I hated farming resistance pots for raids, at least this changed. But I think raiding has taken a nose-dive after TBC.

The instances became total jokes. Many people can do them half asleep or maybe even sleeping. The new Naxx provided no challenge for people that did the old Naxx, Molten Core and TBC raids.

I also hate the 3-7 day raid timers. The short timer was a reason why I liked Zul’Aman. This is why I really hate what they have done to heroic instances in WOTLK. I would have wished for more Magister’s Terrace style instances, but they turned the instances into MINI-RAIDS with absolutely trashy trash mobs and even trashier bosses.

Result? While I really loved a lot of their ideas for WOTLK, I got bored extremely quickly. Naxx done within one month after release. With a raiding roster that wouldn’t have done SSC nor TK.

So I am not sure if killing your more casual nature was actually a good thing, Suzina. Raiding has a lot appeal and a lure that you described perfectly. But I think once you got into raiding and often exclusively log on to raid or do daily quests in certain games, a lot of good things about a MMO get lost, too

I’m a huge fan of getting rid of the huge grindy “learning period” and letting people *get on* with playing the game that they want to play, rather than playing forever to get to the point where they actually enjoy it. Some people genuinely like the leveling game more than the end game, and some like the end game more than the leveling grind. Devs really should be catering to both, without making the endgamers plow through months of content and sub fees.

I have eaten this obsession over, and over, and over…

Now I find myself wanting a fun and casual mmo experience once again. My life is just too busy for me to spend more than an hour or two gaming on any given day.

I don’t have a game to call “home” but I’m keeping my eyes peeled.

You know… that’s not a bad idea. Don’t get me wrong, if the game is decently complex, then you should need some solo content and easy content to get used to your class and what it can do. But MMO’s give hundreds of hours more grinding than is necessary to learn your skills… and really you don’t even learn your abilities well until you face incredibly difficult content.

I’m all in favor of a short level grind and a huge end-game. The more content that requires me to become skilled as a player, the more fun I’ll likely have in the game.

I would say I’m still in the “raider” mindset. I’m actually in a 12 person raid in DN right now. We had two wipes at istum and are going to try him again. We’re just waiting on cooldowns right now, so I thought I’d check killtenrats.

The other day, when the same group wiped 4 times on the trolls, I literally had tears in my eyes. I wish I could say I was kidding. Then on our “one more try before logging” attempt, we nailed it. Massive payoff. My husband and I high-fived each other. We went on to raid for 5 more hours after that and killed two more bosses.

As people got bitten by the game and by the achievement bug, there was a shift in focus. People wanted to level and get to the endgame (which was mostly PvP at the time rather than raiding), not hang around roleplaying in the pub in Camelot.

You felt like an idiot if you got left behind. It wasnt the raiding, it was the MMO ;/