So I started raiding probably a month after the launch of Vanilla, it was the only aspect of the game that interested me at the time (I was very young and slaying dragons is always going to be cool). I had got to level 60, looked around and thought that getting epic loot and killing massive monsters was definitely the way forward. Needless to say that it was a lot more involved than I ever give it credit for, but I think that's something that, in some way, shape, or form, always carried through with hardcore raiding. On the surface it can look very similar to your Average Joe guild that wants a few bosses dead before the end of a content patch, but it's a lot more than that. I feel like I should list a few things that are different straight off the bat:
- Time
- Effort
- Mindset
I only wrote three because I think if I wrote any more down people would wonder "isn't point X the same as point Y?", but I'll go over what I feel each one means.
The Time Investment
Hardcore Progression raiding takes a lot of time, and not just the time you spend actually killing the bosses. It's preparation time, minimizing downtime, maximizing uptime, theorycrafting, simming/optimizing, the amount of days you're actually spending killing whatever raid tier you're killing. There's a lot of time that gets spent actually playing or planning for the raids, and that's something that not everyone can or will put into a video game.
Effort Required
This point links in with the above, but I'd consider it as a separate point. To fully commit to hardcore or progression raiding requires a lot of effort, and whether this effort is going the extra mile to make sure you're playing at the bleeding edge and the peak of your capabilities, or contributing to your guild/team's strategies for killing a boss, dealing with a mechanic, or best use of utilizing raid cooldowns. u need to get it into your head that a lot will be expected of you, so start making a habit of going into a new fight understanding how you personally will deal with anything that gets thrown at you, and then deal with anyone else as and when appropriate. This also links into my next point:
The Mindset
You may have noticed at some point that hardcore raiders have a very different approach to things compared to a more casual player. The casual player might get a mechanic thrown at them, immediately panic, and only be able to get to grips with that mechanic after a few tries of it being solely their responsibility (again, not saying all casual players will do this, but a lot of them might). The hardcore raider might be in the same scenario, but will have a timer/countdown for when that ability is going to land, will have popped a defensive cooldown a second or two in advance if necessary and will have communicated this on some level to the team (via addon or voice communications), and transitioned from State A to B back to A smoothly and flawlessly. Now I know this might sound like I'm glorifying hardcore raiders, and I don't mean to be because they're not perfect and probably will never claim to be. What they do is get themselves into a mindset of being prepared for every eventuality, so that on the off-chance that they do have to deal with something unexpected, it's not 100% unexpected and it doesn't break down into chaos.
I've probably made some confusing statements, and knowing how I usually go off on one I've contradicted myself at least once, but the main point to get across is that Hardcore raiding requires a very specific set of skills, and to be honest, not everyone has these skills. There are players that have been playing for 10 years who don't have the spark, and I personally know a few that have been playing for less than a year who do have it. You can train yourself to do it or it can come naturally, in the end it won't matter because it comes down to one simple point.
You have to want to do it.
Some players will go the extra mile in a regular raid environment simply because it's what they're used to, but they won't expect others to do it all the time and others will be in a super hardcore raid and put in the bare minimum because they only enjoy the raid itself, not the preparation. I've raided with both types of people and sometimes it's those people that make you want to push forward and strive to be the absolute best you can be. In a perfect world I'd be able to push anyone I wanted into hardcore raiding with me because I know some absolutely amazing people who I know would be amazing raiders if they had the opportunity, but the truth is that they don't have that opportunity.
Hardcore raiding is just that, hardcore. There's so much that you need to do in order to maintain the levels of dedication and not everyone can do that, whether that's because of a job, school, family life, or any other commitments. The main thing to remember is that hardcore raiding will never be for everyone, it doesn't cater to specific individuals, it's there and there are some people that push themselves to levels that a lot of players can't do. This doesn't mean that the players who can't do it are better or worse off than the hardcore players. I've raided with players who considered themselves the best at their spec on the server, only to subsequently get trashed by a trial raider on an alt (Yes this has happened to me).
There's high and low points to this article, and at times it probably seems like I'm saying that you shouldn't get into progression raiding, but if there's anything you should take away from it, it's that the moment you have the option to push yourself to the next level, I heavily recommend you should, even if it's your first foray into this level of raiding, as the old adage goes; don't knock it 'til you've tried it.
I figure if I get any questions in the comments or responses on any kind of social media I'll either address them there or I'll just write a new blog post about it. Otherwise, I'm going to get back to fawning over the new Warrior details and theorycrafting for Warlords of Draenor. Seeya next time!
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