So speculate how long until MOP? June, August, October, December or ?

[chaos5061]

1: If you're in LFD and you're not in heirlooms. You run the risk of being called a "noob" anyway (even if you are genuinely new to the game and of course cannot get heirlooms).

2: If you join one much higher than your level as you suggest, and are not in heirlooms. That categorically will not work. Because all the other members will be higher level AND in heirlooms. They will think you're even more of a "noob" for joining such a high level instance in "noob" gear (as I'm sure they'll say).
I actually play low levels a lot because I enjoy levelling. Personally, I can honestly say that I regularly see low level players in greens and blues during instances, and I don't think I have ever seen someone picked on purely for not having heirlooms.

If everyone is getting on with the instance and there are no huge problems, surely it's unlikely others will start inspecting people and picking fault with their lack of looms?

You completely missed the point. It's not about the choice you have about whether you have heirlooms or not. It's that everybody else does have them, and the enemy won't care if you do. There's no point in entering a battleground in your quest greens when you can't even pop a heirloomed priest's bubble. Again, battlegrounds are a team versus another team. You may have a point in dungeons, because it's a cooperative effort. Battlegrounds, on the other hand, are competitive. You don't get carried by helpful teammates, you get a trip to the graveyard. Being a dead weight on your team is really frustrating.
And I think you missed my point too — that there have always been players with better gear, having an 'advantage' over their opponents in that regard, heirlooms aren't the only way to have it.

If you go into a BG in greens, you can only expect to get your proverbial rear handed back to you on a plate if you go up against an equally skilled player in blues. Those who go out of their way to gear well for BGs and are skilled will generally do better than undergeared players of a similar skill, obviously. Before looms, players searched for good twink gear to give the same effect.

It's not as level a playing field as you make out.
Nope, I never made that out. As I said in my original post, low-level PvP is challenging due to several factors, and heirlooms are definitely one of them.

With the relatively easy availability of heirlooms as you highlighted, opposed to the item hunt for twinks, these days you have to going into low level BGs knowing that these people will be there. Just as you have to go into level 85 BGs in your crafted blue PvP set when you're just starting out, knowing there'll be organised teams on voice chat with the best Arena gear waiting for you.

Sure it's tough going up against this at first, but as you get better and gear up, the satisfaction you get when the tables start to turn is worth it IMO.

I'm not dismissing your feelings on this by the way, and please do continue putting your points forward. I'm just saying I think that this situation has always been there in some shape or form.

[chaos5061]

What Is your opinion in turning heirlooms into a scroll with a buff to XP gain on it? That way there is still the advantage you say heirlooms were meant to give without being stupidly OP?
What benefit would be available to people who prefer to play PvP? What could they have instead of the XP scroll, which to them would be useless?

What really amazes me is the high amount of posts of blizzard in this post. Simply saying 'you're wrong, WoW is fun, you're just playing it wrong'.
That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm offering another viewpoint, often my own personal one, as a player of WoW myself. It's unfortunate that, just because my text is blue, some people immediately dismiss my opinion as biased. Anyway, threads like this are often goldmines for some excellent feedback, providing some great points on how we might think about steering things for the better. I've seen several great arguments already.

You compare heirloom characters to twinks. As you know, the decision Blizzard made about Twinks was made "to get them out of regular BGs"... so, if one of them was taken out "for the greater good"...why isn't the other group? Double standards much?
Players that elected to turn off XP gain purely to excel in PvP were moved to their own BGs, yes. I don't think you can throw in players in heirlooms though. They level up alongside everyone else in the regular BGs, so they also have a point where they find themselves at the lower end of a bracket and perhaps aren't going to do so well against players of a higher level. I'm not saying they'll be trashed by people in greens, refer to my earlier comment about gearing up for BGs, but if they meet people in similar gear, they won't have an easy time.

Are you OK with the fact that new players, or old players in new servers, will have a permanent and significant gear disadvantage against heirloomed players? I will remind you that gear is a very important factor in how much you contribute to your team (and in consequence, the fun you have), perhaps even more than skill due to class imbalance.
But it's likely that, on average, the team you face will have a similar number of people in heirlooms, blues and/or greens isn't it? In which case, your team has an equal chance of winning regardless.

Overall for the team, it's fair. But, the same "loomed" players (on both sides) will be bashing the normal geared players (on both sides) on the head every time you get a few yards into the front line. Over and over again. Many players will be thinking they're playing the game wrong. Never realising they never stood a chance against such gear mismatch.
Maybe "many players" is a bit of an overstatement. We all know the feeling of stepping into PvP for the first time and meeting a brick wall of opposition. It didn't stop people (me) from playing though. I think we tend to figure out that our opponents are more seasoned, better equipped players than we are, and to maybe put some research into improving first before throwing in the towel.

I'm fine with the existance of LFR and LFD, however, I'm not fine with the fact that you have more incentives to do those than to do the dungeons the old fashioned way. At the very least you could make it so that if you give the time to run to the dungeon with a group of people you invited you would get the same reward in terms of valor, justice, gold and goodie bags as those who chose to use the tool to teleport into them. The ones using the LFD tool would still have access to faster dungeons (since they have the random dungeon buff, as well as not needing to search for members) and those who wanted to do it the other way would still feel like they are not loosing up on rewards.

You don't need to make one better than the other in terms of rewards, just make them equal. (Although i wouldn't mind if you got an extra 10% valor/justice/gold if you went into a dungeon without using the LFD tool, not too much so it wouldn't feel mandatory)
Okay, good points, thanks for the feedback.

Of course we do. Blizzard blues are a charade. They never post anything that's actually useful, and when they do, it's to defend random 2/3 casuals posting in a thread because they want to keep them subscribed. Don't say retarded stuff like that.
So we only post "to defend random 2/3 casuals" to "keep them subscribed" at the cost of annoying everyone else in the thread who then presumably won't continue to subscribe? Hmm... There's a flaw in that logic.

I agree about the heirlooms part . my opinion is that they shouldn't exist for PvP ; for PvE there great , nothing wrong with getting through the content easier and faster. PvP is a whole other case. New players are at a disadvantage and it's not fair. Let's face it, random BGs are a whole lot more about personal satisfaction team play. No one has any satisfaction if you team wins but you get owned by the opposing team .
Alright, again, thanks for the continued constructive discussion.

[chaos5061]

I agree with the poster, the game is boring atm. I enjoyed world pvp, but there are no world pvp at all and guards are too overpowered.
Well hopefully you will feel less bored when Mists of Pandaria is out, because there is a heavy focus on PvP in this expansion... world-PvP in particular is getting some attention. Also, the guards on PvP realms will be nerfed, which should hopefully serve as an encouragement as well.

There is no new content for a year almost, its too long and the content is outdated.
I hardly think it will be that long, but we shall see.

J/k, but there is a point in there. Don't refute worries now with content that's not out and has to be bought please.
It was never my intent to refute worries, so my apologies if it came across like that. I was merely trying to acknowledge said worries and reassure that we are trying to address the concerns people have currently in regards to PvP, and world-PvP in particular.

With all due respect, we're going on Q3 of a year now. So unless MoP launches in 3 months, I do think we'll be going on a year.
I think there may be a misunderstanding at play here, as what I meant to say was that I hardly think it will take that long from now until Mists of Pandaria will be released. If you look at the time that has passed since the latest content patch, then of course we are looking at a longer time interval.

But his point was no content, and again you tell him to buy a new game. Somehow this rubs me a tad the wrong way. We're paying now too.
I get what the point is, and I acknowledge it. I am also perfectly aware that it is a point shared by several of you guys.

Also I am not telling anyone to buy anything if they do not want to, I'm telling people that we are trying to address PvP concerns in the new expansion we are working on. Once the expansion is released, some of the new PvP systems and content will be accessible to everyone regardless if they purchase the expansion or not, but it is no secret that you will need the expansion if you want access to all of the new content. This by the way is no different from how new systems and content have been introduced with previous expansions, and yet there are still plenty of people who play the game without some or even any of the expansions.

[chaos5061]

Mists of Pandaria Collector's Edition
I saw the MoP collectors edition mount and pet and I want to know if the collectors edition willl be released the same date as the normal game and if it doesnt have the same release when will it be released?
The Collector's Editions we have shipped out in the past where released at the same time as the normal game, and I am fairly certain this will be the same with this release.

Mounts and Disguises
Why can I not mount up when I'm disguised? Why aren't every disguises, which are, just like pets and mounts, PURELY COSMETICS, not shared among every characters on your account?
I'm not an artist so I can't be completely certain, but when it comes to the Ogre Idol it could be due to clipping and size issues. I'll try to find out more.

In regards to sharing pets and other rare objects, to my mind it's a little similar to the transmogrification of legendaries argument. Some of these things are damn hard to get, so when you see one in use, it's special. If suddenly these rare items were appearing a lot more often, they'd lose some of their awe quality. Don't you think it would be a shame if suddenly these relatively rare things became quite common to see?

World PvP and Dismounting Flying Players
They are still working on it, they haven't figured out how it should be working exactly.
This pretty much.

Right now we are looking into the possibility of adding one or more items that can dismount players, however this may change if we find a better way to do it. This is obviously something we want to be very careful about... it has to be done right.

Won't this be pretty pointless on PvE servers?...

I don't think that's an issue. It will probably not work on pve servers against someone not flagged for pvp.

That is the general idea. Players on PvE realms should not be forced into PvP if they don't want to PvP... No mercy on PvP realms though.

[chaos5061]

Trinkets in PvP
I will just jump in here and say that is an excellent post Daisyx, I can see that this must have taken you a lot of time and effort to construct. As you can see in the difference between season 11 and 12, we have already begun adding additional stats to the PvP trinkets. This will hopefully begin making them more appealing comparatively to the PvE trinkets.

Actually the only ''design'' I want to limit are:
1. No more ''damage on proc'' trinkets
2. No more ''haste on use or on proc trinkets''
Understandable, however as has already been pointed out, a lot of people find these trinket procs fun and would find it quite saddening to see them go. What's your feedback for alternative procs that could replace these?

I believe that my solution of a an on use resilience buff would be desirable in PvP, good for the game and have little negative side effects. It increases the skill cap, it could counter some of the burst and it would make the game slower.
I personally like this, it is something that would help protect you from burst and if it instead was an on use that added both PvP power and defense it could be instead used to either counter burst or be utilised to create your own :O Would create some great optional choice to the trinket on how it can be used.

You can make damage trinkets apply a dot, and they should have a chance to be activated when cc is cast.
This I am not so much a fan of. On top of what was already said by Daisyx, DoTcleave teams or similar using this (This is all thinking theoretical) would have an additional DoT that they can apply across your whole team, which could be a large sum of additional damage.

TL;DR: Buff PvP trinkets to reduce the power of PvE trinkets. This would eliminate the PvE trinket problem for the most part. There are tons of design choices when it comes to PvP trinkets, some of which would improve or change game play. A trinket that would improve the gameplay: On-Use Hand Of Sacrifice trinket.
I understand why you say this, and bringing PvP trinkets to the level of PvE ones would indeed combat the issue raised here...but I see a flaw. The matter that is being brought up in this thread is that certain PvE trinkets cause imbalance in arena, if you were to bring the PvP ones to that level would that not also cause an imbalance?

The thought of your Hand of Sacrifice trinket is aiming at finding a middle ground, which is nice, but I am not sure if this particular effect would be appealing to many players. It would be interesting to see how an on-use effect such as this would play out in PvP though.

Number of Quests in Mists of Pandaria
As things are right now, it looks like there will be approximately 1300 quests in Mists of Pandaria. This is a very rough number though, and this is of course still subject to change.

There is some overlap between Alliance and Horde, but the majority of these quests are neutral and because of this we do not expect there to be more than 200 or so faction-specific quests.

Of these 1300 quests, roughly 300 of them are dailies.

Right this moment we don't have the numbers off-hand to show how that that compares exactly to the previous expansions, but the quest count seems to more closely mirror Wrath of the Lich King, however with a much greater emphasis on dailies. Mists of Pandaria is actually the expansion where we have emphasized dailies the most... ever!

The dailies are of course randomized, which means that you will never log in and find that you have 300 daily quests to do. We expect that if a player has progressed sufficiently with the neutral factions, and thus advanced to their maximum possible quest availability, you would have around 48 quests available on any given day.

Paladin
Protection Paladin Damage Low
I have only seen a few numbers in this thread, and they all dealt with Crusader Strike damage, which is a rather small part of paladin damage on the whole. Is the issue that you just like big Crusader Strikes? Our goal has been to deliver more of an impact with Avenger's Shield and Shield of the Righteous. If every attack hits for about the same amount, then attacks don't feel different.

If you have actual evidence that Protection paladin damage is lower than other tanks or lower than it is on live, please share it.

[chaos5061]

World of Warcraft PTR Patch 5.0.4 Notes

Character copy and the PTR servers are live! Don't forget to read

the FAQ. Pet battles are not live yet.

[chaos5061]

General

• Account-wide Achievements, pets, and mounts
  
  • In Patch 5.0.4 and beyond, the majority of your character's Achievements, pets, and mounts will be shared with your other characters. Please read: Bringing Achievements to the Account Level, by Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street
    
  
  
• World Event: Attack on Theramore Isle
  
  • Warchief Garrosh, obsessed with assuring the Horde’s supremacy over Kalimdor, launches an all-out attack against Jaina's island home of Theramore. Though valiant Alliance defenders rush to repel the sudden onslaught, they’ll soon find themselves unprepared for the terrible scope of Garrosh's true plans…
    
  • In the Public Test Realm, we will be testing this event at specified intervals. Keep an eye on our PTR Feedback forum for more details as they become available.
    
  
  
• AOE Looting
  
  • Area of effect looting comes to World of Warcraft with this patch. After killing a group of enemies in close proximity, when you loot one of their corpses, the loot window will include items from all of the nearby corpses for which you have loot rights.
    
  
  
• BattleTag support in World of Warcraft
  
  • Players who have enabled their BattleTag will now be able to:
    
    • See BattleTag friends in your friends list.
      
    • Add and remove BattleTag friends.
      
    • Send BattleTag invites to other players via right-click.
      

Classes

• All classes have been updated with a new talent system, improved abilities, and spells (accessible throughout levels 1-85). Your character's talents have been reset.
  
  • Many old talents have been converted to specialization abilities.
    
  • Druids now have access to a fourth class specialization: Guardian.
    
  • New spells are now learned automatically. Class trainers are only needed to change talents, glyphs, class specialization, or to utilize the dual specialization feature.
    
  • All characters now take 30% less damage from other players.
    

Currency Conversion

• Coming soon.

Items

• Spell Penetration has been replaced by PvP Power on existing items.
  
• Head enchants removed
  
  • Enchants that modify the gear in your head slot have been removed from the game. This includes older head enchants of every type.
    
  
  
• Relics, ranged, and thrown items
  
  • The slot in which ranged, relics, and thrown items were previously equipped has been removed. All weapons should now be equipped in the weapon slot.
    
  • Ranged weapons, including wands, have been adjusted to be more powerful.
    
  • Ranged weapons no longer have a minimum range.
    

Professions

• The glyph system has been updated. Many class glyphs have been added, altered, or moved to different glyph types.
  
• Prime glyphs have been removed.

User Interface

• There is a new user interface for your mounts and pets.
  
• Character creation screens have been updated.
  
• Buffs have been consolidated in the UI.
  
• New roll results frame added. This new feature can be accessed by clicking the word "[Loot]" in chat, or by typing "/loot".
  
• The PvE queue frames have been unified. You can now queue for dungeons, raids, and other queue-able content in one handy place.
  
• Vendors now offer item filtering.
  
• Spellbooks have been updated to reflect changes to core abilities, and now include a brief overview of specializations.
  
• The Dungeon Journal has been expanded with information on all pre-Cataclysm encounters.
  
• A new help system has been added to many frames. You can toggle this on and off by clicking the "i" button in the upper left corner of the frame.

[chaos5061]

Horde Pandaria Introduction Updated

The latest patch brought some new models and actual sound into the introduction, but it doesn't look complete just yet. After you complete the introduction, you can return to Pandaria with a portal in the Pandaren area of Orgrimmar. The Alliance introduction is still a placeholder.

[chaos5061]

Pandaren Cutscene Added

The new character cutscene for Pandaren is now in game.

[chaos5061]

Don’t miss the world premiere of the World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria opening cinematic at gamescom 2012! The latest creation from Blizzard’s cinematics team will be shown in both English and German on giant screens at our booth in Halle 6.1 (B21).

The opening cinematic will debut at 14:00 on Thursday, August 16, the first fully public day of gamescom. This much-anticipated unveiling will be accompanied by a performance from MANAO - Drums of China – the all-female Chinese drumming group that opened and closed the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. A signing session with Blizzard developers will immediately follow the premiere.

Remember that from August 15-19, our booth will also be showcasing World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria, StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm, and Diablo III, as well as our famous dance and costume contests, and many other activities.

Visit our Activities page for details, and be sure to check back here soon for more on what we have in store for you at gamescom!

[chaos5061]

Beta Class Balance Analysis

Death Knight
269s of combat, ghoul cast 69 claws. At 40 energy per, that's 2760 total spent. figuring 10 regen per second, the expected number of claws in that time span with 0 haste scaling on Energy is 69.75. So i'd say the ghoul is not currently getting energy regen from haste. Is this intended?
In the current build you have, the Ghoul’s energy regen was indeed not benefitting from your haste. That’s fixed for the next build. This also applies to the Army of the Dead ghouls.

Also, reaping is not currently functioning as you described. DDDDUU when used on 4 blood boils becomes dbdfUU.
That fix didn’t make it into the build you currently have. It should be in the next build.

As I have said before, we're not yet in the stage of development where everyone makes sure all of their changes are in before we pull a build -- that would just require too much needless coordination and make it harder to get builds out. We tend to just pull builds -- for now -- and get what we get.

Paladin
Is it intended that Sacred Shield not scale with haste while the other options on the tier do? It behaves (more or less) like a proactive HoT, so it'd make sense.
That's an easy fix.

Well, not really about ret, but prot, but does proof that Shield of the Righteous falling behind Judgement and Holy Wrath (against single targets) count? It almost feels like Glyph of the Alabaster Shield is going to be mandatory.
Well, you didn't exactly provide proof, but Judgment in particular does hit really hard for Prot, especially with Vengeance stacked. You have a lot of motivation to use SotR though, so I don't expect it will drop out of the rotation. If paladin damage was low compared to other tanks, that would be a problem (and SotR a potential place to buff it), but we're not seeing that.

(Editorial note: we removed several posts debating the merits of various tanks. Again, perfectly legit topic, but we have a whole forum for those discussions. This thread is about numbers and rotations.)

Warlock
Maybe you don't have to actually debug the simulations, but take a look at this comment made by the warlock developer of simcraft.... Maybe you guys could just take a look at the actions lists for all 3 specs that he uses and see if maybe something could be learned from there:
One point of confusion seems to be about refreshing Corruption in Metamorphosis. There may currently be some bugs with that. The intended functionality (which we will double check) is that Touch of Chaos and Void Ray both extend Corruption by 6 sec, up to a maximum of 18 sec, and both cause the damage to be recomputed. We’re trying to evaluate further what differences there may be between our results and yours. Again, actual logs (e.g. World of Logs) would help us compare the most easily.

[chaos5061]

25 Man Raid Testing
25-player testing will follow as soon as 10-player Heroic testing has concluded. Since there are no level 90 templates, we wanted to make sure everyone who was interested in raid testing had time to level to 90 before beginning 25-player testing.

Cross-Realm Zones and Pet Battles on the PTR
Cross-realm should be enabled, pet battles are disabled on the PTR.

Pet Combat Log
We are in the process of moving the pet combat logging to its own, separate tab. Hopefully on the next build but no promises.

Mechanical Pandaren Dragonling Model
It's placeholder. An updated model/skin is in the next patch.

Request: New Macro Conditionals
A [petbattle] macro conditional will be in an upcoming beta build.

Thanks for the feedback!

Arena Pass 2012 Rewards - Mount/Title been given yet?
Finally, received my pet!
Indeed, it seems the pets and titles that were not initially sent are now being received. If you have not seen yours yet, then keep an eye on your mailbox as it should not be too long now.

Would You Accept Homogenization for Balance and Fun?
Would you prefer if every class was completely unique, but it often meant that some classes would be bottom of proverbial pile, imbalances were rife, things would polarise quite often (1 classes goes from best to worst) each patch and so on.
This extreme offers the most diverse play style, letting a player choose the class they enjoy and you can look at your character and say “That is class X”, which is pretty awesome being able to distinguish yourself like that. This can sometimes also create points where your class may sadly feel either too strong or weak which is something that is not enjoyed.

Classes were very very similar, with only a few distinctive abilities/signature abilities which separated each class from another, but the game was a lot more balanced, you could play the class you enjoyed and not have to worry about suddenly becoming much worse than any other class.
This offers you a less distinct play style with the class you are playing. While you may feel all of the classes are in good balance, which would be great, you would end up looking at two classes of the same role and think to yourself, “Well, what’s the difference?” This does not really feel like something that offers an enjoyable experience.

I can understand why for your discussion you have decided to choose these two extremes, so you can find where the opinions of everyone lie. But from this thread it can be seen that nice balance with the ability to distinguish your class is what most of you would like to see, why not swing the discussion more in this direction?

We hope that you keep up the constructive discussion and look forward to anything else you have to say.

[chaos5061]

PvP vs Ganking
Some great thoughts here. On the topic of ganking though, it's a tough one to handle. Many players join a PvP server so that they can seek out and inflict revenge on members of the opposite faction. You see players wishing for more world PvP like the old Southshore/Tarren Mill conflicts, and maybe some of the things you suggest would harm those kind of battles.

I'll play devil's advocate here (in my PvP server days I was always the victim rather than the ganker).

If buffs are sustained through death, that takes away some of the challenge of finding the person very quickly once they ress. Mind you, buffs can often be applied very quickly.

A debuff to prevent you from killing someone multiple times is a bit of a party pooper, and could potentially be abused — you'd have a hostile that was invulnerable for a limited time.

I think any PvP-kills-only debuffs/changes to timers could potentially add confusing layers of complexity to the game. Also, 'PvP-kills-only' could be possibly be avoided by waiting until a mob was attacking the gankee, then allowing the mob to get the killing blow.

You'd also have to make sure all these buffs/timers didn't apply to PvP zones like Wintergrasp and battlegrounds, and that players can't enter the zones with anything like that active.

Didn't they also have dishonourable kills in those days?
Yes but I don't think it did a great job to discourage those who wanted to do it deliberately. You could also get a dishonourable kill by being in a group with someone who killed a lowbie, this happened to me when I was outside an instance with a group once, I was heartbroken.

Yes it is a real challange waiting for them to res and kill them again with such a low health level and being so low levelled they don't even hit you when they try.
Depends on the difference in levels. Obviously if someone is a lot lower than you then yeah, the 'challenge' argument doesn't apply.

Or they could be made worth no honour if killed in a short time like when you HS. Possibly even the unthinkable bring back diminishing returns on honour.
True, although it only helps if people are actually ganking for honor or just for the fun of finding enemies to kill. I suspect a large portion of people do it for the latter reason, seeing as BGs are a much better source of honor points.

Well given that you can already turn off certain thing in Arena and BGs, even making things only work in a certain way, and have this ability for a while, surely it can be done to this too.
Yeah sure, I was only mentioning it to point out that it wouldn't be that straight-forward to implement, and we always have to weigh up the urgency of changes like this against other things that demand developer time.

Use the PvE-Server-Mechanic
As Oldtrafford pointed out, the whole point is that it's a PvP server. The rules and mechanics should be different when it comes to PvP.

[chaos5061]

Content Consumption Speed and Difficulty
I'm not a hardcore player, nor do I find myself skilled. But rewarding those that put much less time and effort into something with the same rewards as a more dedicated player, is utterly demotivating.
Alright, let's put this in a different perspective to see if you (and other players) keep up with this argument about less time and effort being equally rewarded...

*This is a fictional example*
Let's imagine that developers decided that, from now on, every Heroic boss of an expansion is only available until one guild, just one guild in the world, defeats it. The moment that happens, the Heroic mode of that boss is unavailable for everyone else until the next expansion is released.

In your own reasoning, it's only fair; they're putting way more time and effort than everyone else (hence why they'd be killing it first in the world). I'm sure there'll be people out there that would scream "That is awesome!" at the idea of something like that.

In reality, what would happen, is that after 4-5-whatever amount of bosses they'd probably stop trying after realizing they just can't compete with that guild.

Would you be happy, in that context, with having to come one expansion later to kill those bosses when they're no longer relevant to your character? The answer is most likely: no.

However, that's exactly what has been suggested in this thread for those players that need the debuff to some degree to kill a boss much later than everyone else. They should basically contempt themselves with doing it when it's no longer relevant for them.

If the fictional case I've written before is not fair for you, doesn't that mean that what you're asking for is just as unfair? Think about it. Because both of them aim to the same: rewarding time and effort (just taken to the absolute extreme). And once you start arguing that *this time and effort* is okay, but this one is not, you're not being objective in your reasoning.

So, why do you want to force others to accept something you wouldn't in the first place? That is what you're asking for when you come up with this kind of arguments about why noone else should do something after you did it.

Please for the sake of sanity of everyone who is trying to get a point across here have some understanding of what we are trying to say. The tone of the posts given is very patronizing as if we were wrong to have an opinion that differs from what seems to be the 'design orientation' at the moment, or your personal opinion.
I understand what is being said, and that's why I'm asking those questions. When some posters say that it's not fair that someone comes in with the 30% debuff and kills Heroic Madness with less time and effort, they're failing to acknowledge that some of those guilds might actually have been raiding since the patch was released (which is hardly less time and effort).

That's the kind of thing to which I want to see an objective argument as to why it's terrible that someone that is been pursuing that objective for more than half a year at this point, shouldn't get those same rewards.

[chaos5061]

Beta More Helpful Than Harmful
You do bring up some good points Theremin. It cannot be denied that there are a lot of spoilers being leaked into the community during a beta, and I can totally understand why that is very frustrating for those who prefer the new content to remain a secret until release, so that the experience of something new and the thrill of discovery is fully preserved. I am sure you are right that some people who do play the beta will not be as excited as they otherwise could have been upon release.

That being said, the benefits of the beta far outweigh the drawbacks, and here is why:

An internal test can never be a proper substitute for a beta, simply because of the fact that a beta resembles the live environment much more accurately.

In a beta, there are always players who play the game in ways that were never imagined by the developers, and there are always players who are so creative or so skilled that they can approach or defeat content in ways that were never expected. There is an incredibly huge variation in play styles amongst the beta players, and just by playing(or trying to play), they unearth many glitches and bugs that would never have been found by the dedicated team of internal testers tasked with hunting for glitches and bugs.

Having a huge pool of players in the beta will also help the developers determine if the new content they are working on actually works as intended or not, if the new content is fun or not.

Also, betas are much better at testing both hardware and connections, which helps immensely in the preparations for the launch and the live environment.

What I am trying to say is that having a beta test before release is a better way to ensure a high standard of quality.

Really, you need to test hardware and connections for 4th expansion? Yeah right.
Very much so. Our hardware systems and architecture has changed significantly over the years with every expansion, and this one is no different... a lot of things are going on behind the scenes my friend.