I get what you mean about MMO's, but I wouldn't use the term "assembly line" - rather I would say they are highly choreographed events. Speaking as a former Vanilla WoW Choreographer (Raid Leader) I can attest to the difficulty in getting 40 people to all do the correct thing - depending on roles - for 2-10 minutes.
The most difficult raid I was ever involved in required five people to each press a coloured button in an order that would be given to you, but it was randomised each time, and you had a limit on how long you could take to do it. And we had to do it correctly at least five times to succeed. On it's own, this would not seem like a big ask, but sometimes trying to get a bunch of gamers to do something specific, or even Wait Their Turn (absurd), is like trying to get 12 cats into carriers all at once.
I used to say that "Raid Leading is like babysitting except you can't beat the children."*
Originally Posted by Tuco
Used to to do 40-men WoW raids back as the shaman class leader in my guild, back then. We even achieve some decent results at the time, like first Onyxia and Ragnarok kills in our server and for an Italian guild.
Ah, the good old times... I wouldn't go back to play that stuff if I was paid to do it.
We were the only guild on our server to take down Kel'thuzad in Naxxramas - it took months to get through, and we lost people to stress and insufficient internet connections. We did it once and then we were done. I also NEVER want to do that again. Having to tell a good player that they can't go with us because their internet isn't good enough just sucks.
*This is a joke. I would not hit a child under any circumstances.
