Have to give Blizzard a big thumbs down on allowing high level enchants on low level characters. I just don't get why all crafters have level requirements and yet enchants don't. What was Blizzard thinking when they made this choice? I really can't come up with a answer other then it was a huge mistake and they need to address this asap. Why do they allow this mistake to go on? It has taken away the BG's for the most part to us that don't twink. My friends and I use to jump from new server to new server every 2 to 4 months so we could have a even playing field in the BG's. Now with Xserver BG's we lost that part of the game do to twinks with high level enchants.

I know the expasnion is coming and it's suppose to address this issue to some degree but its only a bandaid on the bigger issue of high level enchants on low level characters. All Blizzard has to do is put level requirements and the problem goes away. Since this problem is still around to this day I don't see this issue being taken care of. So at least put in a option for server only BG's to those of us that just want a fair match.

We are planning on placing restrictions on future enchanting recipes; however placing those restrictions on current enchantments would mean either grandfathering them in (making the current players who have them god-like for any future players) or removing them from everyone's weapons. I can already anticipate the shrill screams to do the latter, but in thise case it's already something that is going to be dealt with in the battleground matching system. We would also be costing many characters hundreds if not thousands of gold each, and such a removal would probably require all realms to be brought down for at least a day. Neither of which we are really excited about doing, especially with a way to parse players out by what enchantments they may or may not have into various battleground games coming soon.

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Q u o t e:

This is a false dilema.

The only choices are not: (1) grandfathering current chants; or, (2) removing all enchants.

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Actually they kind of are, although not all choices are going to be so cut and dry, everything would fall into one of these two categories to some degree.

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Q u o t e:
If you had been paying attentioin to the ongoing discussions in the PvP forum (I know, its asking a little much) you would know that there have been multiple, inovative solutions offerred to resolve the current, game-breaking imbalance caused by the availability of two end-game weapon enchants for a single class in the 10-19 BGs.

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Again, the matchmaking system is our current solution to pairing up players of varying types. I'll give a quick follow up to those that you posted below, but we aren't planning at current to change any current enchantments. I'm not sure it could be considered as game breaking in any case, at least no more than facing a full team with tier 3. It's going to be extremely difficult, but the actual laws of the game don't begin to break down because a twink is in the battleground. It can be frustrating though, and we recognize that and are implementing a solution.

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Q u o t e:
A few of the highlights: enchant effectiveness scaling by character level; removal with a materials refund; allowing any item to be enchanted, but only equipped if the owner is high enough level for the enchant.... etc. ad nauseum.

Just because the two "easiest" (read: least work on Blizzard's part) solutions are obvious straw men doesn't mean there is no workable solution.

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Effectiveness scaling by character level is interesting, but is not much different than costing players thousands of gold to get something they did not originally pay for. Granted item nerfs do happen, but we try to minimize them as much as possible, and this solution would in no way be minimal. (this is in essence a removal)

Removal with a material refund; it's not a bad idea in theory but as material costs shift and recipes have changed it's unlikely players would get back (in a monetary sense) what they had spent. (this is also a removal)

Your last suggestion is no different than grandfathering in the current enchants unless it has a second part to it.

I'm sorry that you feel we are always just looking to take the easy way out, it may seem that way I suppose. In general we attempt the path of least resistance, the path that upsets or affects the least amount of players while keeping in line with our design pilosophies. In actuality that path will usually require much more work than the one that screws everyone over.