Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. And if current information holds, you'll be looking like one of his elves when you hit Northrend. Say goodbye to your cool-looking level 70 purple gear and say hello to starting over with greens. It'll be like reliving your junior high photo day -- or worse.

Answering a specific question about the topic of ugly, mismatched armor during the WWI Q&A session today, the developer panel gave a cheeky answer:

We ended up having a little clown action, ok, a lot of clown action in TBC. We aren't going to eliminate it, but we are going to improve it. You won't be happy 100%, but we could just solve it by making everything gray.

I think this answer is perfectly reasonable. After all, it gives you an incentive to keep going for better gear: embarrassment.

However, on the positive side, Blizzard will offer more armor customization in Wrath. For example, they will make Raiding sets look different from PvP sets. For me, this means if I spy someone wearing a clear-cut PvP getup, I'm going to get the heck outta Dodge lickety split.

What does it take to get epic gear? Well you can do arenas or battlegrounds and save up points for gear. It takes a few weeks of arenas to get a piece of the most recent releases. A good weekend of battlegrounds might net you a piece or two. You can do raids for epic drops. It can take weeks to learn fights and clear raids. A hard night of raiding could earn you nothing but a repair bill.

Among raiding and PvP, which shows more dedication and skill? The term "welfare epic" has popped up to describe gear that some believe is given to a player without the appropriate level of effort. In his official forum post, Kaizersosay of Spirestone asserted that there are no welfare epics- that every piece of purple loot takes effort. He said that the phrase welfare epic is elitist. The thread sparked a lively discussion of welfare epics for both PvE and PvP players.

A guild called Invictus on Alextrasza has posted a sort of advertisement on their realm forum, offering to sell raiding gear to anyone willing to cough up enough gold. There are all sorts of responses, from "Hey, those prices are cheap!" to "This is cheating!" One poster said that players should go through these instances on their own, through teamwork and patience -- but a member of Invictus replied, quite eloquently, that players all over their realm are more than welcome to work their way through The Burning Crusade content on their own, Invictus isn't stopping that; rather they are just providing a service for people who might genuinely be in need.

Suppose, for instance, that your guild is in the middle of progressing through difficult content and a key player, such as a main tank, has to stop playing WoW due to real life difficulties. The next best tank you have in your guild is nowhere near as well-geared, and finding another outside person to fill such a crucial role could be difficult in the extreme. Invictus, they say, allows your whole guild to chip in and get your next best tank to pick up a couple pieces of gear from the highest raid instances in the game, thereby allowing him or her to catch up and start helping out much faster. It seems like a legitimate service to me.

Then again, this is clearly a different situation from some rogue who just wants some epic weapons so he can do tons of damage in PvP -- especially if he didn't earn this gold he's spending through legitimate means within the game itself. Is Invictus doing the right thing by opening the doors to all kinds of players? Should they be very careful in who they sell too? What's your opinion on the matter?

[Thanks, James!]