#0 - March 3, 2009, 3:06 p.m.
Q u o t e:
When 3.1 goes live, the rewards for “Glory of the Raider” and “Heroic: Glory of the Raider” are being removed. These achievements will still be active, however, players will no longer receive the Plagued Proto-Drake or Black Proto-Drake for completing them. Similar to our decision to remove the Amani War Bear from Zul’Aman, the goal is to ensure that such mounts retain a degree of rarity in the game; and with raids progressing into Ulduar in patch 3.1, we feel obtaining the rewards for “Glory of the Raider” and “Heroic: Glory of the Raider” would be somewhat trivialized. For this reason we will be offering new fast mounts (310 speed) as rewards for completing select achievements associated with 10 and 25-player Ulduar.
To start this off I want to say that I don't agree with this change (I know I don't have to, but I don't). Here's a little bit of the reason why.
You stated that you're making this change due to the upcomming patch and said that it was akin to removing the Amani War Bear. But I don't feel that they are anywhere near the same. Zul'Aman was released with patch 2.3 way back in November of '07. At the time there was Serpentshrine Cavern, Tempest Keep, Mount Hyjal, and Black Temple. All 4 of those instances dropped better and higher iLevel items. Then came patch 2.4 in March of '08 and with it Sunwell Plateau. Sunwell dropped items with a full 30 more iLevel items and yet the Bear was still achieveable. It wasn't until almost a full year later with patch 3.0 that the Bear was removed and that was due to the gamewide HP and Damage nerf to bosses. Now THAT did trivialize the Bear run, but not before. There still isn't a high percentage of players that have the Bear.
Now I understand that you want the mounts to retain their "uniqueness", and that's understandable. But with current content and even with the patch, they are hard to achieve. Right now the highest iLevel gear you can obtain is 226 with the majority of the items at 213. There are 3 bosses in the game that drop level 226 items (Heroic KT, Sarth 2D, and Malygos). Are you going to say that the items dropped from Ulduar are going to so good that they'll be the same at >30 iLevel points and a 30% HP/damge drop as was the reason for removing the War Bear? Cause I don't really see another 13 or even 26 iLevel points changing the coordination and practice it takes to down Sarth 3D. It might, and I say that lightly, make the 6 minute Malygos fight a joke, but I can't really see another tier of gear changing the face of the Sarth 3D encounter making it "trivilized".
Now I may be wrong and I may be an idiot. But we're working on it now and progress is slow. With the push to put Ulduar into the game I'd hate to see all that time and effort wasted. My guild was slow to progress at the start of the expansion but have picked it up recently. We just had our first Heroic Malygos kill and have downed Heroic Naxx 3 weeks in a row now. Please put a stay of execution on these mounts for a little while longer. I know you're adding more in Ulduar, but how long will those stay until they too are gone? How many "hardcore" players are you going to appease with this? Is it really that bad that some of the lesser guilds and players achieve this too? Are those that have it going to be so upset that they aren't the only ones that have it? My guild is by no means casual, but at the same time no where near hardcore.
Thanks for reading.
