I may be wrong but doesn't MC and BWL take longer than 2-3 hours of continuous time to play? It's not so much the per week number as the number of hours that you have to sit in front of the computer without interruption. And that is where the problem lies( for me at least).
_____________________________________________________________________________________ Science has never proven that what we see in front of us is in fact real.
Also to get from one place to another (10-20 min). Wait time for BG or LFG all that crap..(10-20 min). Auction stuff (15-45min). The lag (10-15min). PVP alterac valley (1.5h - 5.5h), AB (10min - 35min). You need DKP (bidding points for epic gear) to get epic stuff...so basically you gotta do MC like 50 times get all your 8/8 epic set and other accessories. Farming reputation (a long time but yo can control the pace). Farming honor points (play everyday to prevent honor decay and I see a lot of ppl who reach grand marshal play like 24/7 - no joke). Getting epic gear through instances is actually faster than PVPing. Anyways, this game is just for hardcore gamers. Most people spend at least 5 hour a day to play this game. I said most, not everyone so don't flame me. I'm quitting for now cause I'm too addicted and I really need to focus on my university degree so I can graduate.
I forgot to add a couple more things. I play both horde and alliance and I will check my characters on both side so that is time consuming again. And also thottbot/allakhazam (10-15min)
Originally posted by paravion Also to get from one place to another (10-20 min). Wait time for BG or LFG all that crap..(10-20 min). Auction stuff (15-45min). The lag (10-15min). PVP alterac valley (1.5h - 5.5h), AB (10min - 35min). You need DKP (bidding points for epic gear) to get epic stuff...so basically you gotta do MC like 50 times get all your 8/8 epic set and other accessories. Farming reputation (a long time but yo can control the pace). Farming honor points (play everyday to prevent honor decay and I see a lot of ppl who reach grand marshal play like 24/7 - no joke). Getting epic gear through instances is actually faster than PVPing. Anyways, this game is just for hardcore gamers. Most people spend at least 5 hour a day to play this game. I said most, not everyone so don't flame me. I'm quitting for now cause I'm too addicted and I really need to focus on my university degree so I can graduate.
ahm.... I belive you left out a fair few bits! Well, let me tell my experiences, shall i?
I was more or less invited into a newly-forming raid-guild, and i went along on a 40-man raid pretty sceptically, but still interested to see if my fears about would be true
We met up at the entrance after going trough the portal, and i expected we would soon be going in to full-fledged bashing mode, no dice. 2½ hours later we were still standing at the entrance debatting strategies and formations in the 5-man groups . Please keep in mind, it was the first time the group did this, so its not because peeps were stupid or something like that, just inexperienced. During the evening/night we managed to take down the first snake-boss (down and left) and go for 2 or 3 runs at the BIG-doggie, and we concluded that 1 hunter having the tranqulizer shot wasn´t enough
I went with this group a little while later (1-2 weeks), the pace was somewhat faster (thank god) and we did about ½ the MC that night.
My take on these major-raids is that they are no more challenging than the 5-man dungeons (at least before the nerf), They just take loooooonger time to play through, and with a consistent group of 40 MC-noobs going from scratch and wanting all the epic sets appropiate to each class, you would have to get 320 set items (i belive it was 8 items per class), i belive it to be 8 bosses dropping 2 items each... do the math youself and keep in mind the bosses drops other stuff than set-items....
SO... As it may be easy enough to get into an experienced raid-group and get "dragged" through, starting a new group is very time consuming, a lot of organization seems to go into these things before and after the raids too.
I dont think Blizz has had the players best interest in mind as they designed raids like these! The story-line is thin enough, at least on the alliance side, but after hitting lv60 you only have a few quests, repeating 5-man dungeons and repeat raiding as a choice, oh yeah and the ever so exiting constant grinding, lets not forget that. Killing furballs for hours and hours and hours and..... so exiting. It seems to me that when game designers puts something like raids into a game, not as a option, but as a must do, its only to get away cheap having the players play and pay for longer and longer time, getting less and less out of it. In Principle i have a hard time seeing that a lv18+ char would get less out of the items in a appropiate level-rated dungeon than a 60 would get out of epics, the 60 part just takes wayyy more time.
To wrap this up a bit, i feel i should enlighten another little subject in the matter of the raid-dungeons, now keep in mind i know only about Onyxia and MC out of my own experiences, but as of what i know a lot of kit has to be hunted in order to withstand the fire-damage, especially for the tanks, one should add that to the timetable too. So a casual player in WOW??? Start over and/or find your fun elsewhere.
I quit after watching peeps going from good friends always being there for the fun and the social playing to being loot-whores, raiding in zero-tolerance hard-core raid-groups.
Well, if thats what make peeps tick i say go ahead *bows and points toward a swirling entrance* "go ahead into your repeating hell-hole of boredom and have fun.
I get casual players wanting to compete but lets face it they never will in MMOs which are gear and skill based, the only solution i can think of is to make a casual server with playing time caps or something, BoE epics are where gold farmers come from and are on the whole bad for the game, Epic gear should require an equalivant lvl of playing time or at least being damn lucky in the few instances you go on. I can see however making epic gear more obtainable to smaller guilds who are not at MC or even ZG size but have multiple 60's and dont want to be subordinate to a larger guild who gets to dictate their chances of getting gear in the end game
Comments
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Science has never proven that what we see in front of us is in fact real.
MC - 4+ hours if you plan to go through the entire instance.
BWL - not sure on total time. Razagore takes about 20 minutes.
Onyxia - about an hour.
The world dragons take about 10 - 15 minutes to take down.
I rarely go through entire instances, with the exception of MC. Instead we tend to go after specific bosses for items that we want or need.
My suggestion is either to join a guild, or start your own and create alliances with other small guilds.
Ico
Oh, cruel fate, to be thusly boned. Ask not for whom the bone bones. It bones for thee.
Also to get from one place to another (10-20 min). Wait time for BG or LFG all that crap..(10-20 min). Auction stuff (15-45min). The lag (10-15min). PVP alterac valley (1.5h - 5.5h), AB (10min - 35min). You need DKP (bidding points for epic gear) to get epic stuff...so basically you gotta do MC like 50 times get all your 8/8 epic set and other accessories. Farming reputation (a long time but yo can control the pace). Farming honor points (play everyday to prevent honor decay and I see a lot of ppl who reach grand marshal play like 24/7 - no joke). Getting epic gear through instances is actually faster than PVPing. Anyways, this game is just for hardcore gamers. Most people spend at least 5 hour a day to play this game. I said most, not everyone so don't flame me. I'm quitting for now cause I'm too addicted and I really need to focus on my university degree so I can graduate.
ahm.... I belive you left out a fair few bits! Well, let me tell my experiences, shall i?
I was more or less invited into a newly-forming raid-guild, and i went along on a 40-man raid pretty sceptically, but still interested to see if my fears about would be true
We met up at the entrance after going trough the portal, and i expected we would soon be going in to full-fledged bashing mode, no dice. 2½ hours later we were still standing at the entrance debatting strategies and formations in the 5-man groups
. Please keep in mind, it was the first time the group did this, so its not because peeps were stupid or something like that, just inexperienced. During the evening/night we managed to take down the first snake-boss (down and left) and go for 2 or 3 runs at the BIG-doggie, and we concluded that 1 hunter having the tranqulizer shot wasn´t enough 
I went with this group a little while later (1-2 weeks), the pace was somewhat faster (thank god) and we did about ½ the MC that night.
My take on these major-raids is that they are no more challenging than the 5-man dungeons (at least before the nerf), They just take loooooonger time to play through, and with a consistent group of 40 MC-noobs going from scratch and wanting all the epic sets appropiate to each class, you would have to get 320 set items (i belive it was 8 items per class), i belive it to be 8 bosses dropping 2 items each... do the math youself and keep in mind the bosses drops other stuff than set-items....
SO... As it may be easy enough to get into an experienced raid-group and get "dragged" through, starting a new group is very time consuming, a lot of organization seems to go into these things before and after the raids too.
I dont think Blizz has had the players best interest in mind as they designed raids like these! The story-line is thin enough, at least on the alliance side, but after hitting lv60 you only have a few quests, repeating 5-man dungeons and repeat raiding as a choice, oh yeah and the ever so exiting constant grinding, lets not forget that. Killing furballs for hours and hours and hours and..... so exiting.
It seems to me that when game designers puts something like raids into a game, not as a option, but as a must do, its only to get away cheap having the players play and pay for longer and longer time, getting less and less out of it. In Principle i have a hard time seeing that a lv18+ char would get less out of the items in a appropiate level-rated dungeon than a 60 would get out of epics, the 60 part just takes wayyy more time.
To wrap this up a bit, i feel i should enlighten another little subject in the matter of the raid-dungeons, now keep in mind i know only about Onyxia and MC out of my own experiences, but as of what i know a lot of kit has to be hunted in order to withstand the fire-damage, especially for the tanks, one should add that to the timetable too. So a casual player in WOW??? Start over and/or find your fun elsewhere.
I quit after watching peeps going from good friends always being there for the fun and the social playing to being loot-whores, raiding in zero-tolerance hard-core raid-groups.
Well, if thats what make peeps tick i say go ahead *bows and points toward a swirling entrance* "go ahead into your repeating hell-hole of boredom and have fun.
Cheers
(oh, and spelling might not be perfect 
)
I get casual players wanting to compete but lets face it they never will in MMOs which are gear and skill based, the only solution i can think of is to make a casual server with playing time caps or something, BoE epics are where gold farmers come from and are on the whole bad for the game, Epic gear should require an equalivant lvl of playing time or at least being damn lucky in the few instances you go on. I can see however making epic gear more obtainable to smaller guilds who are not at MC or even ZG size but have multiple 60's and dont want to be subordinate to a larger guild who gets to dictate their chances of getting gear in the end game