Ah, something just popped into my head. Gauntlets. I guess, they're part of the encounter... in the sense that it's a 'mentality check' on the raid - a totally different axis from gear checking. If people tend to zone out doing mundane tasks, they usually can't focus well on Gauntlet bosses, especially after a few wipes.

There -has- to be a better way, though. I can't say I enjoyed Broodlord or Fankriss, and the gauntlets are partially responsible for that... and while I DO enjoy Heigan, it seems the only reason there's a gauntlet plonked down in front of him is so that a bunch of 10 people can't go kill him on an off-night.

On the opposite end of the spectrum w.r.t trash respawn rates:
^ Winner.

Naxx trash (other than the gauntlet which I loathe) was also more or less perfect; well-placed and well-rationed throughout the instance... That Faerlina tunnel spiders had a pretty fast respawn rate actually added to the flavor of the encounter, rather than being a mundane time-sink.

Chromaggus was my worst fight of all time as a healer. Not because it was hard, just because it was so dull. Stand in the same place for X minutes and heal/ cleanse. I hate curator for the same reason.

I like the fights where there's a lot of stuff going on, everyone has to individually know what they need to do, and you get to move around and pay attention to the surroundings.

Maulgar is a fun fight. Onyxia is probably the mother of all fun fights I always enjoyed healing on Sartura, and even the Twin Emps were kind of cool once everyone got into the rhythm.

I think we all also like the fights which change some of the usual dynamics of your class. Vael was a fun fight because no one had to worry about mana/energy/rage.

What I really hate is the zergs where we start getting connection problems. Razorgore was always a trial just because of the disconnects. I want to be fighting cool monsters, not my connection.

And Razuvious always stressed me out (like someone said earlier, having 38 people pissed off at you for something that wasn't your fault is stressy). Until we learned it properly (and the guy I was doing it with got the hang of the timing a bit better) and then I quite enjoyed it. Because everyone at the start thinks it's all down to the mind controllers. It's only a bit later that they realise how much the rest of the raid can help.

Aaaand, the other fights people like are where the mobs say amusing things. The number of people in my raid yelling stuff like YOU ARE TERMINATED, or BY FIRE BE PURGED at random intervals just shows how much people enjoyed that shit

"REMEMBER WHEN I SAID I'D KILL YOU LAST? I LIED!!"

What do you mean by "gauntlets," falk? I don't recall any fast respawns on Mandokir, with regards to trash. Am I missing something? In ZG, you have to clear trash up to every aspect boss, so I'm not sure where you're going with the Mandy-specific example.

He was referencing the Suppression Room in BWL up to Broodlord Lashlayer, not Bloodlord Mandokir in ZG.

Personally I'm torn. I love fights with individual responsibility, but I hate fights where someone can screw up the entire raid by being stupid. Aran is one of those fights I both love and hate. I love it because it forces you to constantly keep track of your position and the position of blizzards or flame wreaths, at the same time pumping out maximum DPS. On the other hand I hate it because if one person keeps hopping around when the flame wreath lands it's severely damaging for "lol whups lol"

My favorite fights at the moment are simple fights like attumen and chess event, just because they're easy and I can relax.

Wow, I can't read today. >.>

I'll put C'thun up as the most fun encounter in many many many games. Part of that is the build up - he's been whispering to you through the whole instance, but a fair amount of that is just the fight itself being incredibly fun to win, and all of the losses being obviously explainable as "we did something wrong". It's accessible (if you're there in the instance) and doesn't require you to go gather something you haven't already gathered. You were prepared, assuming you didn't jump through the walls, if you could see him. TBC's motto: "You are not prepared" is completely and totally wrong. Whoever thought that up should just shoot themselves.

I never, in any attempt at patched c'thun, felt like "the boss just won". I always felt like "we kicked his ass" or "we screwed this up". That's very different from the original c'thun, which was one of the least fun fights ever. The boss was obviously invincible, and it sucked because you wanted to kill him so badly. They retuned him in exactly the right way - and it made him awesome.

That's a very, very, nice place to be.

Four Horseman would be on this list - but it falls outside of "avg" raid composition, and so fails. "You require more warrior ass" sucked for a lot of guilds. Once again, they were not prepared - even though they'd done everything obviously asked of them by the game to that point. Saphiron would be on this list - but it falls outside of "avg" raid gearing, and so fails. Same deal - ya some frost resist was obvious, but the avg guild got to saph without a full set. (Noone enjoys having a frost resist set, aka a saphiron killing set, it just feels gimmicky) On a side note - I think a better solution to resist sets for wow is to require the guild to do something questy (omg bring me x hundred frozen runes and I will use them to design a spell for access to frostwyrm lair) and then have the boss killable without the resist kit. Mostly because this makes it A - Obvious what we need to do, and B - doesn't fill up our bags with useless crap that we only use for 3 hours out of every 80 or w/e.

The goal for a fun raid seems simple to me:

Your average raid (5/5/5 back in the day, or 3/3/3 or 1/1/1 now) shows up to the encounter, and every person in the raid is engaged in a meaningful way, without being absolutely required. They don't need anything more than their swords and spells, no bizzarro potions/buffs/resist gear/imaginary 4th of a class, and persistence.

I think what most people find _fun_ in wow with regards to raids is fights that are conquered via persistence and planning, not preperation or potions. I think we all have fun with the first two, because they're social and lead to camaraderie, while the second two are just work. Work's pretty easy to come by and to be honest I don't want to have to do prep work for my hobby. I'm more than willing to think about my hobby and puzzle at it. I love chatting about my hobby with other enthusiasts, but I don't want to have to go out and dig holes in the backyard for it. I want to be able to come home after a long day where the servers are crashing because my employer is godawfully retarded, and put on my cloak and wizard hat and beat the heck out of a giant dragon that is awe inspiring and terrifying. I want to treat my hobby like other men treat baseball games. I'd be one pissed off yankee fan if I had to clean the outfield before the team would play for me. Same deal with wow.

Lastly that feeling of "I killed a dragon, wth?" is something that can't really be quantified, but is immensely valuable. Wow does an amazing job of creating beautiful encounters - so this isn't a big problem. Even the beta checkered boxes were fun to kill.

As another example:

I love aran. I really love that fight. The first time I saw the fight (in beta) and he screamed "I am not some simple conjurer, I am Neilas Aran!" I was in love. I'm sure everyone at blizz hq hated me for how much feedback I dumped on them about ways to make that fight better, but to me it was a 10 man c'thun and it was awesome. I didn't want anything to ruin that for my friends who weren't in beta. I never wanted anyone to ever have him flame wreath-->conflag-->Poly (for instance) because it exposed what was such a wonderfully intricate fight as "aran rolls 1-100, if he rolls 97 or higher you all die". I literally just stared at my computer when that first happened.

I was laughing, but it was the "this is so clearly broken thank god it's beta" laugh. Eventually I hit release, ran back, and did it again. That same death happened a bunch though, and every time it did I stopped, and felt terrible about it. I would have felt really, really, bad had that type of death made it live and wiped Rebirth. Explaining to my friends that "yeah he did this in beta too, but it's ok right?" would have felt awful. So I joined the group that bitched and moaned until (most) of those moments went away.

Now it's live and every single person I talk to about it says "I love this." We all love it because it really does feel like a struggle, and a struggle that we overcome because we were better, or mightier, or just faster than aran. Nowhere in there does it feel like "we got lucky, he'd have won if he'd rolled better numbers" and that's very important to the people who like organized endeavors.

So to answer the original question: Fun in raiding is about having fights that engage and entertain your audience (aka the raid) without requiring some tedious non-immediate task or feeling like you're watching a randomizer decide if you win or lose. So stuff like c'thun where you can show up in all greens and fight a god, and have it feel like you're really there skillfully dodging and doing your best is excellent. Stuff like aran where you can show up and have something important to do - be it interrupts, or a crucial heal, or just getting argo on a water elemental or two, is really good. Stuff like saphiron where, yeah you're fighting a dragon but I hope you brought your super dragon resistant rain coat from marshal's (only 399 buy now) and heaven help you if all the blocks go to the west was less so, and stuff like "We're off to fight a war in the desert, bring your linen bandaids and peacebloom" even less so.

(On a side note - I really think the aq gate opening quest had the potential to be amazing. Scrap the war effort (for the most part - certainly don't make it required to get into the zone). Change the broodlord head quest to a guild quest that at the end of it got everyone in the guild a mount for inside the instance and/or attuned. Suddenly you have an interesting "help the guild" quest that really has some merit.)

It's funny, because the line between fun and awful is pretty thin. (as the aq40 quest comment shows) Gruul would be really really really fun if he wasn't tuned as hard as he is. I realize he's gotten a bad rap - but imagine if shatter killing someone wasn't death for the raid, and imagine if it took say 4 people shattering someone to kill them? You'd be fighting a giant, he'd be tossing you about, it'd be fun. I still think he should talk with a very refined accent (similiar to the ogre in brackenwall) and I definitely think his attack animations could be spiced up, but the gist of the fight is fun, it's just the tuning that makes him feel so terrible. Beating gruul doesn't feel like "we were mightier" it feels like "we did everything ridiculous we could, up to and including telling our friends they couldn't come".

The fight would be 100 times more fun if some of the randomness was less catastrophic, and if he was tuned to be killable by a more diverse raid composition. I like getting tossed around - it's thematic and intersting. What I don't like is that after I land we have a pass through the raid with death touch. I like having him grow as the fight goes on "You won't like me when I'm angry" is thematic and interesting, what I don't like is that the fight goes on for 4.5 million hp so you absolutely have to bring all the dps you can squeeze into the raid. I don't like that the fight difficulty is in some sense more of a problem with the core design of "some classes do more damage than others" and how it relates to dps burndowns in general. The fight is really vulnerable to class stacking, and what's worse - the difficulty changes dramaticly from the optimal raid to the average raid. I hate telling people "this fight gets harder for every rogue or dps warrior we bring." I hate telling people "Don't use your pets, they make it harder".

So ya, I think what we all look for, what we consider fun, is that "Honey, I'm home" ricardo moment, where we take off our hat, sit down at the computer, and kick a dragon's ass. In the same way that Johnny McWeakSauceBaseBall would come home from work, kick off his shoes and turn on the dodgers game. Anything that doesn't fit into that paradigm, isn't as much fun, and the further out you go, the less fun it is. Some of us come home at 1 in the afternoon. Some of us come home at 6. Some of us never leave the house. We all want that same experience of logging into the game to kick ass though, and the thing that should differentiate the "never leave the house" from the "come home at 8" crowd is the pile of dragon/god/slime/ogre chotcskys in the cabnits, not the number of holes dug in the backyard.

Here's hoping.

Naxx pulled off the trash thing pretty well, and, though this is going to get me flamed, so did MC.

Do you remember the first time you zoned into MC, the epic feeling as you dealt with the giants, the ancient core hounds, the firelords. You felt like you were truly going up against an army, and the first time Rag spawned (for me, anyway), it felt like I was truly going up against its strongest general.

In BWL, the whole "lore epic feeling" wasn't nearly as strong (though it was brought back in AQ40 to a certain degree, though the pre-and-post TwinEmps trash annoyed me to no end). In Naxx to an even degree, the whole "raid on a terrible army" feel was restored.

There was a sense of progression to the trash, rather than "ok, here's the drakonids. Oh, technicians now, here's the gauntlet, I hope I get my boots of pure thought off of this captain".

Regarding BWL, while the encounters and the instance were very fun and somewhat original, they didn't make me feel like "Uh oh, it's Flamegor!" so much as "OK, another boss down". That's not to say that trash is necessary for the "Wow, we did it" feel, which Onyxia shows perfectly, but having some respawning trash, at least for the first couple times you do the instance, definitely makes it more interesting.

MC was fine on trash respawn/strength.

There was just too much of it.

And I don't think BWL was any less epic than MC, so much as it wasn't your first time anymore; nothing's the same after the first time.

edit: Favorite encounters? C'thun and 4H and KT, for being fights where consumables helped but aren't necessarily mandatory (okay, tank consumables were mandatory on KT and 4H, but overall, consumable use was relatively low), where an error *can* be recovered, even if it's hard, but multiple errors will kill you rapidly, for having interesting strategy and flavor, and for requiring everyone in your raid to be on the ball.

Oh, and although it isn't a raid encounter, from the "little things" perspective, nothing beats Om'rogg's external internal monologue.

Absolutely true.

FEAR IS FOR THE ENEMY! FEAR AND DEATH!

Enemies are much more interesting, and more rewarding to kill, when they aren't just mindless schlubs who yell "BREE-YARK" and fight to the death for their treasure(*). And even when they are, making them PRETEND to not be makes them more fun. The added voicing and color-quotes that most tBC bosses seem to have really help up the fun. Or, well, make it "TIME FOR FUN!".

CHAOS, DEATH, DESTRUCTION....


You can start that in virtually any guild that did BWL for more than a few weeks and the players will happily continue

Cower mortals before the wrath of....

Lore and voice acting can help salvage an otherwise shitty mechanics fight- but when they combine together it's magic.

BURN YOU WRETCHES... BURN! It's really hard to separate out where the awesomeness of the lore and build up for Nefarian stop and where the encounter mechanics begin. It lacked a lot of the personal responsibility of further along bosses but, for it's time, it was very progressive and the pacing/lore/stages made the fight one of the few truly stand out fights.

I actually enjoyed the lore of BWLmore than MC, but maybe I'm the green sheep here. I'm not a big lore person to begin with though, so maybe it was the chrmatic flight and the dragon-blood centrifuges.

As for voice acting, I'll never forget "YOU ARE NOT WORTH MY TIME!"
In fact, AQ20 (sans Moam, perhaps) remains one of my favorite instances. It was non-linear, forgiving on class make-up, the trash wasn't painful (if you took the right route), the loot was decent, and the encounters were entertaining. ZG was also well-done, but there were a few more marks against it.

I'd say you summed it up perfectly really. Participating is fun, and significant prep work is not.

On the days where everyone didn't D/c, Razorgore-> Vael was the best 2 boss sequence in the game I felt. Sartura's initial chaos was also always really entertianing for me at least.

I love fights like Netherspite, gimmicky where you can do a different kind of tank and spank. Get a paladin to tank a bit, rogues do 5k mutilates, warriors get over 600 defense and tons of hp. Maulgar was a lot of fun aswell, well less so for me since I was standing and looking at the belly of a big ogre for 5min but the fight itself is very interesting. Chess event was one of the most fun ... events, that we've ever done, we had such a blast doing it, sure it's easy, sure it's free epics, but I wouldn't have it any other way, well, I'd like to be able to challenge several Medivh difficulties after we've already beaten him.
Voice acting adds a lot to the bosses aswell as mentioned. Prince has a real cool voice, as do Aran ("I am not some simple jester! I am Nielas Aran!" <3 <3), another fight I love cause it challenges the 'norm' of boss fighting.
Unfortunately I never got to discover most fights in Naxxrammas so can't comment much about that.

Flame.

Teehee

My favorite fights are those that have a unique element to them (Razorgore, Vael, Curator, Thaddius, C'Thun are good examples of that element, Twin Emps to a degree), which do not require anything beyond average consumable usage, but which instead make execution the tipping point in the fight. Additionally, the best fights give every member of the raid (and every class) a specific role that is critical to the fight's success, without introducing the need to stack the raid.

A fight that has to be won through consumables/gear (Patchwerk, Loatheb) is really just...not fun. Likewise, fights that are over due to stupid, random, unmitigable bad luck are just not fun.

I recently played through Twilight Princess, and while single-player boss fights are in no way comparable to MMO boss fights, I felt that each and every boss fight in that game was utterly spectacular, because you knew that:

a) You were going to have to fight this boss in a way that you had fought no other enemy yet
b) You were not going to be able to brute-force your way through it
c) If you were able to analyze your abilities and use them well, the boss fight became entirely about execution, rather than dumb luck.

The example I'm going to use is the boss at the end of the desert temple. It had a number of completely unique, unused, hilariously fun elements. In phase 1, you have to ride a hoverboard in a giant half-bowl, navigating through a field of blockades to get to the boss and deliver a hit to him. Each hit makes the blockade progressively more difficult to get through.

Once you finish that phase, you move to phase 2, where you use the hoverboard to latch on to walls and ride them up a column to gain proximity to the boss. You have to jump from wall to wall while hurtling up this column in a spiral, avoiding the boss's attacks until you can gain the position to attack from. This also grows progressively harder as you score hits on the boss. The fight isn't that hard, but it requires you to execute with near-perfect timing and to be aware of your surroundings visually and aurally.

This is the essence of what I'd like to see in WoW's boss fights.

a) Abilities granted to both boss and players that are not available in the rest of the game (Vael is an awesome example of this) that the players have to use and mitigate in order to succeed.
b) A fight that requires players to be aware, alert, and quick on their feet to succeed.
c) A fight that is winnable through clever execution (good players), not through brute force (raid stacking).

Add in the multiplayer element and then you have the ability to grant individual classes special abilities that must be used well and in conjunction with other classes' abilities in order to succeed.

Make it impossible without execution, but simple (though not trivial) with it. Remove the elements that result in stupid, uncontrollable random wipes (we had insane trouble with Maexxna thrash-crushing our tank during web wraps, hitting for more than her total buffed+flasked HP in between HoT ticks), and randomize the fight through its unique elements (Burning Adrenaline, Nef claass calls, Thaddius charges).

One thing that I've always liked in fights, and that's thankfully pretty common -- distinctly different phases.

Not just enrages, though I suppose they count, but I'm thinking more fights where the boss does substantially different things at different times, or in particular YOU do something different at different times. C'Thun's weaken is a great example of this -- even though I didn't do much damage, it was fun to run over and beat on him a while. Even getting ported to his stomach changed how I healed (hot up the folks that are down there, throw a couple dots on the tentacles and get out).

As a healer, anything that's got a bit of variation to it. BWL was terrible as a healer -- 90% of the fights involved standing still and spamming a single heal on a single target. I'm glad that, for the most part, they've gotten away from this.

Despite the obvious and terrible raidboss tuning issues, I think most of the boss fights in TBC are really, really well done and interesting. I could do with a bit less random variance affecting the difficulty of fights (Prince with an infernal landing on your healer camp 4 times is wicked hard, and Prince with infernals on the other side of the room is wicked easy), but overall they're imaginative, well-balanced, and IMO a whole lot of fun.

To parrot some of the well written thoughts in this thread, I like the "skill-based" execution fights - that also have *some* leeway for mistakes/deaths. A fight that requires *perfect* execution does give a sense of accomplishment if you beat it - and much frustration when you don't. (ie: One healer/tank/important person dies - "it's a wipe, guys")


After we learned Razorgore, it had that kind of fun. By the end of phase 1, we're generally losing control of the adds, people are dying one by one - and then we'd pop our ace in the hole: A paladin would take control of Razorgore, do the AoE damage ability, and kite the entire room with liberal use of Swiftness pots, engineering boots, and trinkets. It's something different than simple tank/spank/CC, and it's funny as heck to watch. (Memorable vent commentary: "Run you beautiful bastard, RUN!")

Nax has a couple of incredibly lame trash mobs. The packs right before patchwerk that liked to instagib melee with thier stomp/cleave combo and the combination of fear and whirlwind in the DK wing. Nothing like being feared into a ww that hits you in the face for all of your hp.

For trash I would say any mob that makes you lose control of your charecter is not a fun design. With the DK trash example, sure if I stand there and eat a WW I deserve to die, but dying just because I get feared into it? Or how about everyones favorite trashpacks. The phallic bugs in AQ just before Cthun. Boy having everyone run everywhere taking damage while feared sure is fun. How about we throw in a mob that flings people around randomly to make it even more zany.

For the most part nax was not bad for clearing though. A good raid zone should have lots of bosses that are for the most part unique or origional in some way and very little trash.

Shade of Aran wins the coveted prize of favorite and most hated encounter. I love it cause its a pure dps slug fest. But I hate it because I go through a lot of consumables on it, and the near mandatory warlock is disappointing. I also would like to say that the first few times I did Aran I was completely distracted by the voice acting. It sounded like I was killing an old man who was begging for his life. Being distracted by something as little as an mp3 sound over my speakers is probably the biggest compliment someone could give that voice actor. Whoever you are, well done.

Since I was a rogue for a long time;

Any encounter where I was more than just DPS was fun for me;
C'thun, Kel'thuzad, Gothik etc.

Encounters that get you out of your normal paradigm of play are usually fun, unless they are implemented in a silly way like Broodlord Suppressors.

The fights that I consider "fun" are exceptionally well-tuned encounters like High King Maulgar, or Kel'Thuzad. Kel'Thuzad required great execution by your entire raid, and there was next to no luck factor involved. Maulgar gives almost everyone something to do, and there's a lot going on, but it's a fun fight once you learn it, and you don't have to throw away tons of money to "farm" it.