I think this really depends on the quality of your group. I'm not saying at all that better groups chain pull and worse ones don't, but that better groups know when to chain pull and when not to. As a tank and/or raid leader, you have to find the right balance of speed and safety. Too fast, and yes, the raid can wipe. Too slow and it gets tedious. We've all been in groups with the leader who feels the need to explain what every single mob does before every single pull, makes sure everyone from the healers down to the warlocks has exactly 100% mana, and does a ready check each time. Those are the groups that spend four hours getting to Opera vs spending four hours getting to Prince, for example. Wiping isn't fun, but neither is falling asleep waiting for the pull.

While our guild is famous for wiping on trash and one-shotting bosses, we chain pull in a number of situations. The fact that we do so made the Hyjal waves easily bearable.

Having a good pulling rhythm, allowing some people to sit & drink, cycling our crowd control, gives a special feel to our operations. More than once, we have taken somebody on a trial run, and gone into chain pulling mode. At the end of the run, the trial ended up by telling us, "I love you guys."

Chain pulling is what separates the talented people from the people who are better off not really raiding at all honestly. There's absolutely no reason a group (especially a 25-man) can't be able to chain pull any instance unless the trash pulls REALLY require everyone to be at full mana before starting it. Most don't.

More often than not, people will do their "Afk 5 min" or "brb" nonsense when people start drinking and stop pulling. They look at it as a good excuse to leave everyone hanging for a while, even though drinking only takes 30 seconds at most. Any time you can chop someone's excuse to get distracted, you're doing a good thing. Most people in this game seem to have the attention span of a cat. Give them an excuse to take their attention elsewhere and they will do it. Chain pulling gives most people no reason to think they're safe if they just decide to tab out and read a website for a couple mins or go to the bathroom despite being the only person out of 25 people who needs to do it.

A single 5 minute break every hour should work for most people. If everyone does it at once, it's a single disruption. If everyone does it whenever they feel like it, it's a cascaded disruption that affects everyone in a much more significant way.

Your raid leader and/or tanks should be able to pay enough attention to the mana of the rest of the raid and pull appropriately. It might be tricky for a week or so while people get used to the idea that a 4hr raid only needs to take 2hrs, but once you get the hang of it, I really don't see any way people can ever play the slow way. Of course this requires you to have a group that's cleared the content together at least once or twice so nobody needs their hand held and everything explained to them.

You get better at it the more you practice it. I've got a group that clears Kara in 2.5hrs max. It didn't start that way, but once you know how the trash pulls go, it's not like you should need to stop and drink after every pull.

But i totally understand that it's not for everyone. I work with people who are no better at their job today than 3 years ago when they started, because they feel no need to improve themselves. I think most people appreciate playing with experience people who are confident enough to chain pull an instance though, and you really should try it out.

I play the game for fun too.

I do not find it fun if I dedicate my evening to a raid, and we dont get anywhere because others are not ready.

Wrong pet, wrong spec, wrong items, talking on phone, taking hours to get to the same spot, and not past it.

The is un-fun as it gets.

New content with my friends, the accomplishment, the laughter...that is fun. Even wiping while learning can be fun, if it is because of the learning curve, and not because someone cant remember to turn off their windows update.

Also, chain pulling helps create a climate of "not slacking"...and reduces all other time wasters (joking too much, whispering friends during combat, etc.).

We do not wipe while chain pulling, but we also have a rule of if the healing lead says "stop" we stop.