It's news because the lead community manager made an announcement in a forum post that it is the intended design is for old raid to be puggable and easy (or at least possible) for casual wow'ers to see and complete the content. (Thus ending speculation for blizzard's intentions in nerfing t11 normals.)

It's also news because it states a new and better direction they're intending, at least for those of us who aren't hardcore raiders.

If you've got toons at the endgame but aren't skilled enough to be in an aggressive raid guild, or just don't have the time to get geared up when the content is brand new, you can still see the content you've been hearing about.

Still wish they'd put previous expansion raids on a cross-server raid finder for lower level players, so that people who know they have time for a long run and don't care about the gear can get one. Sure would like to see BT, Sunwell, even Icecrown on my leveling toons.

Stop perpetuating the ridiculous "casual vs hardcore" divide.

Raiding for 2-3 hours a time, two nights a week, I saw all T11 normal raid content except Throne of the Four Winds. And my guild is ranked ~150th on the server*. Spending less time raiding then what the average person spends watching TV is not "hardcore" and I am glad Bashiok pointed that out.

The reason T11 has been "unpuggable" is because it relies on DPS to do a lot more then they previously had to do (like interrupts). And what you get in PUGs is normally a whole lot of bad DPS.

* And is "casual" in attitude. No raider/backup divide. No loot system that heavily rewards those who attend the most. If you want to raid only 2 hours out of a month you can do that in our guild. We also don't skill check people on the assumption they will get better as they play.

@theraptor

Being able to raid two to three hours twice a week or not is basically the defining point of casual vs hardcore. I am more than capable of raiding. What I am not able to do is allocate scheduled three hour blocks twice a week. This is why I am a casual and not hardcore. I certainly play more than six hours most weeks but not in scheduleable blocks.

The interesting thing about this of course is that there is no such thing as a casual raiding guild just different degrees of hardcore ones. Having firmly scheduled appointments and written rules in a game is hardcore and not having them when you need them just leads to drama.

Almost anyone with the ability to make it to level cap could learn to raid if they had the time, even back in Vanilla when bad class design and punishing mechanics made raiding much less accessible.


The thing that ma

"The interesting thing about this of course is that there is no such thing as a casual raiding guild just different degrees of hardcore ones. Having firmly scheduled appointments and written rules in a game is hardcore and not having them when you need them just leads to drama."

Hmm, I agree that there are varieties of hardcore, but there are also varieties of casual. My own raid guild does 2 nights a week, 3 hours a night. We managed to clear all of the normal BoT/BWD/Throne content just before Firelands hit. We really do NOT feel "hardcore." I guess from your viewpoint we are, but from our viewpoint we're not. We take it easy, we have fun, but yeah, we have two scheduled raids.

I still don't think it's that bizzare an idea. Tons of people schedule time to practice/play baseball, basketball, football and whatever else in organized teams. They schedule at least one practice and one game a week, usually more. Why's it so odd/hard to schedule a pair of 3-hour blocks to play video games? Just the stigma that "video games r bad, sports r gud"? If it's just that you have no time to schedule, well, anything, then that is understandable.

Overall, I just HATE the "casual vs hardcore" mantra. It frustrates me to no end that the community tries to divide itself into two camps when there are so many more varieties than that.