World Of Warcraft's Raids Get More Flexible

[Colt47]

From experience, it rarely is a bunch of people getting together to joke around as much as listening to one guy give instructions for a boss and then watch as the group dies repeatedly to said boss, invoking the ire of the instructional leader until finally there is a break through and it dies. The thrill of raiding comes from the sense of accomplishment more than anything else.

Then you haven't been grouping with fun enough guilds. Unless you're talking solely about "progression" raiding, which admittedly is often far more serious. Still, a friendly enough guild won't just be sullen and quiet during a raid, at least not in my experiences. I've never been in a guild that didn't joke around between boss fights, and when I was in more relaxed guilds they'd often go at whatever pace they wanted, saying hell to the progression curve and just having fun instead of burning out on smashing against a brick wall for three hours a night.

I still love to run old raids just for the fun of it. It's unfortunate that it seems less and less people are interested in going back to content of past expansions as time goes on, because there are still a fair few bosses from back in Burning Crusade and on whose mechanics mean that you can't solo them, even though gear far outstrips the actual difficulty of them now.

I currently raid with a decently progressed guild, and honestly our raid nights could be seen as three hour bullshit sessions. Playing on an RP server does wonders for finding interesting, fun people to raid with, even though the pool of raiders is far smaller than on any PvE/PvP server. Three different guilds I've raided consistently with (due to poor leadership causing each to collapse outside the raid groups), and I've yet to experience the dreary, monotonous, "listening to one guy give instructions for a boss and then watch as the group dies repeatedly to said boss" style of raiding. It's always been a quick, concise "Here's the mechanics, and here's how I think we should deal with them," at the start, with group suggestions and ideas afterwards. Whenever we could fit suggestions in between all the jokes, that is.

It's certainly not for everyone, but you'll be hard-pressed to deny the appeal of the many different aspects of raiding to people that do find it interesting. (yes, not everyone is being tricked by the game into thinking they're enjoying themselves).

Well it's all fun when the bosses are dieing, just not when there is a new boss that the guild hasn't downed yet and everyone is learning. That's where the gnashing of teeth usually comes in. Honestly, the environment in progression guilds has steadily been degrading ever since they introduced Raid Finder, since a lot of people who were doing normals to begin with really wanted to see the content more than pick up loot or claim a progression mantle. Most of those folks were fairly light hearted and made the runs enjoyable.

 

[bLAZay00]

So glad I gave up WoW last year. I guess this is what former alcoholics feel like when they see folks knee deep in the struggle.

 

[Sansha]

This is a cool idea. I wonder if it'll apply to old world content.

I'd actually like to see old world content like Wrath and BC scale to player level too, with gear being scaled equal to its difficulty, but no better than current content raiding.

 

[Bernzz]

That'd be because, you know, raids reset every week.

Loath as I am to make comparisons between a game and anything actually serious, let's take a hypothetical here: You're single, and you've got a friend who isn't single. Every Friday night, you ask this friend to go hang out and do stuff, and every Friday night he turns you down because it's date night. Who are you angry at? The girlfriend, for keeping him busy on "party night"; the friend, for having committed himself to doing something aside from going out on "party night"; or just nothing and everything in general because things aren't going your way?

World of Warcraft may just be a game, but raiding is generally a pretty significant commitment. One night a week is almost the bare minimum of what a guild could do to actually keep up with the stream of content being released, unless they're all just really excellent players. You may not be interested in it, you may not find it a proper source of socialization, you may think anybody who plays the game on a regular basis is an idiot, but everyone doesn't feel the same way as you do. In fact, crazy as it may sound, some people might actually like raiding every week! I know, it's insane. Who the hell would want to get together with 9+ other people every week to hang out and joke around while beating up neat bosses? God, those people should just stop playing that game entirely.

Hahahaha okay, because I clearly stated they should never play WoW at all. See, I get the point you're getting at, but then you go and ruin it by saying ridiculous things like that.

What I wanted was a balance. Which is also what you'd expect if a guy has a girlfriend. She shouldn't stop him seeing his friends literally every weekend, that's just stupid and clingy. But surely, surely, someone can forgo raiding every so often to do other things? According to you, apparently not.

 

[llubtoille]

What I wanted was a balance. Which is also what you'd expect if a guy has a girlfriend. She shouldn't stop him seeing his friends literally every weekend, that's just stupid and clingy. But surely, surely, someone can forgo raiding every so often to do other things? According to you, apparently not.

Sure you can take a week off every now and then... but when your ten other raiders each have similar ideas of raiding commitment you end up having an incomplete raid group every other week.
As a raid leader do you set up a 'bench' so if someone doesn't make it then they can be replaced? kinda sucks for that / those guys on the bench when everyone turns up.
Do you try and pug an empty spot or two? good luck trying to do any kind of progression while explaining fights and tactics to the puggers - which eats into the already heavily limited timeframe.

Often enough it's a case where, oh the tank didn't show... guess we're not raiding this week.
Do that a few weeks in a row and the raid falls apart, people go elsewhere or stop raiding altogether.

 

[Aposthebest]

So big guilds will now just exploit the new system by calculating at which point of people you stop needing the extra healer and the raid becomes easier to overburst instead.

Can already see it: "Sorry guys, this boss is too hard with 25, but it's a breeze with 18, so we will kick 7 of you. We are sorry, but we can't have the 10 man guilds beat us on it. As you know, this boss is a free kill in 10." (like every other boss in 10 anyway)

Well, that's the last nail in the coffin for 25 man raiding I guess. If it wasn't dead enough in the last expansion already.

Might as well remove 25 man altogether. Change the name while at it as well, name it "double dungeons" instead of "raids".

Glad I quit a year ago then. "Blessed" be the release of D3 that made me lose any faith in Blizzard and got the decision to just not bother with this company anymore.

 

[Kyrinn]

So big guilds will now just exploit the new system by calculating at which point of people you stop needing the extra healer and the raid becomes easier to overburst instead.

Can already see it: "Sorry guys, this boss is too hard with 25, but it's a breeze with 18, so we will kick 7 of you. We are sorry, but we can't have the 10 man guilds beat us on it. As you know, this boss is a free kill in 10." (like every other boss in 10 anyway)

Well, that's the last nail in the coffin for 25 man raiding I guess. If it wasn't dead enough in the last expansion already.

Might as well remove 25 man altogether. Change the name while at it as well, name it "double dungeons" instead of "raids".

Glad I quit a year ago then. "Blessed" be the release of D3 that made me lose any faith in Blizzard and got the decision to just not bother with this company anymore.

Did you even read the article? The flexible raiding system is a separate thing that drops loot with an item level between normal raids and raid finder. So your whole "too hard with 25" is a moot point. Though that issue may arise with guilds who only do flexible raids rather than normal modes, but that can be fixed by tuning the difficulty. Sure some people are going to game the system but the loot isn't even that great so it becomes a non-issue.

 

[Sean951]

I like this! I was my guilds top tank for LK and I had no problems taking almost anyone to any raid or dungeon so long as they paid attention, but since we were a guild with over 50 unique players and only 1 raid group, I had to do a lot of politicking to keep people happy when, and I stress this, I mentioned that we had a POSSIBLE spot open which became filled when the usual guy showed up. I was once berated by an angry father/son duo for that, and I felt like crap. I wanted to take everyone who wanted to come, but we just didn't have room and it didn't seem right to kick the usual members just because some other person wanted in.