World of Warcraft: Shifting gears in WotLK
The Developers are forced to find a point somewhere between the lower-end equipped and the higher-end equipped playerbase, and tune the overall difficulty around that target mark. The outset is crucial as it will set the pace in an expansion. They can't go to far off the scale in either direction, and in WoW's case there's always new players to consider, or those returning after a long hiatus, not to mention that whole new Death Knight class.
When it comes to gear effectiveness Blizzard has taken a no player left behind approach, but doesn't this devalue loot too quickly?
Some think so. Several ideas from armchair enthusiasts suggest that in order to add some intrinsic value to higher-end items and stall mudflation is to tune WotLK around the higher-end equipment Tiers, forcing the not so uber majority to gear-up if they want to be effective in the "bread-and-butter" portion of WotLK. I veto this specific idea; I've seen the detrimental effects firsthand in another MMOG.
According to WoW CM Bornakk, this won't happen since the Devs are planning to balance the transition exactly how it was handled in TBC. Meaning in some cases players will replace some Blues and Purples for trusty Greens during their early Northrend adventures. However many higher-end items from TBC will retain their usefulness for many levels as the crossover into TBC also proved this, debunking many misconceptions back before TBC launched.
This is good news and an obvious "duh" for many WoW pundits, but it also raises the question again on whether or not you should continue to play. Let's say WotLK is a few months away from launch, and your character is in decent or high-end gear, do you continue to play or not until it launches?