The trouble with TotC

In the past week I had a couple of days off, so I had more time to play WoW and raid. Here's what I did:

Trial of the Crusader (10-man): four full clears (no, really)
Trial of the Grand Crusader (10-man): two or three hours of attempts spread out over two nights, two boss kills
Trial of the Crusader (25-man): one full clear
Trial of the Grand Crusader (25-man): about six hours of attempts on Northrend Beasts, also spread out over two nights, no kill

If you think that sounds slightly insane, you're not the only one. And here I thought I was hardcore when I did two full Karazhan clears in one day back in BC...

In the end the experience mostly just left me with a very weird feeling. Obviously nobody forced me to raid the same instance over and over again, and it certainly felt cool to get the achievement for clearing it on all of my alts. However, on the other hand I'm starting to get seriously tired of doing the same fights over and over again (especially the Faction Champions), and in a strange way it feels as if Blizzard isn't leaving me much choice regardless. I mean, I'd quite like to do some Naxx and Ulduar runs again for a change, or even Sartharion and Malygos, but none of those would do anything for my characters' personal progression anymore, as the emblem items have made huge chunks of the gear in there completely irrelevant, even for my alts. My hunter for example has never even cleared Naxxramas, yet she's completed Trial of the Crusader and was only outdamaged in there by a mage in full twenty-five-man gear. How wrong is that?

I think raiding right now suffers from the same problem as the levelling game, namely that Blizzard seems to think that making things accessible means forcefully funneling people towards the end as quickly as possible, even if that means skipping a large part of the journey. Which is really bizarre, considering that the journey is what makes up ninety percent of the game. No wonder that I feel the pull of low-level alts stronger than ever as of late - at least they still have some roads left to travel.