Yes, I've come to the conclusion that mods are pretty much required for many players. I'm another of those that find raids a pointless annoyance to my gameplay loops.

It's even worse with the Mistlands update, because previously you could kill bosses on a different world to avoid triggering raids on your 'regular' world, but now boss kills are tied to merchant goods on that world.

It's a shame, I realize they have their 'vision' of what the game should be... but come on, at least give players the option for something like raids without needing to resort to third-party addons. I simply don't understand the apparent objection to having options available in the base game.

Then again, when you turn to an addon/mod for something like that, you discover all the OTHER fun, cool mods that add amazing functionality that should have been in the base game to begin with.