Project Lore

World of Warcraft has been out for over four years now, and Blizzard has done a lot of great things, along with a few not so great things. Blizzard's approach of never being satisfied with their games makes for some very exciting evolutions. Every new expansion pack makes WoW become a whole new experience. Before the Burning Crusade, World of Warcraft was a pretty hardcore elitist game with very few people progressing through all of the most difficult endgame content. Now with the Wrath of the Lich King, the game has evolved once again to allow more and more people to experience the great content that Blizzard has created. With all the good WoW does, there is one issue that needs to be addressed, random drops. Blizzard has been on record saying they enjoy the PvE content that is out right now, they like the level of difficulty that having multiple tiers of encounters each person and guild can attempt. I believe that the duality of drops, and emblem gear is a perfect mesh but I would love to see it taken a tad further. Each 25 man raid has its own specific achievement. Sartharion has its 3 drake achievement, Malygos has You Don't Have an Eternity, and Naxxramas has tons of achievements with the hardest being The Immortal. Why not allow these achievements to open up gear available from the new vendor. If you complete the Malygos achievement kill you open level one allowing the trash epic drops, and the first boss epics to be bought with the vendor. Each different achievement would progressively be harder, and thus be rewarding the guild that is able to complete these tough achievements. On top of that, this could also give long time raiders a reason to work for the achievements, and help them stay motivated and raiding. The vendor would use the Emblems of Valor marks to help keep balance and to also help emblems to stay relevant for hardcore players. I know in my guild there are a ton of people that have no more use for the marks, this would help partially resolve that issue. This could also give people a lot more freedom to spec the way they want. A lot of the time people who are specced a certain way for a raid must only roll on gear for that spec, if you enjoy PvPing or if that spec is bad for soloing, you can use the Valor marks to help with these offspecs without having to compete against your guild members. What kind of gear can you except from this new vendor? I would suggest all Naxxramas gear before Sapphiron and Kel'Thuzad, excluding all Valorous Tier 7. Why this gear? Well I have looked at all the loot that drops, and I personally feel all gear except for Sapphiron and Kel'Thuzad loot should be accessible. I wouldn't like to see some of the best items in the game like Betrayer of Humanity or Journey's End become nothing more than an emblem grind. In terms of how many emblems the gear costs, that is really in Blizzard's court to balance. If this idea was to ever be implemented this would be well after patch 3.1 and Ulduar. This vendor would only help to create new ways for guilds to get loot, and with more loot, the faster they can progress to see the new and harder content. Most people are going to stop and say wait a second, this seems unfair, why should hardcore raiders be rewarded in this way? With hardcore raiders blazing through the new content with little to no challenge except the the few achievements I've posted, I think it's time Blizzard rewards them for keeping at it. I would like to see an element introduced aimed exclusively to the super hardcore, I think they've earned it. So, what's the verdict people? Would you feel angry that only a small percentage of people would get this vendor or would you feel they've earned the reward?

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