A post on the World of Warcraft

Casual Raiding

wrathofkublakhan3 Comments

“Without a family, man, alone in the world, trembles with the cold.”
Andre Maurois

Casual Raiding

Blizzard, I believe, has used the term Family and Friends for the difficulty setting of Normal. What does that mean? Should I be offended, insulted?

The raid team I run with is definitely that; family oriented. We have parents who will go deal with their kids between fights. One who talks with her Dad during the raid or does homework. On the push-to-talk, we can hear kids and dogs making a cheerful noise. It is a fun group.

The best advantage of being in a Family and Friends raid team is learning the fights. Our Raid Leader has done his homework and will set us up. The rest of us have not watched the videos or the Icy Veins strategies. It is totally fun to see new fights and learn how to beat a boss.

The second best advantage in a Family and Friends raid team is that it is mostly clean-speak. The strongest language is merely suggestive like “that is what she said”. Nothing much beyond that.

I’ve played with some of these guys for years now.

At the end of two weeks, last night we faced Cenarius for the first time. We wiped for about an hour, eventually getting to phase two (yay!) and then called it a night. After Reset Day, we’ll start at the beginning again and work our way up to Cenarius again; hopefully stronger and better prepared.

As you can imagine, the tanks and healers are pretty strong or the game is tuned for us to be successful. The range of DPS numbers is pretty wide. It might be tempting to chide the lower numbers: but why? We’ll get there and be stronger as we eventually move up to the Heroic version.

So far, there have been no “raid killers” like Kilrogg where everything can depend on a single person doing it exactly right. In that light, the encounter designs are pretty good.

I’ve been on raid teams that push, push, push. I’ve seen Raid Leaders call out players with low numbers in front of everyone. That kind of drive can be fun too but as of this moment in time, I’m glad to be with Family and Friends.

3 thoughts on “Casual Raiding”

  1. I’m in the same boat and love it. We raid twice a week, once on Sunday for 3 hours and again on Monday night for 2. Most of us aren’t guilded together, but are rather an amalgam of friends collected over the years. And many people even refer to each other by their real names. I am so grateful that Blizzard has provided content for this type of “mature” raiding environment (by “mature” I refer to the number of real life responsibilities many players also have to deal with), while still providing cutting-edge challenge to those who have the freedom, time, and desire to dedicate to conquering it.

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