AFKing for epics in raids

[Gobbeldygook]

Splitting off from the thread Some Thoughts because it's going to go in a different, more awesome direction!

Do you think failing/AFK for couple hours in BGs should be seriously rewarded? Even in raids you have to succeed and down that foozle to get to that gear.

I skipped over this at first because my posts were WALL OF TEXT enough without arguing with people agreeing with me.  I am going to preface this by saying I am not making this up.  Everything you are about to read is true.
---
So our guild got it's first 25 man raid together.  WOO WOO!  Sure, we had to get a few pugs, but still!  We were in fighting shape again.  We started off with the plague wing.  One shot's and booze for everyone!  We look at spider, but then men of sterner stuff (Such as myself) cried out,
"Fuck spider!  All the pugs go to spider!  Let's go to CONSTRUCT!"
"To construct!"
"TO CONSTRUCT!"

To construct we went.

After the first wipe on Patchwerk, it was time to start playing the blame game.  It's easy to justify carrying bads when you're dropping bosses but that shit stops the moment you start wiping.  It was pretty clearly the healers fault, but we had enough time during the run back and recovery to start looking at the meters too.

That is when I met Vill.

Vill had been in the guild for as long as I could remember, but in all that time I'd never grouped with her.  She played a hunter back in BC but had switched to a druid main for whatever reason.  Perhaps she was worried she'd lose her raid slots if all she could do is DPS when druids could dps, heal, and tank with respecs.  Or perhaps she was just bored.  Whatever the reason, Vill was completely and utterly terrible at her class.  No, terrible is not the right word.  This is her complete combatlog from the first patchwerk attempt.  I have changed the names to protect the innocent and guilty, but otherwise have not in any way altered or excluded anything.  This is all she did for the 2:47 failure.

19:17'55.797   Vill Starfire hits Patchwerk for 2836 Arcane. (279 Resisted)
19:17'59.391   Vill Starfire hits Patchwerk for 3120 Arcane.
19:18'03.063   Vill Starfire hits Patchwerk for 2842 Arcane. (279 Resisted)
19:18'06.141   Vill Starfire hits Patchwerk for 3091 Arcane.
19:18'09.047   Vill Starfire hits Patchwerk for 6130 Arcane. (Critical)
19:18'11.453   Vill Starfire hits Patchwerk for 2761 Arcane. (272 Resisted)
19:18'14.563   Vill Starfire hits Patchwerk for 3051 Arcane.
19:18'17.375   Vill Starfire hits Patchwerk for 6280 Arcane. (Critical)
19:18'42.313   Vill Regrowth heals DPSDK#1 for 3127.
19:18'44.781   Vill Regrowth heals DPSDK#1 for 3109. (3109 Overheal)
19:18'50.422   Vill Regrowth heals DPSDK#1 for 4615. (Critical)
19:18'52.781   Vill Regrowth heals DPSDK#2 for 3223.
19:18'53.469   DPSDK#1 gains 609 health from Vill Regrowth.
19:18'56.797   Vill Regrowth heals DPSDK#1 for 4714. (Critical)

Once we realized she was functionally AFK, there was a brief discussion about what to do with her.  I said to keep her because I was interested in watching what she was doing via /focus because really what the fuck else is a tank going to do on patchwerk to keep himself busy?  On the next attempt, I told her to just spam healing touch on the DK tank.  She cast regrowth instead, so I'm not sure that counts as even passing a Turing Test.

19:35'29.860   Vill Regrowth heals DKTANK for 3285.
19:35'29.860   DKTANK gains Regrowth.
19:35'32.688   Vill Regrowth heals DKTANK for 3212.
19:35'35.078   Vill Regrowth heals DKTANK for 3299. (3299 Overheal)
19:35'37.891   Vill Regrowth heals DKTANK for 3228. (3228 Overheal)
19:35'40.969   DKTANK gains 627 health from Vill Regrowth.
19:35'41.110   Vill Regrowth heals DKTANK for 3223. (1630 Overheal)
19:35'44.328   Vill Regrowth heals DKTANK for 3272. (3272 Overheal)
19:35'47.406   DKTANK gains 627 health from Vill Regrowth.
19:35'49.172   Vill Regrowth heals DKTANK for 3308.
19:35'51.953   Vill Regrowth heals DKTANK for 3287. (3287 Overheal)
19:35'58.047   Vill Regrowth heals DKTANK for 3172.
19:35'59.750   Vill gains Nature's Grace.
19:35'59.985   Vill Regrowth heals DKTANK for 4666. (Critical) (4666 Overheal)
19:36'02.406   Vill Regrowth heals DKTANK for 3118.
19:36'04.719   Vill gains Nature's Grace.
19:36'04.844   Vill Regrowth heals DKTANK for 4825. (Critical)
19:36'07.328   Vill gains Nature's Grace.
19:36'07.625   Vill Regrowth heals DKTANK for 4680. (Critical)
19:36'10.781   Vill Regrowth heals DKTANK for 3333. (3333 Overheal)
19:36'13.906   DKTANK gains 610 health from Vill Regrowth.
19:36'14.094   Vill Regrowth heals DKTANK for 3236.
19:36'17.235   Vill Regrowth heals DKTANK for 3134. (3134 Overheal)
19:36'20.297   DKTANK gains 610 health from Vill Regrowth.
19:36'22.953   Vill Regrowth heals DKTANK for 3221.
19:36'25.953   DKTANK gains 609 health from Vill Regrowth.

Keep in mind she did not die at 36:22.  She lived until 36:43.  In that time she failed to cast a single spell.  On the next attempt, the following was her entire combat log.

19:43'05.781   Vill Regrowth heals Mirror Image #3 for 3147. (2590 Overheal)
19:43'05.781   Mirror Image #3 gains Regrowth.
19:43'25.313   Vill resurrects Gobbeldygook using Rebirth.

...what

As far as I could tell, she was getting up and getting drinks not just in between attempts like civilized folk, but casts.  As the night wore on, she seemed to pay more and more attention as we paid more attention to her like some perverse twist on Schrodinger's Cat.  She was still consistently doing half the damage of lowest tank.  She wasn't the only epic failure; It wasn't until we got to Thaddius that I noticed she wasn't in moonkin form.  She was just casting spells in ye olde standard caster form.  Had she specced moonkin form?  Yep.  She just wasn't in it.

After the raid, I asked in Officer chat what the fuck she was doing in the guild.  In all my time playing WoW, she was the worst player I had ever encountered.  No other player I have encountered before or since could compare to her sheer, raw incompetency.  I believe such a player could exist, but they would have to knock zombies into gluth to limbo under this bar.

"But she has such a nice, sweet personality!"
"She said nothing in vent or raid chat all night!"

My unshakable beilef that we should not tolerate afk raiders ultimately lead to my being gkicked.

[Ratman_tf]

"But she has such a nice, sweet personality!"

Translation: She's either one of the other raider's SO's, a flirt, or the guild has it's share of desperate nerds. (Assuming it's a female IRL, which may not matter.  )

[Azaroth]

Naxx isn't really serious business.

People have different circumstances in life that lead to them possibly not being crack video game players. That's all I can say. If you can't possibly fathom what they may be, then life experience -------->.

Now, I don't mean to seem like a dink to you. But you also shouldn't necessarily have been a dink to her either, if you were.

Let's just remember that online games are for everyone, not just those who are "good".

If you're in a serious, top 3 server raiding guild - then no, that may not be the place for her.

Of course, there does exist the possibility that an officer just has a crush on her or something, and she's perfectly capable of playing well but she just either chooses not to or doesn't care to be told how to. In that case, yes, a little annoyance is appropriate for sure.

But that's only one possibility of many, I suppose would be my point.

[Gobbeldygook]

Now, I don't mean to seem like a dink to you. But you also shouldn't necessarily have been a dink to her either, if you were.

In a display of self-control, I never said a word to her besides my amateur turing test.  It was actually in writing this up that it hit me what was probably going on: Her son was probably playing her character that night without us being informed, which would also explain pretty nicely why she didn't say anything all night.

RE: Nice personality - It was one of the women folk defending her having a nice personality.  Vill's married and her husband played for a while.  So, someone was genuinely defending the performance on the grounds personality.

[Modern Angel]

What?

25 slots. 1 slot filled by someone who isn't inattentive or bad but is not there. Is afk.

If you're in a more casual guild the first two listed above are fine. The last (afk) should never, ever be tolerated. She's not playing.

[ahoythematey]

So is this your first time playing WoW then?

[Lantyssa]

If there's a problem with a player, you could maybe ask them what's up rather than going on a passive aggressive rant on a message board that doesn't know anything about the people involved?  Dunno.  Just a thought.

[Oban]

The only problem with MMORPGs is the other people.

[Gobbeldygook]

If there's a problem with a player, you could maybe ask them what's up rather than going on a passive aggressive rant on a message board that doesn't know anything about the people involved?  Dunno.  Just a thought.

The guild leader issued an edict that since we were a friends and family guild, anyone besides the raid leader was forbidden from discussing someones performance with them.  I am not kidding.

Note the past tense.

[Ratman_tf]

It was actually in writing this up that it hit me what was probably going on: Her son was probably playing her character that night without us being informed, which would also explain pretty nicely why she didn't say anything all night.

Whoops! 

The guild leader issued an edict that since we were a friends and family guild, anyone besides the raid leader was forbidden from discussing someones performance with them.  I am not kidding.

That actually sounds like a sensible idea. It would cut down on teh dramaz when people get full of beans and whiskey over a raidwipe or whatnot.

[ahoythematey]

I don't know how much drama it would actually cut down on, if you consider that there's a lot of opportunity for one of 10-25 people to get frustrated with people goofing around when that one person's time is limited and precious to them and they absolutely, on fucking-no-uncertain-terms, do not have the spare time to goof around and wipe for nothing.  Serious business and all that.

I think this is a good thing for you.  That guild is obviously not meshing well with how you want to play, so what better time than now to look for greener pastures.  It also helps you down the road to have a general idea of how well things may go for a random PUG if it contains one or more members of your former guild, although that isn't always the case.  Shitty guilds can have one or two outstanding exceptions, and top-notch guilds aren't always without their one or two village idiots.

[Paelos]

I booted a guy from my raid recently for being afk. Here's the meter.

Note Felara, who was a feral non-tanking dps druid. If my numbers are right, in a 2 hour raid, he was dpsing for about 8 minutes. I have no idea WTF he was doing the rest of the time because he was there for every ready check. Anyway, it's not about sucking, it's about being lazy. He had full epics for heaven's sake. Oh and that's a healing priest who almost caught him.

[Sjofn]

This is reminding me that I should reinstall recount. 

[Merusk]

I hope yensid was in greens or came in to the raid late.   

[Llyse]

"But she has such a nice, sweet personality!"

Translation: She's either one of the other raider's SO's, a flirt, or the guild has it's share of desperate nerds. (Assuming it's a female IRL, which may not matter.  )

Sorry to go off topic, what's SO?

[Paelos]

I hope yensid was in greens or came in to the raid late.   

Yeah I'm not sure what to about him and another mage that are constantly in the bottom rungs. The raid is a fun raid, so I don't punish people for coming in last. However, I do punish people who screw around, don't play with the group, and expect rewards.

The top 5 DPSers you see there are pretty regular, and have procured decent gear. I was tanking for a long time, but I switched over b/c we had so many people who wanted to do it. As it stands now, there's the top 5, a middle 7-8 that stays within a couple percentages of each other, and then 3-4 that fall below/equal the tanks.

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Proudmoore&n=Yensid That's Yensid's gear profile. As you can see, his position at the bottom makes zero sense. His Beimba ranking is 447 points, while Outkastedelf's is 437. Yet, with lesser actual gear, Outkast is 12 ranks higher on the meters. Obviously, it boggles the mind.

EDIT : SO = Significant Other, Llyse

[Rendakor]

"But she has such a nice, sweet personality!"

Translation: She's either one of the other raider's SO's, a flirt, or the guild has it's share of desperate nerds. (Assuming it's a female IRL, which may not matter.  )

Sorry to go off topic, what's SO?

Significant other.

[proudft]

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Proudmoore&n=Yensid That's Yensid's gear profile. As you can see, his position at the bottom makes zero sense.

Yeah that number is pretty low. My mutilate rogue is basically one rung of equipment below that dude's armory in every slot and 1400 is just.... bleh.   I would expect that equipment to be ~2000 dps on trash and ~3000 on melee-friendly bosses.  Especially in a 25-man.

[Merusk]

Dude's AFKing. Probably just on trash, since "trash doesn't matter."  Start running a WWS log (Or switch Recount over to "current fight" on bosses) so you can see if he's under performing there.

[Xanthippe]

Maybe she's fighting with her SO, or maybe helping with her kid's homework.  In any case, she ought to at least speak up and say something, or not go on the raid.

This is one reason why I don't raid.  I can raid if something's on farm, but my responsibilities around with my family come before anything I do in front of a computer screen.  I simply cannot fill a vital role in a game.  My kids are older now, so they can wait for me to be finished, but a few years ago?  No way.

[Selby]

In any case, she ought to at least speak up and say something, or not go on the raid.

This.  Our guild is struggling to finish content with all guildmembers for the first time.  Someone afking or flat out ignoring what we say is going to be a big problem trying to get things done effectively.  We wiped 3 times on the first pull of Obsidian Sanctuary the other night and I'm still not sure why since half the group is fully decked out in pretty nice purple gear.  We seem to have quite a few issues with people either just ranomly DPSing some mob that the tank isn't working on (and thus causing more work for the healers) or going all out and pulling tank aggro.  Luckily it got better as the night went on and we finished without much issue.

[Nebu]

This is a design flaw.  The more people a raid requires, the less accountable each player becomes.  Having a raid require more than 2 groups means that this will be a common occurrence between inattentive players and players dual boxing. 

I thought they learned this lesson years ago in EQ.  Planes raids were full of this crap.

[Koyasha]

Conversely, the more people a raid requires, the less vital every single one of them is.  There are things I definitely liked about the 40-70 person raids in EQ, and that was one of them.  Every role is filled enough times that there is rarely a single ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL individual, unless your guild recruited poorly or decided to gear up one or two individuals to the exclusion of all others.  That means that, hey, you need to go AFK every 5 minutes?  No big deal.  Just make sure you're here and paying full attention on bosses.  Definitely good for people who want to play but can't afford to sit down and focus for two or three hours to the exclusion of all else.  Instead you get a few critical stretches during boss fights where you can't go AFK, and the rest of the time you can come and go.

Raiding in WoW tends to require a lot more scheduling and careful planning of groups and such in my experience, while in EQ it was 'raid time, everyone get to <zone>!" and we started to raid.  The massive amount of content didn't hurt either, because there were (at least in the later years, particularly Dragons of Norrath on forward) always one to two dozen potential raids ranging in possible size from 24 to 40-something players.  And you could often get started on a raid with 15 or so, cause there's plenty of trash to clear and the trash can be done with far less than the capacity of the raid.  If it wasn't for other reasons, I doubt I ever would have quit EQ, because those raids are in many ways vastly superior, in my opinion.  I can definitely see the merit of the other side of the argument, but EQ raids honestly felt a lot more casual than WoW raids because of the variety and the ability to just book it and go.

It's not that I like or endorse AFK during raids, but in WoW raids it grates on my nerves in a way it never did in EQ, because in WoW that one or two people being AFK seem a hell of a lot more important and they can often hold up the entire raid.

[Arinon]

It sounds like the problem solved itself.  The guild (or at least the officer core) is approaching the game in a completely different manner as Gob.  I couldn’t play in one that didn’t hold its members somewhat accountable for their performance either.

The problem, if you take it as a problem, with WoW raids is all of them are tuned to a max population.  Each person is expected to contribute at a certain level or you can’t win.  Any feet dragging has to be made up for by some hard work elsewhere.  It’s much more relaxed now then it has been since MC but you can still have 2-3 people ruin a whole guild’s night if, and this is a big if, most of the guild is getting its fun from progression.

EQ raids could be solved by throwing more people at them.  So if your guild sucks or you just don’t wanna crack the whip or be selective about recruiting you don’t have to.  You just deal with the logistics of a slightly larger raid force.  Not my cup of tea really. I don’t see the appeal.

It’s like any team or group activity, take people that bring the same level of involvement and enthusiasm as you or its just gonna be stress.

[Merusk]

Raiding in WoW tends to require a lot more scheduling and careful planning of groups and such in my experience, while in EQ it was 'raid time, everyone get to <zone>!" and we started to raid.  The massive amount of content didn't hurt either, because there were (at least in the later years, particularly Dragons of Norrath on forward) always one to two dozen potential raids ranging in possible size from 24 to 40-something players.  And you could often get started on a raid with 15 or so, cause there's plenty of trash to clear and the trash can be done with far less than the capacity of the raid.  If it wasn't for other reasons, I doubt I ever would have quit EQ, because those raids are in many ways vastly superior, in my opinion.  I can definitely see the merit of the other side of the argument, but EQ raids honestly felt a lot more casual than WoW raids because of the variety and the ability to just book it and go.

You weren't an officer, were you?  Plus I'll guess your guild didn't do the upper end Kunark stuff while the "big badasses" were running Planes.   I know my guild leadership core spent HOURS prior to our raid times scouting what was out, and who was there.  If our raid was at 7am PST on a Saturday morning (so we could avoid other guilds who started later) then I know the Guild leader and our "scouts" had been on since 6 or 7am EST figuring out what we were going to kill that day.

The time scheduling in WOW comes only because it's so accessible and you try to accommodate people's schedules instead of requiring "you login now or you're booted out."   Also, you can go ahead and do old raid content in WOW, it's just not reasonable to most people because "why do Molten Core/ BWL when that stuff is crap."  It's part of their 'soft' reset on itemization with each expansion that drives this.  In the EQ model you'd have people in WoW still being forced through BWL before they were allowed to consider getting in a raid for Karazan.     "What's that, you just started playing? Well I guess we can drag your noob ass along on our alt Karazan/ SSC runs but you're not going into Naxx with us."   This is not a superior model, IMO. 

[Koyasha]

It's true that's about how it was in the earlier days, but I was referring to the later, Omens of War, Dragons of Norrath and beyond era where between 70% to 90% of the stuff was instanced.  In the Velious Age in particular it was definitely time-demanding to get to a raid as soon as it was called AND get through it fast and flawlessly, or else someone else would grab the mob, since usually by the time you reached the mob another guild was on your tail just hoping you'd wipe so they could clean up.  I often spent a lot of time scouting the Western Wastes in the earlier days when Kland, Zland, and Sontalak were due to spawn, and popping into the Temple of Veeshan for checks on the spawns in there the days they were due.  That competition was fun in its own way, at the time, but I don't think I'd specifically want things to be the same again.

But by the Planar Age, that had reduced considerably.  The lesser mobs were often left up by the Time guilds, and the Time guilds were practically forced to work out some damned 'rotation' crap since it was only semi-instanced at the time and they could screw it up for each other so easily that nobody would ever be able to beat the place if they didn't work it out.  That meant that 'raid time is X', scouts went out 30-45 minutes earlier and popped into the various zones for a quick check - and since all the relevant zones were directly off of Tranquility, it didn't take long to check - and so on.

In the Omens of War and Dragons of Norrath age, outdoor bosses had become the rarity, and they were rarely, if ever, vital to progress.  The King and Queen in Riftseeker's Sanctum are the main ones I can recall specifically looking for.  The two outdoor bosses in Wall of Slaughter tended to be things we killed if they were up, while we were on the way to the Trials of Mata Muram, though by the time we were in Anguish we basically didn't bother with those at all anymore.  After that, they were really pushing out the expansions fast and most of the content was instanced, so we knew what we couldn't do by looking at our lockout timers, and anything that wasn't on lockout was game to be jumped on.  After we had Anguish access, we didn't even bother with outdoor bosses for the most part until Prophecy of Ro, as far as I can remember.  I cannot think of a single outdoor type boss that we even bothered to check on with any regularity in the Dragons of Norrath or Depths of Darkhollow era.  And at that point, we usually began our scouting  30 or so minutes before raid time for the few outdoor type bosses that existed, - mostly during Prophecy of Ro, all the later outdoor bosses I can recall having much interest in were from that expansion.

And while perhaps having to do old raids to gear up for new raids isn't a superior model, having only two to four raids reasonably available at any given time is, I think, worse.  That's why I dislike the soft reset, because when paired with the glacial content production rate, it means the relevant content is a fraction of what it could be.  Now, I'm not going to say it's really better to force everyone to go through all the old stuff before they can try anything new either, but...well, I like having dozens of things available to do at any given time, not barely a handful.  I don't know how to solve that without keeping old content relevant, other than making ten times the amount of new content than what they currently make.

EQ raids could be solved by throwing more people at them.  So if your guild sucks or you just don’t wanna crack the whip or be selective about recruiting you don’t have to.  You just deal with the logistics of a slightly larger raid force.  Not my cup of tea really. I don’t see the appeal.

And, while earlier EQ raids could be solved by throwing more people at them, the instanced ones were indeed all capped just like the WoW ones were.  The difference, I think, is that they didn't tune the difficulty so carefully.  They just kinda threw in a bunch of mobs, created interesting and clever mechanics for them, made the numbers bigger for the 'harder' ones, and playtested enough to catch the most glaring bugs.  The mechanics and the fights weren't perfectly tuned so that they would present the exact desired level of challenge.  So sometimes a fight was easy enough you'd plow through it the first time through, and you could do it with 10 or 15 people less than the max.  Other times a fight was so damned hard it took a month and a half of practice to get to perfect execution in order to beat it (Sendaii sticks out in my mind as being the latter).

[Moaner]

You weren't an officer, were you?  Plus I'll guess your guild didn't do the upper end Kunark stuff while the "big badasses" were running Planes.   I know my guild leadership core spent HOURS prior to our raid times scouting what was out, and who was there.  If our raid was at 7am PST on a Saturday morning (so we could avoid other guilds who started later) then I know the Guild leader and our "scouts" had been on since 6 or 7am EST figuring out what we were going to kill that day.

He specifically stated DoN and forward.  At that point most anything worth raiding was instanced/triggered including Time, Tacvi, and Anguish.  Now Kunark era, completely different story.  I fucking hated scouting and sitting around waiting to find shit to kill. 

Raiding in WoW just seems so silly after doing Uqua+ in EQ.  I really enjoyed the candy land end zones EQ offered, especially Tacvi and Anguish.

[sinij]

Do you think behavior you describe is common in raiding? As in a given raid someone will be disinterested to the point of being functionally AFK? You also mentioned it was only one player, do you think you'd still succeed if there were 2-3 people like that?

AFKing or plain not trying is A LOT more common in BGs than anecdotal horror raiding story. BG AFKs happened ALL THE FUCKING time back when you could honor-grind decent gear. The only reason it isn't as common right now is that gear you can get this way is completely and utterly garbage-quality.

[Xanthippe]

Do you think behavior you describe is common in raiding? As in a given raid someone will be disinterested to the point of being functionally AFK? You also mentioned it was only one player, do you think you'd still succeed if there were 2-3 people like that?

AFKing or plain not trying is A LOT more common in BGs than anecdotal horror raiding story. BG AFKs happened ALL THE FUCKING time back when you could honor-grind decent gear. The only reason it isn't as common right now is that gear you can get this way is completely and utterly garbage-quality.

While this is true, there are other methods to deal with AFK bgers than to have crappy gear for honor rewards.

[Nebu]

People that afk during raids aren't at the raid for the fun of the raid itself.  There exists a subset of the gaming community that would prefer that the game allow them to pull the arm of a slot machine for every X hours played.  My solution would be to decrease the size of raids to a point where EVERY player must participate at a reasonably high level in order for the raid to be successful.  This is why I'm a fan of 5 man heroics. 

If you want to keep the subset happy, just make slot machines in game that allow you to buy pulls.  Of course, then the hardcore will bitch that their "hard work" has been rendered meaningless.  It's pve... I don't get why anyone would give a damn about what anyone else has anyway. 

[Merusk]

It legitimizes the hours and hours and hours they spend at the computer doing nothing else.  I spend way too much time myself, but damn, the guys I see arguing in /2 and general about how 'ez mode' the game is these days are ALWAYS on.  And always in the cities.  If can login in the morning to check auctions, there they are.  If I login after work, there they are. 

[Sheepherder]

My solution would be to decrease the size of raids to a point where EVERY player must participate at a reasonably high level in order for the raid to be successful.

[JWIV]

My solution would be to decrease the size of raids to a point where EVERY player must participate at a reasonably high level in order for the raid to be successful.

This is the picture you wanted:

[Nebu]

I don't get the hate.  If the game doesn't pose a challenge, what's the point?  It just becomes an exercise in spending time to get a pull on the slot machine. 

I'm not a gaming elitest.  Hell, I'm barely more than competent at most games.  If an encounter doesn't have some risk/reward balance, I get bored and quit.  Large scale raids are little more than organizational affairs.... and in the case of WoW, having the right gear.

[Delmania]

I don't get the hate.  If the game doesn't pose a challenge, what's the point?

Challenge is an tricky problem.  On one hand, you do want to prevent players from breezing through your content, so you want to develop interesting boss fights, and then try to vary them a little so people don't just follow tactics posted on the web.  On the other hand, when something like 95% hasn't seen your current high level dungeon, as was the case with the preTBC Naxx, maybe you've got the wrong type of challenge.  You want the challenge to be in the encounter, not the preparation for it.   Challenging encounters designed for smaller groups are better than the epic rep/gear grind for 25 people vanila WoW was.