I dabbled with raiding at max level in pre-expansion EQII. It was a fun and completely disorganized experience.
Then I did some pretty hard raiding (20 hr+/week) on and off from vanilla wow through WotLK during college. Vanilla raids were simple but they are also my most memorable. In the most recent WoW expansion I found a casual raiding guild that fit really well, but I ended up quitting because I found multiple raid difficulties tedious and the gearing system was random and terrible.
So yeah I like raiding, but can't commit to the schedule I used to keep. Difficulty ought to come from progression not by rehashing the same fight with an additional ability or tuning.
Raiding is fun and awesome to see, when you see 30 characters who have put in serious time and grown to be formidable adventurers working together to bring down cool content in cool zones that otherwise would be too dangerous to be in, working as a team to get rare drops and killing the toughest and most powerful sons of a bitches Terminus has too offer.
It could get sper boring and feel bad though, in classic if you were not the group getting the xp it felt very unproductive and sometimes chat would be very stale as most people had to just listen to whoever on teamspeak and follow orders, which is kinda boring when you feel like just FootSoldier#22. Hopefully xp gets spread out or something to where each group in the raid can feel usefull with maybe groups maybe having differnt roles.
Some raids are awesome though if you are with friend and people you like, not just in so-and-so's guild because they are a tryhard by the numbers militant who runs a tight ship and gives best chance to get that sweet sweet item.
Im here to enjoy my time, not stfu and follow orders, rather be ******* around with my boys and/or letting the riad be losely micromnaged and able to still enjoy raid content, not sure if that makes sense but thats my feels.
Yes and no for me, I did enough raids since EQ1 to last a lifetime and I definitely don't miss waiting one hour just to get everyone ready to start a 8 hour marathon. I did enjoy them, however I preffer challenging areas with smaller groups or really those crazy camp and adventuring places like lower Guk. I was facinated by the random luck of getting items eithr usefull to oneself or tradeable to others, the basics of a social interaction in an mmo.
It depends on what kind of raid it is. If it's a public raiding system, which allows to invite everybody whos around and has time. Then it's totally okay for me. If it's a elitist instanced raiding system which needs you to learn all kinds of mechanics to get a part of it (aka WoW), then no thanks. If it's the second system, I in minimum hope to get challenging group content as well with the same gear-progress possibilities.