Lets Talk Bosses
stargrace 
In my previous post, Dril asked: “do the other games have bosses as complex as WoW? And do you think the game would be a lot harder without DBM?” – I gave this a little thought before deciding to answer. I’m going to start backwards. I am still really new to DBM, I leveled my priest up without even knowing that this existed, and while some instances *were* difficult, they were not impossible. DBM (deadly boss mod for those who are not familiar with the terminology) announces things both in text and in the center of your screen. Helpful things like when an encounter reflects, when charm is about to go off, count downs to explosions, etc. I don’t really think the game is that much harder without it. You still need to react, with or without. Knowing when to react is certainly nice but even if YOU know what to do, chances are your 4 other group mates do not and that still makes for a difficult instance. Since gear also plays a role it doesn’t matter how well you react, if you’re not geared well enough for whatever is about to happen next, you’re still going to die.
As far as other games – yes. They certainly do. There are also mods that work like DBM but are not quite as revealing. One that comes to mind is ACT for EQ2. This allows you to manually input timers for mob encounters, so if you’re fighting something that’s going to dot you every 50 seconds if you’re more then 50m away, you’ll know to move in. These are not used very often in instances, but they’re incredibly valuable in raids.
Every game has ‘complex’ encounters in their own rights. In EQ2 (since that’s what I’m most familiar with) every ‘boss’ has it’s own set of rules. In Sentinel’s Fate there are encounters where every time the NPC says their text speech they become rooted and you must move out of their range or you’ll get a curse that will kill you in three ticks. At a certain percent you’ve got to activate a machine in the room or else they become immune. Other encounters fear, some reflect, but the GAME gives you a good indication of when these things are going to happen (text, a graphic, etc) so as long as you’re watching and paying attention, you can prepare yourself for it. In WoW I find that the game doesn’t give me a good indication at all of what is going to happen next. Or maybe I’m so busy jumping around trying to avoid fire, goo, poison etc that I can’t divert my attention any further.
Hope that answers the question for you Dril! Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.