Raid idea/concept - simultaneous!

[Totle]

Sooo... the Thorim fight is awesome. I loved the idea of splitting into groups and accomplishing something and then coming together for the final task. Here's my raid idea:

2 simultaneous raids -

What do I mean by this? Let's say you're fighting Deathwing's forces as he lays siege on Ogrimmar or Stormwind (how come the enemies never take the offensive?) Well, he's breaking down your walls with his big catapults and his troops are rushing in to slaughter your women and rape your houses.

2 raids -

1) Go commando and infiltrate Deathwing's troops and take down the catapults. Boss fights, and maybe rather than fighting trash, you're suppose to try and avoid it (not all of it, just as a gimmick) until you get to the siege weapons you need to defeat.

2) Defend the breached wall - stop Deathwing's troops from advancing further into the city. Once it's secured, push the invading forces back - ride out to meet them to distract them from the group of adventurers climbing all over your siege weapons. Instance cleared once the (NPC) heroes successfully bring them down.

While these are two separate raids, they take place at the same time and are two different perspectives on the same battle. I think this kind of thing would make encounters and raids much more interesting and with a better grasp than "I went in and killed everyone even though the enemy has impossibly high numbers of troops." It adds realism and a sense of accomplishment from both perspectives

Think back to the Return of the King - no way would Frodo make it unless Aragorn distracted Sauron's forces. Moreover, no way would Aragorn have won had Frodo not destroyed the ring. This is the same kind of concept. Essentially, I am suggesting that raids be more interactive and my idea would provide a clearer understanding lore-wise why things happened.

Another example might in ICC - you have the given raid that goes up and fights the bosses, but then you have the alternate one where you lay siege on the citadel itself and keep the Lich King's forces occupied. You could say, "fine but with your idea, all raids are either - go inside and kill these people, or stay outside and do a Violet Hold like raid. BORING!" Not so, the possibilities are limitless - maybe instead of a boss, you need to fight your way through trash while protecting a squad of bomb carriers in order to blow a hole in the wall. Or maybe you need to utilize a siege weapon to blow down a ziggurat or destroy battlements harboring enemy archers.

TL;DR - 2 raids: the traditional one where you kill the head honchos, and the new one where you take down the honchos troops and generals, in order to (lore-wise) allow for the first raid to be available.

Thoughts?

[MskdEnigma]

I really enjoy this idea and using Thorim as the prime example is perfect. Then again I'm a big fan of fights where everyone has an important role, this could also increase the amount of tanks needed for raids thus increasing the amount of tanks there are in the game. Before I get flamed what I mean by that is that from personal experience lots of tanks I knew stopped tanking because there already were 2-3 tanks in the guild.

[Totle]

I'm not necessarily suggesting that this be the same raid where you split up the group (though that would be an interesting way of bringing back 40 mans). I'm talking that these would be two separate raids of the same event and based on completion, they would have an effect on each other -

Take my Deathwing/City example - Assume that you're taking down the siege weapons, but you haven't done the city defense raid that week. Naturally, you'd be faced with more trash mobs and heavier encounters.

Conversely - if you're doing the city defense first before taking down the siege weapons, then during the city defense raid, there's going to be like bombardments that you have to avoid similar to rimefang's cave (though not as frequently as the bombardments will be coming throughout the entire raid)

This way, which ever raid you pick first during the week, will be on a quasi-hardmode. Not impossible, but difficult in like Sarth 1D: it won't be as faceroll as Sarth, but it's not Fire Fighter.

[Sanctity]

One idea I had was for a CoT instance where you had to go in at different times which sometimes overlapped and you saw your past/future selves, not got the time to make anything of it sadly. The idea of having two raids for different parts of the "event" is an extention on winged dungeons and it's a good idea that could work well in the right cases.