I've had something on my mind all night and I cant seem to find anyone who cares to listen to it, so i figured I'd just post it here and let people read at their own discretion.

I've been playing WoW for around 6 months now.
And one thing i will never understand is the desire of most members of the game to become hardcore elitist Raid members.
I just dont understand why people think Raids are so fun.
And they seem to have a difficult time understanding why i DONT think they are fun.
For those who dont know what a Raid is, its basically 10 or 25 people going through a massive lengthy dungeon with "difficult" bosses and sometimes incredible loot. I've only done a couple, but I've done enough to come to the following conclusions on why i dislike them...



First of all, i think the big raids currently in the game like Naxx or Ulduar, take away from the spirit of the game itself. It just takes the idea of fun and stomps all over it like its an inmate in a siberian prison during the cold war.

They are time consuming. This first and foremost. Not that the rest of the game ISNT time consuming, but Raids take SO MUCH time in one big giant chunk that you have a difficult time doing anything else with your evening.

The are unimaginitive and uninspired. Also kinda like the rest of the game, but at least i only have to deal with that part on a small scale if i want. In a Raid I'm pretty much stuck with it.

They subsitute strategy for cold-hard, stagnent, and rigid "fights" with bosses that fight in very particular ways that, once determined, are preyed upon by even the dumbest of gamers.
Its like if a squirrel left its nest at a very specific time of day everyday and got its food at a very specific location and went back to its nest at the exact same time everyday. Even the dumbest of predators could figure that out eventually and kill the poor thing. Add a respawn factor to the squirrel and the predators in question suddenly have their very own Raid boss by WoW standards.

They are full of elitist "cliques". Yes, the very same kind you tried to avoid in Highschool, they are back in full force (and about the same maturity level) in this game. I need not go into further description of this drawback because, well... we all went to Highschool at some point.

You need god-like gear to join most raid parties to GET the said god-like gear that you need to join.
Yes, that is as asinine as it sounds.
And I've actually had good luck lately in finding a better guild that wasnt as elitist nor did it really have the god-like gear policy, i will say that much.

They take away from creativity. I kinda covered this before with the rigid strategy aspect, but what i mean here really is that your methods of dealing with encounters is pretty much gonna go one of two ways.... You win by doing the one thing you're capable of doing, or you lose.
At least in most paper/pencil games (especially one in particular) i feel like i can mix it up a bit.
In Raids i feel as if I'm a drone, going through the mass production line and churning out dead mobs and dead bosses in my wake.


I'm sure I've got more reasons than this, but I'm tired and this is all i can think of at this point.
And I'm sure that anyone who read this at all has long ago stopped paying attention to what I'm saying.
So I'll just end with saying that i still very much enjoy WoW as a game. I just am underwhelmed by both the quality of its players and the creativity of the game designers sometimes.

And that... is the end of my rant.
Other than that I'm good btw! Life is peachy!

Until next time...