The pros and cons of extending raid lockouts

All through Wrath of the Lich King, I raided in a hardcore progression guild for 16 hours a week. We ran 12 hours in 25 mans and another three or four a week working on hard mode 10 mans. A lot of it ended up feeling like clearing content to get geared up to clear the exact same content but with more bells and whistlers (especially Trial of the Crusader, where we often ended up doing the same raid four times a week). So when Cataclysm came out, I shifted to a more casual, purely 10 man, six h

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