This is exactly what I was thinking.

Sure bring them back but how about they are for *gasp* FUN. Wouldn't that be crazy to have something in the game that was 100% based on doing it for fun and possibly a useless achievement I guess would be ok.

This is something that I have always felt was lacking in wow. I would also like to see some open dungeons that had insanely hard bosses to kill. I miss the days of DAoC and taking 100 of your closes friends to kill a big bad dragon. Even the world bosses in WoW don't feel as epic as the crazy open dungeons of DAoC.

Maybe open up all raids to have a 40 man option. instead of Heroic mode set it to "practice" mode, no drops ofcourse....

This way round you can take any amount of players you like 1-40 to just mess about with a surplus of healers.... like a training aid.... I don't imagine anyone would use it really... I'd like to balance the no drops with inconsequential deaths and so as to not make it an easy way to see end content scripted events be removed and mob models get replaced with target dummies or clowns or something but meh..... I also kinda think it's pointless so i'll be quiet...

The problem with bringing 40 man raids back for the "fun" was that they weren't fun. They were tedious organizational nightmares with little payoff for any individual member of the raid relative to the problems putting them together. Running them was prestigous precisely BECAUSE they were such a pain in the butt to put together.

When people want difficulty and challenge, they aren't looking for micromanagement and babysitting 39 other players. Few people calling for more difficulty are hoping that they'll get to try to organize joint runs with other guilds. What people asking for more difficulty want is to actually play WoW, and do so at a level that matches their own abilities.

You don't need more people in order to introduce difficulty. A five man dungeon can be designed for people in tier eight gear, if that's the choice the developers make (and I'd support endgame small-groups, instead of raids). In fact, smaller groups can be designed to be MORE difficult than raids simply because the added difficulty in organization doesn't need to be factored into the encounters. And, as people fighting Sartharion with three drakes can attest, smaller groups mean that there is more responsibility for each individual member with less leeway.

Collecting people and babysitting them, making sure others bring their own foods and potions and gear and show up on time, that's time wasted from my perspective. Good riddance to large groups, they burned me out of the game once, and I was never sad to see them go.

As a guild officer and a class leader with plenty of pre-BC raiding under my belt, 40-mans were a freakin nightmare that need never return to the game. You spend 2/3 of the time "raiding" trying to sort out everyone and task everyone and the remaining 1/3 trying to wait for all the ADD knuckleheads that went AFK during all the waiting, then to top that off, mobs would only drop 2-3 items, to split among 40 people, you think loot drama is bad now.....