If you could choose the end game raiding you would choose...

So, got me thinking, just how many people want to go back to the "glory" days of raiding.

Me personally, I think it all stinks of elitism, or complete nostalgia.

I've been playing WoW since the blizzard friends and family alpha, thats nearly 6 years now. Through Vanilla I couldnt get close to end game content for a few reasons.

1)I had no friends that played with me, I was always playing by myself, therefore I'd no one to tell me if/when I was doing something wrong.

2)I had no guild. Obviously hampered me doing any endgame content, and this was because of the next point

3)Mindless grind for stupid resistance gear. Having to spend weeks farming for certain resistance, to go in to have a tank n spank fight. I had not got the time and to be honest didnt want to, did not seem fun one bit.

4)put aside the vast hours required from raid initial setup to completion.

Some of the end game content took nearly 9 hours, from intial raid setup, to completion, thats a hefty part of anyones day to set aside.


Now the game is more accessible to really anyone who wants to put the effort in to raid. In my case, it provided an option, a backdoor. I could put in the time, and get myself raiding.

I'm not a fantastic player, I'd hazard to say I'm good. I'm a decent player who is gradually getting better. I literally started raiding properly in the last 6 months. And I love it. But if ICC required me to farm frost res gear for weeks then spend weeks getting attuned, I wouldnt go near it, and its nothing to do with me being a scrub its because that is simply not fun.

And lets remember what boss mechanics we had in vanilla. Everything was tank n spank, you had to farm your resi gear, so you could stand in one spot, and just not die from aoe etc.

Now we have advanced mechanics, where you have to move and keep your dps up. Cant think of anything more difficult for a caster dps imo.

And remember the most important point. Back in vanilla, you hadnt got a wealth of strategy and tactics websites at your disposal. You hadnt got a guide to hold your hand through every class, and whisper what to do in your ear.

Now there is a huge community built around number crunching, spreadsheets, tactics and strats.

You can ding a char to 80, then read a guide how to play that class from step 1-20.

You can quickly find out how to go about killing a boss, and have a step by step walkthrough.

AS I said in a previous post, why not try the icc bosses without looking at guides, cause factually I know 99.9% of the guilds finished icc, did look at guides.

Without that absolute bonus, ( which it is) youd find the fights challenging and exciting, and very inventive.

Instead of just knowing whats coming and when and what to do, you get a filthy suprise and theres panic, then people need to react and adjust, instead of being pre-emptive.

So that leads to an interesting ideal, has the game gotten easier by design, or by the vast amounts of walkthroughs present.

What guilds clear instances without using guides?

Im my opinion if you walk into a raid, clear it relatively quickly, and then say " thats ****, was too easy" and you used a guide, I have to ask does the person in question realise as to why its easy, and that they essentially had their hand held through the content.

I dont stand on a teebox with my golfball in hand, then walk to the green, drop it a foot away tap it in and say " another eagle, this games so easy".

Its essentially what guides are doing.

If you want more challenging content, stop reading your way through it.

And I noticed iceman making a point of how we are tested by flashing screen noises and sentences. I assume your talking about deadly boss mods. An addon, that is literally like putting cheat codes into a console game.

You get told when the boss does what and when, when to move and when to do what.

And people have the cheek to say " wow is ez mode"

What would wow be like wthout deadly boss mods and all these strategy guides?

At the moment, fantastic, amazing, the best game ever, that would be challenging and difficult, and give satisfying rewards for completing content.

But its not, cause we all coast ourselves through raids with our hand held.

And somehow, thats the game designers fault : /