Heroic mode dungeons in World of Warcraft

I did my first heroic mode dungeon in World of Warcraft this weekend. Given that it is easier to get revered with the Cenarion Expedition than with Thrallmar, and thus there are more people with the heroic key to Coilfang Reservoir than with the key to Hellfire Citadel, we we for the slave pens. The experience was pretty intense, even on the trash mobs everybody had to play just perfectly to not wipe. Being the sole healer on the second boss in heroic slave pens and everybody surviving was probably my best performance in this game ever.

We made it, and killed all three bosses, getting an epic and a primal nether at the last boss. Too bad nobody wanted that epic, and we didn't even have an enchanter, so I ended up vendoring it for very little gold. As the first bosses of the heroic dungeons just drop blue items, and only the final boss drops a primal nether with 100% chance, and an epic, I can see how shorter heroic dungeons will be a lot more popular than longer ones. I think we even could have skipped the second boss in slave pens, which is probably what people will do if they go to "farm" primal nethers.

The only thing that every boss drops are badges of justice, which you can exchange against epics. Only you need a lot of those badges, and the epics you can get are rather crappy. Why would I want to kill 25 bosses in heroic mode for a Bishop's Cloak when I alreade got Cloak of Whispering Shells from killing one boss in non-heroic Steamvault? The epic cloak gives 1 int less, and only 4 healing and 4 mana per 5 seconds more.

I don't have much BC raid experience myself, but from all what I hear the difference in power level between blue items and epics isn't all that big this time around. Apparently Blizzard noticed that giving out very powerful epics just means that in the next expansion you need to hand out very powerful greens to everybody, because otherwise people just keep wearing their raid gear. Hey, my level 70 priest is still wearing his Halo of Transcendence from Onyxia. But of course if you don't give out very powerful epics, and everybody expects to get better greens in the next expansion, the motivation to put in enormous effort to get epics now isn't all that strong. Of course that is hard to measure, but it seems to me that this time round there are less people interested in full-time raiding than before. I can't blame them.