Quote Originally Posted by Aeyis View Post
Or perhaps you missed the part where being i170 is by no means impossible, just that anyone who took their time to enjoy leveling probably isnt ilvl170 right now.
People who take their time will take their time to decide to go to the new raid as well.
It got held off so people wouldn't feel like rushing through leveling and gearing.
There's always going to be a difference of opinion over the amount of time is needed.

If someone really wanted to be ready for the raid launch, they had plenty of time to see sights and sounds, get to 60 and get full 170.
If they want to be on the edge of raiding, that is. But if they did a lot more things like crafting and other stuff then being ready for raid launch wasn't a real priority.

I'm really surprised anyone who's really waiting for this launch wouldn't think they should at least get full 170.
It's a Coil type of raid.

The hold off was for hardcore players to not skip the story or rush through leveling. You have to compare it to Coil which was there on release.
But make no mistake, Alex's current release is still for more hardcore players.
They gave just enough time for those players to enjoy the experience, while still prioritizing being raid ready.
And there's still wiggle room since really hardcore is being over 180 ilvl.

So I don't see a huge contradiction here.
They did this so the World First and Server First guilds wouldn't feel compelled to power level with the competition right out the gate.
That's who they were talking to when they said we'd have time.

A casual player, well they might not even touch Alex until a catch up raid like Crystal Tower is released in 3.1.
That's how it was for Coil. Even with the savage vs normal difficulties, Alexander (normal) was still presented as a hardcore raid compared to something like CT.
So I don't know why people would think a 2 week hold off meant you would be able to experience all of HW before Alexander came out, or a guaranteed entry if you had limited time.
All it meant was that the race didn't start on launch.

You shouldn't care about that race if you have limited time, or you have other priorities (which is completely reasonable).
In that case, you can get to the raid on your own time. And the 2-week gating already did its job.