I’ve raided hardcore, semi-hardcore and so-called casual. There is no difference between any of these except that one of these raiding styles isn’t going to be getting anywhere, at least not as far as progressing in the content is concerned. You might have been able to do casual raiding in pre-TBC content but that’s not really possible now, regardless of any efforts Blizzard has tried to put into place to make raiding more casual-friendly.
I don’t know if they just went about it wrong or if raiding and casual are just oximorons that can’t be fitted together in a coherent way that is going to satisfy people at both ends of the spectrum. And as surprised as I am at coming to this conclusion post the disbanding of the 40-man raids and the recent removal of attunements for some of the upper tier raids, I’m even more certain now than I’ve ever been, that you can’t raid casually in World of Warcraft. I’m not for or against this view. I’m just of a mind that this is the current state of affairs.
Let me preface this with a small definition, that raiding is more than just poking your head in the instance and meeting the immediate wipe. Raiding is the measured ability to be able to clear trash and eventually the instance bosses – and this is what can’t be done casually. I thought the demise of casual raids first appeared with Blackwing Lair, for it was certainly the content that started the divide in the casual guild of which I’d been a member, since day-one in the game and even before WOW. For it brought with it a required steadfastness that many casual raiding guilds didn’t possess. It also required massive amounts of consumables above and beyond the standard Fire Resistence. And even if you attempted it on a casual pace, let’s say two attempts per week, you still had to face down the farming for another evening or two as prerequisites. So a two-day guild even becomes a three or four day commitment and this is where any thought of “casual” must exit the conversation.
For our guild, it was the instance that started the cracks in the dam, as some wanted even more of a commitment – along the lines of three to four nights raiding + your two farming and now you’ve wrested five days from guild members. So the war between the casuals and the hardcore began, and so did an exudous of people on both sides of the coin. I left as a casual or better yet, a person who refused to allow someone else’s sense of urgency comendear five days of my time. Once that commitment became required, I was out the door but sad to be saying goodbye. Flip forward to where that particular guild is now and they’ve fallen from being in the top three guilds on a monster popular server, to being among the barely recognizable. That’s a high price to pay for a family guild – losing long time members for a quest that couldn’t be sustained.
Now we have the raids of The Burning Crusade that offer 10-man and 25-man instances. I won’t open the debate on how downsizing to such a degree killed many guilds – that’s fodder for another day. What I will offer is that although the number of people required was reduced and they toned down consumables, what has been raised significantly, are the skills required to master the instance. Not only does Johnny need to be there on time, in decent gear and have his consumables, he needs to intimately know the strategies and more importantly, execute them flawlessly. And it is the latter that really puts much of this content out of the reach of the casual player. Being a good Warlock is one thing. Knowing how to be the perfect Warlock in a Prince encounter, is a whole other story.
I know you have to be prepared to raid – that’s nothing new. But what hit me like a sledgehammer, was watching us faulter in our guild attempts at Prince, night after night after night, ad nauseum. It wasn’t that we didn’t know “what” to do and “when” to do it. It’s that it must be so precise, that when we changed out a couple of people here and there for each attempt, it became impossible to be impeccible. Why? Because Harry as MT Priest does things just a tiny bit different than Lisa the MT Priest, and as a healing trio, Lisa, Harry and John, do it just enough different than when it’s Lisa, Geoge and Linda, that it causes a wipe. And on and on, as tonight it’s this Warlock because of the kids or that Mage because it’s someone’s late night at work or this tank because of exams. You can’t win at encounters of precision when they players must be continually changed out. Yet this is what casual players need – versatility and the option of coming and going in the raid activity.
You could if you chose to do so, continue wiping and changing, wiping and changing until everyone has played with everyone enough, that it doesn’t matter and you’ll eventually get a boss down. Then wind up and start all over for the next boss. However, I think in most cases the players will give up long before that day arrives. I mean – this is supposed to be fun, not someone’s second job. And if all they get for weeks on end are repair bills in between racing off to farm so they can jump in an instance and fail… Well, I think you can see my point. Some people will elect to pass on that oh-so-fun little adventure in Raid-land, and instead opt to play a different character or progress their main down the PVP trail, which is by the way, much more casual friendly. Today I’m here but tomorrow I’m not. Today we won, yesterday we didn’t. So what? The repair bills don’t stack up as quickly, basic consumables can be purchased with marks and no need to farm more than a couple of hours – not days per week, if at all.
Now that I’ve been in Karazhan several times my impression is that the content is good. It’s certainly exciting and it’s thrilling to down the bosses. Prince is down yes, but do we have it or farm? No, we don’t but we’re thinking of starting a second raid group so that other members can see this new content. However, for myself, I have to consider if I really want to be on either raid team. When I came to the realization that what was getting us closer to downing Prince was the consistency of having the same players, it hit me as, “Oh shit, that’s going to suck.” What’s going to happen when so-n-so isn’t online? In case you haven’t been there yet, the consistency is important because it builds a rhythm that can be counted on and helps to offset the random trash and special attacks that they’ve built into each encounter. You can’t win these encounters in our old maverick devil-may-care style of just keeping the tank up and aggro off the healers. That will not work now.
This collective heartbeat and synchronization is so strongly intertwined in Kara, that once we had the same group together and we’re on our A+ game, we started whizzing through the trash with seven and eight people, while waiting for the other raid members to login. No new gear yet acquired and Prince not downed yet, and we could get to him in ¼ the time it had taken us the week before, all because we’d nailed the core people and we were moving as a single fluid unit. That’s hard to come by in casual situations. On the third night of finally having the same people with the exception of one person, Prince went down. If we tally it up, it took the guild as a whole three weeks just to make it to Prince’s door, then two weeks of hammering at him, then five days in a row with pretty much the same group and finally it culminated with that same group needing three nights in a row together, to get him down.
Looking at this scenario and knowing all that is required to raid, I’ll contest that it’s in any way, casual friendly. So here you are at level 70 and you’ll have to ask yourself, “Is this what I want from playing WOW?” Can I honestly make that commitment, knowing that if I agree to go as the [insert class here] to help my guild, that when I can’t make it, they’ll be screwed? People will die, waste consumables or just flat-out not be able to go when the key classes aren’t available. That’s what WOW raiding is now. When it was forty-man, we on occasion started with less hoping to get to thirty-eight at least before any boss encounters. You won’t be trying to down bosses with less than the 10-man required, until your gear has progresses above it, by which time, you’re already in the next Tier of content.
Now that the excitement has worn off, I can be honest and say, “No, I personally don’t possess the same level of desire or commitement to playing WOW that I once held. And that being the case, it pretty much excludes me from being raid material.” Personally, I’m okay with that fact. If I could raid one or two nights a week, and not have to grind or farm much to support that schedule, I do it. Sadly, that is not the state of raiding in WOW. I’ll return to PVP and if I get called on to pinch hit, I will, but I won’t be attempting to join the static raid teams.
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