Bornakk: Next Blizzcast to include talk on the status of badge loot in WoTLK
by Daniel Whitcomb 
Jun 3rd 2008 at 8:30AM
One of the biggest and most successful features of Burning Crusade has been the inclusion of Badges of Justice. Especially in 2.4, these badges have allowed even relatively casual players to get their hands on gear that comes close to the same stuff raiders are able to pull out of end game instances. While the system seems to have been mostly a success, there's still some question as to how it will evolve in WoTLK. The current 2.4 badge loot seems to have been created in part to allow a smoother gear transition between BC and WoTLK for both casuals and ubers, with badges dropping out of 10-man instances and the most powerful badge gear yet. But the question is, will this continue in WoTLK? Will we see badges off of Naxxramas' 10-man version (perhaps earning it the name Badgeramas)? Will we see loot purchasable from a Dalaran vendor that will be comparable to what raiders are pulling out of Icecrown Glacier? Or will they dial it back, or maybe not even include the badge loot system at all?Bornakk somewhat answered these questions in a forum post yesterday, if only by saying that they would be answered in the next Blizzcast. Of course, first of all, it's good to hear the word "Blizzcast" mentioned again. It's been quite a while since the last one, and a lot of us have been watching for it with bated breath. Secondly, it should be interesting to hear the developers talk about the badge system, what worked and didn't work, and if it's a good enough system to carry over into the next expansion.
I do expect we'll see the system in some form again. It's a great way for people to gather loot at their own pace, and it serves as an easy to implement secondary reward system for the Heroics. What I do think might happen is a dialing back of the quality of the loot, and possibly nerf the badge drops from 10-man dungeons. The 2.4 badge loot, while closing the gap between uber and casual gearing for WoTLK, might be considered just a bit too powerful. With the new season 4 ratings requirements, Blizzard seems to be genuinely moving away from the "welfare epics" stigma, trying to make higher end gear more of a genuine challenge to get. Given this, it seems they'll likely impose similar requirements in the PvE arena. Thus, I would expect them to dial back the power of the badge loot a bit, perhaps always keeping it at the level of the latest 10 man loot or slightly higher - strong enough so that people can customize their gear and get a few drops to keep them happy when certain items just won't drop, but weak enough that 25-man raiders still have reason to keep downing bosses.
By the same token, the fact that many people can get 22 badges easily with a quick 3 and a half to four hour Karazhan clear may inspire them to dial back badge drops in the 10 man dungeons as well, both to encourage running of Heroics and to make badges a little bit scarcer so that they can feel more comfortable with badge loot requiring some amount of work. Of course, it goes without saying that we'll see some new badge type -- it would hardly do if you could buy level 80 gear with level 70 Badges of Justice.
Whether my predictions are close to the mark or not, hopefully we'll know soon. There's still no word on when the Blizzcast will be coming out, but when it does, we'll be sure to tell you here.
Filed under: Items, Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard, News items, Instances, Expansions, Wrath of the Lich King
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Memzer Jun 3rd 2008 8:36AM
Badges, badges, badges, badges, mushroom, mushroom...
or was it badgers :/
Jasperwind Jun 3rd 2008 10:14AM
Badges? We don't need no stinking badges!
Badger Jun 3rd 2008 1:02PM
... Sorry, did you say something?
Ikarus Jun 3rd 2008 3:21PM
LOL, I thought the same thing when I saw "badgeramas"
www.badgerbadgerbadger.com for anyone outside the loop
superfrank Jun 3rd 2008 8:37AM
I dont understand why people claim that badge loot is too powerful. This claim is repeated again and again, but you cannot gear up a character from badge loot, you can get about 4 slots out of 14 or so covered. The only sad thing about badge loot for me is that when the T4 and T5 legs dropped I already had what I considered better gear from badges.
Memzer Jun 3rd 2008 9:09AM
The badge loot is pretty strong when looking at particular classes, you're kidding yourself if you say otherwise.
Consider something like the healing cloth gloves [Light-Blessed Bonds]. For a priest these gloves are better than Tier 5 and very, very close to the Tier 6 gloves [-healing for +stam & +spirit].
Unfortunately people take one look at the stats and cry for the nerf bat. What people need to realise though is that gear is only a part of the equation. Take a group of people, deck them out in badge and kara gear and send them to RoS or Archimonde. They won't last 30s.
People also need to consider how the badge loot was rolled out. The gear was initially selected so that players could use badges to filll slots in their characters gear where there was no easily obtainable alternative. The newer (and arguably stronger) badge gear was brought out to help people progress further into the end game raiding environments as the current expansion nears the end of its lifecycle.
Sure it's helping people push through SSC & TK, and yes people can PUG mags lair now (heck we have successful SSC PUGs these days), but as you're making your way through the Sunwell in your shiny Tier 6, being some of the first players in the world to experience the new content, does it really even matter?
Lish Jun 3rd 2008 9:28AM
"you cannot gear up a character from badge loot, you can get about 4 slots out of 14 or so covered"
Wrong. It all depends on your class and what sort of progression your guild is making. If you're in a smaller guild that isn't hitting 25-man instances then you can upgrade most of your gear from badges.
superfrank Jun 3rd 2008 10:33AM
Well as a prot warrior working on vash/kael and the beginning bosses of t6 there are 6 (ok not 4 as I originally said) items from badges that I regularly tank in.
Several of the badge items that have come out in various patches have been upgrades to items in slots already available from badges (c.f. belt, cloak, legs).
There are also other items (c.f. azure-shield of caldera, the plate gloves) that you can get upgrades for fairly early in the 25-man progression.
While a newly 70 prot warrior could get perhaps 10 slots filled from badges and the gear is going to be at least as good as anything he'd find in kara or heroics, he's likely to have replaced half of them by the time he's stepped into Mount Hyjal.
Perhaps its different for other classes, but I would tend to believe that someone who's stepping into Sunwell or poking Illidan would only wear a handful of items from badges, perhaps 4 or less. Thus my contention that there are only a few slots that you can fill with really powerful gear from badges
Memzer Jun 3rd 2008 11:47AM
Yeah like I mentioned above it's totally class/role specific. I also think there's a lot of cross-talk with loot from other locations. Typically when people start talking about loot attainability and how badge rewards are destroying the game they're really talking about the combination of badge loot, *** PvP Gear *** [S1-3 ex. 3 Shoulders & Weapons] & Karazhan epics. Regardless, as long as it's not your first character gearing up an alt at this point in the expansion is incredibly easy.
You mentioned a warrior, a tank to be specific. Tanks are by far the hardest classes to gear but today its even pretty easy to get yourself a good set of gear. From Badge Gear, Reputation Rewards & BoE Crafted Gear alone you can put yourself a set of gear together that will carry you through until about Kaz'rogal in MH and with the removal of attunment, SoA in BT.
For example:
[C]: Crafted
[B]: Badge
[R]: Rep
[P]: PvP
Head: [C] Tankatronic Goggles
Neck: [B] Brooch of Deftness
Shoulders: [P] PvP Shoulders, Any Season
Chest: [B] Chestplate of Stoicism
Waist: [B] Girdle of the Fearless
Legs: [B] Sunguard Legplates
Feet: [C] Red Havoc Boots
Wrist: [B] Bracers of the Ancient Phalanx
Hands: [B] Bonefist Gauntlets
Back: [B] Slikkâs Cloak of Placation
Finger 1: [B] Ring of the Stalwart Protector
Finger 2: [B] Ring of Unyielding Force *
Trinket 1: [B] Gnomeregan Auto-Blocker 600
Trinket 2: [C] Gnomish Poultryizer *
Main Hand: [C] Blazefury
Shield: [R] Sunward Crest
Ranged: [C] Gyro-Balanced Khorium Destroyer
Probably not the best list of what you can get, most of it's off the top of my head. Shoulders are definitely going to give you a headache, but I'm getting off track - definitely enough gear here to get you through T4 & T5 content :)
For the people who claim loot is too easy to get, I think that these people should take a break and actually remember how hard it was to get a specific item pre-bc. I remember our first Azuresong Mageblade drop and all the drama that came with it [a WARLOCK got the MAGEblade, lol?!!!] as we were well into BWL before we saw it again. Now imagine you're coming into the game (or well, that you have a character just turning 70 you wish to raid with) and that you want to visit BT before WotLK. With the old loot model it just wouldn't have happened, with the new model you at least have a chance. Personally, I guess you could tell from my comments, I'm in the 'pro badges' camp. You can rest assured I will not be replacing my Tier 6 with badge gear any time soon but if it gives others a head start into the content we've all been privileged [or cursed ;)] to play through then I'm all for it.
sparkinator Jun 3rd 2008 8:45AM
It wouldn't surprise me if the badge system started in Wrath the same way it did in BC. The first set of badge loot was mostly item level 110 epics. The items in Kara started at level 115. We'll probably see the same thing; a limited amount of badge loot better than the level 80 regular instances, but just a bit lower than the 10 man Naxx.
As time goes on more and better items will be added to the badge vendor.
It is hard to say if Naxx will have badges when it first comes out. I'd guess no if there is just a small amount of gear available at first, people would have bunch of badges saved up before the first patch came out.
Vlatch Jun 3rd 2008 9:04AM
I completely agree with this. People are looking at this without taking time into perspective. If you look at the progression of badge gear from its first implementation to now, there's plenty of time.
What badges do is allow those folks that aren't raiding up front to "catch up" so to speak. Without badge gear, there would be plenty of people left out in the cold with nothing else to do but run 5 man instances and pvp. I know I wouldn't be running kara much anymore if it wasn't for the badges.
Elmo Jun 3rd 2008 8:53AM
I'd like to see some system that changes your Badges of Justice for those new things but that it's not that good
like, 5 badges of justice for 1 wotlk badge. assuming you cant solo heroics at 80
jefeweiss Jun 3rd 2008 9:01AM
They need to make it so you can buy badge gear with honor now that you can buy pvp gear with badges.
Chamual Jun 3rd 2008 11:09AM
jefeweiss said...
They need to make it so you can buy badge gear with honor now that you can buy pvp gear with badges.
---
No you can't, you can buy PvP gear with tier tokens which are different from badges.
Zoidberg Jun 3rd 2008 9:08AM
I'm curious what happened to Blizzcasts. Given the number of different art resources needed (web site, audio, music, etc.), I wonder if it suffered from the problems of scheduling low priority projects. Sort of like this:
http://www.pcdoctor-community.com/blog/posts/2008/05/26/A-Theory-of-Scheduling-Low-Priority-Work/
ctentzeras Jun 3rd 2008 9:18AM
I wonder if Blizzard has considered having two types of badges, since there will 10 and 25 man versions of the same instance, it wouldn't be unreasonable to have two different "badge" vendors who use different types of badges.
crsh Jun 3rd 2008 10:07AM
And much whining would happen then.. Remember badge gear is intended so that everybody can get those good stats.
The best they can do is making more badges drop in the harder raid cap (whether the 10-man is harder than the 25-man or the other way around remains to be seen) so you can get the rewards a bit faster.
Xoshe Jun 3rd 2008 10:13AM
I, for one, would actually like to see the next badge system feature more predominantly in Wrath's raids. One could say that, with their current implementation, Badges of Justice are almost Blizzard's own DKP system, and Wrath could take this another step further by reducing boss drops to only "unique" items (such as trinkets, tier tokens, and maybe some special items), and then making most of the generic gear upgrades be purchased through badges. I know this would, at the very least, make the whole random drop issue a lot easier to swallow.
Smurrf Jun 3rd 2008 10:17AM
"I'd like to see some system that changes your Badges of Justice for those new things but that it's not that good
like, 5 badges of justice for 1 wotlk badge. assuming you cant solo heroics at 80"
No. Just, no. If that was possible, then people who have the baility to get the maximum number of badges possible (say, 22 from kara, 26 from 2xZA, say another 15 from raiding, then 15-20 more (at least) from heroics, then you're looking at around 75-80, or more, badges per week. Even at a 5 to 1 scale, that's still 15-16 LK Badges they're able to get, per week, and have 'em saved up. That's a HUGE number if they do it from here to release. Assuming a November release (big assumption), that still means approximately 20-24 weeks or so, and at the low end, it means a player can theoretically gain enough BoJ to have 300 new badges upon release. And since Kara, ZA, and heroics will still allow presumably a nice chunk of XP upon release, they can keep on doing those in the first couple of weeks until they start to really outlevel that content. No.
Brimoonfang Jun 3rd 2008 10:28AM
Agreed.
Whatever token system Wrath uses, it should not be purchasable with Burning Crusade Badges of Justice.