World of Warcraft at Ten Ton Hammer

They are the few, the proud, the raiders.  Well, maybe they aren't so few in World of Warcraft, but raiding is a job in itself.  A commitment to excellence is required, or at least, trying not to AFK through trash.  So showing up and being the best of the best, on a regular basis is something to respect, or scoff at depending on how you feel.  After obtaining purples for years on end though, what keeps them doing it?   What gives them the desire to keep showing up every night to kill the same bosses for months, and keeps them looking forward to the next version of Sunwell?

Does anyone even remember this guy?

I interviewed the same 3 raiders that were my guinea pigs in my last study.  They are all in different guilds and on different servers.   Also, they're all PvE focused, the sissies.  I'll refer to them as A, B, and C

Question #1 -  Why the hell do you raid to begin with?

A ) "It's the next logical step when you hit 80.  The game isn't simply going from point A to point B level 1-80, and once you hit 80, you beat the game.  It's also what all of your friends are doing.  This is why you're playing the game these days, for your friends.  The game itself is shallow and dead to me, it's the people that keep it alive."

B) "Because it's fun, duh.  If you want to see anything tougher than Trial of the Champion, you're joining that raiding guild.  If you want to see scenes on par with the intro to Culling of Stratholme, you have to raid.  Both difficulty and content evolution/quality increase with each new dungeon patch, with the exception of ToC being a joke in that regard." (He ranted on this for a while)

C) "Because I love my guild.  I've been with them for years and followed them from another game to here.  I know them by first names, I talk to them outside of the game, and us getting together like this is always a good time even if we headbutt content with no results for hours.   Healing them is a joy"

My feedback - I think we hit everything here.  Progression, friends, and loyalty are the 3 main factors to keeping people involved in the end game.  The social aspect of a game is typically the strongest bond a person feels to the game.  You look back and you don't remember that Nefarion kill at all, but you certainly remember the Vent conversation during it that ended up in a divorce of the two guild officers that were married.

Question #2 - What sacrifices do you make to raid?

A) "Not many, my job is 9-6 so it gives me time to grab a meal, a cold beer, and be good to go by raid time nice and relaxed."

B) "I think my last girlfriend left me for attending our first Illidan attempt night rather than taking her out to Arabian Nights like we had been planning.  To hell with that! Arabian nights is 7 nights a week, and we raid 4.  Why did she want to go on a night she knew I might be busy?  Her fault, but I guess you could call her a sacrifice anyway."

C) "Sacrifice?  I sell gold in my spare time, so I'm with the people I love and making money at the same time.  The only sacrifice I make is having to deal with those shady bastards."

My feedback - I have my own sacrifices raiding, I work a night job and on my off days I have to raid.  That kind of kills your ability to do anything with those that aren't nocturnal.  Raiding can be your life as well, so there's no shame in saying it's the opposite : What one may sacrifice to have a life outside WoW.

Question #3 - Are you happy with how raiding has evolved, and the direction it seems to be going in the future?

A) "It's good enough, or at least better than anything else I know of.  They keep coming up with new gimmicks, so I'll stick around to see Arthas fall at the very least.  Cataclysm needs to be out shortly after that to keep us all interested though since Ulduar is getting old and ToC simply sucks."

B) "They need to figure out a better way to handle tanks.  Tanks have something near 65-70% straight mitigation at this point if you just combined their parry and dodge percentage.  So to compensate, Blizzard has the raid bosses punching us for 35,000 a hit, so when it does get through, it has to be healed through instantly and the resulting DoT or whatever dispelled.  Give us some massive global nerf to the parry/dodge formulas and make bosses behave more normally with their melee."

C) "I still want a real group heal as a Paladin.  We used to be the best healers.  Now we're almost certainly the worst.  We may be able to heal 2 main tanks at the same time, but if the raid starts taking heavy aoe damage?  10 man, fine.  25 man?  I'm leaving that to someone else.  I also want new, fresh content and not rehashed Onyxia/Naxx stuff.  However, I'm totally okay with Heroic Deadmines, because that will be awesome."

My Feedback - I got more complaints here than I expected.  For people that love the game and play it on a regular basis, they sure seem disgruntled.  It's not all roses in the raid, I suppose.

In general, I was somewhat stunned by what I heard.  People were generally content with raiding and not having to go above and beyond to get it done.  Then again, if you're going to do something for years on end, as committed as a relationship, you probably have the related life management down to a science.  When it comes down to it though, you raid because you have great people to raid with.  They're either entertaining, or exceptionally talented.  It is the combination of the two that gives people the continuing will to raid.