With the advent of the hardmode system, I have seen the path to progression now goes through Achievements but I was wondering if we will ever see a raid again that requires:

A. Attunement - Instead of marching through the front door and killing stuff, we have a series of quests to complete in a compelling storyline.

B. Crowd Control - Real CC, like the raid wipes if you break the sheep, etc. Think TK trash before Kael, most of SSC trash, BWL too for that matter.

C. More Linear Raids - Like MC, AQ40, BWL, where you feel like you are travelling through the instance and the end of it feels far away.

D. Separation of Gear - Raid gear vs Heroic gear. In Vanilla, there was no comparison. Now, this idea is nothing new and there is always the argument of elitism vs casual but the truth is that the reason a lot of people ran BWL back in the day was for the gear, not for the epeenery.

E. End Boss who takes several weeks to kill - Rather than the "world firsts" (and yes I quoted those words) of today, harken back to the days when the end boss was a real bad ass and it tooks weeks not hours to kill him.

The real question is: Is this type of raid extinct or can we be surprised with maybe one or two raids that really feel like the old days of raiding where there was a sense of accomplishment and challenge?

To those "hard mode" advocates: I have no problem with hard modes, I am just asking if we can see a dungeon that doesn't contain gimmicky hard modes.

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Q u o t e:
With the advent of the hardmode system, I have seen the path to progression now goes through Achievements but I was wondering if we will ever see a raid again that requires:

A. Attunement - Instead of marching through the front door and killing stuff, we have a series of quests to complete in a compelling storyline.

B. Crowd Control - Real CC, like the raid wipes if you break the sheep, etc. Think TK trash before Kael, most of SSC trash, BWL too for that matter.

C. More Linear Raids - Like MC, AQ40, BWL, where you feel like you are travelling through the instance and the end of it feels far away.

D. Separation of Gear - Raid gear vs Heroic gear. In Vanilla, there was no comparison. Now, this idea is nothing new and there is always the argument of elitism vs casual but the truth is that the reason a lot of people ran BWL back in the day was for the gear, not for the epeenery.

E. End Boss who takes several weeks to kill - Rather than the "world firsts" (and yes I quoted those words) of today, harken back to the days when the end boss was a real bad ass and it tooks weeks not hours to kill him.

The real question is: Is this type of raid extinct or can we be surprised with maybe one or two raids that really feel like the old days of raiding where there was a sense of accomplishment and challenge?

To those "hard mode" advocates: I have no problem with hard modes, I am just asking if we can see a dungeon that doesn't contain gimmicky hard modes.

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Based on the points you provided, probably not.

A. Attunements tended to cause more frustration than benefit so we have aimed to put the story parts into optional quests and allow players to have easier access to the dungeons. I don't remember when heading to Onyxia anybody being excited to help someone do the attunement again.

B. Crowd control could be around, but it also is linked with trash that people tend to complain about when there is a decent amount of it. Several packs in Ulduar have CC-able mobs, do you want to triple the number of trash packs and their difficulty to make the CC more valued?

C. I'm not sure I understand this one. There were a number of complaints over the boring linear part of the old dungeons, but we do want the dungeons to feel epic and I think a place like Ulduar accomplished that -- getting to Yogg doesn't feel like a short hop.

D. The gear tends to look similar as there is more of it and more people running raids now that they are more accessible. A lot of players only do things when there is a reward so it seems like a lot of people go where the gear goes.

E. I don't want to blabber on here, but bugs often had to do with the long kill times back then which we have avoided through better testing methods. Yogg-0 is still no easy feat though and that took quite awhile for even the top guilds in the world to pull off.

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Q u o t e:
A. Attunements have an impact on server stability as well. Luckily as in your example, the onyxia attunement is just as required as is grinding sons of hodir rep, which frankly is a larger time sink. Helm and leg enchants took all of 30 minuets in vanilla as well. Was onyxia THAT bad? Really, it's a single boss instance which required minimal effort if you just pugged a group together.

B. He could of easily been referring to raid CC, such as Naxx40 gothik or grand widow (all be it more of a snare).

C. I think he means a raid where you see a storyline progression as the instance goes along as you make your way through the nasty brain childs of Blizzards finest. Not: "Oh look an instance with wings, lets try the blue one first" ... Blackwing for example you moved through nefarions lair, and with the red shard quest were even on a time frame.

D. Ten achievement points don't cut it, sorry. From those I've talked to and massive threads on these forums, many hardcores and even average raiders such as myself are ok with puggable raids and gear spread around, but when the model is just some recolored repeat why bother? Not to be a broken record but the old tier at least had a look to it, which is the achievement. Not 10 Useless points.

E. Artificially difficult fights based on time restrictions like Algalon, or farming other hardmodes which give actual gear was a deterrent for lots looking at one light. Does a title help my guild progress more than a hardmode item off say freya 3?

Personally, I think the end bosses will never be so epic again due to the increase of skill. Blackwing days people were just starting to catch on to theorycrafting and now the big power guilds who take raiding seriously will speed through it, no question.

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A. I'm not sure when you started doing Onyxia but she was very difficult for quite awhile and it was never really fun to deal with the fairly consistent stream of people needing help with the attunement that they couldn't solo.

B. The examples given were for trash mobs so that's what I went on. Trash in encounters is a possibility, but the 10-player dungeons make that a little more difficult as it's hard to assume certain classes are available.

C. I don't see a storyline progression in your example. I could probably argue that there is more storyline progression in the Coliseum than BWL.

D. Just to focus on what the original post was, as much as we want there to be new models and such, we don't want there to be a huge gear gap that significantly prevents players from experiencing new content.

E. So instead of going straight to the thing that was most important you had to build up to it instead. I'm not saying this was perfect, but it also wasn't for everybody but it was a big challenge that was pretty much for only the high end players for a long time.

I do agree with your overall assessment though. Many players understand how the game works way better than before and are used to defeating encounters and not getting that feeling like they did when it happened for the first time - but that doesn't mean they aren't enjoying it still and enjoying the new challenges.