So there has been a couple of edits to the patch notes for 6.2.3. I wrote about my initial thoughts on 6.2.3 in a post last week (which you can check out here if you are so inclined!) For the most part – yay!

Today’s updates I found to be interesting. Here’s what the edits are (which you can read here):

The interesting part that seems to have a few people up in arms is that, of all of the ways we are able to earn valor, Normal/Heroic/Mythic raiding is not one of the options.

I find this interesting because it felt to me that one of the reasons to bring the valor upgrades back was to help people who are the “friends and family” raiders get a bit of a leg up to get through heroics so that they can get the Grove Warden (otherwise known as the moose mount). Every little bit helps, and so the valor upgrades were going to be a great way to give that extra little push to get through some of the tougher bosses. And judging by other podcasts/blogs/general twitterings, many others thought the same.

But here’s the thing. Friends and family raiders generally fall in to that category because they just don’t have the time to raid for long periods of time. They may only have a couple of hours a week to play the game total, and many of them have to make a choice between doing LFR or doing a normal run with friends. So I find it interesting that something that’s supposed to help this group of people requires them to spend even more time doing something else in order to get through the raiding at all. Which seems awfully backwards to me. I can understand the frustration for this type of player, and I feel for them, because I think this feel like another slap in the face for them.

The other information that came out was that there isn’t going to be a hard cap on how much valor can be earned each week, although there will be a soft cap in that there’s a limit to the sources from which valor can be earned. I’m not bothered by this in the least. It seems my views are in a minority here, but for me, I feel absolutely no sense of obligation to go cap valor each week. And I’ll be honest, I really don’t understand why people thing they do have to cap. Why? I’m genuinely asking why you feel obligated! If you can shed some light on this, please let me know in the comments! To me, saying “it’s there so I have to it” really doesn’t explain it well enough, because there are plenty of things that are “there” in the game that people don’t feel an obligation to do. It’s a falsehood and I don’t understand where it comes from.

This blue post raised my eyebrows though:

The focus of this patch is dungeons…. ok then, fine.

But that last comment:

Part of the point is to provide a reason to revisit content that you may not have had much reason to do in a while, rather than just providing an extra reward for continuing your existing routine.

Ummm, no. The reason I don’t do dungeons is because I don’t particularly like them. Not because I didn’t think they were rewarding enough. And to say the point isn’t to provide extra reward for continuing your existing routine? Well, some people’s existing routine is going to be rewarded – all of those people who already run dungeons will be further rewarded (and honestly, yay to them! I’m genuinely glad for you). So that seems like a strange comment to make. But again maybe I’m in the minority again here and others do find dungeons unrewarding. *shrug*

What I don’t like about this is that it feels like Blizzard are ignoring how time poor some players are, and by putting the valor behind dungeons means that some people are going to miss out on getting any of those upgrades at all.

Anyways, that’s what’s happening with valor in 6.2.3. How does this impact you and your play style? For me, it’s not going to impact me. I feel no obligation to get valor at all, and if I want it, I’ll go do what I feel like doing at the time to get it, because I am able to spend a lot of time in game and have that luxury. But how about you?