Originally Posted by Phlis
My point was that what he wants he cannot achieve. It has nothing to do with Lore, or amount of time spent. I raid 3 nights a week, 5 hours on those nights. I have a job, and a life. I've killed Illidan. One has nothing to do with the other. You cannot get the same vibe from a PuG 5 man that you get from Raiding. Ever. It has nothing to do with difficulty of encounters, number of people, or time spent. It's about forging a team from random people, those people become your friends, sharing their frustration and joy. Honestly, open the link in my guild tag, Militiae Templi, our Illidan kill shot is right up top. I'm in the back of that picture, surrounded by totems, next to the tree. Every person in that picture I consider a dear friend. If you don't want the MM from an MMO, you will never feel that. I'm sorry. Go play different games. This isn't for you. |
15 hours of *scheduled* wow sounds like a lot to me, since I'm going to guess you spend another 15 hours a week doing non-raid activities, pvp, farming, etc. I don't actually HAVE 30 hours a week to play wow, unless I want to really cut down on other activities I enjoy. But, that's neither here nor there...
Doing something with people you consider friends is NOT unique to WoW, or video games at all. I bet people on a football team after a super bowl victory feel just as elated as you do after beating Illidan for the first time. We're not talking about comparing "vibe". Just the look, and to a limited extent the mechanics. We don't want to share our happiness with the PUG that we beat an instance with. But we DO want to be challenged, and we do want to be entertained. One can make a 5 man look like a raid. You could build a 5 man encounter to appear bigger than it really is (the temple event in ZF is a good example). You can make a 5 man instance epic in scope (a complete clear of BRD takes as long as a raid, longer then some I would guess). And you can make complex bosses in 5 mans, with interesting and varied abilities (The best example of this I can think of is Arugal, at the end of SFK. There isn't a boss quite as interesting to fight as him for the next 30 levels at least). This can and has all been done. We just want it continued at the end game, so people who don't have 5 dedicated hours, 3 days a week, can continue to have fun in PvE once they hit 70.
Let me sum this up again. 5 man groups are not trying to build the group dynamics that exist in a raid. But that doesn't mean we don't want interesting, challenging, and sufficiently epic encounters.