one would hope a new set of back up raid gear will come out for the off chance i dont happen to be all access.
The only purpose of free to play is to entice people to pay. They aren't likely to give free to play anything. Heck, they aren't giving All Access a lot of stuff unless you pay for Collector's or Premium editions!
Well, they want to sell incoming expansion to more accounts too, some free/silver people can buy new expansion if they will have something useful there. There are also many alt/bot accounts... similar thing - give nothing to free players, and you get less money selling the expansion. I know I have still not decided, whether to get the incoming expansion myself
Actually i have that as my back up set. Normally i get a set of the T1 gear each year as a backup. Unfortunately TDS didnt have that so my back up gear is getting a bit old. IMO i think 100% of TBM should be Prestige; however, 100% of older expansions should be non-prestige. This way you have to be all access to use the current games gear.
I think there are a lot of folks on the fence merely playing the game via buying krono. sometimes all access will slip so you go back to your FTP gear. Could be low on plat. Low on meaningful content to do and so on. I would think keeping a good amount of FTP gear around actually helps people stick around that are on the fence. Not to mention the amount of support accounts that are there buying krono at times to do content. if those accounts dont have gear to wear when they go to FTP i am not sure if they would be willing to even play at all.
CoF raid tier 1 isn't getting old; it's what a good portion of the raid base is still wearing some or many pieces of. Now next expansion comes out I'll probably agree with you.
If i would guess the new group gear will be superior to the old CotF T1 Raid gear. Not even considering focus decay.
TDS Tier 1, is an upgrade in both HEM and focus over all CotF, for group gear. For non-prestige, go with that. I even have a toon on a f2p bronze account, with no TDS almost fully dressed in TDS, non-prestige gear.
I think the new group gear will still be below the cotf T1 stuff. Maybe not but a lot but still below.I believe the devs said their would be no new cultural gear for the new expansion either. TBM was an unfortunate choice of name for the new expansion if you have seen Supernatural's 200th episode. TBM is too close to the BM scene BMS and what Sam and Dean mistook that to mean . For those that follow the show you will know what I mean
I am betting that in both the group and the raid settings that there will be a mix of prestige and non-prestige items. Contrary to what some people think prestige and raid are not mutually exclusive. The drops that are non-prestige raid drops will likely be even with some of the weakest prestige raid items from TDS.
