Call To Arms- The Band-Aid (WoW)

Tank today and this sweet mount could be yours! Doh.. I already have it.

Tired of sitting in the LFD queue for ages? Well Blizzard has a band-aid for this painful wait time problem. Call To Arms, check out the info at MMO-Champion and also check out Sprinks' post which is where the topic caught my eye. Basically CTA gives rewards as an incentive to get people to queue for dungeons, mainly tanks and healers. I mean when are we ever lacking DPS? I thought it HAD to be a late April Fools joke.


The handy dandy LFD system will keep tabs on the the queue, once it gets past a certain wait time CTA will kick in, determining which role is the least represented, and offer a reward for filling it. The rewards for filling these roles range from money and flasks to vanity pets and mounts. We all know that tanks and then healers will be the ones to benefit the most from this, mainly tanks. OMG where have all the tanks gone?!! I'll get to that in a bit. The DPS in the queue will benefit but not in the same way, the lacking roles will go above and beyond with a bonus. Is this fair? I suppose it all depends on how you look at it.

Is this a solid fix or a band-aid on the problem that Cataclysm has caused? I honestly think Blizzard needs to take a harder look at why certain roles are not queuing for dungeons. While I like to think its kind of neat that I may have a chance to get something cool on my healers, I really don't like the idea as a dps class, then again it might help me actually get a group at 85 as DPS. I think the root issues of this expansion and direction should be rectified instead of shaking goodies in our faces to try to get us to tank or heal. 'Look in the bag... all the shiny goodies! Now go tank! Heal the PUGS for phat lewt!'

But wait!  You can't queue up with a buddy, you have to go at this alone. I think this is rather harsh. Queuing with at least one other person would add a little more incentive, in my eyes. What the rewards are not enough as it is?! I'm just not sure, only time will tell.

I am glad to see that Blizzard is aware of the queue times and at least trying to do something, I gave up with my hunter on trying the LFD thing, last time I played. Is it enough incentive to get people to tank and heal more in LFD instances?

Do we focus on guild runs or just LFD solo? There we run into a conflict of interest for this expansion. It seems such a contradiction to the theme Ghostcrawler was aiming at in the beginning of the expansion- Wow, Dungeons are hard ... Get a guild! Focusing on guild runs and I quote 'Ultimately, we don't want to give undergeared or unorganized groups a near guaranteed chance of success'... And they wonder why nobody is queuing?! The idea was to take the pressure off healers and tanks, leaving little room for DPS to cause error, think before you act as there are consequences (Oh noes...whoopty doo dah! Thus achieving in scaring off all the tanks and healers), but in reality it actually caused more pressure and people don't want to deal with it. And maybe hose tanks and healers may be just too busy doing rep runs with their guilds, you know, since it requires so many guild members to group. Maybe they like it better, since it was pushed so hard on us. Maybe they would rather go after those shiny rewards instead?

I say give us normal instances at 85 and heroics or heroics which are much like LK heroics and add in Heroic x2. Everyone is happy. Casual fun with rewards and hard mode for those who claim they love these hard dungeons. I think the implementation of this CTA system speaks multitudes about state of end game heroics. Alas nobody ever asked me, so onward with the carrot on a stick!

I am really interested to see how this fares with the community, if it will help any. *Sits back and reaches for the popcorn!*

-kaozz