For those curious to how much of a time investment it is for a player that doesn’t have top end gear or connections I kept tabs on how long each process took. This is so I can get the kitty of course.
I did this on my WW Monk. 4 tiers, 2 legs, relatively meta, and ilvl 260s.
These are approximations because I wasn’t keeping perfect tabs but I promise you they are close, I used a timer app: 1 hours 45 minutes in LFG 2 hours and 45 minutes on failed PUGs, single boss, etc. A lot of waiting in raid prior. 3 hours and 5 minutes on my successful group Full Clear
A grand total of 7.5 hours across the span of 2 days.
I’d argue I got lucky with my last group. They were more coordinated than the average guild group and the leader/tank was really solid. You know who you are! Much love!
If a raid carry costs 200k (per ads in trade last night) and a token is 200k for 20$, carry the one, order pie… eucalyptus roots or something… Basically your time was worth 3.33$ an hour.
They also stated they spent a lot of time standing around waiting, which, while fun is subjective I highly doubt anybody is trying to argue that is fun.
Good for op though, I’m not disparaging him at all, just doing napkin math for people who may not enjoy the whole pugging a raid experience then they can evaluate if it’s worth their time to do or not.
Most of the experience was neither fun or ‘friendly’ as Blizzard seemed to suggest. However, my last group was fun and friendly. Again, I’d argue I got extremely lucky with this group. There may be something to day-time raiding. My work hours are usually during the evening so that worked out.
Getting a good group is one thing but maintaining it for a full clear has been very rare in my experience.
Oh I also forgot to mention I made the group myself once I had the time to manage a raid. But I did pass leadership to the tank.
Again, not disparaging you, congrats on your accomplishment it is genuinely good to conquer the content and hope you made some friends along the way, my post was just a opportunity cost analysis since you posted times.
Raiding certainly CAN be fun. But the problem is LFG is in a very sad state with gate-keepers even gate-keeping NORMAL difficulty.
I know people will just respond: Make Your Own Group. And honestly, you should, but it doesn’t change the fact that just getting a Normal raid started for a player like myself is far more time consuming than they realize. And unless a person has straight up hours to put aside in their life schedule: You cannot do it.
The streamer-who-must-not-be-named did an interesting video recently comparing wow raiding to that of more modern games, with a pie chart showing how much time was spent on boss fights and how much on other things that had nothing to do with the actual boss fight, like putting together a group, moving from point a to point b, running back, running out to resummon, killing valueless trash that has no rp value, etc.
Wow raiding wastes more than half your time on activities that have nothing to do with killing bosses. He attributed both the outrage about the change to the achievement and wow’s dropping raid participation on time-wasting mechanics that are designed to bloat the time you spend doing the thing you actually wanted to do. These are why people who used to raid have quit guild raiding, and why many people nowadays prefer to do LFR.
He also acknowledged that there are players who take pride in how much time wasting they put up with.
Yeah that sounds interesting I’ll have to check it out. I don’t think Blizzard can expect Raiding to continue like this if they want newer people to join in on it.
There is no doubt wonderful experiences and friendships of socializing that have occurred during these dead hours of ‘raiding’. But those are the experiences of the yesteryears.
In Retail now you feel very isolated, and when you do get a chance to join a raid it’s just not quite the same.
