Cows Loves Cake

Regardless of what you may think of the Ensidia ban drama of the last couple days, the fault for these kind of issues always lies with Blizzard.  It’s not like the saronite bomb thing is new, it’s been all over EJ for a while now.  As a result releasing a fight, especially one as big as this in lore, which bugs out by a given class/profession combination just doing it’s normal dps rotation is just irresponsible.  The severe lack of fight testing has been apparent throughout the lifespan of WoW thus far and as a result is nothing new.  What boggles the mind is that Ensidia can get away with the blatant exploiting in Ulduar (hell u cant get more blatant than admission…) and yet what is clearly an accident gets them banned and achievements/loot removed?

Whether you believe Ensidia or not seems to be largely related to if you are European or an Americunt.

Either way there are more pressing matters to discuss which not many people have picked up upon.   What are these issues which are more important than top-end guild ban dramas?  Simple:  It’s too easy to gear alts.

No I’m not talking about ’scrubs’ getting gear for completing join-the-dots level difficulty encounters.  I’m talking about how good players, decent players like you and me, inevitably end up filling the lack of raid time in the week with the creation of more and more alts.  This wasn’t such a problem back in the day when it took a long time to get to levelcap, as most of the time was spent leveling the alt up to 80 only to come to the realization that you couldn’t get any decent gear on it for shit because you couldn’t even get heroic groups.   But now, all you have to do is type in the name of your character and you’re practically at level cap within a day.  Couple with that the relative ease of getting gear on your new level 80 the problem becomes more realistic.

Now I’ve probably lost you.  What is the problem with being able to gear up alts nicely in 3.3?  Well you may ask, because not so long ago I was even rejoicing at the fact that my warrior, shadowpriest, deathknight, hunter, paladin, rogue.. …. would soon be decked in 232.  And therein lies the problem.  The cycle has changed to allow you to gear but the inevitable conclusion to gearing an alt with the best gear you can get from heroics/pugs is that where do you go then?  The only answer is raiding.

This in itself isn’t new – hardcore players have been running alt raids for a long time.  Usually only 1 alt per person though, players would raid on a main and then their alt every week.  Few players had more than 1 alt that they raided on, but that has now changed from the combination of 3.3 (specifically dungeon queue system) making it easy to gear up other wise forgotten level 80s.  Raiding on 3 or more chars a week has the following consequences.  Either the player has a lot of spare time and embraces the extra play time and learns more class abilities and becomes more versitile.  OR: he/she comes to one solid realization that none of these characters are likely to ever see anything like BiS gear setups before the new Expansion hits, at which time the gear will become worthless anyway.  Added to the issue of raiding the same dungeons 2x per character per week …  Sure the realization requires something who thinks cynically and in the long term more than the short term – but even for the most ADHD addled player there will be the nagging doubt in their mind.

If you do come to the latter conclusion, the future only holds distraction and boredom with the game in general.  Such boredom may well infect your desire to gear your main character too – which can prove fatal.  All that is required next is something to happen in real life which requires you to take a few days away from the game, may be you miss 1 raid at a crucial point and that’s it.

You’re done until the expansion hits.