Stranger (not verified) on January 14, 2007 - 19:31.
You make good points, and in fact point out the key difference in WoW (at least, so far):
No matter how much time you invested, unless you were raiding, you would never have access to the best gear. (I'm speaking pre-2.0)
The epic PvP sets are certainly nice, although the grind to get them was insane. At least 3 solid months of virtually 24x7 pvp play was required to get to rank 14. Conversely, AQ40 gave out PvP-oriented gear that rivaled the GM/HWL sets for compartively far less work. And none of the GM/HWL weapons had anything on drops from the later AQ40 bosses, and hell even Naxx trash dropped superior weapons.
It's certainly OK to stratify itemization...in fact it's necessary for certain content to be viable. Most people would NOT raid if they could get equivalent gear elsewhere...raiding came to a virtual standstill when 2.0 was released and people could "buy" GM/HWL stuff with honor points.
The problem was that in the EQ-catass mentality of the developers, they were so concerned with trying to turn WoW into a raiding game that non-raid PvE development effectively stopped when Dire Maul was released in March '05. When BC launches on Tuesday, it'll be the first genuinely new non-raid content in almost two years. In the meantime, Tigole and Co. went on a non-stop orgy of new raid content and itemization. It was so bad that when Naxx was first released, less than 100 guilds in the US (less than 1 guild per server) were even capable of attempting it. You had 90%+ of the population starved and begging for new content, and yet here comes another complete raid instance, with ridiculous itemization to go with it...and barely anyone has finished enough of the prior raid content to even start on the new stuff.
So of course, people turned to PvP for something different to do. And there, instead of just having certain content being off-limits to them, they got steamrolled by bored raiders using their ridiculous gear to annihilate everyone while killing time between raids. The biggest "screw you" from the developers came when, after Blizzard repeatedly stating "We will not allow PvE to PvP server transfers", they allowed the PvE server that Foror's guild was on to transfer to a PvP server.
PvP has been WoW's bastard kid ever since the raiders took over development. It was looked at as something that bored raiders could do in-between raids. Maybe with the leadership shake-up at Blizzard this will change somewhat with BC, but it seems that ultimately they are still catering to the catass above all else.
Re: WoW's Arena system: more hardcore than ever
You make good points, and in fact point out the key difference in WoW (at least, so far):
No matter how much time you invested, unless you were raiding, you would never have access to the best gear. (I'm speaking pre-2.0)
The epic PvP sets are certainly nice, although the grind to get them was insane. At least 3 solid months of virtually 24x7 pvp play was required to get to rank 14. Conversely, AQ40 gave out PvP-oriented gear that rivaled the GM/HWL sets for compartively far less work. And none of the GM/HWL weapons had anything on drops from the later AQ40 bosses, and hell even Naxx trash dropped superior weapons.
It's certainly OK to stratify itemization...in fact it's necessary for certain content to be viable. Most people would NOT raid if they could get equivalent gear elsewhere...raiding came to a virtual standstill when 2.0 was released and people could "buy" GM/HWL stuff with honor points.
The problem was that in the EQ-catass mentality of the developers, they were so concerned with trying to turn WoW into a raiding game that non-raid PvE development effectively stopped when Dire Maul was released in March '05. When BC launches on Tuesday, it'll be the first genuinely new non-raid content in almost two years. In the meantime, Tigole and Co. went on a non-stop orgy of new raid content and itemization. It was so bad that when Naxx was first released, less than 100 guilds in the US (less than 1 guild per server) were even capable of attempting it. You had 90%+ of the population starved and begging for new content, and yet here comes another complete raid instance, with ridiculous itemization to go with it...and barely anyone has finished enough of the prior raid content to even start on the new stuff.
So of course, people turned to PvP for something different to do. And there, instead of just having certain content being off-limits to them, they got steamrolled by bored raiders using their ridiculous gear to annihilate everyone while killing time between raids. The biggest "screw you" from the developers came when, after Blizzard repeatedly stating "We will not allow PvE to PvP server transfers", they allowed the PvE server that Foror's guild was on to transfer to a PvP server.
PvP has been WoW's bastard kid ever since the raiders took over development. It was looked at as something that bored raiders could do in-between raids. Maybe with the leadership shake-up at Blizzard this will change somewhat with BC, but it seems that ultimately they are still catering to the catass above all else.