Disclaimer: Normally I refrain from things that I classify as “PTR news coverage,” but there are a good many things I have jumping around in my head that I would like to toss out and get feedback on. Note that this is not a news post per se, but an analysis of the changes and what my idea of what they mean is as a result.

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Contents:

1. Emblem Changes
2. Raiding Progression
3. Raiding Lockout Periods
4. Tier Nine (9)
5. Future Changes
• Faction Changes
• Ramifications of 3.2
• Expansion (?)

Emblem Changes

In light of recent news announcements, the emblem changes make more sense than they did when first looking at the patch notes. I still feel that the change should be to have Emblems of Valor drop in all content prior to Ulduar, and Emblems of Conquest drop in Ulduar 10/25.

Many have mentioned the nature of small guilds not seeing anything beyond Heroics, and so these changes provide them an opportunity to obtain some of the gear from content that they may never actually get to see (some have mentioned alt gearing as well, which I’ll address momentarily). While I understand that such problems do exist for a number of guilds, including those that actually have more members than would traditionally be classified as small, I do not think this should be the basis of anyone’s support of the emblem changes.

I should clarify: <devnull> is a small guild. We do consistently have ten people online to raid now (although we’ve struggled with not having enough to fill a ten man for various time periods ourselves), and some time ago we found a guild that was also small to partner with in order to run 25-man raids. We’ve seen the issues with not being able to fill out a raid and get into content firsthand, and we found ways to overcome that hurdle.

With that in mind, simply being able to obtain better gear due to problems associated with getting into raids I disagree with. I do recognize it is a problem, but it is a problem that can be worked through. Gearing alts is something I can definitely understand the changes for, especially from the perspective of those with limited time to play, and something I will certainly take advantage of myself. It still feels, however, like a change that is going just a little too far toward trivializing current content (and I want to make the distinction here, I specifically mean the difficulty of the encounters as designed for the average player, and subsequently the challenge of an instance/raid as intended. I do not mean any type of trivialization of a raider’s achievements.).

Raiding Progression

This is starting to look quite interesting. <devnull> is certainly not ready for the new content (to give an idea of our raiding progress you can view the pugchecker data for Byaghro assuming the armory is actually up), which is a very good thing. I prefer to have content I haven’t seen yet waiting for me than to be finished with what is available and waiting on something new to come along. Having this much coming relatively shortly after the release of Ulduar, though, makes me really curious about how close we might actually be to the next expansion after all, or if this is just a new trend Blizzard is trying to adhere to.

Raiding Lockout Periods

This change I absolutely love. For a guild our size the ability to continue in an instance more than the two nights we currently have is great, and it is not at the expense of anyone else. We currently raid two nights a week for roughly three hours, and as of this past week the plan is to spend both nights in Ulduar to work on progression. The ability to extend the lockout by one more week means we might actually make progress through the instance even with our inability to commit more days to raiding in a week. While some may balk at the thought of being able to do such a thing, I challenge anyone to give me a reason why this ability could be perceived as bad in any way.

Tier Nine (9)

This pretty much goes hand-in-hand with my thoughts on progression. Byaghro only has one piece of Tier 8 thus far, and if I remember correctly only two other guildmates have any T8 yet. This does make me feel like T9 is coming too quickly, but it also means I look at the emblem changes from a different perspective now as well.

The one thing I do like, though, is that it appears the T9 tokens are no longer slot specific. This is something that I truly wish all tokens were changed to embrace. With group compositions being so varied anymore (our typical group for 10-mans is actually quite… odd) we could go for weeks without having a usable token drop (defining usable as one that someone could use that didn’t already have three of the same token due to our luck with loot… we literally have a Paladin that has three sets of T7 because no one else that was on the token was present, and no other tokens dropped for a period of time).

Needless to say, this change is extremely welcome.

Future Changes

I’m not going to go into each one individually quite yet. I want to hear what people think of these upcoming changes:

• Faction-Switching Availability
• Ramifications of 3.2 Changes
• Do you think this signals an expansion soon?

I am certain my relative quietness as of late has been noticed, so I wanted to take some time to provide updates as to why, what to expect soon, and hopefully allay any fears that may have arisen (though I’m doubting anyone is overly concerned).

First, the why:

I have a lot of topics that I wanted to write about, but with 3.1 looming over our heads I knew a lot of the content would be changing. I do not generally jump on the PTR much, if any, and so I decided it best to wait for the patch to hit and gain live information before updating my posts. Primarily, this is the sole reason I’ve refrained from posting much as of late, though not the only reason (others are related to trying to get some things squared away personally, so while they are applicable they are not WoW related).

Now, what to expect:

My Druid is my main, and will continue to be. It is not, however, the only class that I play. In the coming weeks I plan to broaden my focus a little more to include some topics that relate to the other classes I play, although the Druid will continue to be the one I cover most. I have a level 80 Rogue, a 78 Death Knight, and a 73 Priest (which is the one I’m currently working on leveling to raid with when I’m not raiding with my Druid). I know I cannot cover them all with the depth and detail deserved and will not attempt to, but expect to see some things related to those classes as well.

In addition, I’ve been considering making some changes to the site overall. This process started with the revised look, and since then I’ve mulled over whether or not “Casual WoW” is really applicable as a title anymore. The domain will stay, and everything will remain seamless (feeds included unless I post otherwise), but I am thinking of closing another project I have that has been left dormant for some time now and utilizing that domain/name/branding here. I think it fits well, and since I already own the domain (and it is hosted on the same server), all I would need to do is a basic redirect and some rebranding here. In short, do not be surprised if I announce that those changes will be coming after all.

I definitely want to hear from you all as well. I’ve received a number of comments on various topics, but feedback is vastly important when considering whether or not to make these changes happen. Normally I’m very good about commenting back here, so please engage me in discussions (after all, if I wasn’t interested in getting to know you all more I would just have comments turned off anyway!) and let me know what you think of my ideas.

• Post 3.1 Healing Guide for Druids (definitely coming)
• A Look at Healing Variety in Druids and Priests
• A Healer’s Guide to Learning to Tank (Role-Changing and How to Adapt)
• Adaptive DPS, What Every Class Should Understand
• More RP Posts (I’m not getting a lot of feedback on these, and though I enjoy them immensely they may be discontinued if interest continues to be lackluster)
• A complete rewrite of my character and about pages… these are sorely lacking and need to be done.

So, let me know what you have to say!