I detest modes. Raids should be difficult, but not extremely hard.

 

One mode, for everyone.

This. A thousand times this.

Heavily stratified progression just kills a community. The hardest core content is only seen by a small minority of players. As people then lose interest, those same hardcore guilds have a hard time recruiting people because the commitment is so much higher than normal mode raiding.

One tier of difficulty for each raid. No raid that requires absolutely perfect tactics. A casual raiding guild should be able to clear all content within a reasonable amount of time (not immediately, but with practice).

You make it out as if those raids were impossible/ broken when they first came out - they were not. Those issues all got cleared up within the first few weeks (Vashj was not unkillable for months at all, all the issue was was that the green crap she spewed in her last phase was excessive to the point that the raid had to watch where they stepped and not rely on heals to survive - she was much easier than say Kael'thas who truly was a HARD boss to beat) of their release, they were diificult, but if you were organised, figured out the group mechanic and payed attention you beat them.

 

I did play for a successful raiding guild on Magtheridon EU but guilds all over Europe and NA were beating those bosses pre-nerf, not just mine. The attunement system was awesome (once they ironed out the issues) and created a real sense of achievement before you even entered the instances - a kind of epic quest line to allow you entry to the that raiding tier - usually culminating with obtaining items that dropped from the the last boss of the previous tier. The Kael'thas encounter was one of the most original and challenging fights I have experienced, taking us over two weeks to defeat and lasting for about 10-15 minutes - however the pay-off was incredible and made everyone feel like they had really achieved something.

 

The difficulty tiered system is merely a direct result of dumbing down content which not only ultimately killed competitive raiding on WoW but is also dumbing down variety within encounters themselves as all you do with diifculty modes it seems is ratchet up HPs and damage and lower enrage timers - it's just depressing and doesn't really give you much excitement about what may be next.

This x infinity

That's how it was when SSC and TK were initially released. Within a month, most of those changes were already made and the vast majority of people experiencing those dungeons never encountered. The same will be true for the problems in TORs current end game.

Exactly

So, in conclusion, NMM should drop better gear and be super hard?

Fine it should be super hard, but I thought hardcore raiders raided for "challenge" not for exclusivity or quality of gear.

If no one will run them because the gear drops are the same, then that's a telling factor that most of those "challenge seeking raiders" are just full of it, and just want the gear.

Same gear is fine. If you want challenge, go get your challenge, and take solace in the fact that you can do it. You don't need any gear differentiation to prove it if challenge is what you are really after.

Of course if that's just a load of bunk because you want better gear.....

Overall, the difficulty settings are kind of a "meh" response to the issue, but its the best solution in a world of bad ones. It gives the players the most power over their destiny. Locking people out of raids a la BC until they become obsolete is bad design. Giving different raids for different people doesn't avoid the issue either, and only causes more delineation to be drawn.

Overall, one raid mode for everyone with none of the "one person screws up, you all die" mechanics is probably my favorite solution to it all, but it's not everyone's most liked way.

havent done nightmare or a hard mode yet but i can see what your saying.

i only want to add that alot of the fights require the games rng system to be nice to you. take soa for example, we would burn him down to the second transition phase, he would mindtrap someone, so we burn down the mindtrap then burn him to 29 percent to go into the transition phase, and while he is invulnerable transitioning right before he drops the platform, he throws someone around the room, they die. probably cant complete it then unless you have over geared dps.

or third phase the first thing he does is mindtraps your tank, you miss a pyramid or whatever dropping, probably cant complete it then. its little things like that, that are really annoying in boss fights.

the secong thing about raiding is i dont see the point in tionese gear except to gear up your companions by running hard mode dungeons till your eyes bleed. hard modes drop columi gear, normal mode ops drop columi gear. i would llike to see a gear progression where tionese stuff drops from hard modes and normal ops, then hard mode ops drop columi gear then nightmare mode drops rakata gear. the way it is set up nightmare is no point to doing it, since the gear is the same, why go through all the added aggravation of trying to do something harder except to say to yourself you did it.

i like raiding, i like raiding in this game, but somethings i just dont understand why they did it this way and why have three levels of gear when the first one you will never really buy unless you just want it or get unless you just want it. no boss drops drops the tionese set pieces that i have noticed and it would take forever getting crystals and commendations to purchase a set of tionese gear when you could just get columi gear from the hardmodes.