Are Item Upgrades Good for the Game?

Short answer: no.

But let me take some time to actually outline why I am against the Voidbinders.

Voidbinders were first added to the Transmog/Void Storage/Reforging Etheral shops in 5.1, and then they were taken away in 5.2, and then reintroduced with 5.3, now charging far less for their services. If you want to upgrade an epic, it will cost you 250 VP for 4 iLevels, capping at two upgrades, or 500 VP.

Now, the cost-reduction was a good move, if one accepts upgrades as a good thing for the game. In 5.1, the steep cost of upgrading your gear made you essentially gamble against getting any new drops. Admittedly, Valor Gear itself has a bit of this element, but upgrades were competing (more directly, in fact) with them as well.

Getting stronger over time is arguably the most important defining trait of an RPG, and this certainly allows for it. However, I think the problem that voidbinders cause brings us back to the usual "you're never done" problem.

WoW is built in such a way that only the very most elite, top guilds, will ever reach that plateau where you have the best possible gear, so since day one, it's true that everyone had room for improvement.

Yet there were times in the past where one could reasonably feel like they had finished with the current patch - caught fully up, they would not feel any obligation to play just to prepare for new challenges. For example, in late Wrath (summer of 2012,) I got to a point on Jarsus where I had all the (then Emblem of Frost) gear that I needed, and I had filled out every slot that wasn't covered by "badge gear" with 251 epics out of Icecrown Citadel.

Even in other eras, there have been many times when I've gotten to a point where I've got all the Valor gear I need, and thus I can take it easy on the grind, or start spending those points on my retribution off-set.

Allowing someone to feel that they have completed the point-grind (even if they still need a few drops) opens things up to them. They can start gearing for another spec, or they can take some time to work on an alt, or they can... GASP! take a break from the game for a while.

Obviously, the last option there is available to matter what state your toon is in, but for those of us who do want to keep our toons in decent shape and not have to play catch-up in the future, Voidbinder Upgrades are just another thing that seems to be expected.

One of the justifications of Voidbinders was that they sort of allow players to nerf the raids themselves over time. Instead of a debuff to slap on the bosses that lowers their damage and health, players would just naturally get more powerful. Of course, the problem here is that new players would not benefit from such a "nerf," as they'd still be in the state that the more advanced raiders were when the raid was released, which kind of defeats the point of those nerfs in the first place.

And lo and behold, it looks like they're going to be doing a nerf debuff in Throne of Thunder anyway.

Getting more power over time is, of course, part of the appeal of the game. But item upgrades seem too simple, too straightforward to really feel like anything other than an impetus to grind more. The cynic in me suspects that it was cooked up by people who just want to keep your subscription, but while I think that the topic of ethical game design is a real and important one, I'm going to try to remain "intentions agnostic" in regards to Blizzard and comment purely on the gameplay consequences themselves and operate under the premise that Blizzard is simply trying to make World of Warcraft the best game it can be.

More power's always fun, but if Voidbinders are merely elevating the entire plane, then they're pointless and should go.

(Ooh, ooh! Next time I'm going to talk about Reforging! We could do a whole series on Ethereal Services...)