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The views and opinions expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of VGGEN.com as a whole or any of its affiliates. This is simply one writer's opinion, and should be accepted as such. Weekly World of Warcraft is usually updated each Tuesday.

It also raises an interesting question: if a guild had the core people to throw at the 45 minute run, why wouldn’t they just fill up a few more slots and run ZG-20 or even attempt a multi-guild Molten Core run? Let’s be honest here: the 45 minute run is designed for raiders who have the time to run it over and over again until they perfect it. Seriously, if a smaller guild is going to run through the trouble of practicing 45 minute runs and constantly attempt the run, why wouldn’t they just try to do a better instance? Sure, Molten Core requires 40 players, all attuned to run. The thing is, at least by constantly practicing at MC, a collection of casuals could leave with good loot and more money than attempting a Baron speed run and getting nothing but a repair bill. The other kicker is if a guild has a steady priest, off-healer, and tank, they’re likely going to have absolutely no problems getting more members. Most of the smaller guilds I’ve encountered that aren’t able to run the higher instances are the ones without level 60 healers and ones without tanks to hold the aggro, pretty much making them incapable of running Strat UD in 45 minutes or less.

The other massive problem with a 45 minute Baron run is even with a properly geared group that practices, it’s incredibly hard to communicate properly. A Voice-over-IP (VoIP) program like Ventrilo or Teamspeak isn’t required, but it does come highly recommended. Communicating without typing can prevent a wipe or over-pull while ultimately making the entire endeavor much easier. This, naturally, begs the question as to why some form of VoIP was not included with a subscription based game, but that’s a different topic for a different week. This does, however, present yet another problem for casual gamers. Most of them aren’t going to have access to their own servers, so they’ll have to hope they can find someone who has a guild server they can use temporarily for the run. Odds are, however, they won’t find anyone that has access to a server, so they won’t have this advantage.

There is hope for casuals that don’t have access to a good team or consistent group members. Many established raiding guilds have discovered that they can make an insane amount of easy money by charging some Dungeon 1 wearing player gold to run through Strat UD 45-minute run with a group of Raid 1 or 2 geared characters. On the servers I’ve played on, the running price is averaging out at about 800g, although I’ve seen the price rise as of late as the availability of players willing to do this drop (that’s economics for you). Here’s the thing though, how many casuals are going to have almost 1000g to pay for something like that? They’re not, and the quest rewards of the entire chain simply aren’t worth near that much. In fact, the amount of gold you spend without bribing epic-wearing raiders is still more than the set is worth. Let’s go to a simple cost-benefit glance at this situation: Spend a bunch of time, money, and frustration to get a mediocre upgrade to your current armor or spend less money, a little more time, and generally less frustration by going on a MC run to get vastly superior loot. Gee, I don’t know. Maybe by casual content, Blizzard meant, “either drive casuals insane until they leave due to lack of content or convert them into hardcore raiders who keep milk jugs under the desk and raid more than they work, go to school, and hang out in the real world altogether.” You’re all thinking it, I’m saying it. The Dungeon 2 set is complete garbage, and it’s a complete waste of in-game time that could better be used for some other purpose LIKE A NEW NON-RAID DUNGEON.

But what about…

Yeah, I know the common raider defenses of the constant money-sinks in the Dungeon 2 set quest-chain. Yes, I know that you spend an insane amount of money repairing your equipment. I understand that, and I feel for you. However, I ask you to look at it this way: while you’re running MC or whatever, you’re still getting loot and gold. A group of chumps trying to run the 45 minute Baron run aren’t getting anything but damaged armor and frustration. Here’s another thing, since you guys love to glaze over it. You’re at least looking at new areas in the game. People on the Dungeon 2 quests are going to the same tired, played out areas of the game to kill the same bosses for a few new drops they can turn in. Yeah, we do pay gold, and it may not match your repair bill, but you’re generally using better gear than anyone going for the Dungeon 2 set.

Another common complaint is that casuals are getting “free epics.” Yeah. Ok. If by epic, you mean a mediocre blue upgrade that costs too much time and money, we sure are. Guilty as charged. If you want free epics so badly, why don’t you run these obnoxious quests? They’re hell. I seriously would rather run MC with an obnoxious Counter-Strike minded 15 year-old screaming about DKPs for 3 hours than deal with one more 45-minute Baron run in silence. At least in the MC runs, I can come away with SOMETHING worth my time.

And yes, there’s always the inevitable “Don’t do the quests” argument. Sure, casuals could ignore the Dungeon 2 quests, but to what end? There’s really nothing else for people who don’t have another 40 to 50 hours in their week to do. You can only run Scholo, UBRS, LBRS, and Strat so many times until you have everything. Thank Blizzard for not introducing any new 5-man content. Oh wait, I forgot Dire Maul, but can you blame me? Nobody likes to go there if they don’t have to, and the fact that half the classes don’t have good drops in that place makes it even more avoidable.

Recap

So let’s look at this again. Casuals complain about the lack of any good equipment after level 60 (still waiting on the weapons guys) that don’t require running 40+ hours a week in a raid group, so Blizzard introduces an upgrade quest. The upgrades aren’t that great, the quests require a ton of money, and they make you revisit the same tired places and kill the same played out bosses. They also make you run through Strat UD in 45 minutes or less, generally making casuals wonder why they subscribe to a game that urinates on them so much to begin with. When they complain, they receive a ton of flames and/or hate-mail telling them to L2P [sic], LURN2PLAY [sic], or NO FREE EPIXXXX COMMY!1 [sic]” So do I have any better ideas? Sure I do, but they mostly involve a few new small-group dungeons and adding in the new pieces as drops as opposed to quest rewards. But that’s not happening.

In the meantime, my suggestion to casuals is to just reputation-grind and spend your money on an epic mount. It’s more rewarding than the mediocre Dungeon 2 set.

Posted: 07/10/2006

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