I imagine LFR raiding now is going to be a case of: level, do some dailies, run some heroics, profit. And you could gear up just through heroics if you like those. The dailies could be spaced out. And once LFR is out, people could probably gear from that for more intense raid groups. So that’s why I’m calling it accessible.

It’s a different matter if you are really progression minded and feel the need to be in the best possible gear a week after the expansion launches. I don’t know how hard the raids are actually tuned or whether its feasible to do normal mode in iLvL463 gear. I’d be surprised if it isn’t, though.

I know there will be a lot of complaints about the dailies, but they don’t actually mean things aren’t accessible. There’s nothing stopping any player from doing them except time, and they can take as long as it takes.

It’s funny. You wrote this post the same day that I wrote my post announcing that I wasn’t going to raid anymore, partially because I was so frustrated with how inaccessible raiding felt to me – someone who had raided consistently since Vanilla.

And I know I’m not the only one. My Twitter feed and my guild forums are packed with stories about people that thought they were geared enough to go and ended up not being, the fact that farming (literally) and exhaustive amounts of fishing are required to stay prepared, the daily grind and the rep grind (which was minimized, but is still present).

I would argue that anyone who wants to raid now has to jump through more hoops to show that they want to do it than before. I don’t see how that’s improving accessability to something. I see it as making something more difficult when it doesn’t have to be.

Outside of that, I think that WoW’s problem is that it is too big. Not the size of the world, but the number of players. Azeroth has to cater to so many tastes that it simply can’t be everything to everyone. I can understand the desire to be that –after all, Blizz wants to grow the sub base– but I think it is smarter to pick a focus and emphasize that.

To fix the “newly dinged 85 is in crappy gear” problem, Blizzard gave us:
- Buy/craft low level crafted 384 armor and jewelry. You get a 372 weapon for showing up to Pandaria.
- Go to the Adventuring Gear vendor and buy a complete matching set of 372 gear, if needed. Or gear up your offspec in case you want to tank/heal in dungeons, but not questing.

I think Jade Forest is probably tuned for 300-333 gear. But if you show up in 372-397 gear, try killing quest mobs 3 at time. Gave me a reason to do something other than using the same button over and over, and more excuse to some of the my new AoE and defensive talents. Hell, I even respecced a few. Was fun.

They probably should tune up the valley of the four winds however, since its guaranteed you’ll be around 380+ by the time you get there.

“Consumer culture has made us too accustomed to getting only what we want, no more and no less. Experiences are atomised into their component parts ((…)) to maximise the impact of the parts we prefer, with no thought to how their context changes them. But if you only ever get what you know you already want, serendipity is denied and the richness of experience is reduced to the button-pushing delivery of crude hits of fun, excitement, novelty or reassurance, often consumed in the private bubble of home or headphone.”

I think of this when I read people nerdrage about being forced to do content they hate (ie. questing/ exploring/ the actual stuff most people play WoW for) so that they can get to their preferred hardcore endgame.