Photoshop Skills & Attunement

To my left you can see this wonderful example of this new and updated attunement listing for BC. In short, bye bye SSC & The Eye Attunements. I really don't have much else to say on this topic except for the fact that I'm EXTREMELY excited for the casual playerbase as it seems raiding and those big end-game lore guys like Kael'thas, Vashj, Illidan, etc. are MUCH more accessible for them even if they have a 'remotely' casual game. I also rejoice for Retribution Paladins and other folks who don't have to jump through the heroic hoops or respec in order to get in a heroic to complete a Trial quest. I'm glad Blizzard is making this game 'easier', my suspicion is that they want everyone to be close to completing all the content or at least half of the content before they launch their next expansion.

Does this change have any effect upon you as a player or your guild? I know personally that our guild may be getting back some people who dropped out of the game simply because they viewed the attunement process as some sort of sick hoop-jumping created by Blizzard in order to squeeze more money out of you and make the gamer 'longer'. Hopefully they weren't just using that as a canned excuse not to play and now they'll actually be returning!

Karazhan Stuff

So, my guild just crushed Illhoof, Nightbane, and the Prince, hoorah! We were totally on a roll, but then Netherspite put us in our place... hopefully they fix the bug with his breath (he does 2000 more damage than he is supposed to apparently) so he will be a bit easier. So, what did I get from this week's Karazhan run?

::rummages in pockets::

Umm... err... uhh...

THIS HANDY DANDY Lightning Capacitator!

The Mage & Warlock both didn't want it, and so it was me and a Shaman rolling on it, both of us healers, he rolled an 83, and I pulled out a 93. Our leader who was on his Paladin (He used to be a Mage) was crying on the inside, but handed it over to me reluctantly. I'll probably be one of the few Paladins out there with the opportunity to try out this nifty gadget (The circumstances of getting your hands on one over a spell crit heavy class are slim obviously), and I'll report my findings. Maybe this will help my grinding go semi-quicker with judgments, holy shocks, exorcisms, and Holy Wraths, who knows.

Scroll of Maelstrom

To my left (Hi-Jacked from WoWInsider) is a new item. People may hail it as the 'casual' friendly scroll. That's what I thought at first. But, let me break it down into a few possible scenarios:

Farm for Weeks
Okay, so... you've got Vashj on farm status. Good for you! Now, for whatever reason, you want to outfit all the casual folks in your guild (yes, there are 'casual' guilds who can do raid content). So, it takes 1 week per scroll, that's 24 weeks which is 4 weeks less than the sequel to 28 Days Later, which is exactly 6 months. So, it will take HALF A YEAR to attune a group of casuals to front their own assault upon Serpentshrine. This method is possible, but in no way is it some sort of godsend to casuals.

Selfish Bastards/N00bs in Serpentshrine
If there is some reason you guys aren't consistently downing Nightbane or Gruul or able to do a Heroic Slave Pens. Then there is DEFINITELY something wrong with how your guild operates. If it's simply unwilling to help, or just pushing forward with a small group of 25 or so folks... that would be the only reason I would see for them being unable to wtfpwn old content that's on farm status. If they're downing Vashj, there is NO reason why they shouldn't be able to help you.

Rogues? Hunters? Sorry, wait in the back of the line.
While we're assuming that there is 1 scroll per day, and that Serpentshrine can only be run once a week, and it's using the 'Farm for Weeks' scenario. You're going to have a LOT of DPS classes sitting in the back seat for classes like Tanks & Healers who are always vastly more 'key' and 'rare' compared to the over abundant DPS classes. So, you'll be at the tail end of the list, perhaps 2 or 3 months after they have Vashj on farm status.

Overview
Okay, this is DEFINITELY not a godsend for Casuals unless she drops multiple scrolls at once, she may not even have a 100% drop chance for the scroll to begin with. I think it's a nice step in the right direction, but I see it more as a 'Get your alt attuned' thing, or even a 'Let's help that Holy Priest get into our raids since he's unavailable on the days we run Karazahn.' sort of deal.