Call to Arms. Why my arms will not be called!

I’m sure most of you blogminded people have read all about Blizzards latest attempt to battle the shortage of tanks in the heroic LFD queues.

A quote from the blogpost:

“We don’t feel the tanking and healing roles have any inherent issues that are causing the representation disparity, except that fulfilling them carries more responsibility. Understandably, players prefer to take on that responsibility in more organized situations than what the Dungeon Finder offers, but perhaps we can bribe them a little.”

I find this pretty amusing actually.

Blizzard pretty much admits the social experience in the LFD tool is a disgrace. They say it’s understandable most (descent) tanks won’t go near the LFD system because of the crap, complaining, ignorance and leet-kiddies.

Blizzard pretty much admits they created a no-rules/free-for-all/do what you want zone in World of Warcraft. And that would be the LFD environment. Zero accountability, zero reprecussions.

Here’s my take on the Call to Arms system:

It will never work!
I will say that again if you like me to. It will never work!

There is no shortage of tanks in the game! There is however a shortage of tanks in the heroic tier of the game. And the reasons for that are plenty.

• Game design: Raiding requires a lot more DPS. Tanks are not that in demand when it comes to endgame.
• Social experience: Tanks that raid (and dungeon) do so with their guild. Why would they use the LFD system? Maybe once a day for the extra Valor Points, but that’s it.
• Pressure: Tanking means the spotlight position in a group. You screw up, everyone will notice. People tend to not like that.

This Call to Arms is not a system designed to get new tanks into the game. It is meant to bribe those tanks already out there tanking in a guild environment, to queue for random heroics.

So why will this bribery towards already existing heroic & raid tanks not work?

• When patch 4.1 hits, heroic tanks will be busy with the two ‘new’ dungeons, trying to get their hands on 353 iLvl epics. So they won’t be queing for any random heroics soon.
• Tanks will still just do their daily random heroic for Valor Points, but now they will get an extra goodie bag as well. So it’s daily VP + a goodie bag.
• The rewards (goodie bag) are basically a joke.

What rewards are there?

• Extra gold. How much? For this to be an incentive it better be a minimum of 250G. Otherwise you can do dailies. Much faster, less hassle.
• Chance on rare gem. Great, more random stuff with a possible chance to get. So lots of risk, lots of possible abuse + random idiots for a chance to get a gem, that you can purchase on the AH anyway for not that much gold.
• Chance for a rare companion pet. Wow. You mean those things I have never used before? I can seen how this might lure some people over, if they are into the collecting business. But really? This will only work for so long. If it drops (fast) then you’re not going to queue anymore, because you got the pet you wanted. If it takes to freaking long (Archeology anyone??) then people are not going to bother after a while.
• Extra rare chance to get a rare mount. Wow, you mean a ground-mount? Those things still in the game? Does anyone still use a ground-mount these days? Besides collecting them? Again, same shit here. It has the exact same droprate as its dungeon-counterpart. So what would you do? Farm that old low level dungeon on your own (quick 15 minutes) or take a random heroic queue with 4 possible idiots, that can take up to over an hour to complete. And yes, you have to complete the dungeon in order to receive the goodie bag.

What this system will do:

It will introduce a lot of people into the LFD system that have access to a tanking offspec, but don’t really like to tank. Because now it will be faster queues and extra loot for those special tanks!

Remember that guy that queued as ‘tank’ with DPS gear?
Remember that guy that queued as ‘tank’ with PvP gear?
Remember that guy that queued as ‘tank’ because it meant faster queues?
Remember that guy that queued as ‘tank’ but didn’t know there was this thing called AoE threat?
Remember that guy that queued as ‘tank’ but never bothered to mark?
Remember that guy that queued as ‘tank’ but never bothered to CC?
Remember that guy that queued as ‘tank’ but actually wanted to DPS?

Now you can add a new line to this:

Remember the guy that will queue as ‘tank’ because he wantz them goodiebagzz.