New Raids, Old raids

I decided to pull some of the tangent out of my previous post. It might not make sense with it missing, if it even would have with it still in.

From what I've heard, new servers have their gates open automatically. This suggests that Blizzard intends to make it easier to get into the old raids. They are making them more accessible, since let's be honest, can anyone imagine the supplies being gathered now? It took a long time even back when people were motivated and the proper level. But what was the point? Blizzard should have recognized by now that people will go through horrible grinds for the slightest upgrade. Easy or hard, tedious or convenient, it doesn't matter much as long as the end reward is good. What is there for AQ? No upgrades, with the exception of one extremely rare shadow damage enchant of which Blizzard did not make a TBC version. Still, some people do go into AQ, I've gone myself, even got some funny-looking gear, so perhaps the automatic gates weren't wasted.

MC wasn't for noobs while Kara is. Sure, MC was easier and you could drag 20 noobs through, perhaps even more if they just went AFK and caused no trouble. But MC was the raid. Kara was never the raid. It was always the introduction. In terms of player's attitudes, MC was put on a pedestal labeled: Badass, while Kara was on a little platform that said: for ages 7 and under. How did that happen? It's about how the raids were given out. MC was alone and the top for it's time. Then BWL, then AQ40, then Naxx. Each had its time to be badass and so they could get and keep those labels.

TBC raids came out almost all at once. With the exception of BT, they were all there at release (I really hope I'm not forgetting something, I hate being wrong, especially when it's written down). Any badassness was only a temporary label due to the highest guilds being there at the time, quickly thrown away a couple weeks later when they were cleared and farmed.

It's stupid to have set out the raids that way, clearly showing them to be nothing more than stepping stones to the next level, insignificant except as a source of gear, and even then only leading to another source of gear, never anything impressive. They weren't even fully debugged. I wonder how much better raiding would have turned out if there had been gaps between raids. Not a year or so like vanilla, but a month or two, time to build anticipation, make current raids seem more impressive, and give a chance for more guilds to get to the top.