I loved LFR, but I think the OP has a bit of rose-colored glasses for it. The only thing I miss is the scrapbook filled with certificates with interesting but rarely-impactful stuff in them. And I agree about the exclusive stuff—I think it's bad. But remember that AL is run and written by the people who go to the big cons, so of course they think propping up the big cons is important. And why wouldn't they leverage this platform to get them invited, for free, to more big cons. That's just smart.
The reality I've come to accept, as someone who can't play D&D a fraction of the amount he wants to, is that there's no value in sweating about missing out on something here or there. It's only your expectation that you should get to play everything that's causing you distress. There are now hundreds of hours of content available to play, and you should only gripe about exclusivity if you've gotten through it all.
While Kalani's argument—that we should ban unbroken things now to avoid a world where future broken things exist is fallacious, we have to admit that the admins must draw the line somewhere, and that's where they drew it. There's plenty of banned stuff that isn't broken (dinosaurs!) and unbanned stuff that is (Sharpshooter/GWM); that's the price you pay to get the benefits OP brings you.
The reality is that specific mechanics don't matter that much, you can reflavor your character however you want so long as it doesn't change mechanically. My first AL character is a Paladin with all his spells renamed and flavored like those of a WoW Shaman; it just takes a bit of creativity.
The reality I've come to accept, as someone who can't play D&D a fraction of the amount he wants to, is that there's no value in sweating about missing out on something here or there. It's only your expectation that you should get to play everything that's causing you distress. There are now hundreds of hours of content available to play, and you should only gripe about exclusivity if you've gotten through it all.
While Kalani's argument—that we should ban unbroken things now to avoid a world where future broken things exist is fallacious, we have to admit that the admins must draw the line somewhere, and that's where they drew it. There's plenty of banned stuff that isn't broken (dinosaurs!) and unbanned stuff that is (Sharpshooter/GWM); that's the price you pay to get the benefits OP brings you.
The reality is that specific mechanics don't matter that much, you can reflavor your character however you want so long as it doesn't change mechanically. My first AL character is a Paladin with all his spells renamed and flavored like those of a WoW Shaman; it just takes a bit of creativity.
