My opinions on raids have soured quite a lot since I first started doing them, to be honest. I had completely stopped doing them at all until the legendary ring came out and I decided I wanted it. It's extremely hard to find groups these days, except maybe at very specific times, and there's not nearly as many training groups as some people want to pretend. My friend list is comprised almost entirely of people who no longer play the game anymore too, so it's not an easy task finding the right combination of people at just the right time just by getting lucky on the LFG.
That doesn't even start to touch on how bad it is once you do find ten people and make it into the raid. Bad attitudes, bad players, bad builds. People constantly going off and taking unplanned ten minute or longer breaks on other people's time. Not being ready and having to swap characters and gear and builds around for thirty minutes. People lying about what things they do or don't know how to do. It's a disorganized mess 75% of the time, and it's not necessarily a lot better even with a static group of friends or people you know. So much time and effort has to be invested by so many people, for something that in the end is rarely ever worth it.
Raids can feel really good and give a strong sense of accomplishment, but those moments have become few and far between for me. Killing Qadim the Peerless yesterday with a bunch of people for the first time was pretty great, and we were all really excited and proud of each other, but it's probably the last serious raiding I do for a while. Or at least until the next shiny carrot gets waved out in front of me.
