If you want the original vanilla feeling, lobotomize yourself and your 39 other raiders.
Then it'll be a challenge.
Yeah, that'd work. Although we could just play with one hand, without buffs or anything. But having "a challenge" is not everything. There is also the social aspect and comparing with others. Being better/faster that other guilds is what drives the raiding.
Adding abilities and altering skill timers is out of question.
Of course. I agree with this.
You mix up "hard" with "gear dependent".
In this context, I thing these are really
almost interchangeable. When a boss is more gear dependent, the same group will experience more difficulty defeating him - more efficient mana management, more dps, longer fight=more possibilities for "random" mistake, thus it requires more concentrated and coordinated group. But even if not, already everything in WoW is about "gear dependency", that just is the type of progression in this game. The boss mechanics and tactics aren't so important now(as you don't have to discover them for the first time), it just comes down to gear check and how well can you bring your tactic to practice.
You mix up "mechanically rich/interesting" with "hard". "Hard" = mechanically challenging + gear dependent. But mechanically, bosses across all raids don't vary
that much.
MC is not challenging and will never be.
That is really a shame and it is wrong. Nothing should be "not challenging", it's just bad game design and something should be done about it. Original MC was designed with the state/experience of players at that time, with patch features, with available tools etc. in mind.
Any "goal" player should achieve in the game should be:
1) Challenging enough
2) Easy/doable enough
3) Clear/explained enough
4) Rewarding enough
If there is whole raid which is "not challenging" and is just plain grind, it clearly fails and I ask you: Do you really prefer going through a raid without any difficulty and just grind your way through, over earning every step of your progress by skill and perseverance?
Mind you, the faster you progress to the end, the sooner will your meaningful stay at this server end. This server has limited amount of content and progress potential to offer.
ps. Again, if anybody forgot throughout my post, I am against any timer changes/new ability additions(I'm not discussing technical solutions now). I am for keeping all as nice and blizzlike as possible, while maintaining certain level of fun,
difficulty and potential for long future life of the project.
pps. TL;DR: Please let it be challenging, we have just relatively few encounters until we climb the progress ladder and finish all content, let us enjoy every step of it.