Fluffy Bunnies of DOOM

Though I haven't played any MoP, I still watch the WoW news and for the first time in a long time they are doing something I approve of with Flexible Raiding. Doesn't hurt that I've been calling for it for years...

It could be (provided decent content of course) the great solution to a lot of wow problems. Unfortunately, I think they missed the boat on a few items.

1) Wow's primary flaw is the lack of social interaction necessary to play the game in today's version. Flex raiding could bring it back, but to really push it, they need to just kill LFR. Flexible Raiding could easily recreate the pug raids of WotLK to provide non-guild players a chance to raid while opening up the path to joining guilds and rebuilding the community environment. Especially once you address #2.

2) Include a "difficulty slider" or allow the difficulty to be the existing three (LFR, Normal, Heroic) selected by the raid leader: Right now they are suggesting Flex Raiding will be between LFR and normal mode in difficulty. The problem is lots of guilds would love Flex Raiding as their primary raid format. Why should that mean nerfed content? Is a 16 person raid bad by definition? Why can't it be a great 16 player raid knocking down heroics or normal mode? If it was restricted to 3 levels of difficulty I'd still go for the "easiest" being real raiding and not LFR. Somewhere between LFR and normal. If you really want to defend the "purists" you could delay unlocking heroic mode (the only race that matters) for a few weeks so world first guilds couldn't game the system by finding optimal setups on the PTR (12 players for boss 1, 16 for boss 2, 23 for boss 3....)

3) Allow 40 man raids: they min/maxed Flex Raiding at 10 and 25. I get why you need a minimum. You can't alter the fight mechanics to drop below a 2 tank, 2 healer situation though I think you could scale down to 8 by losing 2 dps. However, I don't see why you can't scale from 25 to 40. It solves the (to many dps, not enough healers/tanks) problem in the game and most importantly, it brings back the epicness and social aspects of the 40 man. You probably wouldn't see any true 40 man guilds and certainly not in heroics but I think you'd see 40 man flex difficulty pugs all the time.

I also think Flex Raiding could lead to bigger guilds because you'd now have a mechanism to reward growing the guild. No awkward jump from 10 to 25 or issues when you can't quite field 25 anymore. With a difficulty slider, you'd be able to "bring bads" again without being punished.

Anyhow, still won't cause me to buy MoP, but at least lays the foundation for possibly reigniting interest in 6.0 or WoW 2.0 if they iron out the bugs.

Nailed it with the social aspect. Ran my first MoP dungeon today and used the LFG tool. Group formed reasonably quick, but nobody chatted. At all. I even mentioned it was my first time through the dungeon and no one bothered to point anything out to me.

Halfway through one of the boss fights (literally halfway) the tank decides to drop group because it wasn't going to his satisfaction. New tank joins and spends the whole time complaining about people not knowing what to do, while not actually telling anyone what to do. That was the only chat.

Back in the old days of WoW ("you kids get off my lawn" days), when there were no cross-realm groups behaviour like that would have got you blacklisted. Now it's just tolerated. Sure it's easy to find a group, but it feels like such an anonymous game now.

That and it feels just too spoon-fed. The quests zones are incredibly well-organized and it feels like I'm just going through the motions. Some of the "special" quests they added are a joke. Literally click a button when the counter gets to 100. That quest happened three times. Why bother?

Overall it's a somewhat interesting game still but again it just doesn't have the sense of community and flair the old game did.

You kids get off my lawn.

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I feel this is why I lost interest as well.

Then again, I'm campaigning for camping like mobs back in the days of Everquest.
Being a douche meant there was a good chance you never got past level 10.

I think WoW needs to find a sweetspot between allowing a solo/casual experience, but putting much greater rewards on having a social/group environment. I feel the Dungeon Finder, Scenario Finder, and LFR have pushed things way too close to the solo/casual side, and the game is no longer fun. Maybe they'll fix it later.

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Warlock - This fight is for those who say OHHHHH NOOO NOT WARLOCK!!! They are very hard fighters because they use the power of main fire and the Satan!!!