I assume by "lazy", you mean driven by simple economics, and by "ruin everything with their constant waffling", you mean make another billion dollars by accommodating several customer demographics ;->

old way: equivalent of Starbuck's brewing different pots of coffee for different sized cups (oh, you wanted a grande, I picked up the venti pot of coffee)

new way: hey, we can pour the *same* coffee into different sized cups!

I don't know how much more effort Sunwell was to design than Kara, but I'm sure on my server there were several thousand raiders who made it into Kara whereas pre-wrath, there were less than a hundred people spread across three guilds.

So take your pick: blizz is either giving us the same amount of content with fewer people on their dev team, or giving most of us more content to see with the "hard mode" gimmick. Either way, I expect as a casual raider to see more raid content sooner this expansion than during BC.

You're an idiot. You really think creating a raid with multiple modes of difficulty is easier than creating 2 or 3 different raids like SSC and BT? It seems like most reasonable players recognize this is a smart business decision for Blizz (making as much of the game accessible to as many of their subscribers as possible) as well as a satisfying approach for most players. I think the only ones who have a problem with it are the people whose sense of self-worth is tied to being able to say they were in one of the few guilds to clear Sunwell before the nerf. Other than being able to feel more leet than other players, what benefit is there to making certain raids available to only the most hardcore players.

Adding multiple modes of difficulty to these new raids is anything but lazy. If anything, it's probably harder than creating an entirely new encounter, because the balancing becomes even more precise and delicate when you increase difficulty, and finding interesting ways to vary an encounter is harder than just making up a new boss. You clearly have little to no concept of how much work goes into this game that we all enjoy. Creating these patches in the short amount of time it takes them is amazing--it's only people's annoyingly short attention span and impatience that makes it seem like they're not doing enough.

Wouldn't not caving in to whiners and QQ include not caving into your whining and QQ that raiding be hard without needing hard modes?

To say nothing of them not caving in to your QQ and whining about them not caving in to your QQ and whining by caving in to QQ and whining... but then that means they WOULD cave in to your QQ and whining... but that means they wouldn't... GAH, my brain hurts! The only way to avoid this paradox would be if Blizzard was a group of sapient beings capable of discriminately choosing what points made by their community they do and do not agree with - but surely that's crazy talk.

Right, because you deserve to see more content than me. I mean, really. My personal situation of not being able to spend as long as I want to on new content (due to school / work / transit between school or work and home) isn't enough of a punishment on its own, I should be punished for it, too.
Or maybe, just maybe, you should look at the attitude you have and wonder why you're that eliteist.
Yes, 25-mans should be harder than 10-mans. And they are; it is harder to get 25 together than it is to get 10 together. Should we not be allowed to raid because we don't have an extra 15 people that want to raid? or should we only be allowed to do the kiddie-mode stuff? Pelt Arthas with 25 teddy bears, and he'll give you loot!
The POINT of Wrath's 10/25 man raiding setup was that i can face thwe same challenges that you can, even though I don't have as many people. Also, that if you want to make it harder, you can.

I look forward to Ulduar dropping, and people complaining that it is too hard; Especially looking forward to people QQing about how hard the vehicle combat is. That will make my day, because it's going to be some of the same people who QQ'd about Nax-25 being too easy.

gizmo,

deserve doesn't come into it. Why should you be able to defeat all of the raid bosses in the game with little effort and time? Should you be able to clear Uldaur in 1 hour? 2? At what point does accessibility become so easy that it's pointless?

Like many people you seem to feel that simply buying the game gives you the right to see all of the content. That's not true, not should it be. The game plus your monthly subscription gives you ACCESS and OPPORTUNITY. Nothing more. You don't have any *right* to hit 71 much less see Arthas.

Blizz did a great thing by making 10 person raids for everything. If you care at all about seeing the raids you can fine 9 other people and spend a couple of nights a week working at it. Can't spend 2 nights? Really? How did you hit 80 then? Maybe you can spend several nights, but only an hour or so per night? That's not going to work for most raids - but it's YOUR choice to arrange you life in such a way. It's absolutely fine to do that of course... but to expect the entire game to be designed to accommodate your choices seems.... arrogant.

Shame you're in the minority, and it's better business sense to cater to the majority, the casuals.

My pity for you knows no beginning.

Casual raiding is doable but requires more focus. Everyone needs to show up on time, get in, know the strats, down the boss. Well, let me back it up by saying casual raiding to me is raiding a few hours a week. My guild does naxx10 for...4 hrs a week? Or something like that. They have the spider quarter down, and working on plague. They start every week with the stuff they can farm, and then get into new content, try it a few times, and by then usually raid time is over. It's just a time management philosophy, that's all. To me this is harder than saying be on every night for four hours.

But yeah i totally agree if raids are not designed for casual gamers, they aren't at all. It just requires too much focus and coordination to get 10 or 25 ppl online at the same time, preped, know the bosses, etc.

With a little effort, everyone can play baseball. That doesn't mean the Major Leagues are now worthless.

"You really think creating a raid with multiple modes of difficulty is easier than creating 2 or 3 different raids like SSC and BT?"

Umm ... yes?

The "hard modes" are just arbitrary challenges: do this fight without doing the things that you would normally do to beat this fight. Do this fight faster. Do this fight without anybody dying.

They don't have to work to balance them, because a challenge is just a challenge. There's no extra programming involved, no extra graphics to design, no actual extra *content*.

To put it another way, **every single instance in the game** has multiple modes of "difficulty". You can run with five men, four, three, two or one. You can go in at low level or high level. You can take it slowly, marking and following kill order, or you can run through like idiots. It doesn't take any effort on Blizzard's part to include these "options". They're implicit in the way the game works. "Hard Modes" just codify it a bit.