Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, The Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King, Transmogrification

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.

Should transmogrification change the way lockouts function? originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sun, 22 Apr 2012 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.