Re-activating your WoW account, or interested in "Trying Before You Buy"?Why Do You Raid (or not)?
My Disc Priest Raiding In Heroic Ulduar
So I ask,
Why Do You Raid?
What is it about raiding that you value the most?
Is it the Loot Upgrades you get?
Is it how awesome the raid gear sets look like?
Is it because you've crafted and dungeoned for every single upgrade you can possibly get without setting foot in a raid instance?
Is it the team environment that extends beyond the largely-solo "leveling game" within World of Warcraft that grabs your interest?
Is it being able to explore each nook and cranny of the game, to be able to see or experience what's been developed?
Or, is it because you feel like you've done so much of what comes before raiding that you're bored with it and have since become interested in the "something new" aspect of raiding?
Or is there another reason I haven't mentioned that you'd like to suggest to be considered on the list? :)
(more posts on this topic being created, but first I wanted to hear back from you wonderful readership folk and then progress from there)
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Well it's a mixture of a few of those things for me.
Of course epix is a factor, the nature of the game means that loot is primarily how you progress your character. It's not the most important thing though - loot or no I'd never raid if I didn't have fun too.
I very much enjoy the social aspect. I did ye olde 40 mans back in the day and I didn't like them much, I thought they were too big and impersonal. 25's I think the balance is better - big enough to feel substantial but small enough to get to know each other.
Raids are also primarily where the challenge come for me now. I know there are people out there whining about 'scrub casuals' being the downfall of WoW but I'm not embarrassed to say that our raid community finds Heroic Ulduar fairly challenging - we are currently 9/14 and raid twice a week. However I've been enjoying it thoroughly even pre-nerf's and look forward to clearing the instance and maybe even once summer is over (probably too many attendance issues before then but who knows) start thinking about tackling some of the Hard Modes.
And yes, there is definitely an aspect of 'it's there, I want to see it!' involved too, especially if there's good lore involved. I can't wait for Arthas!
Well, it is a natural progression, to my mind... you level, learn your class, acquire gear, do 5-mans, so you've got a set of skills by the time you hit max level... For me that was in BC (only made it to my 40's in Vanilla), and of course, being a story-oriented type, I also was very interested in completing the story arc and working my way up to Illidan.
Well, what I found is I needed to learn serious healing... and I did, I hit the web, found the blogosphere and learned tons. Only made it into TK and SSC, sadly, but with LK less than 2 weeks away, a friend invited me to guest with his guild in BT and I got to take on Illidan. I'm still sad I never put down Archimonde though... being a druid, defending Nordrassil would have been epic. :) With our size, we are mostly 10-man anyway, we have to fill slots to make 25s. :)
It is also the challenge aspect, I like the challenge of new content, we are newly 9/14 in Ulduar. The teamwork is a real high and yes, the gear is a factor.. who doesnt like going about in the best gear you can get? :)
I don't generally raid these days because of my schedule. I would get too hardcore into it and it would impact my real life priorities.
I PvP now because I can either do it with a group of friends or solo, and it completely fits my schedule when I want it to.
Beej´s last blog ..The Future of the Healer in MMORPGs
It is for me a little bit of each reason you mentioned, but I think there is something that is more important: it is that being part of a guild (i.e. a team) you also have to participate to its activities.
The loots are in some way the rewards for your involvement in the guild.
These days, I don't raid much. Too many of my friends raid too late in the day. Unfortunately, dawn comes early on the East Coast, which leaves me high and dry when raids start at 9 EST and I'm heading to bed at 10. I haven't really been able to hit much since pre WotLK, apart from the occasional fill-in for a Naxx 10 or 25.
I do remember some of the good old days of raiding KZ when it was the thing to do. For me it wasn't about the loot, although upgrading gear always made things nice. For me raiding was always about the challenge, new content, and most importatnly about the comradarie. There's a lot to be said for finding a group of people you can get along with, even if you're getting frustrated by a boss over and over and over.
I haven't done any raiding... yet.
First, my guild is a leveling/social guild, so we as a group haven't tried to do any. Which means I'd have to be a pick-up player. I've come close a few times to answering the calls for "LFM 10-man Naxx!" but have so far passed - mainly because i still feel under-geared.
Right now Mortigan is consistently hitting 1.7K to 1.9K DPS in Heroics. Against large piles of trash he'll AOE for 2K or more. Good for heroics, but I don't want to see him at the bottom of a Recount list. It was absolutely awesome this past weekend to be top DPS in H UP. I was very proud to see my overall damage at the end of the run be well above everyone else. So I guess for right now it's better to be the big fish in a small pond.
Also, it seems that many raid guilds I see online ask for some serious dedication: "We raid from 7 - 12 pm, M-W-F and if you can't commit to that, you're out." Which to me is another way of saying, "You'd better be single." Sorry, I'm married, have a lot going on, and NEVER know when I can play... much less for 5 hours at a stretch.
So it seems like raiding is impractical at this point... especially when it's much easier to get into Heroics. And I still have a lot of gear to upgrade.
Got a new belt over the weekend - Girdle of Bane - so maybe one step closer to raiding, who knows...
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logtar´s last blog ..Why Do I Raid?
Written in a slight drunken haze last night (This topic seemed really deep to me at the time ;) ) i had written on twitter that i raid for the people in my guild, and thats still true, drunk or not.
I recently rerolled, a spur of the moment decision from my Alliance Dwarf Hunter of 2½ years, over to a Horde Orc Hunter, just to play with what i thought was the greatest guild on the EU Realms, this worked out awesome for me and completely reignited the game as well, as i had been loosing interest because of a bad alliance side on the realm i was playing on.
Generally guilds I've been in have been largely based on 1 or 2 countries. But here in Guild Imbalanced on Jaedenar EU, we have a person from almost every country in Europe, asides from all the cool accents on ventrilo during raids, this gives an amazing guild atmosphere.
I'm quite happy i don't play on US realms anymore, experiences like these rarely come along there.
I think I currently fall into the non-raider category. I enjoy the occasional trip into an instance if it's a fun run but years of experience with games have jaded me towards following gear progression paths. All gear is obsolete, if not now then in the next expansion.
In wow I found out fairly quickly that what people achieve in months of raiding can be obsoleted in seconds by a simple patch.
Do what you enjoy, in the end that's all that matters whether it be raiding, pvp-ing or flinging yourself off of random large objects.
I just let my whim carry me... whether that is a 2 man UK normal or some strange foray into stormwind with my undead warlock to say hello to the locals.
Incidentally you'd be amazed what places you can go with a dk + path of frost.
For me to enjoy what I'm doing on WoW, there has to be some sort of challenge involved. I wouldn't go as far to say that any of the classes are very difficult overall, but I definitely prefer my feral druid over my hunter.
For raiding in particular, I usually enjoy it if the content is new and challenging. But once the content gets 'farmable', I very quickly lose interest.. As long as there are some freeloaders who aren't willing to wipe a while for the initial clear (meaning, that would just looove to take my spot once it's being farmed), everything works out.. hahah ;)
You'd never catch me PUGging a raid - risk of un-fun and plain nasty people is too high. My guild is too small even for regular Naxx10 runs. The one time I went with a friend's guild, I had an absolute blast seeing content new to me! I think that's why I want to get into it more. (It was so sad that by the time we got to Heigan, we had only one healer left, a non-disease-cleansing druid, so of course even mastering the Dance couldn't save us...)