What makes a Great Raid?

[melodramocracy]

For me personally, it's a mix of fantastic setting, and quality of bosses over quantity. Most crowd favorite raids, IMO, have too many bosses. For me, somewhere around 8 is a great number.

[Jademist]

How it fits with the overall story and mechanics are what I like the best.

[ro9ue]

Aesthetic, atmosphere. I prefer cool looking stuff with good music. Karazhan, Black Temple, ICC, BoT and ToT. Those are my top 5.

As far as challenge and mechanics: Karazhan will always be the pinnacle of raiding for me. It had some challenge for casual players, but ultimately everyone could do it. It was an era when I raided with friends who I wanted to play with and not just people who were min/maxers because we had to get a job done.

The nice thing about Karazhan, is you could have a few people in your raid who didn't enchant their gear or grind out the max stuff, but if you had ~3 really solid players they could do some carrying. I was a resto shaman at the time, and my guild struggled with Nightbane and occasionally Malchezaar, but I felt like I contributed a lot more to the raid because of the more intimate size.

40 man was absolute shit. You could actually be raiding with people you never talked to. It's like working at big company where you don't know half the people. 25 man was a little better, but I will always feel 10 man is just the sweet spot.

[Cæli]

-Look and atmosphere is a big thing. For that matter AQ, Zul Gurub, Karazhan, Black Temple for instance excels at it
-Challenge
-Replayability : we should have a reason and still earn satisfaction by doing the raid once more powerful. Zul Gurub again and AQ were extremely good at it because of all the items you could get, the treasures, drops, tokens, collectibles, rare items ... felt good to play there. Newer raids ? They are mostly empty rooms if you remove the trash mobs/bosses. Those npcs that only drops purple gear that have little to no use once new content is released. A problem to fix here for future raid in the rewards department.

[Ahovv]

1) Epic, large environment, with several encounters having "moving parts" and massive phase transitions.

2) Mystique surrounding complex mechanics which are not spoiled by some in-game guide, and information not divulged prior to the release of the raid. Guilds must figure out mechanics on their own.

Those are the primary things which make for a great raiding experience. WoW lacks them.

[Nereia]

My favorite thing about raiding is that singular moment when everything clicks for your raid group. That moment that erases all the frustration of days or even weeks of wiping on a boss, and that which at one point had seemed impossible is now reality.

But as far as what makes a great raid? Tough but fair mechanics that force a group of individuals to act as a team.

But lets face it. Any raid is good with the right team. And any good raid is crap with the wrong team.

/sign

I like Karazhan (mostly for its music/atmosphere) and ICC e.g., but I wouldn't want to raid in a team full of people I don't like. For me my team mates are the most important aspect of raiding.

[theburned]

The art is really important, and having a fresh change of scenery every now and then, look at HFC every single fight feels like it's somewhat fel tainted, it just feels bad and like you are not really getting to experience something new, Nighthold looks very promising to me, a few indoor nightborne style fights, then a couple of fresh outside ones, then Krosus, while the boss might be a bit boring the scenery looks quite fresh, and then you have 1 fight which is fel scenery to remind you that legion is pulling the strings.

While emerald nightmare is just way too much red corruption all over the place, but the place you come to afterwards looks very cool, sadly there is little reason to stay there, perhaps mythic-only malfurion there O.o

[RedGamer030]

A "great raid" for me includes varied boss models, themes, and mechanics.
A "great raid night" for my guild is killing most of the bosses in the raid in a single night.