This week, after World of Warcraft: Legion’s mythic Emerald Nightmare raid launched, a Russian hardcore guild called Exorsus had the raid cleared within 18 hours. The final boss took them just two. According to PCGamesN, the guild was surely propelled along by the easier-to-come-by Mythic+ dungeon loot, and other guilds are still stuck on the boss before the last one.
But 18 hours? I am a retired raider. I did it for years in multiple games. I’m over it. I’ve moved on to other MMORPG pursuits that I find more worthwhile than raiding. And I have a particular for disdain for games that hold raiding up as the be-all, end-all of MMO content and design. But if you say that if you’re going to have raiding, and you’re going to insist on a loot/grind/time/group-wall when it comes to a raid-centric endgame, it should probably take even the elitest of the elite more than a single day to rofflestomp through it. They claim to be there for the challenge, after all, not the loot or the bragging rights over the plebes — so you’d better be offering a serious challenge and not a cakewalk.
That said, I don’t know how long I do think it should take. Weeks? Months? Will elite raiders actually put up with months and months of incremental gear farming just to get a raid force to that level anymore? How long should the MMORPG genre’s hardest raids take to beat?
Every morning, the Massively Overpowered writers team up with mascot Mo to ask MMORPG players pointed questions about the massively multiplayer online roleplaying genre. Grab a mug of your preferred beverage and take a stab at answering the question posed in today’s Daily Grind!
