The developers have done a great job over the past years adding new features, or enhancing previous features.

The new Raid Dungeon Finder allows a player to enter Fall of Deathwing and Siege of Wyrmrest Temple once and again. When a boss drops loot, a new window UI displays you won’t be able to roll on any of the items because the loot table is locked to you for killing this boss earlier.

This feature is handy in many ways. For example, the very first time I queued to Fall of Deathwing, I landed on a raid party that was on the final part of the dungeon: Madness of Deathwing. Deathwing died, and his loot was now locked to me.

The good part is that I could queue again for Fall of Deathwing as soon as that run was over. I was not penalized. I could queue again. This time it was a fresh run with all four boss encounters available. I was able to roll on the first three bosses.

This redefined mechanic decentralizes raid dungeon penalty. You are not locked to the entire dungeon for killing just one boss. Each boss has it’s own loot table lock. That’s fine.

The other aspect where this new feature comes handy is when you don’t care about looting the bosses in a dungeon. You are there to help your friend or family member run through so that he/she has a chance at looting. This helps the social aspect of the game, and gives you freedom to spend your time the way you wish to.

In the spirit of enhancing past features, one that needs some time on the “jamming ideas” table is the “You have Entered Too Many Instances Recently” lockout message.

This feature was introduced several years ago when farmers were constantly entering dungeon IDs to loot stuff, and if I’m not mistaken there was an exploit attached to zoning in and out causing server crashes.

This feature was a band-aid solution that hasn’t changed much since then. The problem is that back then the max level was 60 and that end-content loot was getting exploited by farmers to make some serious gold profit. Now at level 85, I’d be surprised if farmers can sell anything from there that’s worth their time, and this lockout feature is clashing head on with Transmogrification.

The band-aid solution served its purpose. Nowadays, to benefit Transmogrification the band-aid needs the bonafide fix that allows players to enter more than the five dungeon limit, while keeping tabs on potential exploit and farmers. Programming-wise, that might take some time to accomplish, but first the developers have to bring the topic to the table, throw ideas into the air, set rules, and find solutions for possible exploits.

Since patch 4.3 came out, I haven’t touched transmogrification. I have been busy doing at lvl 85 the Argent Tournament dailies. Say whoa? Yea, ok. I have all the Horde pets and most mounts from the Argent Tournament. I have been working on this for about a couple of years on and off. Tomorrow I will get the 150 marks mount, and after that need only one more mount to run out of reason to return to the Argent Tournament dailies.

Thus far, I have 138/150 pets — currently working to get the Little Pet Shop achievement. I also have 112 Mounts and working on the Darkmoon Faire pets at the moment.

Tonight I decided to do something that, before, didn’t really attracted me much: Transmogrification. I like challenges. Especially long term challenges. You can tell by now with those two collections.

I checked out the Tier 1-12 Paladin armor sets, and set my eye on the alternate Judgement Armor Set. Most of it drops in Outland dungeons: Steamvault, Underbog, Slavepens, Shadow Labyrinth and other dungeons.

About the fourth attempt on Steamvault, the Mask of Penance dropped. A grin was drawn on my mouth as satisfaction stroke my mind. First piece. Check.

I didn’t have to kill any mob on my way through Steamvault toward Mekgineer Steamrigger. He dies fairly easy at level 85 in less than 20 seconds, and barely get a scratch on my character. It took me more time to swim back and forth through the water system to reach him than killing him.

I entered the Underbog to kill the first boss: Hungarfen. He drops the Judgement Leggings equivalent: Cassock of the Loyal. Killed him once. Zoned out. Reset all the dungeons, and zoned in. The loading screen went through, and suddenly I found myself still at the portal with a message onscreen: “You have entered too many instances recently”.

I have the opportunity to spend my time to do some transmogrification gear solo without a raid, but I found myself gated, waiting an hour before I can enter more dungeons.

I was lucky to have the helm drop in about four attempts. Imagine when the drop rate is so high you have to run 10-25 times before seeing your item drop? It would take over a week.

I have been playing since beta 2004, and it took me a bit to pinpoint where in time this feature was introduced, and why. That’s when I remembered the server crashes, and the farmers and exploits were to blame.

Are there ways to replace the band-aid solution with something more complex and more flexible for those who wish to benefit from Transmogrification? Maybe.

At level 85, it takes a few minutes to walk in, kill a boss, go back to the zone out and reset the dungeon to attempt it again. What if instead of resetting the instance, the boss itself is reset without having to zone out? Hmm.

What if all low-level bosses in the game had a solo option where a level 85 player enters a level 40 dungeon, and instead of whacking a boss in four strikes, he scales up and does level 85 damage, and has adequate armor to last about three minutes, and resetting him there without the need to zone out to get a new dungeon ID. That solves part of the problem. That reminded me a bit of Challenge Modes (mentioned at the BlizzCon 2011 World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria Panel).

I’d recommend removing the “You have entered too many instances recently” temporarily. Monitor exploits and behavior. Let people do their transmogrification. Band-aid as new exploits arise, while working backstage on permanent and more flexible solutions.

It’s time to go back to the drawing board, work on all the past band-aid solutions and build something that’s more flexible taking in mind transmogrification, and other new systems Blizzard will introduce in Mists of Pandaria and future expansions.

Players need better options on how they wish to spend their time either solo or socially without feeling penalized or restricted in some particular cases such as this one. Especially with new MMOs out there with more advanced systems. Personally, I’ll rather stay with World of Warcraft and Diablo III when that comes out.