They still are, even if the 20-man format didn’t aged well, mythic raid are the only way to get multiples mythic track gear in a week.
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All pillars should provide the same end rewards. What they should differ at is speed and efficiency.
Raids should be at the top of efficiency, and not just by a little.
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Guess what they’re doing in Midnight?
They’re getting desperate, I suppose.
I don’t think they are desperate but the Voidspire raid with six bosses is still pretty sizable. I was thinking more along the lines of raids that are 1-4 bosses in size at most.
Lets not forget that blizz kept on buffing the bosses every expansion.
Look at wrath raids participations and now.
Heroic wrath raids and mythic nowaday raids are two different difficulties.
The harder they get less people will play them.
The % is still the same. You never compare total numbers when it comes to participation.
On top of that the playerbase got way better. The most casual player can kill LK 25 heroic on classic. The fight was never difficult.
If anything, they are returning to what used to be the norm. We have had smaller raids in the past, in fact for almost every expansion before Shadowlands: Onyxia in Classic, Magtheridon and Gruul in TBC, Obsidian and Ruby Sanctums in WotLK together with Vault of Archavon and Eye of Eternity, Throne of the 4 Winds in Cataclysm together with that raid boss in Baradin’s Hold etc.
WoD, SL, DF and TWW have been the only expansions without mini-raids.
They have significantly reduced the amount of bosses they design for raids over the years, but especially since Shadowlands. Simply check the amount of raid bosses inside instances per expansion (Of course there is the argument that a single boss in the latest exapansion has more mechanics than entire raids used to have in the past):
Classic 50+, 100+ if we also count instances like BRD and Strat as raids.
TBC: 51?
WotLK: 49?
Cata: 31
MoP: 43
WoD: 30
Legion: 40
BFA: 39
SL: 31
DF: 26
TWW: 24
My argument is that since they have reduced the number of bosses, they had decided to cull the short raids in favour of the long ones; after all the most memorable raids in terms of lore are usually the longer ones (Naxx, Kara, Ulduar and ICC, SoO, HFC, Antorus, Nyalotha etc.), noone says “Dude, Vault of Archavon had great design”. And as we have said in the past, this isn’t ideal because short raids were favoured by the playerbase.
The ideal situation in my opinion, if they have to remain to 8 bosses per tier as it seems, is to have two raids of 6+2 since solo-boss raids will feel like world bosses.
-=EDIT=-
Actually you know what, screw World Bosses. Delete their World Quests and relocate the bosses inside short raids to save resources and also possibly reduce lag, and give a weekly quest to defeat at least 1 raid boss on any difficulty.
I don’t really play PVE content but IMO raid is the reason why wow is a “World” instead of dungeon simulator
Removing it in the future will make the game much less immersive, even though this veil had been wearing off since legion
Fine with that but do something about the amount of time required to raid i dont want to spend entire season being indebted to guild being forced to raid as if its my job, i only care about the kills and maybe 2 or 3 items at most, after that i only care about pushing keys.
And this is exactly why i do not raid, its to time consuming, i should be able to pug it but nope they have to make it in such way that you cannot for atleast until leaderboards are full, at that point whats the point at all.
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I’d say that M+ has taken over as the main pillar for PVE content.
Raids are a once a week thing for most that do them unless they progress onto the next raid level whereas m+ can be repeated many times more over a week.
But you can do this right now. Heroic raids are free af.
I Hope you aren’t referring to mythic raids.
Short answer: yes
Long answer: Raids have contributed to create the pop colture about the game. When you talk with an ex player you end up talking about them.
I have the opinion that the decline as a gameplay loop has been due on how challeging they have been pushed to and im happy the developers have the decided to stop this “arm wrestle” on making more and more challenging.
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I don’t quite understand this bit, raids are dungeons, albeit bigger, TBH, what makes WoW a “world” is, well, the world, not the sealed-off instances, another point: Raidloggers, much world, such wow…
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Raids are very cool conceptually, but for me dungeoneering with a small party of 3-5 people is pretty much the quintessential fantasy trope, like everything from dungeons and dragons, books like lord of the rings with a small party of friends, and even in wow with mythic plus being vastly more popular than raiding. Dungeon running is just so core to the idea of the fantasy genre i do think it should be the primary focus of pve
Raids will be always and forever main content of game , they r tided to lore aswell end of one chapter of story. But issue is people dont want to do them most of time because lil effort they need to give in order to do raids.
Most of this players who refusing to raid still live in Vanilla with 20 warriors in a raid , bosses lasting max 1min and raid overall 20 to 30min.
But they do forget even in Vanila if u did not had gear, consumables or hands to play this game u would end up in demon raid of more than 1.5h until people would start leaving. So its not about raid dificulty how much is about mindset of every player.
No, it’s just a dull bossrush with one-shot mechanics on every corner.
In LFR format of a few bosses at a time, sure.
Not sure anyone has the time left in their day to commit to traditional raiding as a working adult. Then there’s M+ ; a radioactive form of content I would sooner see removed from the game.
Delves are great but a bit boring.
So…idk 
Raiding for me is what has kept me playing non stop since Wrath, but now it feels like its out of reach because of what it requires to be able to do it. I enjoy Mythic Raiding and the challenge, and i can do 2 or 3 nights as ive got a fixed work schedule. But its the maintenance that comes with it, grinding mats or gold for consumbles, doing reps for augment runes, maxxing 2 or 3 slots for your vault(which could easy be another 3 or 4hrs a week and thats time i dont have. Back years ago, raiding was just raiding. You geared up in heriocs hit the ilvl your guild set as a target and away you went, was no weekly grinds, apart from having your consumbles. That made the game more accessible to everyone.
Its great having Delves and M+, gives people challenging content who cant play fixed nights or dont want to raid. But it has to be introduced in a way where it doesnt become a requirement to something else, ie raiding. Thats when it becomes more than it should be.
Much like the arguement of addons, raiding has become less popular because of the requirement in the amount of addons you have to use to do the most challenging content.
People blame Blizzard so much for problems with content, when really is the player creating the problems, by wanting to simplify the games difficulty with addons, but when Blizzard want to remove them to simplify it, the arguements begin.
Im all for them making the game back what it was, a game, you log in you play the game as the game was designed to be play as. The challenge will always be there, you dont need an addon to beat the game. Or every game would have addons.
Yes i am and i do not want to spend months being indebted to a guild, also why would i even consider pugging heroic i can get about same gear from delves just not the trinkets.
You should 100% not be able to pug more than 4/8 mythic bosses.
Its content for the guilds and skilled people, not everything has to be available for everyone. You dont want to join a guild, have a good time socializing? Thats on you.
But on the flipside you want to be able to pug mythic? You can run m+ and get the same gear that mythic raids drop…just a bit slower 