Bread and Circuses

I heard news today of an upcoming change in 4.1 which made me thought a little.  Bliz announced that they will give rewards to the least represented role in an LFD.  This reward will probably be in the form of a goodie bag (remember those during your 20th time in SM:GY??) and will include mounts and non-combat pets as possible rewards.  Possible, because it doesnt have to be.  For sure these least represented classes will be given extra gold.  The pets, maybe.  the mounts, maybe.  So it's good news right?

Well not really.  Let me list my reasons why i dont think this will work out well.

1. Call to Arms will always be on.  Call to arms is an announcement in the LFD tool that will tell everyone who wants to queue what role is in high demand.  Lets not kid ourselves in the least bit and just state the obvious:  Call to Arms will always be on.  and Call to Arms will state that we have a shortage of tanks.  It will never say we have a shortage of healers and, god forbid, damage dealers.   And it will encourage those who do not tank to try to maybe tank for the rewards.  This means that any tank, or any hybrid/tribrid class that wants to tank will be given the oppurtunity to get a mount or a pet. 

2. What this will lead to is, not just more people tanking, but more baddies tanking.  The LFD system is already rife with bad tanks, bad healers and bad dps (although sometimes bad healers can be countered with a good tank and bad dps is often carried by good dps) but of the three, the one that carries the most weight is the tank. If we get a bad tank, the group usually stalls after the first pull or two, gets frustrated, and often disbands.  There will be some stubborn groups who will hold out until the tank decides he's had enough failure and leaves.  It is quite often due to the misconception that we'll have to wait 30 more minutes for a new tank if we kick the current baddie.  This is not the case, but often, people are quite reluctant to kick the tank no matter how bad he might be.   In any case, we'll have shorter queues because many people will want to tank.  But this may not necessarily lead to the same "quality" of dungeon groups we see today.  But i guess, being somewhere doing an instance is better than being nowhere waiting for a queue to pop. 

3. There is a possibility of gaining a rare pet or mount.  This is bad?  Hopefully, this will be as rare as getting an Azure drake from the Oculus random some time ago, which did encourage people to actually do the instance (and such an easy instance it was by then, i dont know how people didnt like it).  But i am basically QQing about this one.  I used to log on to my death knight every other day or so to run through Stratholme for the Baron's deathcharger. I did this for at least six months and one day i decided to stop.  Then, on a random day i decided to run through that dungeon once more and BAM!! i got a horse!  that's about nine months of farming.  although i'd only run it about four days a week, but in those four days are quite possibly 20 runs. I picked up his runeblade three times!  Now, when cataclysm hit and people were actually able to do Stratholme as a random dungeon i kinda felt i was cheated.  Not only that, the drop rate was increased by a little bit.  I felt cheated still.  I bet this is the case for all those who gained "Light of The Dawn" or "Bane of the Fallen King" before Cata. They must have felt cheated that every other Joe is wearing their title now.  Might as well bring back the PvP titles and the BC titles while we're at it (Hand of A'dal, anyone?).  Now we'll have people with what? a blue protodrake? a white hawkstrider? a ravenlord? Midnight? how about that deathcharger huh?  These are all the mounts i am currently farming.  Deathcharger again?  well i do have alts. =P  and every other week or so i run with my guild to get the OS3D drake.  at least with that one, everyone gets a fair /roll.

4. More tanks = More dungeons being run = more JPs gained by everyone in a shorter amount of time.  What else will this mean?  a flood of gems into the AH.  For the non-jc'ers this might be a good thing since i can easily grab an inferno ruby from the AH at low low prices and have someone cut it for me for a small fee.  But this will add to the already sinking JC market where yellow, green and orange gems are already hitting 10g and where Demonseyes are dirt cheap.  The only contender still making us any gold? Inferno Rubies, which has dropped almost 50% in the last two weeks.  Crazy influx of cheap Elementium FTL. Prices were down by almost 50% last week.  So what does this mean for the gem market?  people will begin to drop out.  cut gems will be scarce again.  Even the herbs and cloth and things will not be bought as much as we will buy gems with Justice points.  What else would you do when you have all the heirloom gear you need and all the justice point gear you need?  you buy gems to enchant your gear or sell for gold.  right?

In any case, although Call to Arms may sound like an awesome change to the LFD tool, it will cause a lot of anger, stress and dissatisfaction with the game as we know it, hence the title, Bread and Circuses.  Bliz is only trying to make things look good on the surface (shorten the queue times for DPS), essentially throwing bread at us and giving us entertainment.  But we all know it will only make things worse.  and look, we're already angry at ninjas, stressed at prissy tanks and dissatified with our non-sex lives as it is.  lets not make it worse, yea?  thanks bliz!