Raiding is becoming less and less optional

[Avidria]

If not difficulty, then what's the problem?

No seriously. What is it? That you don't like playing with that many people at once? That we might slide down a slippery slope to needing to do actual current endgame raids to progress the MSQ?

I seriously doubt they'll up and decide everyone needs to be a raider to see the story. There are reasons they haven't before, and they even waited three whole patches to require a massively outdated joke of a raid despite the fact that the entire expansion's story is inextricably tied to it. Shadowbringers literally can't exist without CT - and Alex and Omega for that matter, but those are closer to proper endgame raids, and are NOT being added as requirements at this time. Heck, if I had to hazard a guess, I'm thinking something is gonna happen in 5.3 that just flat out won't make sense if you haven't done CT yourself. Got my theory hat on, but I wouldn't be surprised if it involves going back to our CT on the source. Ooor it could just be them closing gaps in the story - considering the story is such a huge intrinsic part of the game, and they go to such lengths to keep it consistent with itself, they probably wrote themselves into a situation where the plot just doesn't work if you haven't seen CT.

So my question is, how is requiring CT any different from requiring a whole bunch of dungeons and trials in the MSQ? The MSQ already requires group content that's frankly more challenging and potentially more time consuming than all but possibly WoD. Heck, trials are closer to actual endgame raids than alliance raids are. I wiped more on my first Titania normal run than I do on my average LotA run. That took far more coordination than CT. Confession time, but I have literally spent almost an entire LotA run afk auto running because I was distracted by something else. Finished in ~15 minutes and got a comm, for some reason.

I mean don't get me wrong, I don't enjoy running these raids. I used to! But I've done them DOZENS if not hundreds of times, and they're such a memey facerolly joke that the most interesting part of them is when someone does something SO wrong (and it usually has to be multiple someones) that you do wipe to the maybe three mechanics that even matter anymore.

So it's boring outdated content, with a huge chunk of highly relevant lore showcased in it, that requires very little beyond sort of paying attention, following everyone else, and not pulling bosses before alliance A is in the room. There's maybe 3-4 bosses, same as any dungeon, and maybe 3-4 mechanics you actually need to be aware of (or at least most of the group needs to be aware of) to make the run smooth, but that's it. You don't need to be a proper raider, you don't need to know the fights, you don't need to even really know how to play your class. No planning or optimisation or gearing or communication required. Just go in and silently zerg rush the bosses, same as any dungeon, just with more people.

Maybe I'm just not getting it, but again, what is the difference between this and what they already ask of us in the MSQ dungeons and trials? Why is the term "raid" so taboo?