Finding challenge

As I wrote, we play for challenge, learning, wasting time, not being in RL or social reasons. For me, the last three are "not fun". I want challenging content. I assume 99.9% of the top raiders also play for challenge or the social reason of "being respected" by getting "uber" achievements and gear.

There is an inherent problem with group play: the people are necessarily on different level of skill and knowing the content and it seriously affects their perceived challenge:

• Those who are seriously below the skill requirement of the content are not experiencing any challenge as they have no idea what's going on. The others either capable to do it for them or not. This is Russian roulette. Their win or lose are completely out of their control. Not fun.
• Those who are slightly below or around the skill requirement are experiencing challenge. They know what to do and try to do it. If they succeed, they experience "triumph", they know that it was their doing.
• Those who are above the skill requirement are experiencing worse than grind. They know what to do and do it, repeatedly, like grinding wolves. Except they get no reward since the group wipes because of others.

If the group is perfectly at the same level of skill, they are all on the second stage, experience challenge and in some tries they overcome it. However it is impossible. It is also impossible to have a content that is equally challenging to everyone. For example I didn't like Vezzax hard where the bottleneck were the interrupters (5 mins autoattack + rejuv on MT, someone missed interrupt, called wipe) and loved Steelbreaker where the bottleneck was heal. I guess rogues felt the opposite.

Captain obvious says: find a group that mostly have the same skill as you and have fun. However there is a problem here. The main structure of WoW content is "scripted bossfights". It means that there is no place for improvisation, you learn what the boss do, formulate (or read) the counter strategy and carry it out. For the first two steps you don't even need to be logged in. For the last step you improve every try quickly if you are not a retard. This means that all content can be defeated fast.

The only way for Blizzard to create a "scripted bossfight" that is not defeated in 2 hours by every non-M&S player is creating one with very low error tolerance. Let's say you have to run out of fire patches in 1 sec or you are one-shotted and one dead person means you won't make it before enrage. In this fight the "skill" means reacting fast enough without constantly watching fires since you must do DPS or heal or tanking. The learning curve of this fight is:

1. everyone at the beginning, people die a lot, the raid wipes because too many healers died in fire.
2. people improved a lot, but still many die before the tank (who dies because healers die)
3. people improved even more, and enrage is reached, 1-2 healer and 4-5 DPS was dead before enrage
4. 0-1 healer and 2-3 DPS was dead before enrage. 1 healer switch to DPS, so from now on 1 healer die = wipe because of low heal
   
5. 3 people die before tank
6. 2 people die before tank
7. 1 person die before tank
8. firstkill

Assuming everyone has the same skill, at stage 7 you do 1/25-th of the dieing. It means you have 24 tries when you do everything right and still you wipe. If we add that absolutely equal skill is impossible, those who are even slightly better than the others are in the "worse than grind" situation in stages 6 and 7. They do everything right, they can't be any better and still they wipe.

There is only one way to avoid the "worse than grind" stage: be the one who is slightly below the average. You are always on the challenge side. By keeping low attendance while raiding I did exactly that. The fights were always challenging and fun.

However the others have nasty grind because of you and highly motivated to get rid of you. The problem is not that you are below average. The problem is that you are one of those who are below average. Let me explain the huge difference:

• If you are the only below "good enough", every wipe is caused by you. Assuming you are not a complete idiot, you are not wiping with 100%. Let's say you have 33.3% chance to do it right. This means the group has a kill in 3 tries. One can pay the others to suffer 2 wipes, it's not a big deal after all. That's what one does as tourist on farm content.
• If you are just one of the many who are below "good enough", not every wipe is caused by you. Let say you have not 33.3, but 66.6% chance to do it right! But because of others the group has only 10% chance to kill. They need 10 tries for a kill. With you they have 6.66% chance, 15 tries. Not 2 but 5 extra tries because of you, on the top of 9 other wipes that make everyone else already upset. (increasing the perceived cost of one more wipe). This is why permanently paid progression spot cannot be bought.
  

The only way for me to do raid progression is to be a raider myself. I have no doubt I can do it. I just don't want the worse-than-grind phase. So there goes my progression raiding in 25 man.

Of course it is not the end for challenging WoW content. You'll see what I came up with in a month.