Realms The problem with BiS donations.

[Obba]

I am an Icecrown player and started playing a couple of week ago with some friends that were playing wotlk back in the days.
We've been working hard to get our pvpgear as pvp is what we want to do. But it seems like wherever we go (Bgs, Arenas) there are Shadowmourne warriors,pallys,DK who absolutely stomp us into the ground. We continue to get our gear in order to try and match the competition but it gets more and more demoralizing when you realize we will never match the gear they have.
I feel like all my work is for nothing when I always seem to face people with extreme gear. Also matching up with Blackrock players in BG makes me frustrated. They have nothing to gain from playing BGs, right? So they all just get in there just to stomp people (especially people who doesnt like to donate to get their gear, aka me/my friends), and they dont care about winning or loosing. Same with donators who just want to use their freshly donated BiS gear and absolutely murder the rest of us. To me it feels very weird to be able to buy the best gear in the game.

What do I have to fight for? I like to play wow like it was back in the days and feel the progress, not donate and get the best gear that there is. To me it kills the point of the game, does it not? If you like to get gear without working for it, why dont you play Blackrock?

I feel like I am in school, working hard to get good grades, and Im doing fine, eventhough its not just straight A;s. But all around me there are these superrich kids who doesnt have to work at all for their grades, they just pay their way to straight A;s, and still I have to compete with them. And then they get bored because of how easy it is to get grades so they start to bully us less furtunate (aka me)(aka toy with us in bgs/arenas). That was my little metaphor heh.

My suggestions:
Not being able to buy the absolute best gear. Even if people could get relentweaps/gear it would take me alot of time to match that, and it would make us (people who dont like to donate our way to victory) feel as if though we had a purpose, working hard to get our gear. I realize donations are pretty much what makes Warmane possible, but I dont think people would stop donating just because it isnt the BiS gear (well maybe now, as they've already had a piece of the cookie, but not if it was like that from the start of a season or whatever!)
I played on Outland a while back and I seem to recall that was the case there? You could buy merciless but not Vengeful, Vengeful took time and effort to attain. Am I wrong?

Also matching up with Blackrock in BGs and arena (Especially BGS) is a big downer. They have nothing to gain from Honor right? So they just fight in the middle and most of them have extreme gear. So every time you see that you have Blackrock players in your BG you know its going to suck. Noone fights for the objective, they only fight for the sake of fighting.

As of now. Make a top bracket of some kind? People with like 6,3 or 6.4 gs could match up with other BiS players.
Ive worked my way to 5.2k gs and EVERY BG there are atleast 1 or 2 warriors/dks/palas with Smourne who absolutely smash my face in, the difference is extreme. Alot bigger than lets say from 4k to 5,4k gs.

I feel like I have nothing to play for, since the time I have to spend getting the gear you can buy from a click is worth ALOT more than the actual cost of the gear you can buy. So you may aswell just buy it. But I dont want to buy it, I want to play the game? But If I dont buy it, the game doesnt give me any sense of accomplishment so.. I have to donate? And I dont mind donating to contribute to the server, its just I dont want everyone to run around with the best gear you can get. I want to run up to a character that looks awesome, inspect, and feel like "omg this guy is just a beast, how did he even get that?", Respect. Instead of how it is now. Running up to someone that looks awesome, inspect, and feel like "hah ok, what a sad person, he payed to act like the best". The opposite of respect.
I realize not everyone plays the game with same mindset as me, but theres gotta be a way of making playing the game like it used to be played a viable choice and still compete to be the best.

Sorry for sounding a bit sarcastic and irritated, but well, I am.
Thanks.

[dolcokidol]

Well, let's assume there's no donations. Icecrown has been up for about 3 years now (all 3 @ endgame patch mind you), that's more than enough for just about anyone to get full WF gear, and even full BIS PVE gear, so yea, you'd still get BIS people all the time since large part of the playerbase has been playing for years here.

But there's donations and you can use coins to buy items. If we take away the items, players get little to nothing in return for their hard earned money, why should they donate then? Yes, there's people that'd still give money just as a "tank you" or cause they want to support the cause, but majority wouldn't. And a server that doesn't have a monthly subscription still needs to pay the bills (developers, moderators, GMs, servers).

So nope, donating for items isn't going away.
If you dislike Blackrock players having good gear at start you could switch to Blackrock, not like you can't play on both realms.

[Obba]

Well, let's assume there's no donations. Icecrown has been up for about 3 years now (all 3 @ endgame patch mind you), that's more than enough for just about anyone to get full WF gear, and even full BIS PVE gear, so yea, you'd still get BIS people all the time since large part of the playerbase has been playing for years here.

But there's donations and you can use coins to buy items. If we take away the items, players get little to nothing in return for their hard earned money, why should they donate then? Yes, there's people that'd still give money just as a "tank you" or cause they want to support the cause, but majority wouldn't. And a server that doesn't have a monthly subscription still needs to pay the bills (developers, moderators, GMs, servers).

So nope, donating for items isn't going away.
If you dislike Blackrock players having good gear at start you could switch to Blackrock, not like you can't play on both realms.

I didn't say take it away completely, I said not being able to buy the best gear possible. Like on Outland, (dunno how it is at the moment but like a year ago) so that you could still feel that the people you're up against who have maxed out gear made an effort in order to get that gear, and have played their way up to get it. If you could buy the second best gear in the game you'd still be a beast if you did, but maybe not compared to the people who actually fight for it. And it would give purpose to those who want to invest time into it.

[Disktrasa]

Well, let's assume there's no donations. Icecrown has been up for about 3 years now (all 3 @ endgame patch mind you)

4* Years soon, and Before the server wipe it was up for almost 6 years.
I had 10 characters bis before the "moltdown" and I geared them all up again with no donations after that (well a shadowmourne but that was after every other item was bis).
So 2 Times over have I geared my characters to "Bis" or damn close to it at least.

What I'm saying is there's much more people like me then there are "Full Donors".
I've been called "Donor noob" Hundreds of times, When I try point at my 9k Achieve points they say "oh you bought that toon"
This childish mindset of always blaming something or someone.

I want to run up to a character that looks awesome, inspect, and feel like "omg this guy is just a beast, how did he even get that?", Respect. Instead of how it is now. Running up to someone that looks awesome, inspect, and feel like "hah ok, what a sad person, he payed to act like the best". The opposite of respect.
I realize not everyone plays the game with same mindset as me, but theres gotta be a way of making playing the game like it used to be played a viable choice and still compete to be the best.

What if I told you those people you inspect have earned their gear legit, and only a very small portion of players you seen donated to full bis.

The actual truth is a lot of people donate for 1-2 pieces or sell some gold ingame to get coins from website so they can buy that LK 25 HC wep or RS 25 HC trinket.
And 1-2 even 3 items out of a 16 piece item set is nothing, it may be a huge dps boost for them at the moment but its actually nothing compared to all the gear they need to get.