Originally Posted by
Zellviren
I think this is where Blizzard really do have a lot to answer for, because this type of comment is symptomatic of the way the community is now (I'm not getting at you, by the way).
The community, for those of us who played WotLK, was much better during those days and particularly from a server standpoint. In Cataclysm, Blizzard pretty much hammered the raiding model that had worked and fostered communities to a point, and then chose to blame the community itself for those changes; alas, it's gone on ever since.
Why did they make such difficult five-man heroics?
"Many of our players didn't enjoy the easy five-mans in Wrath".
Why did they make the gear catch-up so generous?
"Many of our non-raiders don't want stuck to one toon".
Now these are paraphrases of course, but one argument is blaming the top end raiding community that provides a bit of realm gravitas, while the other argument blames the casual players that make servers thrive. Take a look back over the blue commentary from Cataclysm onward, and even into MoP, and you'll see what I'm talking about. At every turn, one group of players is blamed for inflicting woes on another and the result is that a community that used to essentially support itself ended up turning on itself.
And, no.
I personally don't believe that players who don't gem, enchant or bother to learn to play their class at all should be clearing normal modes. Getting through the first quarter is pretty reasonable if there are better players willing to carry their chums, but any further and I reckon players should start to shape up a bit.