WoW raiding however has taken a horrible turn. It is the *only* form of end game content, it requires tons of preparatory farming, it requires *TONS* of trash killing, and the raid encounters themselves have far too much randomness/arbitrariness, too many random power immunities, etc.

-Cambios
Blogging about Online Gaming and Virtual Worlds:
http://www.muckbeast.com

I don’t know about you, but I find Raiding very fun. If you don’t think it is fun, then why are you doing it? I’ve seen videos of people soloing all sorts of bosses on private servers with characters with 9999+ on all stats or whatever. I don’t see how that is even fun or challenging. I play games for the challenge and fun factor.

I do see the points you are making though. I started writing about them, but then it ended up being too long for a comment, so there will probably be a post about it soon.

Raiding Provides a False, Deceptive Sense of Real Accomplishment
http://tinyurl.com/6nw8a7

-Cambios
Blogging about Online Gaming and Virtual Worlds:
http://www.muckbeast.com

I killed him solo in a private server months ago. Me solo > your raid guild.

Think about that, and then ask yourself if it was really worth all the broken friendships, drama, anger, rage, arguments, etc. that it took to get to this point.

Raiding gives a very FALSE sense of accomplishment that often results in people letting their real life accomplishments falter. Everyone has a certain amount of accomplishment they want to attain in life. When they get it from a game, they stop seeking it in real life.

HOLD THE FLAMETHROWERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Everything I have written above is an exaggeration. I wrote it to make a point. Raiding and gaming should be about fun, not about some kind of titanic “achivement” that feels like you just gave birth.

-Cambios
Blogging about Online Gaming and Virtual Worlds:
http://www.muckbeast.com

Phase 1: 1 minute
Phase 2: 2 minutes
Phase 3: has to be done in less than 3 minutes
Phase 4: has to be done in less than 3 minutes
Phase 5: has to be done in less than 4.5 minutes

So around ~12 minutes of fighting (not counting any break in the fights if there is any with Anveena/Kalecgos helping out).

The reason being, whenever you cast the shield with the Blue Dragon, it loses half its life. So you can only do it twice per dragon. Phase 3 and 4 you only get one dragon, Phase 5 you get four dragons.