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?

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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.

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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.