Raiding Poll

[stray]

Sorry to say this (I truly am), but it serves all of you right. I hope all of you spend months upon months upon months hopelessly scrambling through Blackwing Lair. And when you do finally accomplish it, I hope all your gear becomes gimp. You deserve nothing else because you ask for nothing else.

Paelos, here's a strategy: Tell everyone to piss off, disband, and then go play some golf. Or Super Mario Bros.

[Ironwood]

I agree with Stray.  But I'll still play.

[Paelos]

Sorry to say this (I truly am), but it serves all of you right. I hope all of you spend months upon months upon months hopelessly scrambling through Blackwing Lair. And when you do finally accomplish it, I hope all your gear becomes gimp. You deserve nothing else because you ask for nothing else.

Paelos, here's a strategy: Tell everyone to piss off, disband, and then go play some golf. Or Super Mario Bros.

That's a little extreme. I think I'll just go with the DKP incentives.

[Strazos]

I just really wish lvl 60 was set in its own bracket for BGs so that I wouldn't have to compete with the lvl 60 pieced-out-the-ass catass bastards.

[Shavnir]

For everything but AV it is.

[Zetor]

Of course there are no 50-59 BGs other than AV... everyone in that bracket goes to AV 'cos they can get rep for shiny weapons at 60, good honor, and good xp/loot. 50-59 WSG and AB are literally never up.

BTW, it'll get worse when you hit 60 and end up fighting tier2 teams in WSG/AB as a random noob in blues/greens and no epic mount. AV is more about strategy and tactics than gear (in fact, the best geared people don't really play AV), the same isn't true of WSG and AB, especially WSG...


-- Z.

[tkinnun0]

So you have to fill raids with the leechers you have as best you can and try to replace them along the way.

If your guildies want to be lite-raiders, then let them. No wait, they can't.

...

LET MY PEOPLE GO!

[stray]

That's a little extreme. I think I'll just go with the DKP incentives.

What's extreme is how a "game" can have any features that actually lead people (let alone teammates) to fight and despise each other. Instead of, y'know, letting them have fun.

[tkinnun0]

What's extreme is how a "game" can have any features that actually lead people (let alone teammates) to fight and despise each other. Instead of, y'know, letting them have fun.

And some people say Dikus have peaked with WoW...

[Zane0]

What we're talking about is playstyle incompatibility at its core, I guess.  This isn't a problem with the content in itself; guilds are relatively drama free if there is a clear policy for recruiting like minded players and there's a generally accepted way for going about at things.  Some guilds don't have strong frameworks; some people aren't sure where they fit in; some don't get along with one another.

It happens.  It's part of the social aspect that keeps things fresh and interesting.  It isn't unique to raids, dikus, or even MMOs.

[Calantus]

So you have to fill raids with the leechers you have as best you can and try to replace them along the way.

If your guildies want to be lite-raiders, then let them. No wait, they can't.

...

LET MY PEOPLE GO!

They're let go... once replacements are there. If you always get 30-35 raiders show up to every boss on learning attempts as opposed to 50-55 on farm days, seems to me like the majority wants to progress.

[Sogrinaugh]

Yea, heres the real about that whole "raid lite" BS.

You want phat lewt.  But you dont want to wipe for hour after hour, learning the various tricks, strats, and techniques used to beat the newest boss.  You dont get any great satisfaction from from defeating a new encounter with a bunch of friends, and/or you dont consider many (any?) of the people in your guild to be friends.  So you let the other guys put in untold time, gold, potions, mana oils, etc, into learning an encounter, then just kinda skateboard in later and pick up your phat lewtz.

You fucking maggots are not a different "playstyle".  A different playstyle is someone who prefers to do solo/duo content (field duty) or small-scale raids (aq20)/ 5-man content.  You are a goddamn cancer that feeds off the exertions of better  players then yourselves.  Raid Lite peeps would never exist without forerunners willing to man-up to the challenge, wereas solo/duo and 5-man types would.

So please stop trying to pass it off as a different "playstyle".

[stray]

Funny guy.

"Great satisfaction, "exertions", "man up to the challenge", "better players".....

"Cancer" has gotta be my favorite though. Or maybe "friends", I don't know.

[bhodi]

You fucking maggots are not a different "playstyle".  A different playstyle is someone who prefers to do solo/duo content (field duty) or small-scale raids (aq20)/ 5-man content.  You are a goddamn cancer that feeds off the exertions of better  players then yourselves.  Raid Lite peeps would never exist without forerunners willing to man-up to the challenge, wereas solo/duo and 5-man types would.

WOW.  Bitter much? Drama split your guild? Good players leave for a different one?

[tkinnun0]

So please stop trying to pass it off as a different "playstyle".

They pay their bills (probably on time, too), they should get their lewtz. Like, the whole service economy, you know, has always been based on money paid versus phat lootz received. How else could it work?

[Xanthippe]

This thread demonstrates exactly why I do not enjoy the whole end-game-large-group-raid-for-loot scheme.  I couldn't have made this up to illustrate it any better.

[Sogrinaugh]

So please stop trying to pass it off as a different "playstyle".

They pay their bills (probably on time, too), they should get their lewtz. Like, the whole service economy, you know, has always been based on money paid versus phat lootz received. How else could it work?

As Jayce put so succinctly (and you ignored so completely), you pay to play, not to win.

This thread demonstrates exactly why I do not enjoy the whole end-game-large-group-raid-for-loot scheme.  I couldn't have made this up to illustrate it any better.

As with most things in life, gotta take the good with the bad.

[Signe]

There is nothing good about your "cancer" post.  It was just weird. 

[Righ]

When I gave up, my week consisted of running dragons in BWL with my hunter while we wiped repeatedly due to some folks' inattention. Shaman would blame hunters, who'd blame warlocks, who'd blame warriors, who'd blame druids... and it would be a screaming fit of class-led generic blame games. On Molten Core nights, since I had 7/8 of my set, I'd take the standby repeatedly, and have to farm, level a known alt or whatnot. In silence, so it didn't disrupt the raid. Despite my protestation, I was given responsibilities and access to the guild leader chat, so I couldn't even mute the guild chat bitching fits as the same muting would apply to the leader channel. Since we gave points to people who turned up on time and who couldn't raid due to numbers, I accumulated a lot of points on standby, which caused some people to resent me. I decided to skip some MC nights since I had no need of points, and little desire to farm in silence, and before long folks pulled the 'random raid night' gags because wipes were taking their toll on BWL attendance, and ironically I got accused of being one of the people trying to duck out of BWL when an MC night that I skipped got bumped into a BWL night (not that they were short of numbers since it was due to be an MC night, but there was a whole "us vs. them" thing going down by that point, and as a "leader" I was a good target for abuse). WoW had become as much petty grief and work as Shadowbane had once been.

Fortunately I got a job, and couldn't log in as much. After a few weeks of chaotic work nights, it just didn't seem as attractive to go back to raiding at all. Apparently the holdup on BWL went on for some time after I left, but then it was cracked, they got through the bosses pretty fast, and put that on farm status. They're now having a (somewhat lesser) repeat of the same crap on AQ40. Plus ca change. So yep, end-game raiding in WoW is not for me, and I'm startled that anybody would want to play it past one round of loot/attendance/scheduling hysteria, although it undoubtedly not as bad if you aren't forced to be a "leader" and just hang around in the background largely AFK like many do. As for PvP, I can kill people with better gear than me, because there are so many bad players in good gear but once they're a full tier of gear ahead, its pretty unlikely, even if they're crap. It doesn't really diminish from the PvP, but the PvP experience in WoW seems somewhat dull post-battlegrounds, even on full PvP servers.

1-60 is still fun, and I'm actually enjoying that again, since the half year break since I did all the lowbie quests far too often with alts has made them less painful. What I'd like are a few dozen more level 60 5-10 man dungeons. However, Blizzard can only barely keep pace with the raid content, so I don't think I'm in for any love there.

[Paelos]

Uh wow.

Well I'm in a raiding alliance, so when things go wrong we generally just laugh it off, or if one guild in particular wants to be a bunch of raging idiots, they get the old heave-ho. I'd never joing a raiding guild because I'd have to listen to everyone I raid with who are in other guilds spam away at me. It may not be as effective in the completion standpoint, but I like it much better in the sanity standpoint.

[Ironwood]

Yea, heres the real about that whole "raid lite" BS.

You want phat lewt.  But you dont want to wipe for hour after hour, learning the various tricks, strats, and techniques used to beat the newest boss.  You dont get any great satisfaction from from defeating a new encounter with a bunch of friends, and/or you dont consider many (any?) of the people in your guild to be friends.  So you let the other guys put in untold time, gold, potions, mana oils, etc, into learning an encounter, then just kinda skateboard in later and pick up your phat lewtz.

You fucking maggots are not a different "playstyle".  A different playstyle is someone who prefers to do solo/duo content (field duty) or small-scale raids (aq20)/ 5-man content.  You are a goddamn cancer that feeds off the exertions of better  players then yourselves.  Raid Lite peeps would never exist without forerunners willing to man-up to the challenge, wereas solo/duo and 5-man types would.

So please stop trying to pass it off as a different "playstyle".

Here's the real what ?

This is the finest utter horseshit it's been my displeasure to read.  Really, you've polished it and polished it until it shines.  Bravo.  I wouldn't bother with it again tho please, it might actually splinter my pancreas.

Here's my take on it.  Raiding is not hard.  At all.  It turns a fun game encounter into a organising sheep scenario.   Fuck raids.

They were a bad idea in EQ and they're a worse idea in WoW.  The sooner people fucking realise that the better.  Which they will.  Going by Blizzards own data, 80% of their player base are going to dwindle and die unless they stop fucking focusing on 40 man raids to the exclusion of all else.

Fuck Raiders.

Go and have a look at the video of the 40 lvl 1 Gnomes Raiding Hogger.  They look as if they have had more fun raiding that one encounter than I have had in my many, many, many MC, BWL runs.

Raiding sucks.

[Calantus]

No, raiding sucks for you.

Also the cancer post had the right kind of theme going. Casual raiders I don't give a shit about. You can only come 2-3 days a week? That's fine, I can appreciate you don't have enough time in your life to play all the time, or maybe you just don't want to play more than that a week. That's cool. What pisses me off is people who only go to the easy instances and use the excuse that they only have so much time. If they only wanna just hit upeasy shit and collect purples, hey not a problem. There's tonnes of guilds who generally just farm easy shit and might go after a new boss for something different from time to time. That's great if you're having fun. It becomes a problem when you're in a guild where the majority wants to progress. In that case the leeching bastards should get a fucking spine and go join the right guild for them instead of holding back people who want to progress. But they don't. Why? Because hanging onto a hardcore guild gets you access to more and better purples to farm plus makes your epeen bigger.

[Threash]

Yea, heres the real about that whole "raid lite" BS.

You want phat lewt.  But you dont want to wipe for hour after hour, learning the various tricks, strats, and techniques used to beat the newest boss.  You dont get any great satisfaction from from defeating a new encounter with a bunch of friends, and/or you dont consider many (any?) of the people in your guild to be friends.  So you let the other guys put in untold time, gold, potions, mana oils, etc, into learning an encounter, then just kinda skateboard in later and pick up your phat lewtz.

You fucking maggots are not a different "playstyle".  A different playstyle is someone who prefers to do solo/duo content (field duty) or small-scale raids (aq20)/ 5-man content.  You are a goddamn cancer that feeds off the exertions of better  players then yourselves.  Raid Lite peeps would never exist without forerunners willing to man-up to the challenge, wereas solo/duo and 5-man types would.

So please stop trying to pass it off as a different "playstyle".

Here's the real what ?

This is the finest utter horseshit it's been my displeasure to read.  Really, you've polished it and polished it until it shines.  Bravo.  I wouldn't bother with it again tho please, it might actually splinter my pancreas.

Here's my take on it.  Raiding is not hard.  At all.  It turns a fun game encounter into a organising sheep scenario.   Fuck raids.

They were a bad idea in EQ and they're a worse idea in WoW.  The sooner people fucking realise that the better.  Which they will.  Going by Blizzards own data, 80% of their player base are going to dwindle and die unless they stop fucking focusing on 40 man raids to the exclusion of all else.

Fuck Raiders.

Go and have a look at the video of the 40 lvl 1 Gnomes Raiding Hogger.  They look as if they have had more fun raiding that one encounter than I have had in my many, many, many MC, BWL runs.

Raiding sucks.

You know you sound just as retarded as he does.  Your 80% figure is way off base too, as this thread showed the "i dont want to raid ever" crowd is not that big.  Sure only 20% of people might have killed ragnaros NOW, but 3 months ago that number would have been more like 5%, and 3 months from now its going to be more like 40%.  By the time the expansion rolls around the few people who werent running mc and bwl are going to be able to pug it or run it in small groups in much faster time.  Just because not many people are raiding now doesn't mean most people don't want too or wont raid ever, they simply cant and the number who do raid is just going to get bigger and bigger as time goes on and the zones become trivialized.

Next patch is going to make all zg and aq 20 quest rewards epic, not to mention introduce the equivalent of the field duty quests for argent dawn.  More epics for casuals = easier time with raids = more people raiding.  You are right about one thing though, raiding is not hard...at all.  If more people realized it and decided to start doing it rather than bitch about not being able too you'd see the number of raiders shoot up.

[Paelos]

The point on both sides is stupid. It's stupid I have to collect 39 other people to do something remotely fun at level 60 for me. I enjoy raids. I like the idea of killing big bosses and having it all come together. I don't like the number. Ten people should be the max for anything I would ever want or need to kill. EVERYONE could have access to that. 100% of playerbase would have the option of raiding. But that's not what we got, and you either accept that and have fun within the system, or you become bitter and bitch about it on the sidelines until you quit.

It's also stupid to say that raiders suck because they want people to actual DO something if they want to raid. Nobody likes people who coast through shit that people worked hard to establish and give everyone the finger while they do it. That's just life. You can argue with them for being Draconian, or demanding too many hours, or whathaveyou, but that's NOT the same thing at all.

[Zetor]

You know you sound just as retarded as he does.  Your 80% figure is way off base too, as this thread showed the "i dont want to raid ever" crowd is not that big.  Sure only 20% of people might have killed ragnaros NOW, but 3 months ago that number would have been more like 5%, and 3 months from now its going to be more like 40%.  By the time the expansion rolls around the few people who werent running mc and bwl are going to be able to pug it or run it in small groups in much faster time.  Just because not many people are raiding now doesn't mean most people don't want too or wont raid ever, they simply cant and the number who do raid is just going to get bigger and bigger as time goes on and the zones become trivialized.

Next patch is going to make all zg and aq 20 quest rewards epic, not to mention introduce the equivalent of the field duty quests for argent dawn.  More epics for casuals = easier time with raids = more people raiding.  You are right about one thing though, raiding is not hard...at all.  If more people realized it and decided to start doing it rather than bitch about not being able too you'd see the number of raiders shoot up.

ZG and AQ20 are not casual. They are just like MC and BWL, only they require 20 people other than 40... but that doesn't make them casual. When my guild was allying with another guild for ZG, we spent 7-8 hour sessions just trying to down a single boss (ended up killing the first 3 bosses in 2 runs though). Field duty style quests ARE casual, but they're also crazy farmtastic. 90 insignia to get an epic at revered (44 at exalted), each insignia takes 30 drops from skeletons. Hmmm.

Also, making any kind of statistical judgement based on forum posts is stupid. Of COURSE raiders and "hardcore players" are going to be reading forums more. IIRC tigole said something about 25% of all level 60s having seen ragnaros... considering the level 60 population is 1/2 of the 10-60 population according to that census site, that'd mean ~8.3% of people playing wow will actually see all that shiny new content? (and don't forget that there are plenty of guilds that have been stuck in MC for reasons mentioned in this thread earlier, and won't see the insides of naxx, or aq40, or even bwl until the expansion)

Finally, for some of us, it's not that we don't raid because we loathe green gateways, purple letters and 4 hour wiping sessions (actually we do, I'm sure everyone does). It's because we might be with a group of friends who've been gaming together since 1998, and really don't want to recruit 30 more members in /1 just so we could kill dragons and flex our epeen in battlegrounds dual-wielding weapons that each do 150% the damage of the nastiest blue 2-h weapon available to casuals (Naxx has 75dps daggers and 1h swords, 95dps 2h weapons... for comparison, the 2h sword Demonshear is 53.8dps, and the TUF -best non-raider weapon- is 61dps). And alliances do NOT work in the long term, they invariably end with the bigger guild ditching the smaller guild, the bigger guild absorbing the smaller guild, the guilds merging, or the alliance breaking up in a messy fashion due to loot drama.


-- Z.

[Tebonas]

I almost agree with Calanthus here. I'm one of those people who are in a guild that wants to progress. And I don't give a shit about raiding. I'm just there because those people are my friends from the olden days of Everquest. Yes, sometimes they are short on people and I tag along. After all, a healer with mostly blue equipment is better than leaving the spot empty. If I would only go to the MC raids to grab me some easy gear I would likely kick myself out of the guild as well. I just don't get the need of some people to clear the roster of anyone not being a hardcore raider.

[tkinnun0]

You can only come 2-3 days a week? That's fine, I can appreciate you don't have enough time in your life to play all the time, or maybe you just don't want to play more than that a week. That's cool. What pisses me off is people who only go to the easy instances and use the excuse that they only have so much time.

If they only have 3 hours and their choices are to farm MC for 3 hours or wipe in BWL for 3 hours + solo farm 3 hours for repair costs (numbers out of my ass), guess which one they're going to choose.

And it's not about not wanting to progress. I wanted to progress, but my 1-2 hours 1-2 random times a week just weren't compatible with raiding at all. Perhaps I'm the lucky one.

[Ironwood]

You know you sound just as retarded as he does.

Er, yes.  That was the point.  Did No-one read the Front Paged Raiding thingy that brought us the quote 'I polish my armor with your tears' ?

You guys take this GAME way too seriously.  And, for the avoidance of doubt, when I say you guys I mean Everyone in the thread.

[Ironwood]

No, raiding sucks for you.

Also the cancer post had the right kind of theme going. Casual raiders I don't give a shit about. You can only come 2-3 days a week? That's fine, I can appreciate you don't have enough time in your life to play all the time, or maybe you just don't want to play more than that a week. That's cool. What pisses me off is people who only go to the easy instances and use the excuse that they only have so much time. If they only wanna just hit upeasy shit and collect purples, hey not a problem. There's tonnes of guilds who generally just farm easy shit and might go after a new boss for something different from time to time. That's great if you're having fun. It becomes a problem when you're in a guild where the majority wants to progress. In that case the leeching bastards should get a fucking spine and go join the right guild for them instead of holding back people who want to progress. But they don't. Why? Because hanging onto a hardcore guild gets you access to more and better purples to farm plus makes your epeen bigger.

Ok, I'm going to drop the sarcasm and ask a serious question :  What are the easy instances ?

[Merusk]

Strat's pretty damn easy.  Scholo's a little tricky just because of the AOE rooms (which suck if you've got a lousy mage) and it's wayyyy too long.  UBRS is easy up to Drak.  Even well-equipped people who don't take some FR gear/potions to survive being Conflagged get killed/ wiped.   Anything below that is very easy, just time-consuming.  (Doing BRD in a PUG, for example, can take longer than an MC raid.)

[Ironwood]

Er, yeah.  However, that wasn't what Calantus was talking about, since you don't tend to get purples in there.

I suspect he would classify MC and Onyxia as easy and the other big 3 as hard.  I was just wanting to check.  Not that I'm about to disagree; Onyxia is a total joke.

[Tebonas]

You guys take this GAME way too seriously.  And, for the avoidance of doubt, when I say you guys I mean Everyone in the thread.

Finally something I can really disagree with you on. Yay

There are few things I take less serious than World of Warcraft  :-D

MC up to a certain point is ridiculously easy compared to some of the stuff afterwards as well. I guess its all a matter of perspective. Raiders tend to lose their perspective after a while, its a side effect of raiding those hard instances all the time.

[Ironwood]

One thing I find time and time again is that raiding usually makes people less aware of the 'soft skills' that smaller groups require.  I suspect this is more a side effect of MC, rather than the 'harder' instances, which was why I was asking the question.

For example, it would seem that almost everyone in an MC Raidgroup loses all aggro management skills after a while.  Coming back to smaller groups, more and more you will notice the Rogues, Mages and Hunters that have no idea about keep level with the MT and get their stupid ass ganked.

Last night, while running UBRS, we had those exact classes wipe continuously in a ten man group because they had no idea how to limit their own threat anymore.  After the second death, I just let the mobs go after them.  The other seven of us worked in a perfect team.  It was really, really silly to watch.  I mean, this guy was decked out in full Purple Gear and was getting the shit kicked out of him by UBRS orcs.  Way funny.

However, I'm also fairly sure, having played through it, that those who are running the BWL will have a much better idea of the tasks that they're required to do.

I'd like to reiterate, I belong to a Raiding group who are at farm status for Onyxia, MC, ZG and working their way through BWL.

Raiding is a shortsighted customer focus.

Non of the above in green this time.

Enjoy tearing it up.

Edited because cut and paste is unfair to some.

[Tebonas]

You are right, that is my experience as well. Thats easy to explain. Raid Maintanks generate ridiculous amounts of aggro. They know every trick in the book AND they have the perfect equipment to do their work. And if Aggro is critical on raids the DDs are basically told when it is save for them to make damage. Basically the same people know what to do in a raid that know it single group. The rest are just fluff. Added dd, added healing power, added <insert the one thing you are used over and over again>. They can survive by being drones that can follow orders, know when to roll on loot, and little else. Get those people in your group and you are basically screwed.

But even the ones that know their job, they are usually fine tuned to their tanks knowing how much damage they can make without it biting them in the ass. The pros are the ones that can tune it down and do not expect the PUG-warrior to instantly transform into their main tank so that they see high numbers on their damage meters.

[Soln]

here's the funny thing: my gf and I just started a few weeks ago playing and now we can easily eat up 4-5 hours running quests or lowbie dungeons.   I'm sure if we keep up and get guilded by 60, we could stomach the same time requirement once a week for a raid.  Never ever thought I'd see that.  But we're having fun.  Oh and VOIP FTW.