Handicapped mode

During Icecrown Citadel, the top guild on my realm ran pugs of ICC25 with their alts.  Because some of their players didn't have raid ready alts or weren't interested, they pugged a few spots each week.  Usually the "pugs" were regulars in the group, alts from one or two of the other top 5 guilds on the realm and some mains from the two top 10man guilds on the realm (one of which was us yay!).

The raids were pretty good - we usually managed to do three to five bosses on heroic (our best was 8/12 heroic) and we even managed to build a Shadowmourne.

Sometimes, however, the regulars weren't able to make it.  And then we had to have actual pugs (sinister music).  Normally, we did Blood-Queen Lana'thel on heroic mode, but one such week we had decided that we had too many pugs to take her on hardmode as usual, so we would do it on normal mode because it didn't look like we had the dps.  And we wiped.  And wiped.  Blood-Queen is a fairly simple fight and the regulars all looked on in horror as our pugs bit the tanks ("thret is 4 n00bs lol"), the healers or just didn't bother to bite anyone at all.  After our first try when we wiped due to 4 people being mind-controlled, our raid leader explained the strats slowly and carefully and in a tone of shock with, I think, a little bit of awe at the realisation of how incredibly stupid people can be.

After about ten wipes, the raid leader said "I think I'm going to switch to normal mode.  Oh damn, I forgot, we're already on normal."  The Man, who had decided not to come that week, happened to be walking through the lounge where I play at the time and heard this on my speakers and said "Tell him to check if there's a handicapped mode."  I relayed this on vent to thunderous laughter from the regulars and general upset from the pugs, incidentally sparking an argument that led to two people being kicked from the raid and another quitting and attempting to wipe us (he ran forward and pulled the boss while all of us were outside her circle and died, causing her to despawn).  Ten minutes after that, when we had all stopped laughing enough to play, we killed her flawlessly with 22 people.

Cut forward one year and it would seem that The Man really is psychic.  Blizzard announced today in an interview on The Escapist the following:

"...there is going to be another difficulty level and this raid difficulty - the random raid finder difficulty level - we haven't figured out exactly what it's going to be called but there will be a difficulty level easier than normal mode."

Handicapped mode is here!  I'm sure that the many guilds who were unable to kill normal mode bosses before they were nerfed will greet this with enthusiasm.  My own reaction to this has been spates of giggles that lasted the whole morning so far and a determination to make the term "Handicapped mode" the go-to phrase to describe it.