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.
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Dechion's Place 
What I noticed over the weekend was that the PUG instance LFM’s are not separating people based on gear anymore, but by achievements. So a total dumbtwat can join a heroic PUG as long as he’s participated in achievement run in the same instance: as if that really would make her/him any better as “bring the player not the class”.
On the other hand, the price of badge epics have already plummeted on my server, so a reasonably ‘greedy’ player might be able to gain as high gear as possible via AH with just some gold, possibly making the gold seller business even more lucrative than it has been for some time already.
So, instead of keeping the content in steep incline, Blizz has made it their mission to lower the treshold to enter the instances. One way or another. IMO at this time by making the badge gear more easily available via AH… Trickling down the crap to us M&S’s who don’t take the time from real life to raid endlessly for the gear to be able to raid more endlessly for more gear.
C out
@ Copra The main problem I have with seperating people out base on achievements is that in order to get the achievement you first need to do the run without it.
Kind of like the old catch-22 about needing a job to get the experience you need to get a job.
We shall see how it shakes out, but I think it will be a good thing overall.
I swear it’s like people have forgotten the past.
I remember the crying when the Honor system was changed in 2.0 and suddenly GM weapons could be picked up by any “scrub with time”.
I remember the crying when the Sunwell badge gear was added and suddenly quality PvE weapons could be picked up by any “scrub in heroics”.
And now I’m here as the crying continues about quality gear (OMG even Tier gear!) can now be grabbed by any “scrub with time in heroics”.