Raiding in Northrend

Mr. Khel'Thuzad. This guy is everywhere!

Or: The good, the bad and the ugly.

This is going to be a short post. But I do hope I’ll get some comments. The topic is going to be raid design in WotLK. I’m very curious how you guys feel about the direction blizzard is going, especially if you are in a 10 man raid guild and maybe plan on expanding into 25 man raiding some day.

We somehow all fit into a kind of end-game category. Because as much fun leveling is, someday we will hit 80 and have to choose what to do with our in game time. And then everyone somehow fits into one of those categories:

• Hardcore Raiders like Ensidia
• All raiders in ambitious guilds with 3-5 well organized raid evenings
• Casual raiders, raid regularly but keep raid evenings rather short and don’t subordinate everything to the raid
• The rest that does heroics, pugs, plays the AH, loves the lore etc.

And there comes my complaint with actual raid design. Hardcore raiding guilds laugh at the actual raid content. It was all cleared in a few days, of course by people that know exactly what their doing and did Naxxramas 2 years ago. Ambitious raiders, the category I fit in best, will clear Naxx 25 in a short time. Every casual raider will clear Naxx 10 rather soon than late. And that’s where I see problems at this point:

• Hardcore raider have nothing to do at all right now, except maybe for getting achievements.
• Ambitious raiders will clear 25 man content pretty fast BUT: did you like relaxing with 10 man raiding on off days as I did? Those lovely Kara and ZA runs just for the fun? And now it’s 25 man Naxx….and Naxx again if you want to 10 man raid?
• Casual guilds will rush through Naxx 10 man. And then they will relax OR as many guilds do start a 25 man raid. To do…oh wait: Naxx again?

The good thing of course is that every raider will see every inch of Naxxramas. This is good. I love the instance and knowing that many many people will see it all is cool. On the other hand I see a lot of repetitive content and nearly only achievements as a real spicy tune up in difficulty. I know that it is somehow early to really judge the situation, as we know nothing about the patching frequency blizzard has planned for us. But I know the raiding way of burning crusade and I really really liked karazhan, then slowly building up a raid for gruul and magtheridon to then enter the T5 content.

Input and thoughts please.