Badge epics are not welfare epics

Ever since the patch notes came out I can hardly sleep for all the whining about the changes to the badge system. Seriously, how many people will have their game experience destroyed by this?

None of the folks who are bitchin that’s for sure.

The main argument that I see is that if players are not able to complete *insert raid instance here* then they do not rate having gear equivalent to the gear that drops there.

Apparently there is only so much epeen around, having someone else get equivalent loot makes theirs look smaller. That is quite seriously the only reason I can see to whine about it.

Let me make something clear…. Gear helps, but it’s the person driving the toon that makes it succeed or fail. Blizzard could mail every level 80 in the game a complete set of best in slot items for their class and spec today and it would not matter.

There are still folks that would turn Naxx 10 into an all afternoon wipefest, geared or not.

Another common argument is that badge loot is Blizzard catering to casuals. It is only there for folks who can barely manage their daily clear of heroic Violet Hold.

I say bullshit.

Gathering all the badges required to completely gear a character just by doing the heroic daily would take just this side of forever. We are talking over 500 badges to take a toon in quest greens and put him in a set of badge epics.

That’s a daily heroic a day for over 3 months, never missing a day.

That’s at least 7 hours a week doing the gear farming. Thats not including time in LFG, travel time, time farming consumables, time wiping over and over with random pugs. I know quite a few “hardcore” raiders that raid two the three times a week for three hours at a stretch. Not much difference in time invested really, not looking at it that way.

The only downside I really see to this is that Naxx will likely turn into a frequently pugged badge run. Kind of like Kara was towards the end of TBC.

Oddly I had a lot of fun in pug Kara runs.

I kind of look forward to the changes, they won’t effect me gear wise (much) but should open up a lot more runs I can find a spot in.

TLDR version: The badge changes will not, in fact, cause your epeen to fall off. People will get gear that will let them walk into Icecrown without the roaches being able to one shot them, deal with it.