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I think the real motive is dev ego merged with stupid producers who don't understand WoW but feel aggrandized, or that their resources have been better spent, when the ticker shows one more instance of a raid they designed has been completed. To these people, the fact that the playerbase as a whole was happier during TBC means less than the fact that a higher percentage of players have cleared ToC-25. This is why they think putting the Blue Drake in Oculus fixed the instance; they really do believe that players should play for loot. It's like the chef whose answer to every culinary conundrum is to empty a bottle of MSG into the pot.
This is also why we have these raid weeklies: they actually believe that the ticker showing "another Naxx-10 has been launched" so players can zerg down the weekly boss represents a triumph for them as developers and a better return on their investment. They can boast "More people saw my content!"
I noticed that one shaman in the thread who called drakes "content". That sort of person is really who this is aimed at - anyone so deluded about the game or who gets so worked up that someone else has something he doesn't is by definition not casual but a hardcore bad. The same kind of player who thinks he's good because of his Gearscore then gets angry when you point out that with that full 264 gear and a 25% buff he still hasn't applied it to down anything past the first wing. This guy will actually feel he's on the level of real raiders because he has the same drake they got 16 months ago. And then he'll feel perfectly positioned to trash talk when you tell him he can do something better.
It speaks volumes about Cataclysm content that it's going to be designed entirely through tuning, so when the next tier comes out everyone can brute-force it. What this means, is it will be totally undifferentiated in terms of depth and mechanics. Every encounter except the odd "hard mode only" boss will be pure numbers, so they can keep using raids as hand-me-downs. There will be no room for encounters with novel mechanics that are challenging in their own right, and certainly nothing with a learning curve. Imagine if Malchezzar had the same level of complexity as Illidan and all that changed were numbers.
I've already decided I'm not going to buy the expansion, not because I'm an elitist who thinks content should be exclusive, but because the way the game is being designed is empowering its worst elements, not as players, but as individuals. They actually think it's better that players be banned for damaging the reps of ninjas and bad players than risk losing subs to ostracism. They actually think that it's because of vote kickers that the kicked players doing 10% of the group's damage aren't getting their heroics done.
I like the part where Ghostcrawler says that heroics "didn't get done" before he lent his magic touch to the game. It speaks volumes about his take on meritocracy and community.
I also feel that Blizzard customer service isn't just bad, it's insulting and offensive. I have had quite enough of talking to GMs and reading CM posts saying anything that doesn't work as it should is the playerbase's fault, whether it's a memory leak, faction change bug, botting, the community, or pathing mechanics.
However, the quote itself - making mounts a rare drop - I think is a decent idea. I think it is logical to make it so "if you really, really, really want this, you can farm it". I think it's a decent compromise between totally locking out the ZA bear and catering to Nightfall zergers. The question is, what exactly what the drop rate will be.
I don't particularly mind the ZA bear being unobtainable, I don't think it's unfair - which doesn't change the fact that I as an obsessive collector have and will continue to do whatever I think has half a chance in hell of getting my paladin one. I do think the inconsistency shown with the Black Proto and Slow Brewfest Ram makes no sense.
Considering it would make many people happy at no cost to put the handstamp back on the vendor, I can't fathom why they don't do it. Taken in hand with things like the recent memory leak bug and Northrend Children's Week fiasco - infuriating bugs and oversights that would take five minutes to solve through adjusting one line of code - I can only conclude the devs are in their own world, high on hubris, only concerned with implementing their own self-aggrandizing fantasies.
P.S. The other day, I decided I wanted to get [item]Formula: Enchant Gloves - Healing Power[/item] for more income. Actually it was something I'd been meaning to do for a while, but the impetus for finally overcoming my reluctance was a druid in the guild who wasn't an enchanter and wanted rep. So I started thinking about pugs, when to schedule them, what loot policy, how many to take, the difficulty of leading effectively from Zeida, etc...
So, I went in with the druid. It dropped off Skeram on the first pull.
Cha-ching!
P.P.S. Inb4 TLDR
Aestu of Bleeding Hollow... Nihilism is a copout.
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