Why are there so many raiding styles?

[Giscoicus]

Where to start based on difficulty/progression path and level of rewards:

Heroic 5m dungeons and Normal Scenarios --> Mogu'Shan Vaults LFR --> Heart of Fear and Terrace of Endless Spring LFR --> Normal MSV --> Normal HoF and ToES --> Heroic MSV --> Heroic HoF and ToES --> Heroic Scenarios and Throne of Thunder LFR --> Normal ToT --> Siege of Orgrimmar LFR --> Heroic ToT --> SoO Flexible --> SoO Normal --> SoO Heroic

Bolded content is your gearing path. Non-bolded content can be skipped. Italicized content should be ignored, as the difficulty-reward tradeoff is not efficient unless you can get run-through. Going to the Timeless Isle at level 90 can also allow you to bypass everything before Siege of Orgrimmar LFR, in theory. I highly recommend looking up a guide to the Timeless Isle.

I think that's about right, anyone can feel free to correct me.

Challenge Modes give cosmetic rewards and are not part of the normal gearing or progression path, and are actually pretty different from raiding.

Made an edit.

Everything below ToT LFR is useless at this point. The time spent, especially if doing it with people of similar gear level is not worth the hassle.

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It's not about being lazy, it's about not throwing huge amounts money in stuff that will be used by a very small percentage of the playerbase. Spreading the costs on a large playerbase is, on the other hand, perfectly defensible.

The issue with that is that content for the majority of the playerbase is very short and consumed quickly.

Raids last for a long time because people do progression raiding. Many hours are spent to clear a raid just once on normal, let alone heroic. Content for the majority is designed to be cleared in no time because the majority plays half an hour a week and have the attention span of a fly.

Its hardly defensible to design content that doesnt have a long shelf life over something that can last for months. LFR is cleared in a day once all wings are unlocked, and that is not even by the best, but by EVERYBODY. When a new wing goes live, just staying in the group for determination stacks promises the wing will be completed. Content that is, and this is generous, about 10 hours of time played is worthless, especially when it is used over content offering easily 10x that, over months.

[Maniac2]

Interesting how every thread about any subject ends with LFR debate.

[Giscoicus]

Interesting how every thread about any subject ends with LFR debate.

LFR is darastically different from any other raid mode.

personally I wouldnt mind all raid modes being condensed down to 20 man and 1 difficulty, where semi-good raiding guilds would get about part way, bad raiders maybe a boss or two in, and great raiders through everything.

Boss kills dont feel special when you know either 1) there is a higher difficulty of this, so big whoop 2)everybody has killed this boss before, nothing special or 3)I already killed this boss on 3 other difficulties its not an amazing feeling

the only time boss kills feel rewarding anymore is when its a boss thats a real challenge for a lot of players, something like Heroic Animus, most bosses dont feel special anymore and flex,normal,heroic and LFR are all contributing to that. 1 mode, raiding, you should hope for some progression but not a full clear if you arent great.

[Deleted]

Essentially because blizzard is too lazy to create different raids for different difficulty levels.

Blizzard used to have passion for the game, when wow had multiple different raids instead of 1-3 raids.

Blizzard is creating more content now, by a stretch, then there where in Wotlk. Spoiled brat is spoiled brat.

When exactly is there 1-3 raids? (1-3 implies that there is either 1. 2 or 3 raids. So tell me, when).

Challenge modes are not raiding.

So you have 10 or 25 players(like in wrath) you have normal and hc(like in wrath) and then you have LFR(entry level raid for people who dont know how to play their class, or wants to gear up alts), and flex(bit easier then normal, but not as braindead as lfr, for people who arent quite ready for normal, or want to gear alts).

Its not really that confusing if you spendt 2,5 minutes reading up on it. Also in 6.0 there will be LFR. Normal and hc(these scale between 10 and 25 ppl) and mythic(this is for 20 people only)

[MetroStratics]

Next expansion will have 17 bosses in one tier, and will have 4 different difficulties.
Which part of 17 bosses makes you think they aren't putting effort in the PVE content.

[xcess]

Haha its content because they just changed the numbers around ? So if they made 10 difficulties that would be more content ? Cos I dont see the point of Flex-Flex and normal-flex in WOD

[Lighto73]

Welcome back

Dungeons which you were familiar with now have 3 "levels":

normal < heroic < challenge

Normals and heroics work the same that the ones you used to know.
Challenge is completely new type which doesn't offer ANY gear. It was introduced to allow people who like hard dungeons compete with each other by timed runs. Most people don't bother with it cause they offer no actual rewards.


Raids that you were used to now have 4 "levels":

LFR < Flexible < Normal < Heroic

LFR is not "real" raiding, it was introduced only to allow people who can't commit do scheduled raiding to see the content. Don't expect any challenge from it. It's just go-kill_boss-get_loot machine.

Normals and heroics work the same that they used to in wotlk. The only difference is that 25 man versions now drop the same ilvl as 10 man versions.

Flexible is completely new mode, on similar difficulty level as WotLK Naxxramas. (yeah, MoP normal mode is a bit harded than WotLK normal mode). It's main feature is no fixed raid size. You can bring any number of people from 10 to 25 and bosses will scale to the size of your group.
Most people focus on 2 of the raid "levels": either do flexible and aim for normals, or do normals and aim for heroic.


Scenarios on the other hand are completely new feature that is not connected in any way to raids or dungeons. They are basically 3-man dungeons with no fixed group roles (tank/healer etc.). You also complete them by following objectives rather than simply killing stuff.

This is a very nice and easy summary.

[Meillquei]

There are so many different raiding styles because their are so many different playing styles.
Rafoel's post pretty much summed it up.

[Plutarch78]

Essentially because blizzard is too lazy to create different raids for different difficulty levels.

Blizzard used to have passion for the game, when wow had multiple different raids instead of 1-3 raids.

You do realize how many hours a developer from Blizzard works on a weekly basis, right? I'll give you a hint: it sure as hell ain't 40 hours. Can we stop with the "lazy" bullshit already.

[arcaneshot]

Blizzard is creating more content now, by a stretch, then there where in Wotlk. Spoiled brat is spoiled brat.

When exactly is there 1-3 raids? (1-3 implies that there is either 1. 2 or 3 raids. So tell me, when).

He's probably thinking back during BC when a good number of raiders were stuck raiding Karazhan the entire expansion.