WoW raid math

Getting a level 60 character equipped with tier 0 armor and equivalent blue items isn't exactly a fast process. But compared to getting tier 1 armor from Molten Core, it is fast. So many people whose guild is finally strong enough to tackle Molten Core have unrealistic expectations of the purple loot they are going to get. But Blizzard designed getting equipment from raids to be slow, very slow, so as to keep hardcore gamers playing this part for a very long time. How slow? Well, lets do some simple math:

A WoW character has 17 item slots in which he can put items with magical bonuses. The other two slots, for shirt and tabbard, aren't filled by raid gear, so we can ignore them. A Molten Core raid has 40 people. So if an ideal guild has 40 players repeatedly going to MC to get themselves equipped with purple stuff, how long does it take before they are all "full epic"?

40 players times 17 slots makes 680 epic items you need to find. A complete Molten Core raid, killing all bosses, will give around 20 items, depending on how generous the trash mobs were with dropping epics. You can only complete Molten Core once a week, because even if you did it in a day, you'd still need to wait for the reset. Thus 680 divided by 20 makes 34 weeks, that is 8 months before your guild is equipped.

Of course not everybody needs purple items in every slot. But realistically you can't expect guilds to already earn 20 epics in their first MC week. And in later raids you'll often find items that nobody needs any more, so there are diminishing returns versus the end. If your guild farms about 10 epic items per week from MC, you'll still need a full month before everybody even gets one single purple item from the endeavor.

I see Molten Core as a good place for big guild events. You can have a large number of guild mates working together, and if you don't take wipes and lack of progress too serious, everybody can have a lot of fun. Going from being pwned by Lucifron to farming him status can be an inspiration for the spirit of the guild. But planning on using MC as the main way to get great equipment for people who just arrived at level 60 is bound to fail, because it is just too slow. And going to Molten Core too often, repeatedly wiping against the more difficult bosses, is wreaking havoc with the morale of a guild. Better do more smaller guild events, "farm" the smaller dungeons to get everybody in tier 0, and soon tier 0.5 gear, and see the few epic items the guild gets from MC as a bonus, not as a goal by itself. Just like in real life, if you continually push yourself to the limits, you carry a great risk of breaking down one day.