What makes raid encounters "fun"?
An encounter becomes truely fun, regardless of the boss/instance/raid, when you are able to work with a tighly knit team of exceptional players that are similarly minded & where the challenge of working together well is greater than the motivation for loot. The loot comes; whereas, the great fun depends on the characters who makeup the team!
the team work needed for me makes any instance fun especially if u are slightly low lvl for it but manage to survive by the skin of your teeth :)), and certainly enjoying the new instances in outlands just a shame that MC etc have sort of come obsolete.
I would agree with the above comments and add a few things of my own.
Pre BC we decided to see how far we could go in Scholomance with 2 people. There was absolutely no reason for this other than fun. We then decided to clear it with 3 people, still for no reason other than to see if we can do it.
Pre BC - Chain pulling UBRS until you wipe with 5 people. Why? Who knows, but no matter how much Tier 2 you were wearing Chain Pulling UBRS was still hard with 5.
How few people could we kill Onyxia with? How few people could we clear MC with? These are all things we did to make the game fun after we had gotten burned out with Progression content and Nax was just too much of a drain for anybody to continuously do.
Raiding is awesome when you have a tight knit group of people and server firsts are great but sometimes you need to walk away from the raiding and just have a little bit of fun. So what if you are the 15th guild on your server to clear Kara, what sacrifices did you NOT make that the other raiding guilds had to make to get that server first? How many nub guilds haven't even got keyed yet? I guess it all depends on how you look at it.
I agree Eldredd. I too had a few guildmates that we tried doing crazy stuff with, using very low numbers, before TBC came out. It was pretty fun, even though we failed sometimes, because we were doing it for the sheer enjoyment of doing it, rather than for the rewards.
One thing I did when I hit 70, was I went back to Stratholme, just to see how much of it I could solo as a paladin. :P
Lets talk about the Deadmines time trials.. How quickly can a single level 70 do an entire Deadmines clear. I'm not talking about bosses, I am talking about killing every single MOB in the zone.
My wife is a Fire Mage - She won hands down. It was disgusting though I still can't help but laugh every time I hear the "Wuaarrgghhhhhaahhhhhhh!!!" every time a Defias Miner is killed.
I went to Un`Goro crater and hunted myself a Devilsaur Monday afternoon. It got me down to 97% and I was in Cat Form. Revenge is sooooo sweet.
BM is by far my favorite BC instance. I love the chain pull nature of the instance and the constant running from portal to portal. As a Druid Tank it really allows me to flex my versitility from pull to pull, switching forms, casting a few heals if need be and then Tanking the next Elite.
I wonder how many people it would take to chain pull MC? I wonder if you can 5 man the front section? I haven't been in there to try it, has anybody else? I know people are still going to nax for fun and STILL wiping at 70 in Kara level gear. How friggin insane is that?
What makes a raid fun for me is the idea of having to work as a group to achieve a common goal. The idea that the whole process depends on everyone doing their part and not just getting lucky because your raid for today is all twinks that are looking for loot. Nothing against the looters, but I'd rather wipe repeatedly knowing that everyone is progressing in learning the instance.
Also as much as I love guild runs....some of my best experiences have come in the form of PuG's. This way you have a chance not only to meet some really great people but you also get to see how different people play their characters; i.e.; there may be 3 mages but we all have our own style about playing. Being around this it gives me new ideas of how to play my character, as well as give me new combo possibilities.
In short, What makes a raid fun.....learning from the people around me and increasing my friend base is the ultimate in raid fun for me.
I think you may be using the word Twink incorrectly in there because to me a Twink is an IMBA 19/29/39 bg char, not anybody who would be doing raid content. When I was learning BWL I was glad we had a MT who was already in 1/2 Tier II and I would have never complained about him being slightly ahead of me on progression. I would have been very angry if people called me a "Looter" after my nth time healing Ony after I got my Moose Antlers, assisting so others could get their Tier II Helm.
I have met some great friends in PuG's but I still prefer guild/friend runs. My time to play is very limited some nights and I love having the "A" team kick it into gear and clear an instance in record time. I find the best way I meet new people is through friends who I meet their friends, who I meet their friends, on and on and on.
Quick Reply
You need to login or register to post comments.
Benefits of Registration
- Interact with hundreds of thousands of other gamers on an open social network.
- Post your stories, news, images, videos, and other content to share.
- Create a network with your fellow gamers or join an existing one.
- Gain reputation for everything you do.
- Thumbs Down
- Thumbs Up
- +1
KodyThere's an interesting thread going on over at the Elitist Jerks forum, asking the question "What makes raid encounters "fun"?, and I figured it would be a great topic to carry over to here.
For me personally, I enjoy encounters that really focus on player skill and execution, rather than randomness(though most encounters nowadays have some factor of randomness). Some examples of encounters I really enjoyed because player skill, above all else, really played into the success: C'Thun, Twin Emps, The Four Horsemen, Thaddius(this was a very random encounter, but it relied on player skill and reacting to changes to overcome it), Ossirian the Unscarred, and some older stuff like Majordomo Executus, Broodlord Lashlayer, Onyxia, and the three drakes. A lot of these encounters were about execution above all else, and while some of them weren't exactly difficult, they really shine in my memories as some of the more enjoyable encounters to date.
As for the stuff I didn't like? Well, Loatheb and Gruul are very much at the top of that list; not really because of randomness(though Gruul tossing you in a random direction can suck - you can still overcome that to some degree), but because of the sheer consumable requirements for those two encounters. I really disliked Huhuran, the Bug Trio, and Viscidus from AQ40; they just weren't fun encounters to me at all. Vaelastraz the Corrupt, in his second iteration(after they buffed him), was a really frustrating encounter to deal with, especially since you could have a string of three straight Burning Adrenaline's being placed on tanks. That's randomness you can't overcome, in any shape or form, and something they luckily fixed. Then you have Shazzrah in Molten Core... I can't really put my finger on it, but the encounter has never been fun, in any iteration of it you can think of.
So how about you guys? What makes an encounter fun for you? Don't be afraid to list stuff you don't like as well; feedback is a two-way street, it doesn't flow without both the good and the bad.