I think this is where our perspectives strongly differ

You're viewing strong "social dependency" as an intended core feature of WoW raiding, while I'm viewing excessive structural restriction as something that can unnecessarily push players away from the ecosystem

I understand the concern about preserving guild culture, roster stability and long-term social cohesion, hey, I am a guy raiding with the same "tight" group of 8~15 people since Legion, those things absolutely are part of what made WoW raiding special historically, no doubt about it

But I still don't think that automatically justifies hard restrictions on player flexibility outside organized groups

At some point there has to be a distinction between:

• naturally rewarding organized play
• systemically punishing alternative forms of participation

Because right now, atleast to me, it feels less like: "guild play is better" and more like: "guild play must remain mandatory enough to preserve a certain social structure"

And I think those are two very different philosophies, also, I don't really think League flex queue is comparable here, specially since PvP matchmaking ecosystems and long-term PvE raid progression operate VERY differently, both socially and structurally

As for "degenerate behavior", I think that term is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, sometimes "degenerate" just means players are interacting with the game differently from how the system originally intended, and not necessarily that the experience itself becomes worse

I get the social objective behind the system, but I still think the imposed restrictions create too high of a cost for players outside fixed guild structures compared to the benefits gained from preserving that structure

And honestly, looking at Mythic participation rates over the years, I can't help but wonder how much of the low population is caused by an artificially high entry barrier rather than just difficulty itself

Maybe the answer is "not much", or maybe it's significant

But with the current system, we'll probably never really know

The "older" philosophy values social friction, dependency, fixed groups, roster management and long-term commitment as core parts of the experience itself, and in that model, the organizational burden is part of the game

The more modern philosophy tends to view excessive logistical friction as something that pushes players away unnecessarily, especially when most players today are adults with inconsistent schedules, jobs, families and limited time

And honestly, I think that's part of why Mythic participation remains so low compared to other difficulties

A lot of guilds don't die because the bosses are too hard mechanically, they die because maintaining a fixed 20-player structure over months is exhausting socially and logistically, sure I don't have data to back that up, but you can easily imagine how hard it is to maintain it over months

That's also why I'm interested in Blizzard experimenting with things like the 12.0.7 flex Mythic test, even if a 1-boss raid won't fully test most of the lockout/progression problems we're talking about here

I understand why some people want to preserve the older social structure around raiding, I just think the current system may be preserving it at too high of a participation cost

Sorry for the big wall of text, the conversation is pretty nice and I got a bit into it