Grindy. Excessively and unnecessarily grindy.
The notion that you should have a system that takes 40 people being bored for 80%+ of their time is absurd to me. I want raiding to be short, sweet, and intensely challenging, not a burdensome time commitment.
I know that games like this require grinding and part of me loves that aspect. There's a simple pleasure in strapping down and doing the work to improve your character. If you're grinding in a group then you can have a good socializing time while you're at it. There's absolutely no pleasure for me in clearing raid trash for hours every night, which is made unbearable by having this boring time on a rigid schedule.
If raids in Pantheon are packed with time sinks like in MMOs past and are a overbearing scheduling burden, then I won't take part more than once or twice.
Orginization: Being part of an Organization, A guild, Incorporate and Assimilate.
Ambivalent
I like the challenge of raiding, but would rather not do anything with that many people. In my experience, when the raid size gets above 10 or so people, things start degenerating, both organizationally and socially. I'd generally rather play with a smaller group.
Distracting
Too many people focus on Raiding, and rush headlong to get to the point where they can drop the rest of the game and focus on this one small aspect of it. Raiding endlessly until there is nothing left for them to raid then complaing that the game is boring/dead. Until the next expansion comes out with lots of content, that they again rush past to start the cycle all over again. All the while putting undue rush on the developers to put out new material (sometimes before it is truely ready), so they don't loose money as the hardcore raiders jump ship to chase the next big raid.
In the end, it seems they pass by most of the "meat and potatoes" of the game, to gorge themselves on dessert.
Ambivalent.
(When reading the several posts where the answer was 'Depends', I have to say that a TOTALLY different idea flashed in my mind than was meant by the authors. What came to me was an image of people I've heard about who go to great lengths to be able to stay 'at the keyboard' for however many hours it takes to complete a Raid of epic length and difficulty.
Nuff said...)
Aging
I would have said "end of fun" but it is not 1 word . After a period of excitement , discovery , socializing and exploration comes in every single MMORPG there ever was the period of raiding . I have seen it 2 times on EQ progression servers in the last 3 years (and dozens of times before) and it always made me sad because it meant that the game became too old . During this period people log in only for raiding so that the real fun of discovering , doing random things , grouping , dungeon delving gradually disappears .
What's left is a kind of unpleasant routine : "Damned it's Wednesday and already 20:00 . I must log in for the weekly raid ." Of course there is the initial discovery of raids during the first years of youth of a game but it transforms fast in a boring , grindy routine . When I feel it coming , I know that it is time to leave the game and do something else .
