever new system is put in place, it would need to motivate people to run heroics all the way through Cataclysm's duration (like Wrath's system), rather than encouraging people to run heroics in bulk to save up emblems to buy gear immediately after the patch drops. One option is to use a system similar to Badges of Justice, but to inflate the cost of gear much more dramatically as the expansion goes on while also increasing the amount of emblems that drop from bosses. This would discourage people from running heroics in advance while still keeping things simple, but the cost of gear would probably reach absurd levels, and people would still farm heroics to get gear the minute it is released. It would also mean emblem achievements be worth less as the expansion wears on.

Perhaps emblems could be demoted as patches went on and be given better gear they can buy. Let me explain what I mean. Suppose that emblems are replaced with a currency we'll call seals. When Cataclysm launches, there would be two kinds of seals: Gleaming Seals of Justice, and Seals of Justice. Heroics (and ten-mans, if Blizzard wants 25-man raids to drop better gear currency) would drop Seals of Justice, while 25-mans and your first daily heroic would drop Gleaming Seals of Justice. GSoJs would be used to buy gear equivalent to 25-man drops, while SoJs would be used to buy gear equivalent to 10-man drops. Now, when a new patch with a new round of gear is released, all of your GSoJs would be demoted to regular SoJs (the idea being that time has made them lose their sheen), but all of the gear that had previously been bought with GSoJs will instead be bought with regular SoJs. Only the latest round of gear would be bought with GSoJs. And, of course, GSoJs could be traded down for regular SoJs.

This kind of system is not without its flaws. One could easily chain-run heroics early in the expansion to save up regular SoJs, then use those SoJs to buy the second best gear later in the expansion. However, the best gear would still only be available to those who continue to run heroics, and someone who is the kind of person to run heroics to save up seals for new gear is probably the kind of person who would want the best gear and would keep running heroics to get it. Players may also feel indignant about their "good" seals being transformed into "bad" seals, even though the "bad" seals would be capable of everything the "good" seals had been capable of before the patch was released. Players may also feel that it isn't worth it to spend their regular seals now when they can get better gear with them later, but if today's system didn't evoke feelings of, "Why run heroics now when running them later will give me better badges?" then I doubt seals will evoke a similar feeling.

Sadly, I cannot come up with some magic system that can solve all of the issues emblems have (if I could, I'd be writing up my resumé to submit to Blizzard, not writing up this blog post.). Considering that the Cataclysm press beta-invites have already gone out, perhaps we'll soon have some idea of just what Cataclysm has in store for us and our emblems. I am quite eager to see what Blizzard decides to do.

Should the dungeon finder should put people of similar gear levels together?

As it stands now, the Dungeon Finder tries to create groups whose members have varying levels of gear; it tries to put people who outgear heroics to a ludicrous degree and people who are just starting to gear up together, rather than separate the two. Of course, this frequently ends up with people who are new to level 80 being put with elitist a-holes who could never fathom doing heroics in non-epics, even though we all used to do that. Many people have claimed that the Dungeon Finder should instead put people of similar gear levels together; people who are new to heroics would be put together and people who outgear them would be put together. But is this system really in everyone's best interests, or are we ignoring the risks of such a system?

Let's first look at the benefits of grouping people with similar gear together. People who out-gear heroics would stand to gain a lot from this kind of system. Most people who run heroics these days know that finishing the heroic is a given; the only thing that changes with your group composition is how long it takes to do so. As such, having "under-geared" members in your group only slows you down, but rarely if ever prevents you from finishing the heroic. If the Dungeon Finder put über-geared people together, they would get to breeze right through heroics and get their daily emblems of frost without difficulty. Many of the "best run" stories I hear about heroics are stories of groups where everyone had amazing gear and the trash and bosses died really quickly, so I don't think many players would object to more of their runs being like that.

What about the players that are still gearing up? What do they stand to gain from a system like this? Quite a lot, actually. If a player is just starting heroics, they likely don't have much experience with groups or with their class in group play. Heroics are not just a place to get gear; they also serve as a training ground for people so they can better play their characters when they move into raids. Now, let me ask you something: What does a tank learn when a healer can heal him through all his mistakes and the DPS can survive the damage they take if they overaggro? What do DPS learn when the tank causes so much threat that they don't need to worry about aggro and the healer can heal them through damage they should be avoiding? What do healers learn when tanks barely take any damage and DPS don't need to be saved immediately when they take damage? As it stands now, the Dungeon Finder spoils newer players, allowing them to get gear without the necessary experience and lessons that once accompanied it. That would be different if those new players were put with other new players: they wouldn't be carried through the heroics, so they'd learn something from it, and they'd be spared the hateful tongues of those who think one needs ilevel 232 epics to run heroics.

There's also the issue of intimidation. When a healer can't heal a tank that is chain-pulling half the instance because healers can usually heal him through that or he can't heal the DPS because they are taking damage that they should be avoiding, it's likely to turn him off from heroics. When a tank can't hold aggro because DPS refuse to watch their threat and they then chastise him for it, it's likely to turn him off from heroics. If a DPS are continually kicked from groups because they are only putting out 1.5k DPS, it's likely to turn him off from heroics. However, if people who are gearing up through heroics are put together, these issues would vanish because the potential for their existence would be lost. A new tank cannot chain-pull half the instance; a new healer can not heal the DPS through their mistakes, so he won't be expected to; and a new DPS can't pull aggro off of a comparatively geared tank. In short, players that are gearing up through heroics stand to gain a lot by being put in groups with other people who are gearing up through heroics.

Also, if the Dungeon Finder put people of similar gear levels together, there would be more of a sense of progression in heroics. If a new player starts out in heroics with players who can carry him through it, the heroics are already easy for him, and he'll probably get bored pretty quickly. If, however, he first runs heroics with people like himself, heroics will be challenging for him like they were in the early days of Wrath of the Lich King. As his gear gets better, he'll be put with people with progressively better gear, so the difficulty of heroics will go down accordingly, rather than starting easy for him when he first steps inside of them. Under a system like this, getting gear would make heroics easier for the player, rather than making him less of a burden to his groups. It would be a form of positive progression, rather than negative progression.

Now that we've gone over the easy stuff (the benefits of this system), what would the drawbacks of such a system be? One drawback for the more geared players would the potential for the widespread impatience among better-geared players to get worse. After all, no system is perfect, and people who are just gearing up would at some point be put with elitists. If the more geared players got used to being in very speedy groups, the less-geared players would be even more abused than they are now when they are inevitably put with more geared players. Rudeness is already an issue in heroics, but a system like this gives it the potential to become even worse. Still, considering just how bad rudeness had gotten in spite of mixed groups, I don't think it could get much worse. Would people who are gearing up suffer any ill effects from this system? None that they don't already suffer; they'd just suffer them less frequently.

So, in the end, everyone benefits from the mixed-group system being abolished in favor of a system by which people are put in groups with people in similar gear. It seems that the newer players would benefit the most, which is ironic, considering that the mixed-group system was probably put in place to benefit them.

Shoot raid loot still be based on random drops?

Anyone doing the Love is in the Air event this year knows that much less of your ability to successfully complete the meta is based on chance than it was last year. This year, you can get all of the items you need by handing in Love Tokens, which are rewarded by the new dailies and given when you give the holiday vendors a Lovely Charm Bracelet, which are made from Lovely Charms, which can be farmed off of any enemy in the game that gives you experience. In short, getting all of the achievements for Love is in the Air is simply a matter of investing enough time in the holiday, to the extent that, with some dedicated play, I got all of the achievements for the meta in two days.

Why do I bring this up? Because the larger trend in World of Warcraft seems to be a general moving away from RNG. In general, chance is playing less of a roll in everything we do. Tier gear is now bought with emblems, not tokens that randomly drop off of certain bosses, which was still less random than the tier pieces themselves dropping off of raid bosses. We now focus more on gear that can be obtained from emblems and less on gear that drops from bosses than we ever have (though we still think about the latter, obviously). The chance for quest items in Northrend to drop increases with each kill, meaning you don't get those situations where you kill dozens of enemies for that last ear you need for your quest. However, drops from raid bosses are still a very random element of the game, much to the irritation of people who want a specific drop. Is it better that loot remain this way, or are random drops a relic of a more primitive time in WoW's history?

I have said in the past that gear serves two purposes: giving you access to new content and representing your achievements. An RNG-based loot system isn't the best way to accomplish these purposes, but it isn't a horrible way. Basing a person's ability to see content on how lucky they can get with gear drops may not be the best way to go about regulating the rate at which people see the content, but in the long run, streaks of good and back luck when it comes to loot drops tend to even themselves out. Sure, raiders may feel frustrated when a certain piece continually refuses to drop, but raid drops will rarely screw over a person so consistently that he won't be able to gear up for the next raid. As for representing one's achievements, though skill is required to successfully complete raids, getting gear from those raids is more of a matter of luck and dedication than skill. In that sense, gear can be a display of one's dedication to the game, and though one may get lucky with one or two drops in his first raid, many raid runs are usually required to fully deck out one's character, so good gear does a pretty good job of representing one's achievements. That said, the loot system as it is is less than perfect. The amount of gear that gets disenchanted into Abyss Crystals can attest to that, and the random nature of random loot drops necessitates guild loot systems so that everything can be fair.

Still, I think the way loot works is fine as it is, because any feasible alternatives (meaning alternatives that don't change the loot system into some completely new system) would resemble the way loot drops now, but wouldn't be as interesting. Emblems are an example of one such alternative; a different loot system could involve bosses dropping only emblems and all of our gear coming from emblems. However, in the long run, farming emblems for all of your gear would have the same effect on your character as simply running multiple raids for loot drops: both result in your character getting better gear, and though the latter is a bit less consistent, it is more exciting. I think the system we have now, where bosses drop both random items so people can get instant upgrades, and emblems so they can work towards other upgrades, has the best of both worlds: emblems allow people with bad loot luck to still gear up, while random loot drops still allow people to feel the excitement of getting a new piece of gear and the immediate satisfaction that comes with it. Barring a total overhaul of the system by which raid loot is acquired, I think it is fine the way it is.