25 person max raid size for expansion

[Lissa]

What we can't tell is how many hours of play that week is. I'd guess 20 or so, resulting in one decent epic item. I'm pretty sure you'd get better than that if you spent the same amount of time in MC or BWL with your guild on a new 60 alt.

I don't think you're a jerk at all. I recognise that later raids are a different level of difficulty to the first ones released; that you're able to enjoy yourself in that way does not diminish my experience. That little has been provided for smaller groups as raiding has grown from MC to Naxx does. The 1.10 chain is a start but that seems to be it before the expansion.

I'd like to see more playstyles supported. I'd like to be able to join a raid on occassion and not be a liability to my guild simply due to inability to obtain the necessary gear; I'd like to be able to take loot from raids and not trivialise the rest of the game. I'd like it to be an option rather than a lifestyle.

I'd say it's a lifestyle if you choose it to be that way. There are plenty of things that you can do that don't revolve around raiding. I know Bun rarely raids on his characters and puts most of his time into playing alts and trying different things with the same classes (he's got two druids, two warlocks, and I think two hunters, with the druids, a warlock, and a hunter capped, but each has a different talent build for each duplicate). We also have a number of people in our alliance on Stormrage that raid when they get a chance and they have some decent gear as well and are learning how to raid. As was stated by others, you typically will have a core raid group and then those that can make raids as time permits.

The "necessary gear," isn't as hard to obtain as main people think. Most raiders started out with blues from the "end game" instances (Strat, Scholo, BRS, Dire Maul) and then geared up in MC before progressing to BWL and on. The worst part about preparing for BWL was farming MC for the cores to make the fire resistance gear, although you can get around that to some degree if you're a cloth or leather wearer.