World of Warcraft - The War Within (2024)

For variety, you get to change set of dailies every 6-8 weeks when you finally manage to cap one faction.

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Assuming you are actually doing them daily, most of the factions only take about two to three weeks to cap out with the greater commendations making revered->exalted way easier. Some of them are a lot faster than that (with Golden Lotus being the longest, by far). That's not to say that they are necessarily the right length, but it's not as much of a grind as some people make it out to be.

And what blizzard say about the dailies not being mandatory is nothing else than a lie: Sure, you can get better gear in dungeons, but there is exactly 0 chance of getting into a raid any more unless you already have good equipment and be ready to do whatever it takes to be self-sufficient and efficient.

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It really depends on what kind of raiding you are looking to do. Most guilds seem to be right in the middle of the tier right now, and just showing up weekly and being there for a few boss kills pretty much insures that you will have the gear needed to keep progressing. All the other stuff was only absolutely necessary for the hardcore guilds racing at the beginning, before enough time had passed that most people were in raid drops. If you want to raid seriously, you kind of have to be prepared to put in the time at the right time, which was a couple of months ago for MoP. OTOH, people are going to drop out as the expansion progresses, so there are always going to be spots opening up for people who are competent and have geared themselves up to an acceptable level to not be a burden.

I don't know that taking the gear grind out for PvP is healthy, especially if every other mmo is going to scratch that itch. If I didn't have something to work towards, I'd probably not log in nearly as much (saying this having just gotten my Justicar title last night!!! 8 years in the making.). But if it's too difficult to gear up, I probably wouldn't log in much either.

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That's the issue, and there's no easy solution. I think moving to mostly cosmetic rewards is the way to go, because otherwise it really is just people who grind winning. The gear issue also completely breaks OW PvP, even beyond all the ganking and level stuff we have talked about. In my opinion, the kind of people who would be geared in PvP gear already have a huge PvP skill advantage over PvE players, so there's no need to add more on top of that. I think at the least turning off the PvP stats outside arenas/BGs would be good (and easy, now that the stats on PvP gear line up with PvE gear).

I'm interested because my monk is getting ripe (88 now) and I'd really like to play some PvP as a healer

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Just an FYI, right now pretty much the only thing a monk can do in serious PvP is get laughed at. I was watching Reckful's stream (prolific PvP streamer) the other day and he saw a monk in arena PvP for the first time after a bad string of losses, because they just don't get up to that level. They were making jokes about losing so much they got down to monks. People say that's supposed to change in 5.2 based on the notes we have, but who knows what will actually happen.

This is stupid, and it sucks that people do it. It's not new, people used to use achievements as their litmus test.

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They are an easy indicator that someone gives a sh*t and is not completely incompetent. If someone wants to raid, but they have a really low iLevel, you have to ask, why? Did they just start playing or playing on that character? Are they just terrible? Does it mean that they aren't committed enough to show up every week? At this point, anyone who cares and has been playing from September should be at least 470, and I would want a damn good reason why they aren't. Now, for people who I already know, things would be more lax, and setting reasonable requirements is also necessary. But, having run raiding groups before you do learn to look out for the red flags before wasting your time, and an unusually low iLevel is one of those red flags. As much as a lot of people don't want to admit it, raiding is a job, and if your group is going to last they need to treat it like one. Low iLevel is like having a couple of missing years on your resume, it's not a deal killer, but it needs explanation.

Well, in theory there's some there, but it never, ever, ever, ever f*cking drops. Ever. Not from normal, not from LFR, not from coins. Blizzard's RNG system sucks ass, and always has (save any comments about 'random loot is random'. It's not. No random system is this consistent and predictabe. The exact same loot drops from the exact same bosses every week, without fail). Every raid is Groundhog Day.

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I understand your frustration, but one person/raid is not a large enough sample size to criticize their RNG. In SWTOR I have the unluckiest character in the world, who hasn't gotten a single raid drop in months, but I also had one that geared up in two weeks. Random is random, and there's a reason people find it frustrating. I actually think that ideally, something that simulates random while weighing the odds more in your favor every time you lose out would be a decent compromise. I'm actually a fan of just using currency and getting rid of RNG all together. RNG drops work well for a raid group as a whole, but work a lot less well on the personal level.