It’s really too bad that ‘gogogo’ culture has become so pervasive that it’s now taken for granted that players will sacrifice the most fun part of raiding in the name of progression…
which is not knowing what’s coming next.
In 20+ years of playing…almost every single one of my best memories in the game has come from fighting a raid boss for the first time blind. Not only does it yield the coolest moments (oh wow, the boss can do THAT???) but also some of the funniest (the entire raid getting simultaneously deleted) and the most clutch (managing to figure out the mechanics on the fly). Killing a raid boss on the first pull without knowing what it’s going to do is a megaflex in my book.
Because after all…you only get to fight the boss the first time…once.
And I’m really liking Manaforge Omega, I managed to bumble my way through normal without spoilers and that was pretty fun. But I started fooling around in heroic today, and managed to get in to groups for each of the first four bosses.
As part of my commitment to at least trying the bosses a few times for those amazingly cool / funny / clutch moments, I’d intentionally avoided any heroic videos. And although I had a vague idea of the boss’ abilities from normal, I didn’t know where the raid leader expected the boss to be positioned to handle it.
In each of the groups I was summoned in, given a pull timer, mis-positioned the boss, and kicked within 5 minutes.
Now was I trolling? Yes and No. I know that the modern expectation is that you know the fights before even attempting them. But also no, because I didn’t mis-represent myself at all and was in there doing my best to figure out the fight on the fly.
The raid leaders are also trolling their own raids, because instead of spending the five seconds to even ask if I know the fight, they’re literally taking it for granted that even though it’s week 1, I already know how they want things done. They’re creating 10 minute wipes for themselves because they’re too ‘gogogo’ for 15 seconds of friendly conversation.
Now the more evolved approach I should be taking is to create my own guild of like-minded individuals who go in there and do things blind for the first week for the fun of it. And for the next expac I may do that. But that’s also not practical as once I get AotC, I deactivate until the next tier, which is not what a guild leader should be doing.
Going in to more general terms, it is funny to take the expectation of Warcraft raiders to research all the fights ahead of time and put it in to other real life contexts. For example, would you ever go to a movie and expect that everyone in the theater had read the script first? Of course not, it totally defeats the point. And I’d argue it’s not that different from Warcraft, where people totally wreck their enjoyment of any plot twists and cool phase changes by knowing what’s going to happen ahead of time.
To stress again, it’s SO MUCH FUN when you don’t know what’s gonna happen and then all of a sudden you get the boss to 50% and the floor blows out and you start falling down to the next level, or three minutes in to the fight the boss turns in to a demon with a totally new set of abilities. That feeling is literally the best…unless you read about it on wowhead already…then it’s completely forgettable.
Another example of the “research the fights before trying them” mentality being out of place in reality…imagine colleges. How many people actually flip through their college textbooks before going to the first class? The whole point of going to the class is so the professor explains the material and you learn it. Same thing with Warcraft, players should go to the “class” first and Then go to wowhead and warcraft logs to check their mastery of the material.
The other problem is that the culture of researching everything ahead of time has undoubtedly changed the design of the fights themselves. The developers are obviously aware that everyone watches the strategy videos before attempting the fight, which destroys any incentive to try and ‘hide’ a cool phase change or secret phase.
So I write this unpopular opinion not really expecting much to change, but who knows maybe a few people that read this will decide…heh you know, maybe if it takes me an extra week to get AotC but I actually enjoy the journey 10x more, it’s worth it.