I’m find I’m more interested in doing things I haven’t done yet (some of the older raids).

I am also a little anxious about the class changes. Change is chaotic and innately scary/stressful. I’m seriously wondering if I’ll continue with the Hunter next expansion or go with something else. My main worry is that the feel of the class (which I enjoyed) might be lost with all the changes.

someone in my guild get the insane achievement recently, and i’ve spent a few days chasing down what i had left for loremaster on a warlock that i sometimes barely tolerate but still love playing and has the next 2 holidays left for long strange trip, which is perhaps the only reason i’m still subbed at this point.

the cata blues is quite endemic, and i think the LFD system shifted attention away from the problem of setting up ICC as a monument to raiding, rather than a series of threats or objectives. the super-boss layout works, but it is somewhat unfulfilling after a few months when you have to play the same way each time you raid.

i know a few guilds that have organised alt runs, so you have a dedicated alt, and a dedicated main, etc, so everyone who wants to raid, can swap roles, making the same game, the same fight, actually meaningful when you have to tank/heal using different people with different gear.

the most fun i’ve had is to go back to the older instances, the ones that needed 40 people, and just pugging it with 7-9, getting lost, wiping on the twins in aq40 or pugs that think they can AoE tank the 6-8 trash packs, leading about 40 mobs back to the entrance gate in sunwell, etc.

also raiding the city bosses, sneaking/cloakroom’ing 30-40 people into stormwind, getting lost in exodar, running around in circles in dalaran while bored, etc. is arguably more fun than raiding or farming/fishing. but, it depends.

if fishing is more exciting than raiding, then the game (or the gamer) has problems.

when they switch old world raiding off with adaptive difficulty/handicapping your level, that kind of fun will be missed.

Exactly because there was so much time, twice or thrice than usually given for a raid tier.

Yes, it allowed me to bring “alts and alts of alts’ alts” into Icc – not as a pure exercise “I’m done farming badges for X, let’s farm it again for Y, but in the great goal of finding out which class, spec and role suit me the best and which main to pick for Cataclysm.

It also allowed me to stop, look back, and realize what I’ve done wrong in previous tiers of raiding. I was one of those who started in late TBC, so never saw much past Karazhan when it wasn’t cutting edge content since long, imagine what kind of “raiders” were going there and getting all excited over it.

And with those view points I entered into WotLK, never finishing a raid tier properly, always got stuck somewhere between ground floor and 1st level, and wondering what kind of hardcore pros manage to not only see the end boss, but also kill him, then do all that again – on hardmode.

I was leaving guilds for the sole reason I saw PUGs getting further that the guild run… And then came the days of TOC and “no achi no inv”, I had no guild any more and I couldn’t get into PUGs, I was devastated and promised myself to never repeat that mistake again and whenever a new raid is released PUG it on day one when no one “has achi”. I did that with Icc, and my “experience” gave me a pass into some guilds. Well, 3 of them actually, as I was always alting.

I end the raiding tier with the Frostwyrm mount and a glimpse of Arthas heroic (no, didn’t kill him yet, and no idea will time permit to get any serious tries, as our raid setup is really not fit for it), and with the lessons learnt what worked and what didn’t work.

I love 10 man raiding. I simply cannot stand any group larger than 15-20 people, I feel uncomfortable, and I’m looking forward to Cataclysm with hope and relief, maybe no one will ask me any more “why the heck won’t you go to 25?”

And the biggest lesson I’ve learnt is to avoid groups, guilds, etc. (or at least be very cautious and wary of them) that describe themselves as “social” and “casual”. Rough translation of mindset of like 80-90% of players in those groups: “I don’t give a damn how this game was meant to be played, I play how I want to, I’m not going to learn or research, this isn’t a job, I’m not obliged to show up for a raid despite any previous arrangements made, because it’s just a game, why so serious, I can go for a half an hour afk in the middle of raid because rl > wow, if I’m outperformed by others it means I’m a healthy person opposed to them no-lifes who play 24/7, if we wipe, we don’t learn from mistakes, because what mistakes, it was just bad luck, and we’re friendly and we support each other, so if you play better you ought to boost / carry me, if you have more gold, gift me some.”

If I never was granted the time I got in this tier, I wouldn’t see the different world, and I would be stuck in “social casual relaxed raiding guild” that never got past Hodir / Blood Prince Council and I would still think how bad a player I am that others do achievements and hardmodes and I’m “stuck” here. Now I know it wasn’t me.

I want to see the other side of the coin now, the dreaded hardcore elitist jerks no-lifes and whatnot, I know people who were there and turned back with disgust, but I didn’t see it personally yet to know. In WotLK hardcore = 25 man, so I crossed it out without even trying, but hoping Cataclysm will give me a chance to see the game from that perspective.

What’s burnout? I’ve never been in a situation when game leaves no more challenges for me. The only “burnout” I could feel would be the game has challenges, and I wished I could try them, but I don’t know people capable of trying who I could group with. That was my case in the past, and this tier is the one when it’s not the case.

Yes, when you have a geared main and dream of a Frostwyrm / Bane of the Fallen King / Light of Dawn but all you see yourself doing for the next weeks is boosting some lame-@$$ alts through 11/12 normal, then you feel burnout.

Any one of those can be enough to get me to raid but if they’re all missing, my motivation fades. So, I definitely plan on raiding in Cataclysm. It’s going to hit the right spots for a while and perhaps there might be some new enduring favorite that I keep going back for. On the other hand, I don’t expect endlessly new mechanics. Loot gets dull and once you’ve seen one dragon, you’ve seen them all.

I certainly see raiding being most engaging at the beginning and then inevitably losing some of the hooks that made it so compelling. It’s a challenge for each raider to keep an eye on that and match one’s commitments to one’s motivations as they change. We also need to have the courage to speak up when how one raids doesn’t work anymore. Raiding for negative reasons, like inertia, fear of losing a spot or not wanting to let people down, those are problems and a far cry from raiding because it’s a satisfying way to spend one’s time.

Anywho, is hopin’ ya finds yer fun, wherever it may be. Is the whole glubbernuggin’ point, afters all.

I have to agree with Wolfshead as well. I think I preferred the gear gating aspect of BC versus the Mario jumping gating aspect of LK. I actually enjoyed the difficulty and tricks in Naxx and found Uld/ToC/ICC a bit too complex for my taste. The later fights in Kara were starting to get complex as well.

I was subscribed the entirety of BC and had something to work towards the entire time. I was ecstatic that I would have all of the raids to work towards in 10 mans for LK, but the move towards using heroics as a stepping stone directly to later raids made my preferred content irrelevant even on my alts.

Unfortunately (for Blizzard), I grew tired of the difficulty of raiding about two months into ICC and lapsed my subscription. My plan for Cataclysm does not even include raiding.

You have to be kidding. You are really saying that a fight like Patchwerk (where you stand there and cast the same spell for 5 minutes) is more fun than LK?

“Then a new expansion comes out and within 5 minutes you have better loot then the best raider has.”

So, people who have been playing the game a long time should always have the advantage over new players?

“Then there’s the complex politics of raiding, the loot whores, the people who rig the loot allocation system, the favoritism, the cronyism, etc.”

Get a better guild. Seriously.

“Who has the time to spend hours raiding these days?”

Well, no-one I think. Two hours at a time, once or twice a week is more than enough to see all the content with the changes to instance lockout timers in 3.2. And since you prefer tank and spank encounters where progress is simply a function of time spent in acquiring levels or gear or character power however measured, then clearly you do too!

“Killing a boss is practically meaningless”

Depends what you mean by meaningless. I would say that “meaning” (which I interpret as importance) is derived from hours learning a fight as a team, choosing a strategy, improving over days and weeks (82 wipes on LK right here before the first kill) and having a huge emotional payoff in the end.

I had started raiding relatively late in BC (maybe 6 months before the pre-Wrath patch hit) but by the time 3.0 hit I think I was getting a bit tired. I feel very much the same now. Hard modes don’t interest me that much, and the guildies that I wanted to help get *their* Kingslayer titles seem more interested in bringing alts, alts’ alts, and alts of the alts alts into ICC. I’m feeling about the same now as I did when 3.0 arrived.

The Scourge invasion of Wrath and the time period of leveling and gearing before starting up raids helped refresh me quite a bit, and I expect the same to happen this time around.

There’s far too much research involved now. You have to learn all the strategies on YouTube, you need to make sure you know every phase of the fight.

Then a new expansion comes out and within 5 minutes you have better loot then the best raider has. It all seems so transient and fleeting now.

Then there’s the complex politics of raiding, the loot whores, the people who rig the loot allocation system, the favoritism, the cronyism, etc.

Then there’s the time involved. Who has the time to spend hours raiding these days? Not me.

Finally, there is instancing. Killing a boss is practically meaningless as the very same boss can be attempted simultaneously.

Other than that, raiding rocks!