You know, everyone cites the nerfing of Kara.  It's legendary.  What no one notices is that what they 'nerfed' were ERRORS.

Lets look at the hideous 'nerfs' 

Opera

- BUFFED Big Bad Wolf, increasing damage, health, difficulty.

- NERFED Romeo.  Pre-nerf, Romeo was the hardest hitting boss in the instance (harder than prince or nightbane) which made it nearly impossible to do without grinding tank loots (as he could quickly crush non-epicced tanks)

NET: Made 3 encounters have equal difficulty instead of an easy encounter, a moderate encounter, and a nearly impossible cock-block.  

Shade of Aran

- NERFED Flame Wreath.  Flame Wreath used to trigger off a number of abilities and hunter pets, making it virtually impossible to do the fight consistently (it would randomly detonate even in no pet, no movement environments)

NET:  Made the boss possible to learn, instead of a random-ass murder spree that rewarded you for reading forums to learn the random abilities that would trigger it (totally unrelated to movement), kicking your hunters and warlocks from the raid, and made the fight fair, instead of a punishment to casual raiders.

Nightbane

NERFED: Skeletons, raid damage.

NET: A 15 minute hell encounter that was nearly impossible for raids that had priest/druid healers as only shammies and holy pallies (mainly pallies) could take the skeleton hits when it spawned on them.  That created an encounter that could only reliably be beaten by guilds with holy pallies, thanks to spell knockback mechanics.   Preferably two of them.  

So the legendary kara 'nerf' was a bugfix.  

Originally posted by Fishermage

5% unemployment is, as all economists know, statistically zero unemployment. It can't get any better than that. Given that, we see the economy grew at a very nice rate, expecially considering 9/11 and the Clinton recession. All with statistically zero inflation.

I don't need to show an historical graph because I expect you to know how the economy has done, after all you chose to hijack the thread and start an argument over an off topic issue.

As I said, I could find dozens of pages that continue to show this, but if YOU choose to live by your faith and not think critically, and just want to get into forum fights, then no, your religion won't let you change your mind. You just want to live by hate of all things republican so you look for what to hate. I on the other hand like neither republicans not Democrats, but always give credit where credit is due.

Either way, please stop hijacking the thread and if you wish to argue economics start another thread. You are jumping out of my context just because you enjoy starting fights until at a certain point you start flaming. let's stop now.

EDIT: actually, you started out flaming, and will continue to do so. You simmply do not know how decent people carry on a conversation, which is the main thing the evidence shows.

Statistically zero?  No.  The exact natural rate of employment is a rather hotly debated subject, even today.  Declaring it '5%, no argument' is beyond handwaving.  Yet, this appears to be not an attempt to intelligently defend your point.  You show me dozens of pages of nonsense, and wish for quantity to subsume quality.

I can hand you a thousand pages detailing how George Bush masterminded 9/11.  They'd be 1000 pages of pure bullshit.  You can hand me 1000 pages showing how the Bush Tax cuts were the best thing since sliced bread.

I'm pretty sure you're handing me documents of similar quality. 

Decent people do not attempt to overwhelm eachother with masses of links of dubious quality.  Decent people do not pretend a subject as complicated as the natural rate of employment is "baseline 5%, story over" and hope it flies because they want it to fly.  Decent people do not pretend that their opinion is fact because they say it is fact, and avoid any treatment of the subject.

If you feel you are being treated indecently, I suggest you examine why people do not treat you decently.  I submit it is a reflection for the lack of respect, discussion, or indeed even acknowledgment you show to those who do not share your narrow ideology.

Originally posted by Fishermage

 

Sure they did. I didn't provide evidence because I was sharing MY beliefs and views to another poster, not making a case or trying to prove anything. That being said it is very easy to prove the case and dozens of studies have been done in my favor.

You forget they brought us out if the Clinton recession, and led us into economic growth. They also did lead to GDP growth until the housing bubble burst, which was the fault of administrations and congresses prior to Bush groing back to Carter.

But, if you insist, here's one that took about 30 seconds to find:

taxesandgrowth.ncpa.org/news/are-the-bush-tax-cuts-working

 

__________________________________________________________________________________

How Has the Economy Changed Since the Tax Cuts?

*cut wall of lies*

_________________________________________________________________________________

 

The biggest problem is that they were not made permanent, and they were offset by reckless government spending.

There's more evidence. pages and pages of it.

Sigh, wall of text.  This is all patent nonsense.   Your beliefs are based on bad facts - tax cuts are not the be all and end all of economic stimulus, nor do they create economic boons when the money is being siphoned away from vital infrastructure.   You can pile tons of bullshit on a plate, but it still remains bullshit. 

Think critically. 

Let me show you what happens when you critically examine this crud, instead of lapping it up like a dog. 

GDP Growth

After the recession in 2001 and the first round of tax cuts, economic growth speeded up and is expected to pickup even faster in 2004:3

But it's 2008!  Why would they quote 2003 data?  Oh that's right.  To decieve you.

Fact:  Here's the GDP of the US:

The growth SLOWED DOWN!  It's certainly not the boom that we should be seeing.  At best we got a temporary spice, which we ALWAYS GET when we move out of a recession (just look at the graph).   2001 was anemic as hell, 2002 no better, some tax cut growth.  If they were actually any good... why didn't they work?  

Onto jobs:

* The unemployment rate remained steady at 5.6 percent in May 2004, well below its peak of 6.3 percent a year ago.

But once again, no historical graph!  No context.  Two numbers.  Is 5.6% good?  Is 6.3% bad?  Peak?  The peak was during the great depression, so peak relative to what?  What are we talking about?

Oh that's right, it sounds good, like the add on the side of a pop-tart box.  Lots of nutrition.  Many essential vitamins.

www.miseryindex.us/urbymonth.asp

Haha!  The Bush tax cuts INCREASED UNEMPLOYMENT!  That's right.  Passed in 2001, the bush tax cuts were perfectly in line with increasing unemployment.  In may of 2001, the unemployment was 4.3.  On June 7th, the tax relief act was passed.  Unemployment has never returned to that level.

Did they actually increase unemployment?   I don't have enough evidence to say.  Too many other factors at work.  But this website picks an arbitrary point (years from June 7th, 2001 passing date) as a high point, then designates an arbitrary low point some time later, and calls it a day.  
 

There's more evidence here that they tanked the economy than helped it.

I could go on, but the point is made.  Quantity is not quality.  Your site lies to me, and expects me to believe. 

I don't know why you would offer me this.  I assume you consider yourself a critical thinker, this website is the antithesis of critical thinking.

Originally posted by Fishermage

To clarify, and to show you more respect than  you seem to show anyone here:

 

Bush's tax cuts, which I supported, were great for the economy. I did not however like his runaway spending. Personally I would have cut taxes much more, and cut spending. I would eliminate most federal agencies, almost all socialist welfare state programs, and everywhere the federal government is overstepping what I feel is its only constitutional mandate -- to protect the rights of the people.

This is why I said what I did. No contradiction at all.

Oh, and reagan was too liberal for my tastes as well  -- again in terms of economics-- which is partly why I didn't support him either.

Both however were far to conservative for my tastes on social issues, but that's something else entirely -- but those did factor into my lack of support for them or republicans in general.

I hope this time I was clear enough.

 

Statements require evidence.  Job growth did not increase.  GDP?  Not exactly soaring.  The dollar?  Eh...

How was it great for the economy?  At best, it was not an unmitigated disaster, merely a pretty bad disaster. 

You have jumped straight from the hypothesis (Tax cuts are good for the economy) past the gather evidence phase, and into the apply theory phase (Tax cut!  Economy must have improved).  

But it doesn't really seem to have.

So a long thread mysteriously dissapears wtih absolutely no moderator announcement... under new forum software... with several moderator actions using the new software...

Definitely a conspiracy.   TINFOIL GO!

Originally posted by Finwe

Homosexuality is confusion. There are many situations where people cannot separate emotional attachment with sex. Even things as early in our growth as Oedipus' complex. I once dated a girl who at first thought she had a lesbian attraction to one of her best friends because of the emotional and mental connection they had made. It ended up not being so, more confusion than anything.

There is nothing in the natural world that would point to homosexuality being anything but an abnormal process.

Epic fail was pretty epic. 

So an unamed person who may or may not have some position in the Obama administration apparently has these (totally unsourced and unreferenced) opinions.

Yeah, this isn't a baseless smear.  I believe you.  

Fear-mongering: 6/10 (needs more terrorists)

Rational Debate -1/10

Originally posted by Dekron

Originally posted by Sharajat

Originally posted by Dekron

This is what Obama has done so far.

Obama Day One

Suspend pending Bush policies. This, of course is understandable.

Set a 16 month timetable for leaving Iraq. This is bad. Not bad in the sense he wants the war over, but bad as in saying "Hey, we are leaving in 16 months." Suddenly, violence seems to stop, but, when the pullout is over, Al Qaeda takes over once again.

Suspend all trials at Gitmo - even for admitted conspirators in 9/11.

Request the push through of the second $350 billion without accountability clauses. So much for this transparent government he has claimed to bring in his "change".

 

Al Qaeda took over once before?  Have you confused Iraq and Afghanistan?

No. They took over many parts in Iraq after Baghdad was taken.

You of course have citations for this, I assume.  

The Congressional Report does not seem to think this is the case.

http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/crsiraq0907.pdf

In fact AQI is pretty thoroughly hated by the locals, who have worked with the US Government to eliminate them.  There is very little chance that they would gain any ground absent United States involvement, since everyone else would still hate them.

Originally posted by Dekron

This is what Obama has done so far.

Obama Day One

Suspend pending Bush policies. This, of course is understandable.

Set a 16 month timetable for leaving Iraq. This is bad. Not bad in the sense he wants the war over, but bad as in saying "Hey, we are leaving in 16 months." Suddenly, violence seems to stop, but, when the pullout is over, Al Qaeda takes over once again.

Suspend all trials at Gitmo - even for admitted conspirators in 9/11.

Request the push through of the second $350 billion without accountability clauses. So much for this transparent government he has claimed to bring in his "change".

 

Al Qaeda took over once before?  Have you confused Iraq and Afghanistan?

Originally posted by Barrikor 

---

 

First off, in the first line I said that I "might be wrong". What I said in the first part is only what I heard from other people who happened to have problems with CLF's. Also note that the method that EPA proposes is completely impossible if the room doesn't have a window.

According to your link the EPA got it's information from Maine's Department of Environmental Protection and they link to it as a reference. Here's part of their report.

No might about it.  Like everything in your post, it was wrong.

 

---

 

Continue ventilating the room for several hours.

...
When a break happens on carpeting, homeowners may consider removing throw rugs or the area of carpet where the breakage occurred as a precaution, particularly if the rug is in an
area frequented by infants, small children or pregnant women.

• Finally, if the carpet is not removed, open the window to the room during the next several times you vacuum the carpet to provide good ventilation.

The next time you replace a lamp, consider putting a drop cloth on the floor so that any accidental breakage can be easily cleaned up. If consumers remain concerned regarding safety, they may consider not utilizing fluorescent lamps in situations where they could easily be broken.

Consumers may also consider avoiding CFL usage in bedrooms or carpeted areas frequented by infants, small children, or pregnant women.

Finally, consider not storing too many used/spent lamps before recycling as that may increase your chances of breakage. Don’t forget to properly recycle your used fluorescent bulbs so they don’t break and put mercury into our environment.

---

 

So I guess mercury in you house and in the environment isn't a problem...
</sarcasm>

In minute quantities?  Yes.  It's in the water you drink, the air you breath, the food you eat.  In very, very trace quantities.   Like the people panicking over cell phone radiation.  

 

---

On the second PS, the 60 Hz issue hasn't been an issue for more than a decade. They added ballast that entirely solves the problem, flickering far faster than any human can perceive.

---

 

<sarcasm>
Apparently all the people who posted here saying they had problems with florescent light must not have seen any florescent light for ten years... we'd better tell that it's safe to look at now...

Yeah, we better.  I'd suggest you remove the sarcasm tags and start using the <think> tags, because thinking is obviously way outside your field of expertise.  As is sarcasm, in point of fact.  

Basic fact - CFLs don't noticeably flicker anymore.  It cannot be seen.  Sorry, it's simply true.  People claim that they don't like the light, the same way they claim cell phone towers are giving them migranes.  They don't. 

You wanted me to do some research? Here it is:

Other problems with CFLs:

Did you know some museums don't like florescent lighting? Apparently it emits too much UV and causes damage to artwork...

This just in - we don't live in museums.

The max brightness of CFL's changes with the temperature, win winter your lights might be a bit dimmer...

This just in - We have central air. 

To be fair:

There are dimmable CFL's, and you can buy them, they don't work the way the manufacturers want the to work yet, so they advertised much. (Can only dim to 10-20% of max brightness before turning off)

Not true. 

You can make any any lightbulb last forever, if you keep it on low wattage and never turn it off and on after putting it in:

Longest-Lasting-Lightbulb: 107 years, still burning.

Efficiency blows.  This is 4-5  times the efficiency of a standard incandescent. 

 

Originally posted by Rayx0r

I love how we're so eco-friendly when it comes to saving a few bucks on electricity.

lets forget about what the manufacturing of these products does to our environment, much less the disposal, or the cost of replacing existing lite sources and disposing the old.  How many people do you really think dispose their flourescents properly?  Right, they get thrown in the trash to leech into the soil.

same goes with battery powered vehicles.  The amount of toxic waste produced by plants manufacturing these batteries is mind boggling.  But if it saves you 5 mpg, I guess its worth it

Actually the manufacture, etc. of those bulbs does not, as I showed, do more damage to the environment than the amount caused by the incandescents, which use 4 to 5 times more electricity.

The difference between a CFL and an incandescent is the difference between the worst SUV on the market and a Prius.  And the additional cost?  Doesn't do NEAR the damage generating all that electricity does.

As I quoted, light bulbs use 20% of the household's electricity.  CFLs could cut that down to 5% or less.  

The concept that this is somehow made up by some mythical pollution is absurd.  No scientific study has concluded this, no research has suggested this, no one except gullable people willing to believe anything would think this. 

If you actually think this is true, you have to believe that homeopathics cure all diseases including cancer, crystals really make your water pure, and that there are alligators in the New York sewers, because they're all as plausable as this nonsense that you're repeating. 

Suddenly the same people who are complaining that we're running on a nanny culture, we're excessively paranoid, and that we're hysterical about the dangers of DDT and contaminated fish are suddenly crying wolf about levels of mercury that are provably, demonstrably safe.  There will be invisible mercury particles in your carpet.  How much?  One atom?  Maybe a thousand? Oh dears, oh noes.

No one thinks this is a dangerous level.  There's mercury in the air your breathing right now.  This very second, you are inhaling mercury.  Breath in.  Can you taste it?  It's there, I assure you.  There's too much coal burned in this country for it not to be (and coal has a lot of mercury, far, far more than CFLs). 

When the Bush administration refused to cut mercury levels and loosened restrictions, you poo poohed.  Oh, it's not dangerous. 
 

Suddenly, now that we're talking about residue that will give you levels of exposure tens or hundreds of times lower than those, and we're all going to die of mercury poisoning. 

I'm just asking for a little consistency here, folks.  If the Bush administration's lack of restrictions on mercury in the air are fine, don't complain about exposure to a small FRACTION of that.   Residue from years later?  Don't make me laugh.  You can probably find a few atoms of plutonium in there too, doesn't mean you'll die of radiation poisoning. 

It's perfectly, utterly, 100% safe.   And that, really, is that. 

Originally posted by Draenor

for someone advocating research, you sure didn't post any about the biggest point of your post, which is the energy savings created opposed to the cost of manufacturing flourescent bulbs.

Oh and ps. on the electric car thing...lol, electric cars are a joke, everyone knows that by now.

http://energystar.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/energystar.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=5284&p_created=1216151825

Once again, easy peasy.  I wish you didn't post and support absurd claims, then ask me to do the research to refute them.  Wasn't even the biggest point of my post.

The point of my post is someone posted a bunch of unsubstantiated nonsense and you wanted it to be true, so you insisted someone else do the legwork to prove that the false claims were, in fact, false.  Bad thinking.

I note you didn't ask him to support his garbage claims.  Burden of proof much? 

And as for the electric car thing, I didn't say anything about electric cars, but since this seems to be your favorite tactic:

The sum total of your argument is "Lol, electric cars are a joke, everyone knows this?"

Nice argument. 

Additionally, besides the shards and raid, when you have wintergrasp, you have access to a special mob that drops eternal shards at a high rate.  This makes it very attractive to people who are farming PvE gear.  However, since it's a PvP zone and you're PvP flagged, farming them is risky and exciting (I've been dominated doing that by a rogue a few times, but it is VERY good drop rates).

Originally posted by Dekron

Originally posted by Sharajat

Originally posted by Barrikor

 

---

Originally posted by daeandor
As to the recommend procedure for cleanup, how are you supposed to seal off a room that is central to the house?  I mean, think of new houses now days, kitchen and breakfast area open to a family room which is open to a central hallway and most likely either a formal dining or living room.  No doors except those into bathrooms, pantries, laundryrooms, and bedrooms.  What if the chandelier breaks?  All those bulbs breaking in a central open area to the house.  What if you have small children?  And what if this happens when the central air is on?
 

---

 

From what I heard, (so it might be wrong), apparently if the room is sealed off and doesn't have windows, you close the door and just don't go in it for 2 days (it's not so great if it's your only bathroom though).

If the room is an opened area in your house, and cannot be sealed off, open every window in the house and come back in 24 hours.

 

---

Originally posted by Dekron
Screw the environment. I'm stocking up on incandescent bulbs.

---

Actually, you're helping the environment, incandescent are way, way better for the environment than Fluorescents. Fluorescents use a little less electricity of course, but that is far outweighed by the manufacturing and disposal of hazardous that is now being carried out on a massive scale to create lightbulbs that save a tiny amount of electricity...

 

Is electricity bad for the environment?
If you favor hazardous-waste lightbulbs then "Yes"
If you favor electric cars slowly rolling down our roads then "No"

Environmentalist always fail to see the big picture, even when it comes to the environment, sure they do good things here and there, but they are too quick and blindly follow they leaders without thinking , also they are too quick to attack and defend, that's way they often accidentally fight on the wrong side. (Also why they sometimes damage property, failing to see the resources it'll cost the environment to rebuild)

All in all, they probably do make the world a better place, slowly but surely, in a 3 steps forward, 2 steps backward sort of way.

PS: I heard that people might start using these lightbulbs to trow in riots :)

PPS: I also heard that more people will need glasses (a special type), there's some eye problem where people can't see quite as well in florescent light, most of the time eye doctors see it in elementary-school students who are getting bad grades, or getting headaches in school. The problem is that florescent light is really flickering, just faster than normal eyes can detect.

 

Basically put, everything in this post is false. 

 

Great argument on your part on why it is false. I didn't know "Basically" was a reason.

*YAWN*

You want me to start on how the post failed?  

First, EPA procedure for cleanup is 15 minutes of airing out, not 24 hours.  So first falsehood, first paragraph.

http://www.epa.gov/mercury/spills/index.htm#fluorescent

Second, lighting is currently at 19% of the world's energy usage.  CFLs cut energy usage by lighting by 75-80%.  So this 'small gain' is actually not so small.  It is also not outweighed by the 'waste' generated by making the bulbs.  Also, they add less mercury to the environment than Incandescents.

On the first PS, throwing glass shards into a riot is far more dangerous than the risk of mercury contamination in an outdoor environment.  Risk is absolutely minimal, risk of glass shards creating serious injury?  Pretty high.  So I guess it's an argument for... plastic light bulbs?  Beats me.  

On the second PS, the 60 Hz issue hasn't been an issue for more than a decade.  They added ballast that entirely solves the problem, flickering far faster than any human can perceive.

So yes, it's basically completely false.  And you supporting it?  Completely nuts. 

Do some basic research, really.

Originally posted by Barrikor

 

---

Originally posted by daeandor
As to the recommend procedure for cleanup, how are you supposed to seal off a room that is central to the house?  I mean, think of new houses now days, kitchen and breakfast area open to a family room which is open to a central hallway and most likely either a formal dining or living room.  No doors except those into bathrooms, pantries, laundryrooms, and bedrooms.  What if the chandelier breaks?  All those bulbs breaking in a central open area to the house.  What if you have small children?  And what if this happens when the central air is on?
 

---

 

From what I heard, (so it might be wrong), apparently if the room is sealed off and doesn't have windows, you close the door and just don't go in it for 2 days (it's not so great if it's your only bathroom though).

If the room is an opened area in your house, and cannot be sealed off, open every window in the house and come back in 24 hours.

 

---

Originally posted by Dekron
Screw the environment. I'm stocking up on incandescent bulbs.

---

Actually, you're helping the environment, incandescent are way, way better for the environment than Fluorescents. Fluorescents use a little less electricity of course, but that is far outweighed by the manufacturing and disposal of hazardous that is now being carried out on a massive scale to create lightbulbs that save a tiny amount of electricity...

 

Is electricity bad for the environment?
If you favor hazardous-waste lightbulbs then "Yes"
If you favor electric cars slowly rolling down our roads then "No"

Environmentalist always fail to see the big picture, even when it comes to the environment, sure they do good things here and there, but they are too quick and blindly follow they leaders without thinking , also they are too quick to attack and defend, that's way they often accidentally fight on the wrong side. (Also why they sometimes damage property, failing to see the resources it'll cost the environment to rebuild)

All in all, they probably do make the world a better place, slowly but surely, in a 3 steps forward, 2 steps backward sort of way.

PS: I heard that people might start using these lightbulbs to trow in riots :)

PPS: I also heard that more people will need glasses (a special type), there's some eye problem where people can't see quite as well in florescent light, most of the time eye doctors see it in elementary-school students who are getting bad grades, or getting headaches in school. The problem is that florescent light is really flickering, just faster than normal eyes can detect.

Basically put, everything in this post is false. 

Actually for broken CFLs, the EPA recommends isolating the room (i.e. shutting interior doors, leaving room) and airing it to the outside for 15 minutes.  Then it recommends carefully, using gloves, scoop all of the glass into a box and pick up any small pieces with sticky tape.  It suggests using wet paper towels for final cleanup stepl.  It suggests disposing of any clothes or bedding directly impacted by falling shards (stuff that may have contacted the shards after breaking is fine post-wash).  Then it recommends disposing of the waste in a manner suggested by local government. 

Given the EPA is pretty much the most paranoid institution ever, your $2k cleanup is pretty bogus. 

Yes, that's probably the cleanup fee for a mercury thermometer, mercury-containing materials with visible amounts of the stuff, and other situations involving amounts of mercury 10s, 100s, or even 1000s of times greater than the amounts in a CFL. 

Quiz, you're straight up trolling at this point.  The PvPvE system has been well explained, multiple times, on how it will fix population imbalance.  Stating that it's a hypothetical situation when it is actually working in a released game is being a troll.

Originally posted by projous

Just wanting someone to confirm as i heard from a friend that "World Mounted Combat" (not battlegrounds) didn't make it in Wrath of the Lich King?

 

thanx

Vehicle combat is definitely in WotLK. 

Originally posted by Eruiel

Improvement works if the game stays on the right track and doesn't suddenly take a turn for the worse, WoW abandoning its old ranking system was a example of that. You had a handful of top ranked people with the best possible gear, that's not overpowered or exaggerated...but instead of a ranking system that meant for most of the player base to rely on skill and not gear(since equal rank gear was the same), WoW chose to have players rely on itemization, which in my op was a bad judgement call since it basically meant that anyone with enough time on their hands can eventually leech off some pvp equipment and newly arrived people wont stand a chance not because of skill but because they lack gear

Hopefully Aion adopts a simllar ranking system and promotes skill over gear rather than the contrary, and improve from it...fun is when you are sure you beat that player with your skills rather then because you had more time to farm gear then him

Nobody can accurately point out if this game will indeed stand out from the rest, we hope it does since many before it promised so much but in the end failed so badly to deliver what was promised

Actually the old ranking system heavily favored people with excess time on their hands.  The system heavily rewarded time spent, to the point where virtually all of the max rank PvPers had 40+ (and often 60+ or 80+) hours a week spent on battlegrounds.  Skill was virtually unrewarded in any real sense.

I really hope Aion does nothing like the old WoW system.

The point of a game is to have fun. 

The ways Aion intends to accomplish this are:

PvPvE - a method of creating realm-based PvP that doesn't suffer from the general flaws of population imbalance.  They are promising keeps that have influence on the game, and elite mobs in the PvP zone to bring in players and generally add risk-reward to PvP

Interesting combat - they've worked on refining combat mechanics, feedback has been generally positive.  From flying on down, they're promising more involved combat than most MMOs.

Interesting zones worth exploring - between flying and the effort they've put into the zones, this is a world that they want you to explore.

PvE - They're angling for rewarding group content with a high challenge level

Stigmas and character customization - they're trying to make unique characters while leaving open the abilities of the class.  Instead of essentially taking away class abilities, they offer new abilities that you can learn to make your character unique.

This is an interesting premise, I would like to see it in action.