I believe Blizzard is on the right track with the changes announced for MoP:

- WotLK-difficulty (and, hopefully, size) dungeons. Cata Heroic dungeons size and difficulty was what drove me out of the game.
- Other ways to earn VP (and, thus, gear good enough to get into a raid). PvE scenarios, dailies, challenges.
- All new raids available in the LFR. Given that LFR-version raids are meant to be done in a single session, I hope this also means each tier will be broken up in more, but smaller, raids.
- LFR raids at an easier difficulty level.

Little caveat, though: as long as the LFR version has all the lore, I don't care about the extra perks from doing the normal or hard versions at all. I would rather have some fun, (hopefully) stress-free time with an easy raid than see slight errors wiping the group repeatedly. Unless I get invited to some fixed raiding group doing normal or hard raids, and I feel like the group is actually capable of pulling it off without drama and with little frustration, I will stay on the LFR difficulty indefinitely.

What I would have also done:

- Challenge modes for raids, perhaps based on the heroic difficulty. With normalized gear, we would have a far better view of which group is really more skilled than server / world firsts can ever hope to provide. Plus, it would keep all raid content current for the best raid groups, as a top ladder score on any current expansion tier would be quite an achievement, given the gear normalization.
Perhaps even have the challenge modes instead of the hard mode. Instead of hard mode half tier of gear, those challenge modes could provide each player their pick of a single normal mode gear piece they wanted, plus cosmetic gear rewards akin to those from the dungeon challenge modes. This would reduce the gear inflation problem, to boot, and the ranked ladder should provide enough incentive to keep trying and improving even without better performing gear as a reward.

- A kind of GTFO/DBM/Recount hybrid added to the default UI, focused on telling each individual player what he did wrong and where he can improve. Turned on by default. Perhaps even impossible to toggle off for LFR-assembled groups.

- A far better iLvl check. Something that only allowed characters to queue for a specific spec if they had the right gear for that spec, properly enchanted and gemmed for the content they are queuing for. The current iLvl check is a bad joke.

- Repeatable single player challenges meant to teach players the basics of raiding with each role. With dailies giving VP, make them dailies and give VP according to the player performance. Perhaps also tie the ability to queue for the LFR to having completed the challenge for the selected role at least once.

Reply