Gaming Signal: One man's view of loot...

One man's view of loot...

So after reading this latest article from WOW Insider regarding the upcoming new patch that adds some new armor, weather effects, and some other fixes. There are some additional details here in a 1UP article. The interesting thing to me is this new armor in that it is defined as tier 1.5 armor which leads me to a segue regarding this terminology - and I am sure many of our readers are veterans of these games, but I feel I should offer some explanation.

As players progress through the game, and reach the upper levels of experience there are rewards marked as "appropriate to that level and effort". These epic armors are differentiated by statistics and are slotted into a series of levels or tiers. Tier 1 armor tends to be entry level of the epic gear and is the starting point for players as they start doing more and more boss mobs. The tiers are setup like a pyramid in that there is always less Tier 2 gear than Tier 1 since the mobs that drop that equipment are more rare and require more effort. The tier system continues until the designer has the "uber" items associated with the most difficult encounters in the game. This highest tier of equipment is extremely rare and only usually available to the most die hard raiding guilds.

Now with that very short definition out of the way, I decided to check out the message boards at Blizzard for WOW regarding these changes and started reading through this post. There are a variety of responses here, but the ones of interest to me were the discussion that adding a Tier 1.5 armor that does not require raiding somehow diminishes the effort and trivializes the term "epic". The problem is, as Scott stated, having a given item is some how affirming that an individual has reached some pinnacle in gaming. To be honest, for some that is what gaming is about - excelling over others - for me its to have a cooperative gaming experience with my friends. Gaining access to decent gear without having to dedicate 4+ hours a day to do so is a selling point. WOW has made great strides to achieving what I see as a more casual MMO.

One last point is that, I think this move is intended to fix a problem Blizzard had when they created the original armor tiers. With that statement, I will go out on a limb and say that Blizzard should have designed thier tiers like this:

Tier 1: Quest only armor that requires no more than 5 folks to obtain any given piece. This armor should have been available to almost all players who make 60. This would be rare but not epic armor - it would be a badge of honor and not trival but also not incredibly difficult to acquire.

Tier 2: Available only in the level 60 dungeons in the game - in WOW these are defined as Upper and Lower Blackrock Spire, Scholomance and Stratholme. This would include a mix of rare and epic armor.

Tier 3: This is the Epic armor and as such is only available to those players who can do raids on Molten Core and Blackwing Lair.

Uniques/Tier 4: This equipment is available by killing the major bosses in the game: Onyxia, Nefarian, etc.

And to tie in with Scott's post, any of this gear would be purchasble from the MMO vendor at appropriate prices. Discuss