Guild Wars 2

I was trying to google these things to get a solid answer on what exactly these terms mean.

Raid – I get the impression that this term simply means a hard dungeon with a larger than usual group.

Wing – It kind of seems like this is referring to a single path through the Raid. In that case, “Raid” is “Large Dungeon” and “Wing” is “Raid Explorable Path”, in GW2 terms.

Attunement – Not applicable here, since they say GW2 won’t have it. But was this a process that had to be completed every time you entered a Raid? Or was it a one time thing to get access to it?

http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/wowwiki/images/d/d0/InstanceMap-Naxxramas5.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20090325214029

This is a picture of a raid from WoW called Naxxramas. Raids are larger scale, difficult instanced areas. They’re usually not meant to be completed in one session, and can take months to progress through. Each boss acts as a check point and measure of this progression, each boss fight lasts anywhere from 5-15 minutes (and in the past, boss fights could go on for far longer than that) and can individually take hours, to days, to weeks to ultimately kill. To kill all the bosses in the raid means to clear the raid.

A wing of a raid is simply a quartered off section of a raid. In WoW, this simply means you have a non-linear progression to the ultimate end boss. In this image, you have four literal quarters. Each shaded area is a boss. Here is a zoomed in image of one of the wings from Naxxramas:
http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/wowwiki/images/e/eb/InstanceMap-Naxxramas4.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20090225194055

Killing all the bosses in the wings in Naxxramas unlocks the final two bosses, which are located from a teleporter at the center of the raid. Your path to the final two bosses, however, is mostly nonlinear. You have four progression paths to take, and can stop any path at any time to begin a different one. Usually, each quarter has a final mini-end boss that has better loot and is more difficult than the previous bosses. The difficulty/loot curve therefore looks something like:

Standard Bosses -> Penultimate/Final quarter bosses -> Last boss

In other words, the further into a raid you get, the harder it becomes. Many bosses can also be further categorized, but I doubt this is relevant for GW2.

Attunements are a process of accessing a raid. Typically, this involves completing previous content (such as the previous raid) or current, lower difficulty content (such as a dungeon added at the same time as that raid). To be attuned to a raid means to be able to enter it. It’s usually a one time quest or process that does not need to be repeated.

I think you have Raid and Wing down pretty well.

My reasoning is that the first raid is going to launch with one Wing, and then get another 2(?) down the road at some point.
So my guess is, as you said, each wing is going to work like dungeon paths, and running one Wing will be similar to running one dungeon path, but on a weekly basis.
Presumably one can run multiple wings a week, but that’s purely speculation on my part.

ScribeTheMad.7614:

I think you have Raid and Wing down pretty well.

My reasoning is that the first raid is going to launch with one Wing, and then get another 2(?) down the road at some point.

It’s not uncommon to how Blizzard handles raid releases. Many raids are intentionally gated, and most multi-raid tiers are done this way as well. This is not very different from the industry norm, actually. I don’t think much can be taken from it.