Poll Who here hates raiding?

I feel like I didn't really leave raiding, it left me. The want is still there to defeat those bosses, but putting up with all of the other shit, no thank you.

I thought about this a bit since it was first posted. I like raiding, I like playing my character optimally, I even love grinding.

What I hate is meters. I hate seeing dps 8% below me on a wipe, I hate seeing myself 2% below someone on a wipe. I hate knowing the reason our concerted effort to slay the dragon failed.

It makes me hate my team mates. I raid with some really nice people. I've raided on and off with them for years. I know who the fuck ups are, I know who the failure dps are. Personally I like them, I like them alot I know what kind of hobbies they have, how old their kids are, all kinds of stuff.

I really hate the extra amount of time I have to give them so they can understand the encounter or give the rest of the team time to over gear the content so we can win.

I've questioned my motives for playing mmos for years. I don't have a solution to the things I perceive as negative qualities about the genre. They just have enough content to keep my busy so I don't get into doing other things.

I do like the genre and alot of the people that play it with me. I don't think any hobby is 100% blissful fun and enjoying. Everything in life has ups and downs.

I guess the question is it worth it to you to put up with some of the bad shit to find some form of satisfaction and entertainment. Even if at time it seems
masochistic.

I loved raiding in EQ. The thought of getting fucking amazeballs gear that everyone on the server would know you for, was awesome. That and I was an SK, so I got a ton of loot because no one else in my guild was crazy enough to be an SK until way later like PoP etc. SK gear generally rotted, so I'd always win it if I was there and it dropped. A raid in EQ was an actual fucking fantasy raid. An adventure that would take weeks of preparation for. It was not "hard" in the sense of tons of mechanics, but the preparation itself was the hard part. But a lot of that could be done solo or in groups with your guild. Things like key pieces, resistance gear, fishbone earrings, etc. It was a slow burn to a climatic ending, and was a meta game in itself a raid outside of the raid. That, and back then, there were no spoiler sites or screenshots of raid zones, etc. I mean sure you had Allakhazam but half the info on there was missing at the high end raids. So a raid was an actual new discovery for most players. You were told the boss strats that some officer bribed off another guild, and had to imagine them and what the boss and his lair looked like, in your head. And there was the whole thing where most bosses were in the same leveling zones we farmed in, just deeper. So there was always that mystique, of knowing a hallway everyone told you to never go down, led to somewhere really bad, and you really wanted to know what was back there (Vox, Naggy, etc) so raids were more than just farming phat loots, it was a quest for satisfying the imagination. And one other thing I really loved, was every class had a specific unique role it was required to be good at for raiding. Monks pulled, Wars tanked, Rogues corpse recovered, Shamans slowed, SK's helped pull and OT, etc. You had to learn your role, and be good at it to even stand a chance. And there was pride in that. Your job was so much more than just dps, even if you were a dps class. Now it's all just if you can meet a DPS numbers bar.

I hated raiding in WoW. I do the LFR raids regularly, and like those, as long as they don't give us shitty generic looking gear like they did in WoD. I like to get my set gear, make my character look cool, etc. Just something I enjoy in MMO's. But the whole concept of scheduling a time to get on, to be led by Timmy the fucking 20 year old with something to prove, and wiping on the same boss over and over is like slamming my dick in a door. I just don't have time for that shit. I don't mind as much when a guild has a raid on farm, and you go run it with them and do a full clear in 2-3 hours, but the whole learning thing, or trying heroic modes and shit is not for me. I don't need to DDR while hopped up on 8 redbulls just to get a different colored piece of gear with +10 gooder stats.

I do think part of it has to do with age though, because now days with a wife and 2 kids, there is no fucking way in hell I could ever get into raiding in EQ like I used to. That and I think the internet itself has killed any hopes of another game like EQ with actual mysteries. As soon as someone finds that shit, they will have it all over youtube to get the mad clicks, and every raid leader will expect you to watch that shit and know every single aspect of the fight before you even considering coming with. I do think a lot of the draw of raiding for players in EQ days, was the mystery, which made it feel a lot more like an actual "adventure", and that aspect is totally gone now. Now it's DDR with 20 other retards while executing a perfect rotation, and hope they or you don't mess up. It's not just "slaying the dragon". I have to wonder if this is a lot of the reason the MMO genre is dying. Because it's no longer able to capture that mystery and adventure that drove it into mainstream initially.

I used to like raiding in EQ and some in WoW. Nowdays if I play a MMORPG I'm more likely to do stuff solo and if there are certain things I can't do, get, or accomplish solo oh well.

Aaron said:

Being into my 30s with a family, work, and other shit to do in my life, then this resonates with me. I have done LFR in WoW mainly because I can jump in when I have time, and if something comes up I don't mind ditching the group. I could not put real friends through such shenanigans.

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Same here... I do like to raid. Enjoy the challenge and raiding is nostalgic to me. I know we don't prep/buff and all that like in EQ but it feels similar. I could never devote the time like I use to so the state of raiding today works out great for me. I miss more of what I raided more than anything. For some reason I really enjoyed the Planes/gods thing that EQ did and how they tied into the lands and story of Norrath. I may not be into the lore of WoW though as I was with EQ.

@Amod request thread name be appropriately changed to "Who here is also bad at raiding and video games?".

Raiding requires investment and there hasn't been any new games in the last couple years to justify such an investment. Better off casually playing old games as they get updates.

If you get the right group of people you can make the time commitment problem go away as long as you aren't also trying to be competitive.

I don't mind raiding but don't do it anymore. I hate all the different versions of the same god damn dungeons/raids. Normal, Heroic, Mythic....Fuck that make one version of a dungeon/raid and make it hard if you want but not the 20 different + harder versions we have now. I think it's lazy ass programming. Keep Diablo III out of my WoW.

qwertyqweqwertwqert said:

But what about if you had a guild that let you just show up whenever, and they would be raiding all the time. So forgetting about scheduling, did you actually enjoy the raids themselves?

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That notion completely went out the window with hard caps on raid sizes and encounters balanced around those numbers and progression requiring you to play exactly your current content and nothing else.

You wanted to raid, but only 30 people are online? Ok let's hit Plane of Hate instead of Trakanon.

Forget that in WoW, if you're 10 people short and wanted to do Ahn Qiraj, you don't wanna hit Molten Core because 1. nobody needs gear from there 2. doing the encounters clearly designed for 40 people is not gonna be fun with 30, even if you overgear it.


And god forbid you have 50 online. Now you gotta tell ten people to sit around with their dick in hand while everyone else has fun.

Hard caps ruined casual raiding more than anything else.

Quineloe said:

Hard caps ruined casual raiding more than anything else.

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Enrage timers ruined raiding more. That's the precursor to hard caps and requiring you to do the fight only one way.

I ENJOY RAIDING!

I played an Enchanter in EQ, so some raiding was fun, like Planes and stuff with lots of CC, up until Velious when they assfucked CC with those retarded 100% magic resist mobs. I still liked teaming up with a bunch of fairly skilled players and taking out targets ASAP when they popped, porting in and out of places at top speed etc.

I really liked raiding in WoW too, because I was lucky enough to be the Priest class lead in our 40 man raid group and we were pretty good, no fuck ups or slackers. Just good, laid back, no drama, online friends all working together to get each other loot. It was a great time.

Now, I don't know. Maybe if the mechanics were traditional and the challenge was interesting and I had another group of skilled players to raid with. But honestly, it gets to be too much like work after a while, with the scheduling, and micro managing other players, and hours of gathering consumables, etc. The actual couple hours of raid time are fun, but the whole social management and time sink aspect really can burn you out after a while.

The things that I enjoy about raiding you can also find in group content and sometimes pvp.

In EQ it was groups of groups and office politics and none of us knew wtf we were doing. As we got better at raiding, raiding generally became less fun.

I do miss DAOC relic raids. Those felt like the last real raids for me. They required either off hours ninja teams or three strike teams. The logistical and strategic co ordination was challenging, and you did have to prep for them. I'm sure that if I'd ever been able to get into EVE it offered a similar experience. I can see why people liked it.

PvE raids are still fine and all, I do enjoy them mostly in whichever mmo i've played. But they don't really justifiy the time investment anymore. I'd rather just sit and watch tv or play stardew valley or something.

Raiding is... Fine I suppose? I think it's one area of MMO's that can be revolutionized but when and how that happens I have no clue.

Malakriss said:

Enrage timers ruined raiding more. That's the precursor to hard caps and requiring you to do the fight only one way.

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Raiding Kael Drakkar with 108 people kinda beats enrage timers.

I don't see how hard caps and enrage timers are related.

Quineloe said:

That notion completely went out the window with hard caps on raid sizes and encounters balanced around those numbers and progression requiring you to play exactly your current content and nothing else.

You wanted to raid, but only 30 people are online? Ok let's hit Plane of Hate instead of Trakanon.

Forget that in WoW, if you're 10 people short and wanted to do Ahn Qiraj, you don't wanna hit Molten Core because 1. nobody needs gear from there 2. doing the encounters clearly designed for 40 people is not gonna be fun with 30, even if you overgear it.


And god forbid you have 50 online. Now you gotta tell ten people to sit around with their dick in hand while everyone else has fun.

Hard caps ruined casual raiding more than anything else.

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Everything but Mythic difficulty raids are flex size now. You can do them with anywhere between 10-30 people and the content scales.