Raiding in original WoW covered a wide spectrum. There were a tiny handful of hardcore cutting edge raiders, some who wanted to be those cutting edge raiders but weren’t (that Onyxia video), super chill raiders who were 2+ major raids behind and mostly used raiding as an excuse to goof around in Ventrilo, and everywhere in between. My guild fell in the last of those categories and it was fun.
While being “serious” became more popular in raiding over time, prior to M+ that mentality never came to dungeons. Up until its addition those were more of a go in with whatever ragtag crew you could gather together and have fun kind of thing, which has sadly has mostly been supplanted by solo content in modern WoW. There’s little content that requires a group and is low-stakes enough for the social or fantasy aspects to take precedence over the competitive ones.
While being “serious” became more popular in raiding over time, prior to M+ that mentality never came to dungeons. Up until its addition those were more of a go in with whatever ragtag crew you could gather together and have fun kind of thing, which has sadly has mostly been supplanted by solo content in modern WoW. There’s little content that requires a group and is low-stakes enough for the social or fantasy aspects to take precedence over the competitive ones.