Thank you! Finally someone seems to get it. I’m sick of seeing all these players insisting that a video game should reward the hardest workers who are willing to tackle the most miserable tasks. That’s a recipe for success in the workplace, but it’s a stupid way to run a pay-to-play game.
WoW is a video game, not a meritocracy. Blizzard spent too much time paying heed to these complaints about “welfare” gear, losing sight of the fact that they’re not a real world economy. In the real world, opponents of welfare believe that it incentivizes people to simply exist without contributing to society. There is no such parallel in the virtual world where higher quality gear costs just as much to produce as level 1 white gear. The only “downside” of having gear that’s acquired through popular content is that more players engage with that content longer. By marginalizing that content, Blizzard has neatly shot themselves right through the foot.