What’s baffling to me is seeing people who raided in TBC and even Vanilla expecting bosses to die in 2 nights. I was in a decent guild in TBC (social and not hardcore, but focused), and it feels like we wiped for weeks on Lady Vashj and Kael’thas. Anything less than that is easy to me…. yet some still get impatient when something isn’t dead in a night of attempts.

(That being said, I’d argue that Wrath WAS challenging. Not Naxx and not normal ICC with a 30% buff, but we worked our asses off for those frost wyrms and Sindragosa was a bitch. People just seem to remember easy pugs and blazing through heroics…)

Please don’t mistake “players who got comfortable with the easier content” to read “casual players”. That’s not what I meant at all. In fact, I was referring specifically to players who considered themselves “progression raiders” that took this attitude – and it’s bled over into the more challenging content. Many people who call themselves “hardcore raiders” lack stamina and perserverence. They think that they shouldn’t have to work for success – and it’s that mentality that I am frustrated with.

I actually was one of the few raid oriented people who spoke well of the “hardmode” model, because I believe it’s important that everyone who wants to raid be able to see content. But on the same token, I think that you should still have to work for it at every level. I am keenly aware that something that I may not find challenging may seem almost insurmountable to others – just as something I may find insurmountable may be a walk in the park for the Paragons out there.

Some people want to see all the content. Some people want to get all the acheivements. Some people want to be able to fly around on a brand new hard-to-get drake before it’s a several-months-old drake more than half the server has. Some people enjoy the challenge and would do the same raids for half the reward. For them, conquering the obstacles IS the reward.

I think that may be part of why many people want to see raids go back to being designed for raiders, rather than designed for “everybody”. (Which always ends up being about as inclusive of “everybody” as “one size fits all”.) It’s not that “hardcore vs casual” is a problem. It’s that putting people who have radically different reasons for wanting to do the same content together is a problem. There’s some overlap. People who want to see the story may very well be willing to work hard for it. People who really, really want that drake NOW may be willing to work as hard as necessary to get it. But there are also a lot of them who won’t. It’s not why they are there.

One could say the people who want loot and achievements should grow up and accept that you have to work for what you want. When it comes down to how so much of the story takes you into raids, though, I have mixed feelings. I don’t think the default should be to assume raiders don’t care about story and leave it out… plenty of raiders are lorehounds! But I have my own struggles with raiding and am often disappointed to be cut off from story content because it’s in a place that is inaccessible to me.

In the end, I think it’s a big problem with groups in general… from raids down to low-level dungeons. All being there for the same content doesn’t mean you’re all there for the same reasons. Until players can put aside their personal goals enough to say, “I will do whatever it takes for this to succeed and reach my own goal along the way,” everyone is getting further and further away from their personal “finish line”.

As Glyneth states below (and she is spot on!) this has absolutely nothing to do with how you may chose to the play the game. I’m not criticisizing anyone for their choices, nor am I saying that “content should be so hard only the best can achieve it!”.

What I’m discussing is the perception from a lot of people, in guilds of any level, that if you can’t succeed at something after two hours or two days (or maybe two weeks!) that the encounter is poorly done, or too difficult. I’m discussing the lack of stamina that I see in a lot of raiders today, the lack of focus, and the lack of patience and preserverence.

I don’t think that any of those things are isolated to how you may chose to play the game – regardless of if you play the game for 4 hours or 40 hours a week.

We got comfortable with it because it was well-tuned for our level of expertise, and it wasn’t us who created the expectation that this would be the status quo, it was Blizzard.

I also wasn’t trying to phrase this as a casual-vs-hard core thing. More of a there’s-all-different-levels-of-raiders-and-for-some-of-us-WotLK-was-just-right thing.

Forgive me Beru for speaking out of turn, but Tony, she’s not addressing the casuals vs. hardcore debate you seem to think she is.

She’s talking about (possibly hardcore, at least that’s my impression) raiders who have this mindset that everything should just fall over at their feet, and give them epics.

It doesn’t sound like that’s what you want either. You want to work for it, and be happy when you succeed. It *is* possible in Cata. The early bosses in the dungeons were designed to be taken on in heroic blues, rep purples, and crafted items. And they can be taken down with a good group, dedication, and coordination. It’s possible you may not get it quickly, but it CAN be done.

I don’t know where you read into this that she is pooh-poohing at casuals, but I’m 99% positive you couldn’t be farther from the truth.

And they’re gone. And I haven’t raided since. And it breaks my heart.

I was part of a ‘group of buddies’ guild that was actually challenged by LK’s version of Naxx, who never finished Ulduar, and who didn’t finish ICC until 4.01. For us, though, that was pretty good, because in BC we never got past the Kara/Gruul/Mags level. I personally never minded that we didn’t get to see BT or Sunwell, I knew we weren’t good enough for that, but in LK I enjoyed the fact that given time and effort we had reason to be “optimistic that patience and time will lead to success”.

The bar isn’t set at the same level for everyone. For you guys the Cataclysm-era raising of it means that you have to work harder, but that you will eventually succeed. It’s a foregone conclusion that you will eventually ‘win’. For us, and for a lot of other folks like us (and newer players that came on in LK and have never encountered this level of difficulty), that raised bar doesn’t mean that we have to work harder to succeed, it means that we may *never* succeed.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that we’re not all *gasp* “spoiled” and “soft” players who just want free epix. We want challenges, and we were actually challenged by WotLK. Cataclysm is just a little too much for us. That doesn’t make us lesser beings, and our dismay about it doesn’t mean that we’re whiny little QQ-ers who want everything for free. We worked for what we got in WotLK.

Maybe we’re a little older now and don’t have all that “time” that you mentioned any more, maybe we’re not *that* bad but we value hanging out with friends in a casual guild above finding a hard-core progression guild, maybe we really *are* that bad and just want to have fun. Our money is just as valuable to Blizzard in the end – and just because they catered more to us in LK than you doesn’t mean that we like having “fingers pointed at us”.