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Raiding
nomadian
Member Posts: 3,490
It intrigues me how WoW opted to put raiding in its game when from the original game it was from(Everquest) there was quite a divide over it. People seemed to either love or hate raiding, so for WoW to implement it they knew they would alienate a certain part of their audience. It seems a risky strategy, ok yes its probably good for retention purposes, but surely there were means of satisfying more of the audience without alienating the rest.
Anyway, I'm curious on the result of the following poll:
Anyway, I'm curious on the result of the following poll:
Comments
I like it. It's a good chance to make some friends and it's a great source of exp.
Good for retention? The raid focus was the primary reason I left the game, and from what I hear they're having real trouble retaining most of their players once they hit 60. My original guild fell apart because of raiding, with around half of the players leaving the game or going to play alts on other servers and around half leaving to join raid guilds. People who say that raiding is good for retention seem only able to justify it with circular logic; they say 'in EQ, raiders are the only ones who stuck around, therefore wow should cater to raiders' but the reason only raiders stuck around in EQ is they were the ones being catered to.
I think it's pretty clear that there was a significant change in design philosophy between WOW-original and WOW-now; I specifically remember the comment about how raid gear might have cool effects but wouldn't actually be stat-better than non-raid gear. And the rested XP system (advance more quickly if you don't play continuously) was clearly not the same philosophy as the Honor System (can't advance unless you play constantly, taking a week off can result in you needing several weeks to catch up to where you were). I think it's quite clear that raiding was not originally going to be the focus of the game; all of the classes are just too versitile for 'know your role' raiding, there's no gradual progression from 5-mans to 40-mans, and so on.
I'm not sure if Bob is being sarcastic with his 'good source of XP' comment, since WOW raiding is all level 60 content XP doesn't really enter into it. At lower levels, XP gains are halved in a raid, so generally you'd want to work towards XP in a group, not a raid.
Personally I'm not into raiding, although I certainly wouldn't refuse to buy a game simply because that aspect was included.
It enhances retention because some people like it and it's something else to do post level 60.
When you say you left because of raiding, did you leave immediatly you heard raid content was included, or when you had got bored with the game?
While Raid content is clearly not for everyone, the strength of games like WoW is that they include something for everyone. While each player may not enjoy every single aspect of the game, there is still plenty of things for them to do that they do enjoy.
WoW burrowed a lot from EQ1 .
It differed only in its marketing.EQ1 for instance came to a new ground of mmorpg,had no trade name ,almost no advetizing,and to get a copy here in uk back in 2000 i had to phone like 6 shops to find one compared with WoW which is even on sales in clothing and food shops here now.
While i praise the marketing team of WoW(heck i wish i knew this guys) the development team has been far from ideas.
Ppl say its a raiding end game but as a raider i can say it has nothing on EQ1 raids.This were fun raids and often the encounters involved luck.I can recall many times a stragedy we used on zone A failed and we needed to try another way of thinking.The only encounters that were to the book was when the wizards still had mana burn spells which quickly got nerfed.
In WoW there is severe limitation on number of raid zones and the encounters all go to the book.After we done mc quite a few times it became like reading a book you read before with same ending.It became predictable and of course boring.It now was a race to see how fast we could clear the zone.
Pray tell please.
PvP- ok how many times do i have to do the same 3 BG to get bored?100,1000,10000 times.Even at that BG are totally unbalanced because gear in wow is so important nothing else matters short of an imbecile who bought the char in epics using him.You will lose plain and simple.And since most raiders work as a guild in BG it even makes it worse.
Crafting-erm what crafting?
Quests-at 60 there are very few quests and many of them involves dum dum dum RAIDING.
I left once I tried raid content and discovered how horrible it is, discovered what raiding guilds are actually like, and realized that Blizzard was making their game only for raiders.
No there's not. There are some long rep grinds to get rewards that range from 'inferior' to 'massively inferior' to raid gear, there's rerunning the same old 5-mans (last one added: DM in March of last year), there's rerunning the old 5-mans with a time limit and farming bunches of stuff for gear that's mildly inferior to trhe weakest raid gear, PVP against people effectively 10-20 levels higher because they raid and you don't, and occasional fluff like the holiday events.
Pray tell please.
PvP- ok how many times do i have to do the same 3 BG to get bored?100,1000,10000 times.Even at that BG are totally unbalanced because gear in wow is so important nothing else matters short of an imbecile who bought the char in epics using him.You will lose plain and simple.And since most raiders work as a guild in BG it even makes it worse.
Crafting-erm what crafting?
Quests-at 60 there are very few quests and many of them involves dum dum dum RAIDING.
PvP there is also PVP servers, open air PVP fights, dueling and the pirate's arena. Battlegrounds are not the entire PvP content, they are simply the most popular.
There is loads of crafting.
There are loads of quests at 60 and loads more quests pre 60. This game has quests coming out of it's ears. I didn't finish anything like all the level 60 quests before I got bored. The game has a certain replayability factor on the quest front as different races and factions get access to many different quests.
There are plenty of aspects of the game that do not include being bored at lvl 60. Presumably if you had not have enjoyed them, you would not have reached lvl 60 in the first place.
I left once I tried raid content and discovered how horrible it is, discovered what raiding guilds are actually like, and realized that Blizzard was making their game only for raiders.
No there's not. There are some long rep grinds to get rewards that range from 'inferior' to 'massively inferior' to raid gear, there's rerunning the same old 5-mans (last one added: DM in March of last year), there's rerunning the old 5-mans with a time limit and farming bunches of stuff for gear that's mildly inferior to trhe weakest raid gear, PVP against people effectively 10-20 levels higher because they raid and you don't, and occasional fluff like the holiday events.
Sorry but you are fixated on a very narrow part of the game and that is what to do at lvl 60, after you have maxxed your craft, after you have finished all the instances, after you have achieved enoigh PvP victories, after you have got your mounts, after you have helped all your friends, after you have explored all the world, after you have explored all the different races and factions and classes, after you have snuck into the enemy capital etc etc etc.
I didn't even bother with Raiding and PvP and I still found loads to amuse me. Eventually the unseen content/second dried up and I quit. There was still more to see but it had become scarce and significant character advancement would have required timesinking or PvP or Raiding.
This is the standard complaint form someone who has finished the game. The very last last dribble of endgame content, is not the entire game. You have lost perspective.
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After an evening out, what kind of person are you?
Are you the kind of person who thinks........
I spent all my money and partied until the bars all shut, I chatted up the barmaid, squeezed that friendly girls tit's, drunk a flaming lambourghini, insulted a tramp, had a nice meal, met all my friends and laughed at their hairloss, shoke my stuff at the discoteque, climbed the gas tower, ran away form the policeman and ended up in some grotty late night drinking hole that was the last place in town still to be open and drunk cheap booze until they ejected me.....
Or are you the kind of person that thinks...
I can't beleive I ended up in that grotty drinking hole, with that same old cheap booze that has given me a hangover and the same old ugly girl behind the bar. And they stopped serving me at 6.am. AND they threw me out at 6.30 am.
What level 60 crafting is there, exactly, that isn't either making useless junk or requires raid drops? There's around 2 dozen items total across all crafting skills that are worth using at 60 and don't require raid drops, and around a quarter of those are bind on pickup so
Yes, but how many are actually interesting quests and how many are just boring repitition with no story or challenge to them? The new Cenarion Cirlce quests, for example, are just a big rep grind, and the older set just led to raid bosses. There are some good quests, but they've been in the game since launch and don't take that long to run through the interesting ones. Plus there aren't many that are really for level 60, they're generally for people in their 50 and it shows in the amount of challenge.
They also aren't really adding any non-raid quest chains; they did add a cool quest chain for opening the AQ gates to access the raid zone which requires raiding BWL, and they've added quests about accessing the Naxx raid zone that later involve raiding.
I like raiding, however it does require you to put up with guild politics and drama queens both of which I hate. Guilds that are free of these tend to be small and unable to put together regular raids.
I also dislike the way it’s implemented in some games. You should never have to log on for more then 3 hours to raid if your guild is organized. This allows even the most casual player to fit it into their schedule.
The last thing I dislike is the DKP system. Unless it’s a strategic need like armor for the main tank I much prefer to see everyone who needs an item lotto for it. On average this gives you the fairest possible distribution of loot with your chances of getting good items being exactly proportional to the amount of time you spend raiding and still gives you the opportunity to get something every time out. DKP skews the distribution in favor of those putting in more hours, I.E. people who raid more not only do they get more loot, they get more loot per hour played.
I'm talking about the 'endgame,' I'm not sure why you chose the word 'fixated' on the part of the game that I reached and was talking about originally. Your 'evening out' question doesn't appear to have any relevance either, all it is is a 'positive/negative spin' question that bears no relation to the topic being discussed. I am the kind of person who tries to discuss the topic at hand instead of asking silly questions about other posters that have no relevance to the issue of raiding and player retention.
For a non-raider, the game ends pretty quickly and has had next to nothing added to it, like I said. The raiders get a full new instance every few months, new and better gear, new and better class abilities, new quests, and when they PVP their gear is not massively inferior to another group's gear. How does that help retention for anyone but raiders? Do you think maybe it would help retention if they spent the same effort creating content for the other 75-95% of their playerbase instead? Or are you going to just come up with random bar scenarios and ask me what way I view them?
And seriously, why do you even mention something like maxing crafting skills? I decided that I didn't like my 300/300 herbalism/alchemy on my druid, so I ditched them and had 300/300 skinning/leatherworking in less than a week and my only real focus on leveling it was a few hours killing lower level stuff to boost my skinning up to 250 or so. The only thing that takes a long time for a level 60 to do is to get the recipies that require rep grinds, but killing 49585829 furblogs isn't exactly the kind of thing most people enjoy.
I hate raiding with a passion.
Love MMOGs, hate Raiding.
I will admit, WoW has a lot to offer.
BUT! The game lacks imagination from both the developers and the audience. While you can better your character through raiding (if that is your thing), a long borring PVP grind, grind rep for crafting, etc...etc... It all comes down to GRINDING! You can't alter the world, you can't alter politics, the crafted items have no true variety and to get the best ones you need to raid in the first place (Good luck on your own guild masters letting you see the materials), and the role playing opportunities are slim to none (I played on an RP-PVP server. Can you say "h3110 s1r, m4y 1 60rr0w s0m3 g01d//?"?)
The reason the game ends at 60 is because there is a lack of 5-man dungeons, because you can't get those high end crafted items, because someone else can actually be worse than you in PVP yet kill you every time due to gear.
The same thing is true with EQ. When you cater to 1 specific group, you will only get that specific group. You now have a lot of people cancelling their accounts more and more and pretty soon the WoW sub. numbers will decay, just like EQ.
If games like WoW, EQ, and other raiding games want to keep a large variety of customers, they need to stop caterting to raiders for a few months.
(1997) UO --> EQ -> Runescape -> DAoC -> WoW -> EVE + WAR (2008)
If you make a mistake doing a scarlet monastry run, either nobod notices or you get away with it anyway.
Make a mistake whilst fighting Onyxia or any of the raid bosses really and everyone dies, that's 39 pissed off people. It doesn't even need to be a wild mistake, could be lag or the tank gets booted off server. The difference is there, but Blizzard's approach is quite harsh compared to what you were used to 1-59. Those that don't like the big ask from Blizzard leave or roll an alt on another server, why I'd never know it's still the same endgame heh.
Personally I think WoW will see a massive renaissance with raiding when BC comes out because everyone will be like, "oh shit we can do Molten Core with 10 people!". That's when the challenge goes.
My question to those that hate raiding, would you rather run scholomance, stratholme, ubrs/lbrs 100 times or Onyxia once?
No annoying animated GIF here!
I would like to see blizzard make more of those smaller dungeons. Make oh say about 10 smaller end-game dungeons (even 10-man is ok) and put in some decent gear, then I could safely say that blizzard has a chance in hell of staying the top of it's game in the MMO world.
My question to raiders is why should one minor mistake (even lag) ruin what should be a great end-game experience in raiding? Because, quite frankly, not everyone was in the military (Or wants to be).
(1997) UO --> EQ -> Runescape -> DAoC -> WoW -> EVE + WAR (2008)
Trust me when I say that most mistakes are because other players are asleep, literally. Raiding is very very boring. At least Blizz made a better effort with AQ than MC. The raid bosses have so much HP and once you learn the script, it's just a question of standing in the right spot (or running to the right spot) and bashing away.
Those 10 smaller dungeons will come, but in the expansion. Which is kind of like crossing the Atlantic and then learning how to swim.
No annoying animated GIF here!
They are only including 2-3 smaller dungeons which, sadly, lead up to raid dungeons. Burning Crusade might not come out till 2007 as well. You'd figure a company making billions of dollars a year from 1 game would have the funds to put out new content every few weeks as opposed to months and years (especially for an expansion) AND be able to maintain lagless servers which only hold up to 10k players in the first place.
Also, why should all battles be scripted? There is a reason why they are boring, because they are done the same way all the time. So even if raiding were someones "niche" the average person would be bored out of their minds defeating rag for the 100th time and still not getting the gear they want.
(1997) UO --> EQ -> Runescape -> DAoC -> WoW -> EVE + WAR (2008)
Well info on BC is kinda patchy, from what I understood in all the E3 coverage Outlands was just going to be one big battleground or just a big PvP zone. Unless the average person was needed in the raid, i.e. a tank with tons of fire res gear then that's when DKP kicks in because they wouldn't need to defeat rag 100 times just to get one item. There are a lot of variants of the DKP system and what a few have done is simply taken the EQ model, the reality is that if you are in raid of 40 and you are the only druid (seriously if you really want epix roll a druid) then great, cheaply bought purple items, but if you are cookie cutter rogue #99 join the back of queue.
Maybe my memory is hazy, but I also remember Blizz said about raid items only be on a par with world gear too. I also seem to recolate that the raid zones were going to be winged like SM, so they wouldn't take so long to do.
Thing is though the average person wouldn't raid the same place 100 times, because even if everyone else is pretty much beefed up, they'll be thinking about the next raid area. Even the uberest guild had to go on a raid with inferior items at one point.
Like all things it takes practice and it's not as difficult as you'd think and can be fun provided the system used, indeed if you do use a DKP system, is agreed by all and that there are no drama queens or jerks.
No annoying animated GIF here!
I come from EQ Raiding. You must be crazy to think DKP solves all problems (even Zero sum) even with a lack of drama queens.
Point is, raiding caters to a very specific group of people. Raid guild (Weather you think this or not) have a very militaristic structure. Doesn't matter what guild, the stress on the GM and the guilds officers is very high due to the need to organize everything.
Raiding is fun the first few times (1-3) but after that it becomes aggrivating and goes against the principal of what a real MMO is.
I've done the whole raiding thing and I'm sorry to say, it will kill MMORPGs. No one likes being cleaved by some warrior who has no skill at playing anything and only can kill you because he had several days of time to go raid and get gear.
(1997) UO --> EQ -> Runescape -> DAoC -> WoW -> EVE + WAR (2008)
If you're overleveled and/or overgeared for it, sure. If you're actually running it at an appropriate level, then you need to know what you're doing, much more than in a raid.
Yeah, right. That wasn't my experience, and the guild I was in wasn't super-geared (they were up to Domo in MC, about half the raid didn't have any raid gear). Since people have 10-manned and IIRC even 6-manned onyxia, it's clear that when you have 4-6 times the number of people you've got some slack for error.
I refuse to do either.
How can you experience something which you refused to do? I call bollocks on 6-man onyxia.
Never said you had to use DKP at all, let alone solves all problems. Truth is no-one knows the answer to end-gmaes in mmorpgs though OU is said to have come closest.
No annoying animated GIF here!
Why not have 5-10 man instances which are harder than the normal ones where u could get ur Epic items / sets instead of raiding, i really dont get it. Raiding isnt harder than to do 5-10 man instances or something the only hard part about it is to have 40 ppls at the same time online ....
In a 40 man raid u dont have a feeling like u accomplish something yourself but in a 5-10 man instance u have.
The 40 man raids are just there for time sink cause it takes forerever to get ur items thats it. Better to have 5-10 man instances, maybe some world bosses for 20 mans and have other things to do than just raid like alot of PvP, city raids / buildings castles / owning territories and defeding it, hiring NPCs from money to defend your land and so on i dont know ... just raid raid raid is plain dumb and boring.