It’s not against the ToS, it’s not against anything to sell services in game, I personally think some services should be outlawed, but agree selling M+ and raid runs for gold should always be a thing. You need to remember, the president has been the president for only a few months, he never wrote the ToS, he is only playing the game, give it a break.
What we need to focus on more so is from around MoP > 9.1, look at the state of the game and look at how this game has devolved from something once great to now bottlenecking players into raiding. Everything about SL up until 9.1 when Mike came on board was basically designed to build up your character to than jump into raiding as the only end game that matters.
As much as Ion is a great raid designer, and I think that is a universally agreed upon thing, having someone who is this focused on raiding has done nothing but hurt the rest of the game. In my mind there is no doubt the board at Blizzard seen the numbers and wanted to do something to make a change from that mindset, hence they brought on someone in a position of power above Ion who actually does content outside of raiding.
Yes there are delays in 9.2 coming now that all these changes are being made for 9.1.5, no doubt they have to delay things. Can you imagine the amount of work that went in during BFA in order to prepare SL for a reduction in AOE? The mob density in the overworld, in dungeons, in raids, it would all have to be taken into account when reducing AOE and it’s evident.
Look at the WQ in Korthia where you have to clear the area near Kroke and inside the cave, there are like 35 enemies total that you can kill that count towards that WQ. With a reduced AOE cap it’s going to take only one person to group up all the enemies outside or in the cave and boom, they are all dead and the next person who comes along has to wait for the respawn. It was designed to take into account killing 5 enemies at a time.
The mobs in the overworld and in dungeons are far more spread out than they were in BFA and Legion and it’s going to make for some very interesting WQ’s and dungeon runs. Even in the current expansion raids compared to just BFA you can see a lesser mob density. And not just the amount of mobs sitting near each other either, but you see some packs in BFA consisted of more enemies than your current AOE cap even allowed you to hit, even that’s been changed and you can now pull one pack of 3 enemies instead of one pack of 6 enemies.
Look at all the changes and apply it to content outside raiding and no doubt it was all planned for Blizzard to bring on the guy to make these changes to benefit playing the game outside of raiding, it’s just going to be weird playing an expansion that was not designed for some of these changes. Like how the covenants were basically locked so if you wanted to swap you could not easily swap back meaning you picked your setup for end game and that was that.
Now when it drops we can choose our covenant based on the content we are planning to play the very same day and swap back after we are done. That’s not how raiding usually worked, not especially way back in the day when swapping specs and talents cost gold, especially not how Ion would have wanted it.
So what if Mike is selling M+ runs for gold, he is just playing by the rules, be thankful we are getting so many positive changes. And by all means keep passing on feedback, if you don’t like M+ gold runs than don’t degrade the guy for doing the right thing, just let Blizzard know how much you don’t like it and ask for it to be changed.
But look forward and be thankful we have someone now in a position that can help make changes that are good for the game in all aspects, look ahead and think about what all this means for the game in the next patch and the next expansion, maybe there won’t be as much systems, maybe the systems won’t be as restricted, maybe it will be fun once again to play the game outside of raiding be it for the gear or just for you know, fun.
Call me crazy, call me a sheep, tell me I’ve drank the kool-aid, ask me to suck up to Mike some more, but if you cannot see how the game was in Vanilla and the changes that came and brought us up to around MoP, and now the changes since that have basically placed enough systems that it’s forcing us to raid or die, than maybe you are as much an anti-sheep as some people around here are sheep.
The only time this game has resembled Vanilla since Vanilla, was in Vanilla days. Soulbinds are just another talent tree with restrictions to stop you changing. Covenants and the powers that come with them is just another restriction to force you into a set role. Content outside raiding is guite bland and boring that it makes you look towards instanced content for end game. It all resembles Vanilla and it needs to go, we left that behind for a reason, and we need to quickly leave it all behind again.