Warfronts are the Ultimate Catch-Up Mechanic - Provided Your Faction is Attacking

My Rogue hit 120 yesterday and he's already at 325 item level, a perfectly respectable starting point for mythic dungeons and what I would assume is the minimum for LFR (opening tomorrow!)

And I have Warfronts to thank! Between the one-shot quest (presumably coming back each cycle) to get a 370 piece, you get a guaranteed 340 drop every time you complete it. This can include weapon drops, like the 345 warforged dagger I got on my latest run.

The Warfronts take time - using my Lightning Shield on my shaman (which persists through death) as a kind of timer, I found that his last warfront took about 35 minutes - though that's not so bad compared to, say, a mythic dungeon where you aren't guaranteed any drop.

Players are starting to get a feel for the strategy (I imagine a quicker learning curve for the Alliance thanks to those of us who play both sides,) and my most recent run worked like a well-oiled conquest machine.

Naturally, as purely random gear, you might wind up with duplicates (my Shaman on his most recent one got the same belt, though with a gem slot,) and that's obviously going to happen more frequently the more pieces of gear you get.

The timing of this release just before Mythic Uldir comes out does raise some eyebrows, giving Horde guilds a serious leg up on the Alliance in the race for world first, though I'll grant that the past few weeks of mythic dungeons probably allowed most hardcore raiders to get a baseline item level near 340 - the only real issue I see is the guaranteed 370 piece versus a chance at such a thing off Doom's Howl (the Horde azerite tank that Alliance players get to fight when they have control of the zone. The Alliance one that Horde players fight is called Lion's Roar, but they are, I believe, mechanically identical.)

I'm very curious to see how things change as we get different commanders. Currently, the Horde is led by Eitrigg while the Alliance has Danath Trollbane (makes sense - Stromgarde is Trollbane's seat, and this starts us off with a classic Orcs versus Humans feel.) I'm hoping that the different commanders bring significant changes to the units available, rather than being purely cosmetic.

They've talked about having other Warfronts over the course of the expansion. I think that as a kind of PvE battleground, the system has legs, and at least for now the rewards are appealing. I would want to see subsequent Warfronts have different mechanics - capturing important locations and ultimately pushing to the enemy fort is fine, but I'd want to see different things to spend resources on.

Once we're in the thick of the current content, I think the cycle thing won't be as much of an issue, though it'll be tough for those who can't play all that much to find that when they have some free time, their faction is playing the waiting game.

Given the fact that the warfront is an instance, I don't see why we might not eventually have one that is open to both sides - though I get that by putting it on this cycle, it makes it a bit more special.

One thing I'd be concerned about is if, a month or two from now, when enthusiasm for it dies down a bit, the cycle might slow to a crawl as people are less invested in the turn-ins. I hope they'll reduce the amount of materiel (not a typo - it's like material but for military purposes) required to unlock the warfront.