I would like to subscribe to your newsletter. Honestly, I’d prefer a more hidden and behind the system with a choice of “Thumbs up, Needs Improvement, and Never Again.” But that’s me.
Here’s a two birds with one stone idea: let people pay for respecs with badges of justice. I would think 6-10 should work, but I’m sure someone will disagree.
Frog protection…I think we’re saying the same thing 
Honestly kinda like this idea. Gets people doing content.
Yeah it’s definitely similar to the alliance gift box for winning a BG. That’s a different problem though because there’s no social interaction in game between factions and also by design it doesn’t make sense that horde would need to incentivize alliance to do anything other than corpse run.
I don’t like the idea behind the BG box either for the same reasons, and the fact that you only get like 2g and some bread in it shows what sort of reward Blizzard would be offering if such a feature existed.
Honestly I would like to see the idea of paying a tank destigmatized. That’s my proposed solution. I’ve been paid to run a H SP for example for a quag’s eye someone was after. That these kinds of players generally have no issue paying thousands of gold for best in slot crafted gear suggests that a 100g payment for between 1/7 and 1/8 chance at a best in slot trinket seems worthwhile. For me, 100g to complete a Slave Pens is in line with the 300gph I could be making farming Black Morass.
In summary - it’s not enough that I get money, I need you to lose money too 
I joke, but that’s kinda what we do to prevent gold from getting inflated.
They tried this with wrath, in addition to death knights AND dual spec. There was still a massive tank shortage and heal shortage to a lesser extent.
The only thing that ever would have solved the problem was letting MORE classes tank. They could have let shamans keep tanking after classic, but it was taken away. They could have let rogues have a tank spec. They could have let hunters have a tank spec or maybe hunter/warlock on the pets. They could have done so much. They knew there was a massive tank shortage in classic but did practically nothing for it in crusade then just added 1 new tank class in wrath. They later added MORE tank classes with monk/demon, but it would be too late.
I’m just glad my main will be death knight in wrath so I’ll be able to tank everything myself. I’ll be getting instant prompts and bonus rewards around the clock. I just have to finish suffering through classic/crusade, then I’ll finally get to live the good life in wrath. Wrath is what we’re all waiting for.
Honestly, I would love to see such behavior officially banned and policed by blizzard, together with gold buying, botting, boosting for gold, and other anti-community behavior out there.
I really don’t have any problem with players negotiating things like this. If this is the “solution”, it would be nice to have a system that makes it a little more transactional like having an in-game middle man/system. That would likely be clunky and awkward to implement and not worth the trouble. I wonder if an addon could do it and if it would be frowned upon.
Nah it would be way too unpopular. I respec twice per week so I can tank dungeons, but that’s my problem. Hekket wants to be able to run dungeons without any expectation that he should have to pay for the privilege, and that’s totally understandable.
Sounds like you’re posting in the wrong forums. Retail is that way ———>
I also tank on my alt without any expectation of getting paid, because it is a part of the game that I enjoy.
I for one don’t have problems finding a tank at all because I have plenty of them in my guild and friend list that I can ask, and vice versa they can ask me to tank for them or their alts.
If people played the game like it is intended to be played, aka, socialize, instead of playing it as a solo game like retail, they wouldn’t have a problem finding tanks either.
Sure I’m in the same boat, I have no problem running dungeons on my non-tank characters and I don’t ask anyone to pay me. I hate the notion of people responding to LF1M tank messages with offers to tank for gold.
I tank stuff I don’t need for friends, they DPS/heal stuff they don’t need for me. This is the ideal transactional approach where it’s not actual gold changing hands but good will.
But when someone offers to pay for a tank they need, suddenly it doesn’t matter as much that I don’t need anything from the dungeon.
I can also imagine a world where paying the tank is normal and suddenly you’re viewed as the scumbag for not offering the tank gold. I don’t want that either.
What is the point of a mmo?
With an IT background, I tend to fall back on technical solutions. Is this an opportunity for an addon? PUGs are very transactional by their nature. What if we change that more to a social event. What if we had a “Looking for Friends” addon? Guildless people could post what they are looking for (maybe like a profile) and guilds could look for new recruits. Guilds could run the dungeons needed with potential recruits in order to see if they are a good fit. Am I just dreaming here?
I like that angle a lot more. When I was leading a raid that was kinda my strategy. I would run dungeons for the sole purpose of scouting people out and if I had fun in a dungeon with someone I’d ask if they wanna join my raid team.
I think you’re just describing guilds though. Raids are a pretty elegant version of what you’re describing.
Yeah, I think people are doing this anyway. It’s just kind of random whether people find each other. People are using server forums, discord, etc (no offense 
) to find each other, but it would be nice to have an option in game. That would be a hefty addon, so I don’t see it getting built. I guess it was a brainstorming day for me so I am just tossing out stuff that may spark a thought from someone else.
Several replies saying the same thing, Dual spec, yeah. Notice how the majority are tanks saying they’ll respec to pvp or something else. Very few say, yeah I’ll use my second spec to tank, because people don’ like to tank.
You can argue otherwise, but the proof is since original WOW when dual spec was implemented up until the current refail, there has always been a tank shortage regardless of any incentives.
It did have a more robust need for consumes and once you hit naxx potions, elixirs and flask with buffs was a requirement. My weekly bill was 500g to 1.2k a week depending on wipes. I can tell you didn’t play Classic, nice try retail Andy.
Duel spec in WoTLK did not work like retail’s current spec system does with the simplified player stat system.
You can’t run to the trainer for a respec and start tanking in whatever gear you have on.
You need to acquire proper gear for it.
In WoTLK players primarily used duel spec to switch between alternate specs for the SAME ROLE. I doubt you would see much difference in TBC with that, and there are only three potential classes that can do this anyway.
Pretty much everyone had a PvE/PvP, RAID/Dungeon, farming spec, or something similar to that.
Think about the amount of time you have spent gearing your character.
How many rolls you lost on the way to getting what you wanted.
How many DKP points or gold you had to earn and spend on drops.
How many times loot council passed you over until you got the gear you wanted.
Imagine how much effort it would take doing that twice to fill up your bank with gear for two completely different roles.
Nobody is going to do that.
This is why, after dual spec is introduced, they would need to add personal loot. Because otherwise people would need roll on offspec gear, and tanks/healers actually tanking and healing would do so even less, because pugs would just roll against them for gear.
Then we’d need cross realm grouping because the tanks and healers on the server don’t pug as often.
Then we need deserter debuff and vote to kick to both keep players from just bailing on groups and to get rid of players who weren’t wanted.
Time to add gear that changes stats based on spec!
To keep people running dungeons at all, we need RNG stats on gear.
Just merge TBC into retail, already. 
There’s not enough tanks because you need the gear, need to know the dungeon and not all tank classes are the same.
The game isn’t alt tank friendly at all, some dungeons have too many mechanics and it can be a disaster.