Wow, this is something I never saw coming. Tigole just announced that the Serpentshrine Keep and Tempest Keep: the Eye raids will no longer require any attunement:

After a lot of thought and deliberation, we've decided to remove the attunement requirements to enter Serpentshrine Cavern and Tempest Keep: The Eye. While many of our attunements in the Burning Crusade have been good progression checks, a few of the attunements have turned out to cause unnecessary stress on guilds either doing the content or attempting to do the content. With Black Temple and Battle for Mount Hyjal thriving, we want to encourage (rather than prevent) new guilds and raid groups to attempt Serpentshrine and TK. We are going to leave the current attunement quests in the game so that players can still engage in the challenge and the lore of those quests should they choose to. At a later point, we are considering adding a final reward step to those quests as well (that way those who have already completed them would not miss out on a *new* reward).

We're listening to feedback from you guys constantly and your opinions are important to us. We want this game to be the best possible MMO experience for our players.

Enjoy Serpentshrine and Tempest Keep =)

(Please note: This change will go live later today -- it's not yet active)

Presumably the idea is that the effort it takes to get the gear to compete in SSC or TK is enough of a check. Many people have complained about overly involved attunement processes in the Burning Crusade, and this is a big step in the direction of fixing that. In fact, Tobold had cited the attunement barrier to SSC as a major reason why he canceled his WoW account. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got some sightseeing to do...

Tags: attunement, blue, eye, forums, hotfix, ssc, tigole, tk

Filed under: Quests, Raiding