Season 5 introduced us to Bloodforged Gear: PvP-focused equipment that dropped in High Risk and from players and out in the world. This new gear type was designed to solve several significant–and sometimes hidden–issues that arose as a result of Raid gear being freely tradeable:
- Players would make a dozen alts and run a new raid a dozen times on the first day of release, and funnel the gear to their main, getting BiS way too fast and ruining the experience for themselves and others.
- Raiding loses competitive integrity when you can just buy the gear from the Auction House
- It was impossible to balance how fluid gear needs to be in High-Risk while also keeping raids as relevant content at all. Either it was too hard to gear for High-Risk, or there was no reason to do raids because gear was so available.
Originally in High-Risk, weapons and armor weren’t soulbound…
