Our whole guild is way worse than that, at least that guy has shadowcraft. We have players in half greens and half epic HWL gear.

Honestly, this patch was great as far as keeping my interest in the game for the next month, without it I probably would have let my character sit for the next month knowing there was basically no point to raiding. At least this way I can slowly (or quickly, in some cases) accumulate some decent gear before the expansion without grinding out raid zones. Of course, our situation is a unique one in that we're far more experienced and dedicated than anyone else in greens, and we quickly found that gear was overrated (ugh, sorry for that).

3 days after the patch basically half of orgrimmar was walking around in r13 shoulders.it has become kind of a guild sport to find the person with the crappiest other items. think this one is the winner

http://i16.tinypic.com/2itl95d.jpg (sorry for messy compilation)

This disease of people who doest want to raid anymore is spreading like wildfire on our server.
We had to announce our break today and by now only a handful of guilds and communities still raid naxx.
A quick /who revealed 0 people in BWL and 0 people in Naxx on the day which normally has the most raiding activity.

It occured to me last night, and I was hoping for some feedback on this, but how did raiding change in EQ before the first expansion hit?

The reason I ask, is World of Warcraft, like all addictive hobbies has alot of similar game traits with slot machines and random games of chance.
Usually those who do quit very rarely return to the hobby simply due to the negative associations they form with their past behavioural patterns.

Gamblers show the same signs of addiction as raiders. I myself being a raider, sticking it up till 3 am have noticed this. I think alot of the raiders, upon buying TBC will realize this is the same game, with only bigger mobs and drop it within the first month of payment.

My question is: is world of warcraft going to take a permant decline in the raiding population ? Is this the end of 55+ man guilds ?

The reason I think so is that if there is no inventive to form a group beyond 30 players there is no reason for the largest guild to exist. Likewise, with smaller dungeons, with only a difficulty toggle to seperate the skill of players, is there even a raiding game in WoW? (aside from Doom Lord Kazzak?). If there is nothing other then claiming first kill, on a dungeon with only difficulty settings to provide future content, is there even incentive to form a frontier guild again, if all content is just recycled with two new abilities per boss?

If there is no incentive then, what's going to keep us all from sticking around, other then 'keeping up with the joneses', after we all beat the first 25 man raid ? A legendary mode to that same dungeon ?

The next 25-man raid? There's a forced encounter/gear progression through these things, and some of the population will just never ascend to those higher, more 'hardcore' tiers of raiding. What keeps them playing?

Obviously, every game reaches the point where it peaks/jumps the shark at some point.

...what?

Are you assuming that 25-man raids are going to all be like Z'G or something? That is not an assumption I would make.

I expect the Black Temple to be nothing less than Naxx v2.0, with fewer attendance issues.

Karazhan is a 10 man instance and thus far has boss encounters more varied and complex than most of the 40 man content we've had thus far. Assumptions that 25 man content will be watered down ZGesc clears are foolish.

See: Hakkar with 0 Aspects down?

And you guys who flip out losing in PvP are why MMO players have such negative stereotypes. I don't like losing in PvP by any means, but getting bent out of shape over it doesn't make sense. We lose the odd BG, but are we gonna say you can't bring your alt, even if the gear sucks? Are we gonna say you can't play because we need more healers? No, that's not fun and it engenders bad feelings. I have a job, a life and a raiding schedule that all give me plenty of stress and headaches. Why would I set myself up for more when I don't need to? Maybe you need to graduate college and get some perspective.

My 59 priest has far worse gear that than person and expects to do nothing but PvP once I hit 60.

I'll estimate how much honour I can rake in before BC and then decide whether to pick up the full blue set plus rep rewards, or whether I should go straight to the epics. Although if I decide to head for epics I'll make sure to turn off 'display helmet' and pick up the shoulders last :D

The idea of forcing blue -> purple progression is a good one.

Nearly all the level 70 5 mans are harder execution wise than ZG, with the exception of Dark Portal(which is really like 69) and maybe Shadow Labs.

So really, don't expect the raids to be a walk in the park at all.

Original Everquest (before the first expansion) did not really have much raid content. The 3rd expansion was where raids came to be the "main thing to do".

Also, there was no "raid group interface" or "instances" where you were limited to how many people you could bring. It was like having the green dragons from wow with as many people in the raid as you wanted :P Lots of racing other guilds and contesting spawns took place.