After reading pages and pages of the comments on this article, I can't believe how many people completely missed the intended point.

In simplest terms, here it is: we don't want to have to buy inferior gear with our 10-man Ulduar Valor badges.

25-man Ulduar raiders will be able to buy gear equivalent to what Heroic Ulduar bosses will drop with the new badges if they have bad luck with RNG. That's one of the reasons the badge system exists. 10-man Ulduar raiders will NOT be able to do the same thing, because the gear on the Valor vendor is inferior to what will be dropping from bosses in normal Ulduar.

Implementing a new badge for Ulduar-10 would have easily prevented 25-man raiders from stockpiling Valor badges to buy tier 8 gear on the first day of the 3.1 patch, which is the only justification Blizzard has given for not making two pieces of tier 8 gear available to 10-man raiders.

@rosencratz
"Blizzard have stressed that 10 man Ulduar WILL be easier whilst simultaneusly stressing that 10 man naxx was unintentionally harder than 25 man here and there.

We can't make demands of Blizzard with the assumption that their design process is inherantly flawed when they identify the past mistake whilst designing the future content. With this in mind, why would the easier raid require a legendary item?"

You're paraphrasing Blizzard's statements to fit what you want it to fit, but it's not entirely accurate. They have NEVER "stressed" that normal Ulduar is going to be easier than heroic. They said "probably," and that's the extent of it.

You ask why we feel like we can state that their process is flawed when they acknowledge their mistakes. We can say it because they did not set out from the beginning to make 25 man Naxx easier to do than 10 man Naxx, but that's how it ended up. They have time and time again started processes with their stated goals upfront and have had to go back and readjust and readjust and readjust some more to achieve the goals they were shooting for, and in some cases, they've had to just move on and start working on the next thing without ever making it. Looking back and saying "yeah, we messed up there" does not in any way guarantee that future mistakes won't be made.

It's a ridiculously complex system, and thinking that mistakes won't be made would be foolish. They have made many in the past and, and leaving 10-man raiders to purchase inferior gear with their badges is going to be one of the items on that list.