heroic-lockouts
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What do you think deserves an update?
The story is always the same: I find a particularly intriguing piece of transmogrification gear, one that will totally make that midnight blue set I've been working on piecing together. And the piece is pretty easy to get, relatively speaking; it's a drop off of a boss in one of those old Burning Crusade-era heroics. Easy enough to solo at level 85, so it should be a snap to get, right? Well ... not quite. Because for some reason, all of these old heroics still have their old lockouts in place. Despite the fact that you really don't get anything of consequence from these dungeons and you haven't been able to for years, you still can't repeatedly head into these dungeons. Now I realize there is a five-dungeon-per-hour limit to keep people from excessively farming, and I get that. I really do. But when you introduce a game feature that encourages farming old content, it seems silly that you not only have to cross your fingers that the item drops, but you can only attempt to get it once a day. And really? That's not the only thing that could use an update in today's World of Warcraft.
Should transmogrification change the way lockouts function?
I've admitted to my transmogrification habit on a few occasions now. One of the things that it's brought to my attention is that I really, really hate heroic lockouts on content I can easily solo -- like all The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King heroic 5-man dungeons, for instance. Let me tell you a true story. I have been running heroic Azjol-Nerub once a day for a week now. Every day, I zone in, kill everything in my path like an unstoppable juggernaut of death, reach Anub'arak himself and crush his carapace with wrenching blows from my two gigantic swords, then peel open his husk to find the same exact drops, none of which are a plate helm. It's annoying because it only takes five minutes to do, but I can't devote, say, a half-hour to doing it six times because it's a heroic and locks me out for an entire day. I find this absurd. I especially find it absurd because it's not as if older heroics get a lot of at-level use nowadays. People who ding 80 don't queue up for heroic Azjol, they go to Hyjal or Vashj'ir. Nowadays, these older dungeons serve purely as repositories of fashion, clothing dispensers we run in order to assemble a look. Well, OK, some of them also serve as a source of frustration when a mount doesn't drop. At any rate, what purpose does it serve to lock up these dungeons behind the mantle of "heroic" and apply the lockout to them when no one runs them when they're anything like a challenge anymore? There's already a system in place that keeps you from running a dungeon too many times within an hour; that should be sufficient for these dungeons. I understand leaving raid lockouts in place, but not 5-mans. Yes, there could be twinking imbalances here for people who froze their XP, but frankly, if some level 70 or 80 twink can get a level 85 or 90 (in Mists) to carry him to gear, it doesn't really bother me. We've already stated numerous times that the game isn't balanced for PvP at lower levels, let's embrace it. These dungeons aren't heroic anymore. Let's let reality reflect the changing game -- and more important, let's let me get my freaking hat. World of Warcraft: Cataclysm has destroyed Azeroth as we know it; nothing is the same! In WoW Insider's Guide to Cataclysm, you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion, from leveling up a new goblin or worgen to breaking news and strategies on endgame play.
