Blizzard better not have lied.Follow

do you really think they will make them completely useless? If you can get better gear later on what will the instances be used for?

In short, ever since blizzard's announcement of raiding gear becoming obsolete and raids being reduced to 25 mans, my guild has been ravaged.

A once vital and strong guild of 60 people has been reduced greatly over the past few months, down to the size of 30. This was probably for the best though, as the small amount of us left (only around 25 of us are actually geared well enough for naxx) have joined forces with another small guild to run naxx as an alliance. The guild we joined up with has undergone similar changes since the announcement, as they were once stable as well and have been reduced to shambles.

this happened to me in eq, the 80 man raids got cut in half

Vazruden... wow. I mean obviously the risk vs. reward of the entire instance is somewhat out of whack, but it's probably the most out of whack here. We did get to see one of his epics since we can down him with some regularity (it was a very nice druid belt!) but obviously the difficulty lies with the transition to Vaz + Nazan and thereafter.
I don't think he's impossible, which seems to be a sentiment shared by some others. In fact I like the current difficulty level. He's not C'thun mk1; it was very clear to us after about 16-17 wipes that he was possible and within our grasp as a group, although delicate and very difficult. However if he is kept at the current difficulty (which demands a lot of the players both in execution and preparation, which is as it should be IMHO) his rewards are going to need to be better.

I have greatly enjoyed the difficulty of the heroic mode dungeons. Someone mentioned that these areas foster elitism and block off content for casual players, and nothing could be further from the truth. This is something that is raid difficulty, without pulling any punches at all, that's doable by a 5 man in under an hour, for many of these zones.

People said tanks need 11k hp and healers need 1100 healing minimum for these zones, and that also doesn't block out casuals. I don't know if you've noticed, but there are quest rewards, normal mode blues, and craftable items which are rivaling the best gear coming out of karazhan, and which frequently beats Naxx gear. So no, these instances are designed to be hard for the average player at 70 who takes the time to build up his gear and character. Yes, casuals might take a month or two longer than raiders by virtue of playing less often, but they do wind up decked out. Look at many casuals on the live server, and they'll have their ZG enchants, spellpower enchant on weapon, they'll have darkmoon fair items, high cost craftable items, etc. They will get the gear to compete in these zones, especially with professions now having access to much better quality gear than before. They want to play, and they want to have challenging, non-boring content, but they don't have a reliable enough game schedule to commit to a large scale raiding guild, or they just don't like the atmosphere in such guilds.

Please please please do not tone down the difficulty of these places. If you want a mild challenge, but a zone that should be fairly easy, any of the normal mode level 70s will suffice. If you want to step it up a bit more, these zones on heroic provide a great springboard to raid level content. I would like to see the number of hard mode tokens needed for rewards toned down, or the quality of the items buffed. For example, I have a green ring from a quest in netherstorm which I feel is equal to the hard mode ring reward. The same is true for the necklace.

Heroic Dungeon-Difficulty Feature
Another exciting aspect of the expansion is the new Heroic dungeon-difficulty feature, which will let you experience many of the expansion dungeons in two different modes. One mode will be the normal version, and the second mode, Heroic, will boost the difficulty of the dungeon. The additional risks that players take on at the higher difficulty setting will also come with the opportunity to gain greater rewards.

The challenges that await players inside of a dungeon set to Heroic difficulty will go beyond just increased hit points and attack power for the creatures inside. Enemies will also have extra abilities, making each encounter more tactically challenging. The rewards of course will scale up accordingly with the boost in difficulty. In order to unlock the Heroic level of a dungeon, players will need to be level 70 and achieve other objectives as well. More details on these prerequisites will be revealed at a later date.

While I’m on the topic of dungeons, I wanted to mention here that the Black Temple -- the dungeon intended to offer the most challenging encounters in the game -- is still deep in development and will be opened up for public testing after the expansion is released. It’s important to us to spend as much time as possible balancing and polishing the content in this dungeon before releasing it to players; it’s definitely not something we want to rush out the door just for the sake of meeting a deadline. We look forward to sharing more information and offering some glimpses of the Black Temple content in the weeks ahead... and then opening it up to Burning Crusade players on the test realms once they’ve had a chance to level to 70 and gear up in the other dungeons.

I think any boss that's comparable to C'Thun is probably in that epic category. In fact, general consensus on the beta boards seems to be that the difficulty is just about right to be called "Heroic Mode" in a game such as WoW, just the rewards could use some buffing (people are saying that some quest rewards are better than 90% of the drops). Here, another quote that I think sums up the feeling of the raid community on the beta boards fairly well (as far as I can tell) concerning these dungeons that are supposed to be epic challenges.

I understand your feelings, but I am just curious...

What sparked this rant? O.o

what started the rant was the fact that my guild hangs on the edge of breaking/stabalizing heh.