I did progression raiding for years in “World of Warcraft” (‘Burning Crusade’ and ‘Wrath of the Lich King eras, if you’re wondering), acting as Main Raid Healer, then Main Tank Healer. Not only did I grow to hate raiding during that time, I grew to hate WoW, because of the game’s overall culture. That said, there are still some positives about the activity, so without further ado, I give you…

5 Things I Love About Progression Raiding

1. The Challenge. As a well-known Filthy Casual™ when it comes to MMORPGs, one would think I hate anything that even resembles Raiding, but that’s not true. I actually really enjoyed raiding itself, especially when it came to the challenge it would present. Learning the fights, trying to overcome the, shall we say ineptitude of others in the group through just healing like an absolute beast, and so on… It was amazing fun, even if it would often leave me exhausted thereafter. Of course, we would raid for 8-12 hours at a time, so that is to be expected, I suppose.
2. The Cameraderie. Being in a Raiding Guild is something else! When everything is going well, these guilds are a great fraternity of players. Everyone helping each other, supporting each other, and working towards that common goal: Down the next boss!
3. The Community. Different from the camaraderie of a good Raiding Guild, there was also the Raiding community as a whole. My old guild tended to do 10-man raids, so I needed to look to the raiding community for doing 25-man raids. Or, more to the point, they would scream for a competent Healer to fill out their ranks, and I would step up to that challenge. My gear certainly wasn’t up to doing the cutting edge 25-mans most of the time, mind you, but I was able to step up and do secondary healing duty in many other big raids, and accorded myself rather well, actually. In fact, before I left “World of Warcraft”, I had some 25-man raiding guilds seek me out, if they had an open Healer slot, which was pretty cool!
4. The Competition. Now here’s the thing: I don’t know how it is now, with the current raiding community, but there was always a mostly-friendly competition between raiding guilds. The best-of-the-best competed over World Firsts, or Server Firsts, and the rest of us competed over lesser Raid Stats. Mostly that meant how many bosses we had downed in a particular raid, compared to another guild, but it could even come down to prancing around Orgrimmar in our complete tier sets, showing off rare mounts earned through raid rewards, and the like. It was good fun, and a nice way to pass the time between raiding sessions.
5. The Choice Loot. This was, hands down, the #1 reason I enjoyed raiding, and still miss it to this day! There was nothing better than doing a great run through some raid, and having that one last piece of gear you needed to complete your set, or (earlier on in some expansion’s cycle) just to bring your item score up high enough to be able to do harder content. The gear wasn’t just powerful, it looked awesome, and really helped build a sense of accomplishment… which was great, because I worked my damn ass off keeping everyone alive, and fucking deserved something nice for my trouble!

That all said, I will never go back to “World of Warcraft”, and even if I ever did, I will never, ever go back to raiding in any MMORPG! Having watched a load of videos and livestreams of modern raiding, it just isn’t for me anymore.