Why Do You Raid?

As the title suggests I want to know why you raid. There was a rather heated debate on our guild chat channel the other day about people not wanting to raid Ulduar 25 man because they didn't need the loot. This was swiftly dismissed, with most people agreeing that the achievement and the pleasure of playing with 24 other like minded people was incentive enough. As often happens to my brain when I'm reading guild chat (on this occasion over my spousal unit's shoulder) I started wondering about people's motives to raid.

What makes you want to raid? Are you a phat lewt and purps demon? Do you lust for the thrill of the fight and the "whoosh ding" of the achievement? Do you just want to play with a like minded group of players, take out some more difficult bosses and have fun? Perhaps you are driven by seeing the inside of all those amazing instances and following the lore.

This may pique your interest into why I raid so here's my reasons.

I'm a wee bit ashamed to say that Deme is still effectively in Naxx. Sapp and KT are proving to be a bit of a bugger for us. We really should be facerolling it because we're overgeared for the instance so there's something wrong somewhere. Anyway, the point is, we're there because we want to do it. We want to say we pwned that stupid undead floating dress and his bony pet lizard. There is very little loot that would be of interest to most of us. Even as a relatively casual raid group, we spend most of our time enjoying other aspects of the game and so our gear is mainly from emblems, we certainly don't need stuff from Naxx particularly.

We also wanted to do it to bond as a group of 10 people before we moved onto the harder raids. We've had people come and go and had to replace a few members here and there so that hasn't helped. However I'd say we are now settled and have a great team who all know their roles. The raiding has helped us bond and learn to trust each other to do the role required.

I must confess though, for me, I am addicted to the "whoosh ding". I've even grown to like the little one you get when you complete a random dungeon. I adore the noise, the sense of pride, the shared sense of achievement with 9 other people and most of all, the cheers that go out on TS and the over guild chat. I also get a kick from downing bosses. My biggest geekgasm to date has been from downing the Twins in the Temple of Ahn'Qiraj. I'd spent a long time wiping on them a few months before and for some reason we never mastered them. This time we did and boy did it feel good! Better even than downing that horrid big green bag of pus Grobbulus. Loot? What loot?! I was level 80 and this was a level 60 instance! We did have a level 60 drood with us who loved it, but for me, I wasn't bothered at all. Not even if it was pretty. I just grinned from ear to ear for dropping those bitch slapping brothers.

Do tell what makes you go back again and again to those raid instances.

Deme the Under-Achiever

btw I know I'll never see that mace, but damn is it sweet.