Naxxramas

Tobold's comment in this post:
"Fortunately these complaints have come from the top raiding guilds, which are the only customers Blizzard is listening to."

made me think about all the comments I've seen about Blizzard focusing on raiding. Here are a few I came across with a quick search:

"95% of the work at Blizzard is probably about fine tuning all these encounters."

"The game is going downhill. They've done the exact same thing that EQ did in catering to the top 1% in order to reduce subscription cancellation due to boredom by those 1%."

"...catering to Raiders and refusing to have a viable end game for Non-Raiders was the single most idiotic move Blizzard made, and yes it cost them many subscribers, they came back because Blizzard changed end game focus."

And that made me think about Naxxramas. A lot of focus is on the end-game because Blizzard wants its players to keep playing of course. Do they really put that much focus on raiding? I tend to disagree, but it does seem counter-productive to focus on an instance the majority of the players would never step foot in.

Due to the current complaints about Serpentshrine Cavern trash, and its buggy encounters, many players are lamenting the bygone days of Naxxramas. It is being mentioned as the best designed instance in the raiding game.

Unfortunately, and this is where it seems I support Tobold's statement, I only got the chance to see a small part of it at the right level. I could go back now, but as a guild officer told me "it doesn't matter now".

I remember saving crafting materials so I could help those in my guild make their T3 pieces, in the end only about 4 or 5 people actually got one piece of T3. I remember thinking we would have to get busy working on our frost resistance, sadly we got no where near Sapphiron. I remember the only way I would see loot from Naxx was on the backs of other players on the battleground after they installed cross-realm pvp.

Although my burnout on raiding leaves me without the most positive attitude about it, I wish I had experienced what many are saying how raid instances should be designed (without the required pot consumption I assume!)

Now the only chance I'll have to do Naxx, is as a level 70 (the tuning requirements are too steep for my level 60 alt to bother) with the challenge toned down and the loot too easily replaced. Naxxramas diminished to the category of Deadmines. That's a shame.