I jumped online last night to run an LFR with a twitter friend @mementh. He finally got this legendary daggers – GRATS!! and I wanted to see his wings 
So we did the second half of LFR with some friends of his and generally it went ok. Had some issues on Spine – I think the tank was new perhaps – he was just kiting the mob around everywhere – it was painful.
We wiped, but not after a load of abuse by a lot of people Poor guy should really read up about what he is going to attempt before walking in and thinking 24 people are not going to have a go at you for fucking it all up.
Whilst waiting for him to be ready, I remembered that there should be a pending realid request if I was any sort of lucky! THERE WAS!!! EEP!
Anyway I was far too excited to actually have another blogger added to my realid list, I feel so special that people even want to talk to me at all. I am sure they have many people waffling on to them all the time though, fielding like 300 whispers is probably not easy anyway.
I didn’t really do much else, it was late when I got home and then after cooking dinner etc, I really was just exhausted. But overall I had an absolutely fantastic night.
Things have changed a lot in seven years, not all of it is for the better. I remember when the drama involved in getting 40 people together on multiple nights to raid was a very, very big deal. Due to this raid etiquette developed, this was in many ways a good thing. I concede that often no one told you the rules which could make raiding a very elitist, and often Kafkaesque, club that it was impossible to break into.
Don’t get me wrong LFD was the best innovation the game ever received. I still tell people (or remind them) how long it took us to (fail) to put 5 man groups together to tackle Outland dungeons. Shadow Labyrinth was particularly unpopular for some reason, even if you had a tank…and a healer.
LFR has pushed back the boundaries of the game and made accessible an aspect of the game that had been very exclusive. 1% of gamers got to see Naxxramas 40 when it was current. 1%! I wonder what proportion of the player base will have seen Dragon Soul by the time MoP arrives?
There’s the rub…LFR isn’t a raid as I understand it. You don’t need a guild for starters, it doesn’t take (more than) three hours spread across multiple nights. You don’t need to enter the instance with even a rudimentary understanding of group roles, or even your job, even if you’re the tank! So the worst children and casual game players get to “raid”.
This isn’t being elitist. This isn’t the hardcore kicking back at the broadening of accessibility. When guild membership was a gate to raiding, bad, ill-prepared, childish and selfish raiders were filtered out and quickly shown the door. Raiding etiquette demanded you show respect for the other 24 people who gave up their time to raid with you. This respect extended to turning up on time, being repaired and prepared (with your own flasks and food) and NOT wasting peoples time. Imagine some way to filter out people who didn’t know their class, didn’t know the encounters, stole loot from you that they couldn’t use and were messing around spoiling your fun.
We used to have a filter, it was called ‘a guild’. That’s why LFR isn’t and can never be raiding. It only becomes raiding when you enter an encounter with your guild and the consequences for being lazy, selfish and bad are not being invited again.
Yeah your comment is basically my argument about smaller raid sizes etc, it seems people now feel entitled to raid spots and gear without ever needing to show some respect.
You are very eloquently putting my thoughts in one comment
coherently!