Patch 3.3.3 - Holiday Bosses (Cont.)

after reading through the WoW forum post on the topic of the patch 3.3.3 changes to holiday bosses, i've come to the conclusion that there are two distinct sides to the argument as well as two distinct parties or groups rooting for each side.

one side, the side that favors the change, are those who are not part of a well-rounded, stable guild or do not have many friends in-game to help them with instance running.

while on the other side, the side that does not favor the change, are those who are part of a guild and are die-hard collectors of all things vanity.

the change significantly benefits those of the former group more than the latter. it removes the risk of getting "ninja'd" from in PUGs and small groups filled with maybe half friends half randoms. let's face it, some people just have no other choice but to PUG, and blizzard is recognizing this by implementing this change. those who are not all that interested in vanity items will also benefit from this as it's a guaranteed chance for a pet or mount whether or not the player was intending to go for it in the first place.

the second group of people, the collectors, the "farmers", the people who normally never have to suffer a PUG really don't benefit from this change at all. not only will they have a small chance for a mount or a pet (low droprate is low), with the "once-per-day" system, they can't even hope for additional attempts. i also mentioned how this change will negatively affect those who just cannot log in every single day during a holiday event. it pretty much cuts their ability to receive vanity items down to such a small number, it might not even be worth trying for.

so with both sides laid out and ready to go to battle with each other, blizzard must ask itself who are they going to side with. obviously, being such a large corporation like blizzard, they will most likely side with the majority. but then that brings up the question of just who is the majority? is it the guildless, casual, non-collecting side? or is it the guilded, hardcore, collection-loving side? it would be unreasonable to attempt to make both groups of players happy, so i hope blizzard can figure this out before it gets out of hand.

personally, i don't believe such a drastic change is necessary to appease both sides. do i have a foolproof solution to back up my reasoning? not yet. i'm still thinking this over. however, a change such as this really does have cons that outweigh the pros, whereas no change would be no change. it would have no cons or pros to outweigh each other at all. does that make sense? sometimes the best action and is no action. the less of two evils. you get the picture.

without any change, yes, people who are forced to PUG will still have to risk getting items ninja'd from them or having their summons wasted on fail groups. but how is this any different from other non-seasonal PUGs? does this mean there will be a huge overhaul to the PUG system as well as the holiday bosses? it just doesn't make sense to change one thing but not the other when they are pretty much under the same system.

i'm hoping for more information on this in the near future. if there is a way to implement this change while not screwing over either side of the coin, i'd love to hear about it soon.