I feel that the idea of a squish on the item level of ToC and ICC is actually a good thing for WotLK classic because it will preserve the difficulty of Ulduar and keep the raid relevant in P3/P4.
Unlike previous stat squishes in retail this will be the first time that its being done to extend the life of a raid in the early tiers and not invalidate all content that came before it. I think this idea could be applied to future expansions as well and will provide more content for classic over the years.
Fort instance if we squished the ilvl of all of Cata’s gear to the point where questing greens were around the level of ToC or ICC normal it would extend those raids lifespan into Cataclysm. In my opinion it would be great for the game because it would create a very robust raid scene where your team could progress through older tiers on the way to the highest one in its current expansion.
So if Blizzard is reading this then thank you for at least trying to make Ulduar more relevant and reduce the amount of times people will be required to clear ToC.
TLDR: ToC + ICC Item Level Squish Toc Lockout Changes
Thank you Blizz for your efforts
Please feel free to share your thoughts even if you don’t agree with my own. Have a great day.
Players shouldn’t have to continue to run content from previous phases. Muddying up progression by not having clear divisions between gear is just artificially extending content’s lifespan and compelling people to play more than they wanted to previously. Keeping players in the same instances longer isn’t fun; it’s just lazy.
There will still be clear divisions between the tiers though, and you will regain those lost Ilvls of power when the buff in ICC increases every week.
Right forcing 24 people to run Ulduar for one persons shards is silly. Because people will be farming them lets not kid ourselves. Make the loot relevant for progression into ToC Heroic and all of a sudden the rest of the raid is validated in going back.
One good thing from these changes. Faerlina and Benediction will be the only NA servers left by the time Blizzard’s done revamping Wrath, and then they can merge the last 50k players together onto one super mega server without issue.
It’s a good thing. Not many guilds ran BT still for someone’s glaives other than it being the GM or being in a hardcore guild.
With this ilvl squish people will still run Ulduar and also get additional Valanyr’s without being forced to do Ulduar for literally nothing but fragments for one or two people.
On top of that with above mentioned, not every guild would have kept running Ulduar with ToC out but with the change hopefully coming they will. Win win for everyone.
Retail seasonnal player spoted + you don’t know what you’re talking about.
It doesn’t mean you’ll do Ulduar during ICC it just mean that Ulduar gear will be relevant a bit longer until players replace everything with TOC gear.
“Everyone who disagrees with me is a retail player” word lmao
Why is “seasonnal” derogatory? If you mean that I sub for a few months per patch, nah, that’s not it. If you’re talking about replacing things with each patch, sure, that’s compelling progression. Vanilla and TBC-style gear progression is murky, unfun, and not intrinsically rewarding. Treating raids and dungeons like they need to be relevant longer feels more like a retail attitude anyways; between LFR to Mythic, players can spend months running some flavor of the same content. I’d much rather have Wrath-style progression where I can be done running old content as new content replaces it.
It would be nice to start focusing on running the content for the sake of enjoying content and not for the gear which we vendor in a few months anyways.
Idk who actually enjoys running the same raid more than a couple of times, it feels like you’re on auto pilot after awhile. The excitement is there the first few times, and then quickly fades.
If anything, once ToC comes out they should buff the drop rate of Ulduar gear so alts/new players/anyone behind would gear up faster and be able to run ToC while it’s still relevant.
That’s the thing I don’t understand. Difficulty bloat is one of the most annoying parts of retail, and yet no one’s willing to call “keeping Ulduar relevant longer” just elongating the treadmill. Bloating the game with ways to keep running the same instances over and over again is a decent way Blizz can keep subscriptions on the hook longer and fill in dead air, but as a player, I don’t see any real benefit to having to rerun raids even longer than before.
ToC + ICC Item Level Squish