I mean i get wanting something like a mythic+ retail dungeon difficulty in a wotlk or big private server where there's definitely a huge learning curve in between heroic dungeons often times feeling easier than 7x xp leveling dungeons massively undergeared dying when the mage ninja pulls 2 mobs that then in turn run in fear at 30% and pull 27 mobs that **** the **** out of people in their lvl 20-70s in lvl 2 greens and white gear.

But Warmane aims to be a classic wotlk experience, and it existed before / and at least 9 years before blizzard even re released classic publically.

While i think i did enjoy the mythic+ system and warmane in particular kinda has a hellhole of "all the catch up dungeons +- badge set gear gets you 4.9-5.1k gs.

Raids demand 5.4-5.8k+ gs to do all the easy icc bosses then quit on putricide/rotgut/festerface to 0 explanation mechanic fail "Make sure everyone gets hit by the -25% dmg resist spore or you die in the one shot" or "merge the green oozes that appear on cleanse and try to drop them in front of the other oozes and don't ****ing stand in them and die".

I've seen some pug raids where they were doing really well even with 1-2 line explainations who then just ragequit or left and then the run would die on 1 wipe. IMHO i've heard some people say that the inane gs demands for icc aren't neccesarily solely to get people to buy boes/cash shop gear.

It's because most pugs don't want a person who's never done icc to wipe the raid with them killing everyone with the spore or hitting enrage timers. Many want to one shot everything in 1 try with minimum communciation or headache while having overgeared people hunting trinkets funnel all the unwanted gear to them and emblem frost tokens as pain free as possible to avoid those 1-2x first leavers that often kill a run.

However i feel like the retail approach of whatever "gamma epsilion defense protocol archgamon" is sounds in a dettrimental way more like early private server jargon. Warmane's final state is built all around the lich king. Something like the "Scourge/Stone of ruin and Avarice", or some ebon blade themed magic would probably be more fitting.

However trying to replicate blizzard's attempts to spice up their own retail version from being not exactly like free privates gets messy. It could potentially risk opening up unneeded lawsuits trying to replicate retail too much maybe(?). And it definitely would more clearly target a current retail market that's recently spent money, vs people who played wotlk as a kid like 20 years ago who already paid 100$-600$s on the expac / 300$ year sub fees x 2-4 + 60-120$ expansions who feel like they got milked more than enough already.

Considering wow charges the prices of 6x full triple AAA games but you usually just did 4-10 new dungeons and 1-3x raids for gear of +10 ilvl over and over again.

Even then, while not mythic+, there technically is already meant to be some bridge content between 5.4k-5.8k gs for icc10/25 vs easier heroic dungeons. Pit of saron/Forge of souls / Halls of reflection already drops 232s on heroic + 219 ToC. The ilvl 200 normal toc banner can actually do the dps of non icc ilvl 264 trinkets with good itemization on some classes that love armor penetration + ap (like feral/warriors).

And Trial of the crusader 10-25 man technically can be meant to be a ilvl bridge between 232 ilvl catchup gear and 251/264 icc gear. Though, most people just use the icc boes anyways. And there's voa for trickle 264s/tier 10 gloves/pants as well.