Quel'Serrar
There's been talk of giving Tactical Mastery a trainable skill for warriors, the talent only enhancing its effectiveness. Although these are mere rumors, I'm still delighted the developers are - seemingly and hopefully - aware of this flaw of the warrior class. (Inevitable skills are indeed a flaw in a game that prides itself in offering a multitude of equally viable skill choices. And honestly I have never met a warrior who didn't have TM as a talent...)
Also in the news: a few weeks ago Foror's Compendium dropped for me. I was stunned. Honestly, what were the chances that the best non-raid epic tank weapon's quest strarter just decides to pop. (Even warriors with access to BWL weaponry choose the Quel'Serrar over other swords. It's that good.) However what started out as a reason for pure delirious happiness started to become a burden. Evil Gimps doesn't raid at all - we couldn't even if we tried - resulting in an awkward situation: I have to ask other, preferably advanced guilds to take me to Onyxia so I can finish the forging of the Quel'Serrar. Aside from the cruelty of Blizz of making a non-raid epic quest finish in a 40man raid instance, it can get annoying how some guilds plainly refuse to assist. I fail to see the big deal in letting an extra person tag along only to stick an unfinished blade in the ground and wait for Onyxia to breathe on it. Of course if the raid is full it's obvious that no guild would kick one of their members in favour for me, however most of the guilds that do BWL and AQ40 regularly are in the position to down Ony with much less people than originally intended. An interesting point was raised by Shuii when they were first asked about this: "My initial reaction to the plea of helping out with Foror's was that it should be a huge incentive for your slacker guild to start on Ony." Right he is, but EG has trouble putting up five members for a normal instance sometimes...
Anyway, I just hope Origin will do Onyxia in the near future again. Because they did, the weekend I was ill. I might have used up all my luck with that drop. It was a huge disappointment to find Malar's invitation in my mailbox for Ony for Saturday on Sunday evening...
Also, I learned that helping someone with getting Quel'Serrar is sometimes considered a "free ride" to Onyxia. Although I admit making 20-40 players do something is in itself a huge achievement I see a tendency of fetishisation of raiding. Just the fact that you (for various reasons) cannot spend three to five hours in an instance with 39 others a few times a week shouldn't make you a player of lesser value. The only problem is Blizzard's current direction of development and itemisation are heavily emphasising on raid superiority over anything else. It's funny to see how the new non-raid armor, the so-called dungeon2 set, is on par with tier2 raid armor regarding difficulty of acquiring yet vastly inferior to it. Because the sky will fall indeed if - O! God help us - epic quality items were available outside 40man instances.
The best explanation I've heard until now was the following: there are two kinds of raiders. One type raids for the challenge, for the joy of beating harder and harder challenges and most importantly for having fun with his friends. For this kind of person, loot is a bonus, means of progression not unlike levels in the pre-60 life. The second type however raids for the loot. If he could just get epics by mail, no chance he'd ever set foot in a raid instance ever again. Ambivalence is the key: it's a huge burden to get those epics, but should they let every common pleb have them, he'd lose his position and advantage he worked for. For this latter type giving epics to a casual player is the greatest sin since Eve's bite from the apple. Meanwhile for the first type everyone could have access to anything he has for all he cared.
I wholeheartedly agree with this classification. Also, sad though it is, I have to add that the majority of raiders seem to fall under the second "loot-whore" category. I still blame the Game Card system by the way. WoW can be played by buying a Game Card at any simple shop out there, meaning every kid with enough pocket money has the chance to play and ruin the game with his inevitable immaturity for the rest of us. The natural obstacle the need of a VISA card posed before WoW wasn't entirely a bad thing.