Tobold and Gevlon have formed an unlikely alliance and moan about the current gameplay. Now me, being old and wise (yeah well .. and humble, too), I would like to point out that there always always always were problems with raiding. It's just that apparently people remember the highlights more? Odd, I always thought it was the downsides that were more memorable. Maybe I'm a realist, though.
Anyway. Back to the bad old times. Some of the information I'll present will be plain wrong (because I wasn't there and have to rely on the interwebz for information), but hey ... you might not notice.
Vanilla WoW:
Raiding was done by 40 people. At the same time. Druids, Paladins and Priests healed the tank in the same cloth gear. The tank was a warrior. Doing a healing rotation, so when three ran out of mana, the next three stepped up and took over. The others moved back and sat down to drink. DPS classes didn't get healed, but then again - you could drink more than one potion per fight, so it was just a matter of money. Using class abilities was important, but there were only about half as many as there are today.
The Burning Crusade:
Raiding got better (for me, at least) with the reduction down to 10 (or 25 people). Content was either/or, though, so small guilds only saw some. Fights that were based on stacking one type of class were common (yep, we're going to sunwell now. We want three rogues with both Warglaives and twelvety shamans), as were fights that had nothing whatsoever to do with skill and depended on luck. Can't remember that? Were did the infernals fall during the prince fight in Kara? You know.. the instance everyone loved - this was a fight that actually brought fourth rampant "cheating": 'Let's all stand on the broken pillar next to the door, except for the tank, who wedges into the little crack on the right'.
Wrath of the Lich King:
I raided most in this area, so I probably noticed most of the bad things here. Initially we had complaints about just reusing old fights and adding two one single-boss raids. Then there was Ulduar (and I can't remember any complaints - this was just ace). Then there was the "no trash" room. Then there was ICC, with the stacking buff (added random link with complaint. There were plenty).
Raiding was allegedly too easy. Or too hard (especially the heroic modes). I'm personally with the "too hard" group. But maybe I play too many single player games. I want a smooth progression in my heroic difficulty, not "doable" on Marrow-thingy, then "un-frickin'-believable" on Lady Deathwhisper, then "we need one more Kingslayer to do heroic loot-ship", then "ouch ouch ouch" on 'Jaina is such a wuss for crying like a girly-girl'.
Cataclysm:
And now we're in the stage where player health and healing numbers have grown to a state where normal damage will not kill people any more. So game design had to change to include more "instant death" types of fights. Which are, certainly, based on knowing what'll happen.
I'm not entirely happy about it. Some of them also use mechanics that I cannot track to improve my performance (like Sound on Atramedes). However for the casual blokes like me, there are now nerfs. Last week I've seen Nefarian for the first time. In three attempts we had him at a stage that I'd call "stable" - we got into phase three consistently and it was an overall enjoyable learning experience. One or two more tried and we'd have had him.
Now I'll compare those to 93 attempts on the first Lich King (normal) kill and I'd say "thank you". For someone who only raids very occasionally now, this is perfect. I'm lookiug forward to actually seeing some of firelands. Even if I have to learn not to stand in the bad.
Which challenges my muscle memory.
And is not so different from Baron Geddon in the original Vanilla WoW.
Stop complaining. :p
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