I think that this ties in with my dislike for PuGs. I just came out of a Kara PuG tonight that took 6! hours. . . and we didn't even kill Prince or Netherspite. I don't like grouping up with people who really don't care about doing well themselves, as long as the group is good enough to get them their l33t 3p1x that they can show off.
I like the trend that Blizzard is heading toward with the 10-man raids. It means that every person's contribution matters four times as much as when Molten Core and Onyxia (and the old, er, current Naxx!) were the big things to be doing. But while my contribution is more than it used to be in a raid, that also means that the guy who's in full S3 but can still only put out 400 dps also has his contribution amplified by 4 times what it used to be.
I would very much like to play a game with my friends and family that is like World of Warcraft, without having to deal with all the idiots who populate its servers. The appeal of "private" servers is becoming greater every time I have to deal with some moron who either can't communicate in my language, or can't communicate well enough to assure me that they understand what I want them to do in a particular fight.
I know that this is supposed to be a Massively Multiplayer RPG, but sometimes more just isn't better. What I would like to see from a game is something where individual ability is appreciated more than the ability to wrangle a mass of people together and have them sit through something for 20-40 hours per week. My view of raiding might be severely skewed, but the only "raiding" guild I was in required 4 hours a night, 4 nights a week of raiding, and that you bring all your buff items with you (food, flasks, elixirs, potions, etc.). This meant that if I wanted to see endgame content, I had to first go out and farm for things that I wouldn't otherwise use and then I had to endure hours of what passed for progression that mostly consisted of everyone complaining about how so-and-so took too long, or was afk for something, or whatever. I only got about 3 or 4 hours of actual boss-killing and raiding out of the 16 that were required, and spend another 3 or 4 preparing myself for those. So 20 hours a week spent just to boast(?) that I had seen MH and BT.
In a sense, I like the approach that Blizzard had when World of Warcraft was first released and only 5% (or whatever) of the population of the server saw the inside of Naxxramas. Make the encounters difficult. Make the skill of the player count. Make it even more worth it to hone your tradeskills to max level, and get the rare plans/schematics/recipes/formulas/designs/patterns. That way, when someone says "I have full T9" it actually means that they're good, not that they got into a good guild.
Unfortunately, this is a two-edged sword. It means that to get these awesome items that I want, I have to be good at what I do. Not only do I have to be good, but the friends and family that I play with (who range from the equivalent of a 10-year-old girl gamer to the really cool father of a friend who really doesn't know that much about gaming) also have to be good. And for them, being that good at a game just isn't fun; it's work.
Anyway, maybe I'll put down the keyboard (for gaming! I still need it to publish my inner secrets about life, the universe, and everything) and take up cribbage instead. At the very least it'll help me build tighter relationships with people that I currently forsake to kill demons and alien orcs.
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