World of Warcraft Reputation Guides - Golden Age of Raiding Guides
This is it folks, the end of the golden age of raiding in World of Warcraft is upon us. As we advance further into Cataclysm we’re watching the curtains fall on everything that we know and understand about WoW and slowly march into the unknown that sits before us. As it stands, the bronze (vanilla) and silver (TBC) ages were advancements into where we stand now where the raiding dynamic allows almost everyone to play who shows a bit of interest in it. Yet, now, with the latest announcement we’re watching as the official forums have broken out into chaos; what civil discourse may have been there is now gone. Marshal Law has all but been declared as people are being temp banned left and right.
This will result in the 10-man instances becoming the de facto instance of choice. This means that they're either going to be so overwhelmingly easy that everyone can do it, killing off the hardcore raider or hard enough that the casuals are locked out and the hardcore raiders will never be satisfied.
That’s even before we begin touching on the hot issue of keeping the starting raids from overshadowing the heroic instances. Raids should be difficult, but rewarding. We shouldn’t have epics raining down just because we walked into an instance unprepared.