Raiders, why do you raid? None riders, why not?

[Sil3ntxR3qui3m]

I don't raid because I hate feeling like I'm holding everyone else back. I'm usually the last to learn something. Everything most players see as easy (Alex Savage, Zurvan EX) I see as incredibly difficult. That's all.

[Canadane]

I don't raid because I hate feeling like I'm holding everyone else back. I'm usually the last to learn something. Everything most players see as easy (Alex Savage, Zurvan EX) I see as incredibly difficult. That's all.

That should be motivation to get in there and learn!
You can do it, you just need to believe in the heart of the ca... yourself! Believe in yourself!

[ApolloGenX]

I raided for years in EQ. Here it's not worth it. Gear is throwaway and raid zones aren't interesting new places. They are rooms with a boss in them.

I'm also not a fan of the "team jump rope"... raids used to be about strategy, now they are memorization. Not really my style.

[ToniRomo]

I don't raid. I raided hardcore and ran a successful guild in vanilla WoW. It eventually got to be too time consuming.

FF14 raiding seems more casual, but I just don't feel like having a set time to play a videogame. Plus I can see the story in normal mode, and eventually get mostly comparable gear when tome upgrades.

[Nicodemus_Mercy]

I'll never understand when people say an activity/achievement they've engaged in/accomplished is suddenly "worthless" because it became easier with time/outleveling/outgearing. Just because those who came after had an easier time doesn't marginalize your achievements. If you did it when it was current/difficult then that alone is a bragging right that no one who comes after can ever match.

On topic: I used to raid in other MMO's for many many years. As I've aged I've become less willing to commit my time to a regular schedule. I prefer my freedom to play as I please and when I please.

Why I used to raid: I have a long term guild I am still a part of which has played (and raided in) several MMO's together. It doesn't really raid as a guild anymore, but we are still all close, not unlike a family. Raiding with these people was a great experience for many years in multiple games because there was a strong sense of camaraderie and support. We looked out for each other, became intuitive of each others play, and generally conquered all content set before us. We weren't the fastest, or the most optimal, but we got the job done. It was fun and rewarding in many ways that weren't loot related. On loot however, in most games of those bygone years, raiding was the only real way to gain character power past a certain point. People raided because they had no choice if they wanted to be stronger.

Why I don't raid anymore: Real life happened to me and my crew. I'm old and have health issues now. I can't handle the stress of high difficulty content as well as I used to. Friends had kids, moved away, acquired other priorities. I'm also quite fond of my freedom. I play when I want, I go afk when I want, I engage in whatever content I want at my whim. Being constrained by a schedule is anathema to me these days. Burnout is a big part of that. When games start escalating difficulty, they lose their defined "end" and that kills me. I don't want to clear Raid A and then have to "do it again but harder!", and then "do it yet again even harder!" only to be met with "I heard you liked higher difficulty in your raids so here's more difficulty with your difficulty!". To me it feels more obviously like a treadmill to keep me redoing the same crap over and over. Sure there's often higher end gear for more player power, but its just not worth putting up with. Other reasons include, competitiveness and just being sick of the ever more obvious treadmill as mentioned.

Like my initial comment about people who think their accomplishments lose all value the moment the masses can do it easier than they did, I find such a mindset toxic to a positive gaming experience. I engage in content, collect mounts/glamour/titles, and earn achievements because I want to, not to engage in a dick measuring contest. My self worth isn't predicated on comparing myself to others. Other little things like raider attrition, finding replacements, etc make high difficulty raiding a "not fun" experience for me. Being able to queue up when I WANT to, for something on the difficulty of Dun Scaith or my weekly Soul of the Creator, is the extent I'm willing to raid and no further. I'm not interested in beating my head against a wall for hours on end anymore. Those days are long behind me.

FFXIV is a breath of fresh air for many reasons. One of them being that the gear gap between raiders and non-raiders is so much smaller than in other games with raiding and that's a damned good thing IMO. It makes it so my player power isn't arbitrarily gated by content I don't want to engage in. I get to do the things I want to do and still become nearly as powerful as those who devote themselves to savage content. Sure I won't get the mounts/glamour/titles they do but that's ok, because I can still be about as strong in the content I do engage in. I don't raid, not because of a lack of incentive, I don't raid because I don't want to and I don't HAVE to in order to acquire player power. That's a big positive in FFXIV's favor as far as I'm concerned.

[ToasterMan]

Nowadays? Raiding is just another avenue for spending time with friends. My static is full of friends and if I wasn't in my current group I wouldn't be raiding at all

[Meraii]

I used to raid in WoW.
I don't raid here because:
a) I've yet to reach current content.
b) I don't really know anyone.

[Moomba33]

I don't raid for a few reasons.

1. I don't want to schedule my playtime. I like being able to decide what I want to do each day on a whim.
2. I don't like the idea of content which takes hours and hours to learn in a multiplayer setting. With a single player game I can fail at something for months until I get it down and it's fine. In multiplayer it's horrible to be the slowest learner in a group and knowing that you're holding others back from clearing.
3. I don't care about raid gear/titles/prestige. Faustlet minion is the only loot I'm interested in all of Savage and even that isn't worth trying to trek through the mechanic vomit of A8 Savage.
4.Story is the main reason I tried to get through Coil back in the day. Now that we have normal mode raiding it's a lot easier for me to ignore the hardest stuff which I consider a positive as I don't enjoy the challenge of raiding.

[KeyboardFacerollname]

*SNIP*

Yep.

I know I'm not very good and that I don't know my rotations perfectly or have all the best gear with proper stats and materias and whatnot. Every time I enter an instance for MSQ I feel like I'm being carried and I wind up not enjoying myself because I think that this group would be done the dungeon a lot faster if they had someone that wasn't me holding them back.

It's a bit of a roadblock and something I'd like to get past since I try and do stuff like the relics and OH HEY you need to run X, Y, and Z dungeons/trials! So I just stop because I don't want to force people to carry my dead weight through the instance.

I avoid running instances unless I need to for MSQ and simply concentrate on leveling jobs at my own pace. I've been playing MMOs since 2001 and most of that time has been spent treating it like a single player game with a chat room and player-driven economy.

[Khalithar]

The gear is a big part of it. But there's another part of it depending on the game you play.

For example, I raided a lot when I played WoW because blizzard decided the only way to see the end of the storylines in expansions was to raid. If you're really big in to the lore like I am, not being able to see the conclusion of major lore events is a huge deal. So if you didn't raid on WoW you didn't get to see how the storyline in the various expansions ended.

In swtor, some of the most interesting boss design mechanics that I had ever seen (at the time) were there. Playing those really offered a new type of challenge. Especially on the nightmare mode difficulty.