Logs, meters, and parses, oh my!

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The natural progression of the focused, goal oriented, min-max player through the years.


Through the life of any game, especially MMO's, the player base will begin to understand the nuances, the ins and outs, all the little nitty gritty details about the game.  For the ones that like being "the best", it's a very natural, fluid ordeal for them to achieve everything they possibly can out of their game.

Shit, people study Chess their entire lives to be better at that.  Why should video games be any different?

They aren't.

Since the beginning of thought for man, we have always spent time asking ourselves, "What if?".  What if that rock would help me cut open this dead animal easier?  What if figuring out how to smelt down this stronger rock and shape it into some other shape would make my life easier?  What if we could leave a message for each other somehow?  What if we could fly?  What if I could stop sucking at healing on my druid and keep the raid alive?

Now, what are the key ingredients to all these questions?  Information.  Experimentation.

You are going to have to fail a lot before you find out what works "best".  We live in a very finite universe.  There is only so much matter on this rock that we can use for different purposes.  Any game developer will only program in a certain maximum amount of combinations of things into their games.  Eventually, and sooner rather than later with the help of technology, those combinations will be discovered.  We are a curious species, we want to just "know" things.  I want to know why all of a sudden I'm a moron on my hunter, but I'm playing better on my mage.

Let's talk Ultima Online.  Not sure if everyone reading this (if anyone still does) ever played that game, but it was the first major "theme park" kind of MMO.  At first, players don't have a freaking clue what they are doing in it.  Use a dagger on a tree?  The hell for?  Oh, I can get kindling for fire?  But if I use an axe on it, I can get wood and make a shield?  Oh hell yeah!  Let's do other shit!!

Extrapolate that to years later, and players have figured out that if you are trying to raise a particular skill (which normally took years and years and years to do in that game), if you got on a boat, and figured out this exact pattern to sail in, you could almost completely automate rapid skill gains.

Or that each "tile" in the game had a certain amount of skill point resources that could be depleted and replenished over time.

Or that they actually programmed environmental habits for wildlife, migration patterns for food sources, and how to handle predators and prey.

Neat, but what does that have to do with WoW, Dave?  Well, your average WoW player, that is super casual, may might LFR once in a blue moon, but just levels up, does quests, maybe crafts some, but nothing too major, for them it doesn't mean anything really.

For the player that says "How hard would it be to kill that dragon over there?  Oh it killed me in three hits?  Hmmm, would my buddy who's a protection warrior do better?  Oh he died in eight hits?  Hey let's get our druid friend to heal us.  Oh he ran out of mana after forty seconds?  Crap, okay guys, let's think this one out.  Let's get another guy who can take a lot of hits, that paladin guy over there.  And really this will take me like twenty minutes just with the amount of damage we're doing, what if we got like eight more people to shoot this sucker.  And the druid may need some help healing that many people, let's get him a shaman and a priest to help him out.  Okay, NOW let's go take that dragon down.", then this is exactly for them.

Trial and error, that is how most of the things are learned in this game.  Even for the developers too.  Test, change some code, retest, change more code, tweek something here and there, test it, more tweeks, etc. etc. etc..

But people also hate wasting their time.  So we invent things to save ourselves time, energy, resources, etc.  Now we have tools like skada/recount, those dreaded "dps-meters".  Websites like World of Logs with all sorts of information hosted there for people to sift through and make use of.

What do all these things do?  Give us access to information.

Where does the stigma, the social cry against these come from?

Well, to be honest, bad players.  Bad players that get called out for being bad, and it makes them feel bad.

But I'm over simplifying an issue.  Both sides of the argument will, until someone like me comes along.

What is the actual point of those "dps meters"?  It isn't to brag, it isn't to make fun of other people.  It isn't to let someone yell at someone else.  The actual real goal of that piece of programming is to display information in a fashion that is both easy to comprehend what it is showing, and provides the information in as close to real time as we can get.

What a human being then does with it...that's a different subject.

God, for the longest time, I would see forum post after forum post where someone would get all cry baby because someone in their random dungeon queued group called them a bad player because their dps was too low for their tastes, and got the group to kick them out.  I'd see it every single day on the forums, majorly rampant during Wrath for some reason, maybe because I just spent way too much time on the forums back then.  So they would go on a freaking crusade to get the devs to ban "meters", because THAT is what was making players caustic in WoW.

And then this would be the point where most people would ignore them, or just call them butt hurt, and people would move on.

But it isn't the "meter" that is at fault here.  Those types of players making those posts, they really just hate the jerk who was a total dick to them and got them kicked from their group.

But what if someone nice, like me :D, were to come up to them, and using that exact same meter, would have them spend some time at a training dummy, and then figure out what they are in fact doing wrong, and work with them on improving it?  They'd probably then go download it themselves and see what this world is all about.  The player obviously cares about their performance in this game, otherwise they would have completely ignored the incident with the caustic player and just kept doing whatever they feel like doing.  If they are going to take time to complain about it, they'll take time to make sure it NEVER happens again.

Another reason for needing this information, besides to better ones self, the devs keep making harder content!  I mean, really, if they just keep pumping out easy mode dragon after even easier easy mode dragon, one after another, eventually nobody bothers, because it's too easy.  There isn't any accomplishment.  There is no knew challenge to try to overcome.  Players leave.  So...game gets a bit harder and harder, naturally, or it dies a horrible death, and the devs don't make any money, and they go on welfare, and they rape and pillage the countryside in real life to then make ends meet.  And really, I don't need a dev looting my actual house, so let's keep having them pump out more content that keeps our interest peaked so we pay them...and it's a cycle of fun for everyone.

Oh and I really would enjoy the "well people will just pad meters to make themselves look good" or "but they don't show the people that are avoiding damage" or other such nonsense.

Shut your mouths, these people.  Stop your fingers from moving, and just read.

Our meters show us everything now.  How much damage you take.  How much damage you deal.  How much healing you do.  How much wasted over-healing you do.  Abilities you use.  Sources of damage you take, or deal to enemies.  How many times you interrupt enemy abilities.  How many times you use crowd control abilities on enemies.  How many times you BREAK crowd control abilities on enemies.  How much threat you pull.

We see it all.  And the good raid leaders, and class leaders, and officers, and other people in charge of interpreting that information, we know what they mean.  I know when, on a fight like Paragons in SoO, if someone is just multi-dotting like an idiot (the bosses heal to full whenever one of them dies).  I also know when a shaman that is glyphed to let flame shock ticks heal themselves are actually spreading that dot to all enemies to help keep themselves alive better and give the healers an easier time of things.

Stop making the argument against information.  You had bad experiences with real shitty players.  Trust me, there are waaaaay more good players, using the exact same programs and meters, etc, out there than those bad players.  Find them, and enjoy the game like you never have before, playing with people that don't suck at life.

Why I bothered to bring up this subject again?  Hell I don't know, but maybe it was just to have something to point to whenever the topic comes up again.  Enjoy yourselves people, as best you can!

Breakfast of Champions. And...To Infiinty...And BEYOND!

Mine consisted of:

Coffee, Folgers + Splenda + Hazelnut Creamer
Almond Joy, Large
League of Legends, Jayce (normal/draft, loss) + Sona (aram, win)



Yeah, good breakfast for the most part.  Jayce, get your shit together, why did you lose vs Teemo top?

As I'm writing this up, Cillie is taking her last final for this semester.  After this, she has one more semester to go before she's graduated, and we move back to GA!  So...I guess this post is all about the future.

We've all seen the WoD coverage, posts from the devs afterwards, raiding is changing in a big way.  The whole "20 man" thing.  Mythic.

There's something funny about our server.  Apart from the only actual 25 man raiding team on the server, all of the big 10 man teams have all messaged Cillie about them and us merging for the expansion.  From the alliance, we were propositioned pretty early, and invited to join them.  Never gonna happen.  We like our raiding and guild environment the way we make it.

From the horde side, it was kind of a chuckle.  We were propositioned as if their team were better, and we've be helping ourselves out more by joining them.  At the time, we were 5/14h (a week later 6/14h) and they had just killed Immerseus heroic.

An even bigger "no".  Here's the thing, and I can't speak for alliance side because I haven't seen what their Flex scene is like over there, but besides us, I actually see Little Big Guild getting into some serious progression later on in WoD, hell maybe even some heroics this tier before WoD goes live, they certainly have enough time, and they are already getting serious strats for the Klaxxi fight for the first time.  Plus, we've done some Flex with them, and they have a lot of really really strong raiders over in that guild.

Beyond that, nobody else is farming Flex players right now.  We're a small server, horde side, with few teams really raiding.  Our second team is doing better than most main teams are, they one-shotted two new bosses to put them at 11/14.  Some of that has to do with our guild fostering a strong Flex community, and working with people outside of our own to build a raiding community from the ground up.  Besides LBG and us, I don't see that happening elsewhere.

I'm sorry MR, but we got a lot of your population because you held your Flex to just your core people.  Bad move.

Anywho, I'm excited, really excited, for our prospects in WoD.  We have two very good teams, the leadership is incredibly in sync, and we have some good raiding relationships with a lot of people out there.  Come WoD, where Flex is the norm except for the very top of the player base, we've already got it down.

If Cillie hadn't been working so hard, so long ago, through multiple tiers, to get a second team raiding, I don't know if we would be in this position.  She's got much better long term vision than most people in ET.  Without her leadership, EQ wouldn't be where it is today.  Sure, I can break down a strat and call things out with the best of them, but running a guild, managing people, keeping the soul of a guild going, and building, that's something she does better than anyone I know.

So...yeah, bring on WoD whenever Blizz, we got this.

A bit of a dry spell

Nothing fancy about today, just jumping back into spitting my thoughts onto paper...or digitized screen, whatever.

Huuuuuuuge gap in time since the last post.  Sorry about that, part busy part lazy mixed together there.  If you've been following Blizzcon, you know that the WoW raiding scene is going to see some changes, Blizz says in order to streamline things going forward.

For those that have no idea what I am talking about, Blizz is change raiding structures some.  Our current "normal" mode is going to be what the difficulty of "current flex" is in the next expansion, meaning anywhere from 10-25 players.  Current "heroic" is going to be the "normal" raids, and it will also be the flex style for raid size.  They are then introducing "Mythic", which will be the new static size of raiding, which is 20 man (no more 10/25), and will be the same in difficulty as the current "heroic" we have now.

So, to recap, LFR will exist, then it goes to Flex Normal, then Flex Heroic, then 20m Mythic.  And everything but Mythic will be cross realm from day one.

So 10man teams are going to have to double up, and 25man teams are cutting down a few.

A lot of people are already in freakout mode.  The 25's probably not as much as the 10's though.  It's easy to drop people than recruit new players, for sure.  I hope this gives Blizz the ability to design better content with this streamlined approach, but we'll just have to wait and see on that.

For me though, and more specificly for my wife Cillie who does almost all the recruiting, this means we have to start planning now for the future.  We've been trying for a very long time (since before ToT came out) to get a second raid team going.  Now, it looks like one might be getting a really good start.  They've only been a raid team for a couple weeks about and they are already 5/14N.

Naturally, the questions are already starting.  "Will I be on the 'Mythic' team?"  "How many from group 2 will join the main team?"  Lots of questions like these.  The easy answer is...maybe.  

If you've read any of my previous posts, you may have an idea of the type of raider, player, person, I look for.  You have to be a certain caliber to be on the "main team".  We're looking for the total package type of player.  Raid awareness, class ability, role ability, punctuality and attendance, communication.  All these are factors for being one of our raiders.  Patience, not being a douche, etc also.

Also, if you play on Eldre'Thalas, horde side, the heroic raiding scene would not exist at all if it weren't for EQ just about.  Now, hopefully server mergers will give us an influx of raiders from other servers (one could say we would be the influx into other raiding communities, but it's the same thing either way).  This, plus our own stable of raiders, will probably give us the ability to field a Mythic team.

Here is what many progression oriented teams need to start thinking about.  It will take time to recruit people, more or less depending on your server population.  More for us, barrig server mergers treating us to 50k new horde.  Any "new" teams/guilds will also be trying to poach players.  And besides recruiting, there is a process, mostly trial and error, of weeding people out.

Let me give you an idea.  During MoP, we had about three people from the Cata team not even play MoP.  We went through a dps and two healers and a tank before having a semi stable team up until around our 2nd heroic kill where we had to replace another tank.  

More shuffling around and we get to ToT, where we replace a healer again.  We actually live through most of ToT normal without any personelle issues...until the very first week we could do heroics and the guild splits (Remix to Equilibrium).  

Two members replaced.  We get another stable team for the most part, until SoO, and we have to replace a tank.  We hadn't even cleared normals yet, and we went through about three different people before finding someone, from Australia!

That's a lot of stress, people, emotions, in a years time.  And that is just for a 10man.  Double that, and that's what Mythic raiding is going to be like.  Probably more so.

Our team has its own culture, a way of making fun of ourselves, hazing each other, and also a way of getting serious and doing work.  If you have a very large influx of people very fast, it's going to be volatile.  No matter how nice and civil people are, people will show their asses and do stupid shit.  We had to kick a non-raiding guildie out because of BMAH crap.  Somethig as simple as that got some assclown kicked from the guild.

So yeah, recruiting has already started for the smart guilds, and the ones that never clear content won't bother until WoD.  And if you are the type of player that is jonesing to see progression raiding on our server, start sales pitching us now.  We took a player from freaking Australia, so don't think that being a local gives you any kind of advantage.

I'll be posting some of my own thoughts on all the stuff from Blizzcon that we got to see in the next few days, so be ready for more idle ramblings!

Welcome To The New Age

SoO is in full swing!

World first race is still on, with a few 10's and 25's working Garrosh over and over.  Flex has come out, and people are using that.  LFR wings are starting to open, and the hilarity there is starting to ramp up.

For Equilibrium, we're doing everything.  Our core 10 is sitting right now on 11/14, much faster progress that we've ever had before in our raiding lives.  We're really impressed with ourselves, and now that we have recruiting (hopefully) finished for this tier (hopefully forever, but I know real life always comes in eventually), we're really cooking along with a real solid team.  Impudence over on alliance finally downed Garrosh, mad props to them, can't wait to join them and work on heroics.

Equilibrium has absorbed a lot of new people recently.  I'd like to brag and think it's because Cillie and I are just sooooo awesome and badass.  But I know it's pretty much probably just because other people aren't organizing what we are organizing.  Our officer core is doing a fantastic job of arranging guild Flex raids, and we're running those with almost 25 people every single time.

Hell, we even started doing guild LFR runs, so more people can get that done without the wipe fest most seem to be lately.

We've got a lot of new people getting into raiding.  Which is very awesome!  Eldre'thalis needs a lot more raiders, especially on horde side.  We've got a lot of people that are very new to organized raiding though.  I want to spend a little time on Raid Etiquette.

Raid Etiquette:

First, and most important, and encompasses many things, is be respectful of everyone else's time.  Your time is being spent partaking in the raid, but so is everyone else's.  If you are being a distraction to the raid, you aren't slowing yourself down, you are slowing down and wasting the time of everyone else.  It's considered "bad form", and if you do it too much, you may find yourself not being invited back again.

I compare this to a radio show that I sometimes listen to, called The Rick And Bubba Show.  On this radio show, they have a segment where they allow anyone to call in, and for thirty seconds, you can talk about whatever you want.  They preface this segment by telling the audience to keep in mind something very important.  If you were to listen to yourself, would you feel like you are being annoying, a waste of time, or would you feel like you were entertaining and informative.

I want my raiders, all of them, to have that kind of mindset when they get into raid.  Especially on Mumble.  Yes, we're all online at the same time, and all chatting in Mumble together.  However, raid time isn't social time.  Shout outs to each other, talking about non-raid stuff, stuff of that nature shouldn't be going on.  When trash is being killed, when the raid gets to a boss and it's time for a strat recap, it isn't time to goof off.

Don't get me wrong, we'll joke around in raid, and maybe the occasional off topic thing might be talked about.  But when it is constant, that's when it becomes a nuisance, and that's when it is counter productive to the raid.  The raid is here to progress through the highest content in WoW, that is it's main goal, it's focus, the reason why everyone is showing up.  That's where the focus should be, not elsewhere.

Second, gear, and guild resources.  After each boss kill, everyone is always excited about their gear drops whenever they happen.  Naturally you want to put it on, trick it out, and be better than you were before.  However, spamming chat or Mumble for every enchant, gem, reforge mount, etc, slows down the raid.  Yes, you might see a 1% overall improvement in your performance, but you are actually wasting everyone's time while we wait for all that stuff to take place.  Wait until a break, or the raid is over, to take care of that kind of stuff.  And don't expect the guild to fund all of that stuff.  All those enchants and belt buckles and shoulder/leg enchants and gems, etc, take people time to acquire, and definitely not in the amount needed to give everyone in the guild whatever they want whenever they want it.

My 10 man team pools resources so that key people take care of key items, however, that doesn't mean that we've put in the time for another 30+ people to share those resources.  You should never expect that, just because you are raiding, that all the mats for everything are going to be welfare'd out to you.  Everyone needs to be able to either provide their own mats, or work with other raiders (or anyone really, doesn't need to be with people in the guild) where you agree to provide each other certain things.  The guild bank is not Good Will.

Third, reputation.  You are part of a guild, a very successful guild, but don't think that gives you the ability to "shit talk" over the Internet.  Just like how a business cares about what it's employees are saying on Social Media sites, or to people in public, a guild cares about that too.  If you are a dick to people, you will be kicked out.  That can include things other than just what you say.  It includes what you do.  We've reformed the entire guild before because of a minority, we'll do the same any time it is needed.  If someone is harassing you, find a way to deal with it like a responsible adult.  Remember, this is just a game, and the moment it becomes abuse, that's when it should be walked away from.  Put someone on ignore, get a GM involved, do whatever it takes to separate yourself from the issue.  There isn't any good coming from nerd raging over something as insignificant as what anyone could ever say (or do) in WoW.

Fourth, have fun.  Once this all is no longer fun, then it's time to put it away and move on to something else.  Yes, there are some guidelines to follow so that you don't ruin the fun for others.  And once everyone decides to get along, then everyone is having a lot more fun, and we have an even bigger reason to keep playing.  Be respectful of each other, and yourself, and you'll enjoy this game and this community more and more.

Fifth, send me all your gold.  No?  Meh, it was worth a shot.

Every body wants to rule the world...

Thought I went away huh?

So, if you are keeping up with WoW, 5.4, Siege of Orgrimmar, is about to go live in a few days.  Blizzard has a few new snacks for their players to gobble up and taste for this patch.  First off, the big one, FLEX RAIDING!  We've already got guild/pug plans to have this mode rolling a couple days a week.  With how they are staggering the release of flex wings, it's actually going to be pretty slow going at start.

Why is flex going to be slow?  They are gating it in sections like LFR, but at a slightly faster pace than LFR.  Well, actually flex is going to take LFR's old gating speed, and LFR is going to be delayed a week later than flex.  It's a little weird, gating within gating while gating is gating other gating, but yeah.

Plus there is other random stuff for the masses to do on the new island place, with things and quests and items and crap.

I'm kind of hoping for some better competition this time, but I probably won't get it until they do the virtual server mergers, if they ever do that.  That feature is being delayed, we don't know until when, but we're looking forward to it.  I love my server, but apart from us and MR, there isn't any other real progression raid scenery going on for us to recruit from.  Hopefully flex changes that, and more than hopefully the virtual servers will def change that for us.

Oh yeah, and Garrosh think's he's better than he is, and needs to die.  I'm putting my axe in his forehead.  It's our town, not his.

It's quiet...almost...too quiet...

Bit of a dry spell since my last post, I know, I know.  But something really entertaining, that makes raiding and playing with this group of people the bets thing ever, happened on Tuesday.

We picked Horridon as our fourth heroic kill this time.  The fight isn't really harder, the only new mechanic is a pink dino that you have to punt away from yourself every few seconds.  But the health of everything just scales up enough to where everything is taking long enough to where you can't always kill everything before their mechanics take place. 

We worked on it all night, and in classic raiding fashion, the last pull of the night before our time is up, we get the kill.  We barely get the kill.  Let me show you!

We'd been refining the fight after each pull, working out cooldowns, targets, interrupts, etc.  We actually had a pull near the middle of the night where we cleared every gate, had Jallak down, and had just died to Horridon's massive damage ramp up and had tried to stay spread out to make him run people down and still dps him.  But he just had too much health and too many of us dead to make it happen.

But the pull just before this one, one of our tanks, our newest member, said something like "Man it just feels like we're regressing!"

A few of our veteran members tell him that that is exactly how things go in this guild, we pull and pull and pull, wipe and wipe and wipe, and then we decide to stop messing around at around the last ten minutes and pull out a kill.

But for this group, we started a new heroic boss and had it dead in less than three hours.  That's a record for us.  And the way it finally happened, with our ele shaman reincarnating before the last person died, getting just enough damage off before the boss melts his face, the desperation all of us were probably feeling, that we're so close and it's looking so bleak, and then we finally get him down, there are very few feelings in the world like that.  That feeling of something being so difficult, and yet a group of friends over the Internet work together, work their asses off, and see something glorious take place.  There isn't word in the English language to describe that feeling the right way, no word or phrase that expresses just the overwhelming joy, elation, the sense of victory, the camaraderie, that..."je ne sais quoi". 

To have a little fun with things:

At the 11:11 minute, when both tanks are down, we're like shit!  Everyone spreads out, trying to make Horridon run his ass all over town.  At about 12:15, Cillie is screaming.  It totally sounds like Lemarc goes into massive prayer mode.  Well,back at 12:02, Donton actually drops and comes right back up a couple seconds later.  Once Theblob goes down, Donton's all like I got this!  And then, at 12:20, that glorious moment in time, it feels kinda like this.

I hope everyone gets to have a moment like that in WoW, or in any game really.  There is just such an immense sense of accomplishment that comes from having something, it could be raiding, it could be PvP, it could be getting to the level cap first on your server, whatever it is for you.  But that moment of triumph, where something was difficult, and failure could be at any moment, but you make the right decisions, you make the right plays when they matter the most, and you get the win.  I hope each and every person gets to share that type of feeling at least once in their life.  It is a cherishable moment, once that I will remember fondly for a very very long time. 

Or until Cillie bakes me a cake.  ;)

Together we'll stand, divided we'll fall...

Who the hell was Canned Heat?!?  I don't usually get all hippie like, but I thought the lyrics fit this topic kinda well.  Listen in the background while you read, maybe, or not if you don't want to.

So, Blizzard, they came out a few days back with this little gem.  Flex Raiding.  What in the Sam Hill is that?  Say you want to raid, current content, but LFR makes you want to vomit all over your next door neighbor who will then punch you in the face.  But, you can't get a solid ten man or twenty five man group that will dedicate the time to do normal raids.  What do you do?  Blizzard now lets everyone form a scaling raid based on number of bodies, anywhere from ten to twenty five people, assumes you know to have enough tanks and healers doing simple math (read as at least one healer for every five people, and two tanks), then lets you fight current content that is much more casual friendly, yet not the stupidness of LFR.  It won't be as hard as normals, but it won't be the Keystone Cops that LFR usually is.

Why I think this is one of the best ideas ever created:

First, all of these statements to follow are based solely on the idea of what this feature could be.  None of the WoW community has actually been able to test this to any real extent, so nobody can come out right now and say what everything is like.  It's all conjecture and idealism and people pissing thoughts out the window.  Which is great, because everyone loves to get involved in some imagination time.  Especially about WoW.

Aside aside, this feature, if done correctly, is going to be a fantastic tool to build raiders.  This mode, as Blizzard has said, will not share any kind of lockout with the other raids.  Which means that people in serious guilds can kick back with their friends that don't raid as much as they do, still do meaningful encounters, and be able to teach others and give them first hand experience at how raiding really is. 

Take my guild as an example.  We have a fairly big roster and not just a crap ton of alts.  We have a large amount of unique players.  We have a pretty kickin ten man team that is a serious set of raiders.  There are others in the guild who are trying to get a second team going, because they do enjoy end-game content and want to raid, but they are just a bit behind current content mostly because they are getting into it later than others.  Nothing wrong with that, it just means that whenever new content comes out, they get to it a few weeks after others do until they can catch up.  Then you have others in the guild that wouldn't mind pitching in from time to time if anybody needs it, but they don't want to commit to a serious schedule.  If they happen to be on, and a team needs a filler because someone is out that day, then everything keeps moving along smoothly.

But not everyone is in that situation.  Take my ten man team, we're at the point, content/gear wise, where if we have someone out on any particular raid night, then progression halts.  We usually have to reschedule, because on our server, finding a suitable replacement is very difficult.  The general raiding community, horde side on Eldre'thalas just isn't very strong.  Not many people are at the same gear level we are, or have the same fight knowledge that we have, so finding someone to fill in is nigh impossible.

So Flex Raiding, how does that actually help?  Well, those teams that are trying to build up, it gives them the ability to form a meaningful raid, because now the content is a little easier, there are still meaningful rewards, and you don't have to strive so hard for that perfect team comp.  My second team will probably use this while learning fights, or if they have to sub people in.  Our main team raiders can easily come in on a Flex night, help carry while teaching people how to handle mechanics and such, and not take up a valuable slot preventing people from learning fights or getting gear, because gear is distributed using the LFR loot system, nobody interferes with your loot.

Or both teams could group up together, plus fill in with random people in the guild, and get a taste of what twenty five man raiding is like.  Or everyone could hop onto whatever alts they have, run a Flex raid, the fights won't be as gear dependent, and everyone can have fun running through the raids while still making progress on their alts.

There are tons of possibilities for how Flex Raiding can be a huge boost to the "fun" in WoW.  There will be more pugging going on every server, because people won't have to wait longer for more gear to overcompensate for mechanics, they will be able to enter into raiding earlier, have meaningful improvements, have a meaningful learning curve, and have fun.

Wasn't LFR supposed to do that?  Well, yes, it was, but when you lack real communication in raid encounters, the developers have to dumb fights down to ridiculous levels.  Or what they did recently, which was to put in a stacking buff after wipes.  In reality, LFR leaves a sour taste for many players.  You are getting this weird roulette type experience, because unless you queue up with a lot of people that you know are good, you have no clue if your healers are going to suck, if your tanks won't know any fight mechanics, or if your dps are a bunch of tools who just auto attack and stand in fire constantly.  With Flex, you are able to hand pick people, have better communication because more than likely you will be using Mumble, or Vent, or Skype, or whatever, and have a better raiding experience with better rewards.

Flex Raiding, as long as Blizzard doesn't totally fubar it, is going to be an amazing gap closer for people wanting to get into raiding, for people looking to gear alts, for people wanting to play with friends, and guilds needing people to sub in from time to time or build up a farm team.  You can realid friends with this, on current content, across servers, and you don't have to have perfect raid comps to do it.  This is going to be a wonderful system for building a greater raiding community, for casual raiders, for heroic raiders, for guilds, for entire servers.  Blizzard, get Flex Raiding out to us ASAP!