Aug 12 2008
Fed up! Raiding sucks as a sole form of end game content.
I love MUDs, MMOs, virtual worlds, (insert your favorite term). I love making them. I love playing them. I love talking about them. I hate raiding. I hate the current obsessive focus on a MUD’s “end game.” There shouldn’t be an end game. The draw of open ended, online multiplayer worlds is that they don’t end. But the constant dumbing down of MMOs is such that people expect to be able to race to level cap and then participate in the “real game.” I’m going to put aside the fact that I find this absurd, and focus on the current popular form of “end game”: raiding. Oh, and I intend to utterly savage the concept of raiding as currently implemented in MMOs.-
Ok… I lied a little.
Alright, I lied a little. I don’t hate raiding. Sometimes it can be fun. What I hate is the way raiding is currently implemented in MUDs (graphical or text), and the fact that raiding is generally the ONLY serious end game MMOs offer. (Yes, I am using MUD and MMO interchangeably. See my Gaming Terminology page. This is my subtle ruse to get people used to the term MUD and use it instead of MMO.)
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I know a lot of you out there love raiding, or at least claim to love it. I know there are things about it that are enjoyable: the shared experience, the challenge of figuring bosses out, the sense of accomplishment when you beat a boss or finish a dungeon. But raiding, as currently implemented on most MUDs (like WoW) is horribly flawed, and does not even do a good job of maximizing the positive elements people claim to enjoy.
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Raiding as a Concept is Horribly Designed.
1) I play games to PLAY THE ACTUAL GAME. I don’t play games to load up a web site and read a step by step strategy for how to defeat a boss. Sure, you don’t have to use raid walkthroughs, but you have to be masochistic not to. Raid encounters are generally designed to require an extremely specific set of maneuvers in order to defeat them. Bob has to stand on point A and hit 1, 2, 3 in succession. Joe has to stand on point B and hit 1, 2, 3 within 2 seconds of Bob hitting his 1, 2, 3. Cindy has to stand EXACTLY behind Bob, face backwards, kneel, alternate between the Macarena emote and a focus change macro, and press the 1 button exactly every 10 seconds. Frank, the raid leader, has to constantly bark commands over Teamspeak/Ventrilo to make sure nobody get distracted from the raid and does something foolish like trim their nails for some excitement.
Raid encounters feel like crappy community theater to me, not epic game play. I feel like an extra in a low budget Hollywood fantasy movie where the producers are only making the movie for the tax write-off and don’t care about how illogical the directions are. Uwe Bol ’s action scenes make more sense than even the best raid encounters on WoW and most other modern MMOs.
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2) An hour of killing trash for the “reward” of a 10 minute, scripted boss battle is like suffering through a root canal for the reward of a prostate exam. Oh, and if something goes wrong in that boss battle, you very well might be clearing that same hour of trash to take another shot at it. Why they make the trash mobs so pointless and worthless is beyond me. You have a capitive audience of 10, 25, 40, 50, or 100 players and you make them spend an hour each (25 man hours of trash killing for a standard WoW raid) doing something that is DESIGNED to be a pure, boring time sink. That’s good game design? That makes sense to ANYONE? How about we swap that? I’d rather feel uber clearing pansy minions for 10 minutes and then fight the boss for an hour. I’d find that a lot more epic, frankly.
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3) There is no room for error or improvisation. Everything has to be done in a completely orchestrated way, and for the most part nobody can screw up. If someone makes a mistake, it is generally a wipe for the whole group. If someone pulls aggro that shouldn’t, it is almost always a wipe. If someone attacks the wrong thing or in the wrong order, wipe. If someone kinda spaces out for a minute and lets off on DPS or healing, wipe. I am fine with games punishment bad execution or inattentive play, but the problem is it only takes a very small mistake on the part of one person to cause the other 9, 24, 39, 49, or 99 a lot of pain, suffering, misery, and wasted time clearing trash. And with each person’s role so incredibly explicit, there is rarely the possibility of someone else picking up the slack. If Bob sees Joe is slacking off, what can he do? He can’t pour on more DPS, because he is already expected to be at maximum DPS. If Cam the Tank loses aggro to a crazy DPSer, there’s nothing he can do. He can’t be a hero, because he is already operating at maximum threat and most likely the boss is immune to any snap aggro taunts anyway (another gripe, but I digress). If Cindy the healer isn’t healing enough, Kalli the healer can’t make up for it, because she’s already healing at max efficiency and even if she could heal more she’d either run out of mana or pull aggro.
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4) So may elements of boss encounter design are absurdly arbitrary. I have fought bosses who did incredibly ridiculous things that were clearly designed solely with the idea of nullifying a specific class, tactic, or ability for no logical reason other than the devs thought it would be funny. I have fought raid bosses that were immune to all sorts of standard abilities for no apparent reason other than to make you feel impotent. I have participated in raid encounters where mages had to tank a boss… just because. People don’t make mages because they like tanking, folks. They make mages because they like to make things go boom. I have fought bosses where they you have to interrupt some of their spells, but not all of them, because being too good at interrupting their spells triggers some kind of Uber Spell. If the boss possessed the ability to perform this Uber Spell, why isn’t he just doing it all the time? Why punish people for being GOOD at a core mechanic (interrupting spell casting) with this arbitrary result? I have fought bosses who cast spells that require NOBODY in the entire raid move a single pixel, and then randomly follow it up with an attack that makes people stagger around against their will. And this boss in particular gets us back to #3. If one member of the raid accidentally hits their D button (move right), the raid wipes. That’s good design? The tiniest little finger twitch by one person and everyone dies and starts over? Huh?
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5) Loot. Hopefully soon I am going to write an entire post about how stupid I think current loot systems are in games, but I’ll hit this one briefly now. So 10, 25, 40, 50, or 100 people work together to mindlessly clear trash, follow their little script of brain disconnected button pushes to beat the boss, and now he drops 2 or 3 pieces of loot. This loot will often be useful/needed by multiple players present, so someone loses out. The same item might drop many times in a row, resulting in certain classes feasting while others enjoy famine. Or sometimes loot will drop that nobody can use, and it just gets blown up or sold to an NPC Vendor. NEVER is the entire group happy with the loot that drops or the way the loot gets distributed. There are always people unhappy with what happens at REWARD TIME. This is BROKEN. At the moment of ultimate success, there should be happiness all around. Not happiness for 10% or less of the participants. I have a variety of suggestions for improving this, but I’ll save those for the previously mentioned LOOT post I intend to make.
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6) Raid encounters have very strict requirements for the classes you need and the numbers you need. This results in a lot of friends and guildmates getting left out on a regular basis. It results in arguments and hurt feelings about who gets “rostered” to go on the raid. There are arguments about who will get rostered to kill bosses 1, 2, and 3 but not bosses 4, 5, and 6. Sometimes a player will only want/need loot from boss 4, 5, or 6 and thus will not want to even go on raids planned to kill boss 1, 2, or 3. But you have to cajole such people into joining because you need their class. The amount of heartache involved in creating rosters for who gets to raid is absolute misery. You are lucky if half the people are happy with the system you use, and at some point everyone is likely to be very pissed off by a roster decision. Since raid dungeons have lockouts and reset times, you can’t simply run the same raid 2 or 3 nights in a row so everyone gets a shot.
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I could continue, and I probably will in the future. But I think I’ve made a pretty clear case for how incredibly flawed at the core modern MMO raiding is. The worst thing about this is the fact that far too many MMOs have pretty much hatched their cart to the concept of raiding and that’s all you get for end game content. If you agree with any of the above points, most MMO developers pretty much don’t care about you. Your desire for more varied and interesting gameplay will be completely ignored and discarded. They will tell you “join a raid guild” or “roll an alt.” That attitude is ridiculous, absurd, and terrible for the industry as a whole.
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So… what do you think? 
Lots of stuff to comment on here so I might return later on.
The main thing here is the hate for the raiding system of games like WoW and I agree with that one 100%.
I hate the fact that most players only use very few of their skills while raiding and the real challenge is in getting 20+ people to do their part and most importantly not screw up.
The best time I have ever had in WoW was just after the last expansion where I got together with four friends and we did lots of 5-man instances without reading anything about them online. Now that was good fun.
I know the game designers has to come up with some content that will keep a challenge and a goal for people who play more than 30 hours a week. And I honestly don’t know if any content as small as the raiding instances would be able to keep such a huge amount of people playing a game as these raids have shown to do.
I would have to agree with all of the macro points that you’ve made.
1) I think the idea of reading the boss encounter on paper, sounds incredibly stupid. But, as an example, last night I was raiding with 9 others and we couldn’t beat a scripted boss encounter that we’ve beat several times before. The makeup of the group was very different and the tactics, or website strat we’ve used before simply didn’t work. We didn’t want to walk away empty handed so we moved on and later found another strat that may or may not have worked for us. At the time the encounter was still challenging for us. No one person made any mistake, the mechanics of the script made it impossible for us to defeat it the way we were trying. The point is that the challenge is there, but one day it will be gone. I think there is room for scripted encounters, as long as there are multiple ways to beat them. I don’t think I would want to necessarily abandon them completely. I think they make one good form of a boss encounter for the lower tier of an instance/dungeon. And I like the way progression works, where you need the gear from the lower tier bosses to beat the upper tier ones. It works for me, and certainly for the company (it keeps you playing longer). I would say I want the the big boss encounters to be the more dynamic ones.
2) I do like the idea of keeping trash to a minimum. For me, trash is all the mobs you fight between instances, that’s certainly enough. I don’t know that I want many boss fights to be a whole hour, but I like the idea of long fights with the bosses versus the pulls right before the boss being generally harder than the boss themselves.
3) I don’t know how to make it work, but it’s on the devs not me. I think that’s the best thing you can do to make these games better. Dynamic encounters that should be skill based, not robotic memorization based.
4) I think rogues are largely screwed in WoW because of the nature of boss fights as they are. I don’t play one, but it seems you can always get along without one. This also applies to dps warriors and other melee dps that are largely hard to use in many encounters; that is a big failure I believe. You should be able to handle any encounter regardless of the makeup of your dps. I don’t mind needing a holy trinity, but requiring specific classes (or excluding them) is a failure, in my opinion.
5) 100% agreement. There should be no random loot from raiding, it’s a waste. Tokens seem to be a good alternative, but I’d rather see non class based ones. Eventually you still have a raid with no paladins and both of the other 2 classes that are eligible have the piece already. Again you are blowing them up or selling. I think Warhammer may have implemented this, and I intend to find out.
6) This seems to be a bigger deal for bigger raids. I like a 3 day cooldown on instances, like ZA. There has to be a cooldown for big loot doesn’t there? I’m not asserting it, I just haven’t thought about it much. I guess since TIME is the limiting factor on these, maybe that’s good enough. You aren’t going to line up 24 other people every day, and if you do, that’s to your credit (or dismay). Maybe no lockouts then? I think the lockouts are to keep guilds from progressing to fast, but it only really applies to hardcore guilds.
What other type of things do you see for endgame? I think PvP is one option, but it certainly doesn’t work for everyone. I think it has to be a progression of sorts. One path is Raiding, another is PvP, and another is ??? I don’t have a good idea for that either. Dynamic encounters seems like a good idea, how about player controlled bosses? Or maybe something like that. Company controlled bosses, instead of GMs, boss employees. Haha…
I think what your trying to say here Mike is that MUDs should be more like Diablo. Where mechanics are there but the gameplay is to a point where you stop worrying about the math involved and you just play, and you don’t get people telling you how many seconds you should wait between your whirlwind attacks. Everyone just levels at a steady rate, finds cool shit and has fun.
The end game sure you farm items or whatever, but you grab 7 other people and you just go in and lay waste to crap, you don’t worry about Bob and Cam doing everything in sync, they just play how they think they play best and everything will pretty much work out as long as your not all pants on head retarded.
I agree with everything stated above. Raiding to me is a glorified 25 man square dance. It’s really sad that it has become the default “end game” for mmos.
It’s my belief that the only good way to do an “end game” is to have it be player generated. Most commonly this is done through either pvp or rp(though none of the big mmos have gone the rp route that I’m aware of). I don’t like the endless treadmill of character improvement that comes from raiding and such. Why are you raiding? To improve your gear. What are you going to do with your improved gear? Raid more to improve your gear.
Personally, I like a character to be “done” at some point. I like to know I’m at my full capability, and nobody else is going to have an inherint advantage over me. From that point forward, playing the game becomes about improving -my- skill, not my character’s. I’m kind of liking AoC for the moment for this reason. I’m nearing level cap now, and I’ve already pretty much maxed out my gear. So I can go into pvp and work on integrating the various combat features into my playstyle rather than continually grinding out gear.
Somebody mentioned Final Fantasy XI earlier. While generally I view it as a pretty crappy game, they do have one feature I wish other games would incorporate. A single character can level up every class, but only has access to abilities from two of those classes at a time. Ultimately this means that the people who want to advance their character endlessly can basically do so by trying to level up every class on that character to maximum, and those that want to be able to be “done” can just level up the 2 classes that they want. The one looking for endless advancement would wind up more flexible, but not neccessarily more powerful than the one that wants to be “done”.
I agree that raiding could use improvement, however, I do feel as if many of the points are not solely the result of developer design, but of player culture.
1) From my understanding, prior to WoW, boss raiding and strats were kept secret amongst guilds and sharing the “how to’s” was something that was rarely done. In the early days of WoW, recognition for a certain boss kill was not awarded as the hardcore raiders believed should been and as “revenge” they began sharing the strats. Thus, a new cultural standard was created by players themselves. (I am more than happy to supply the actual guild and boss name, if it is important).
The “read strats and execute” culture of WoW is not a requirement to raid in WoW. Afterall, someone has to trailblaze the strats in the first place after trial and error. This aspect of raiding is something that is really in the hands of the players. While this can be controlled through rules and the administration of a much, much, much smaller game, such control is not possible by game developers of mainstream, commerical MMO/MUD’s, such as WoW.
2. I agree that the work and time that players spend attempting a dungeon/boss is something that is difficult to design around different player goals, especially when you have two major player cultures to contend with: Casuals and raiders. Casuals want content that is quick to do and provides a comparable reward to hardcore raid content and raiders want difficult content that takes some time to complete and worthy of bragging rights.
Pre-BC WoW was very brutal about this, designing raid content almost completely for the raider culture of players, with instances that last hours upon hours. BC introduced more casual friendly features, such as the raid i.d. system which allows you to attempt raid content in more manageable chunks. With WotLK, raiding is undergoing another change, with several of the raid instances planned for 10 and 25 versions, which allows for even more players to view this raid content.
That is the most important thing, in my opinion, when designing raid content. Make it tough enough to challenge hardcore raiders, but still accessible enough so that a very large portion of the community can experience it.
3/4. Boss design is also another tricky one. While it can be frustrating, I can also see why a boss caliber NPC would be immune to certain abilities. Kinda hard to be a boss caliber NPC when the same taunt spell that works on Hench #123421, also works on you. By the time you’ve reach boss status, it is not unreasonable to expect that the boss has learned how to ignore some crazy armored guy screaming at him.
With regards to scripted fights, I believe this gives the player more of an understanding of why they just borked that fight. The issue with boss fights that have a set list of abilities that are triggered arbitrarily is that a fight can go from a sure win to a close one or a close one to a bork without knowing what went wrong or being unable to prevent it. People hate losing, but at least knowing why they lost makes them feel a bit better.
5. Loot, loot, loot. While killing the boss and saving the princess is a reward on its own, loot appeals to our more materialistic nature. So, how do we make this work so that everyone wins? I think one of the better ideas to allow everyone to be rewarded are, as someone mentioned, the tokens for armor sets and the Badge of Justice tokens. While it is true that there are limited numbers of armor set tokens per boss, all bosses could be equipped to drop the Badges of Justice items. These are used to purchase armor/weapons/trinkets/etc. from special vendors, giving players more control over what they want.
Again, WoW has been notorious for loot issues in the past. With WotLK, they are streamlining how loot is designed to allow greater utility for more classes. Gone would be the days of General Drak/Nefarion/etc. dropping that rogue/mage/druid helm over and over and over again. Now, most items that drop will be useable by someone that is present at the raid. Granted, it may not be the absolute best item for that gear slot, you will not be walking away empty handed. Which is a good thing.
What I think you want to avoid is players attempting a boss once, getting everything they need and then never going back. Sure, they got the instant gratification of getting what they wanted, but afterwards, they have nothing to look forward to.
6. I touched earlier on how raid content/encounters should be experienced by as many players as possible. WoW was definitely bad about specific group composition in Pre-BC WoW. Really, though, this only matters to hardcore raiders. And if you are all there for hardcore raiding and all that this entails, then the players playing at this level should be a bit beyond hurt feelings because a certain encounter only needs x number of y class. If you are experiencing this content with friends to simply experience it, then do that. Again, this is partly an issue of game design but also of raid culture as well.
As I said, I can see many of the points made by Michael and how they affect certain populations of your community when designing raid content. I think a good philosophy to have overall with regards to raid content is: Make it tough, but not impossible and make it so a majority of your community can see it, not just the guys who “raid or die.” Furthermore, players should be more responsible and accept that some of the issues and gripes with raiding are caused by the way they approach it. Have fun with it and remember that it is a game! After that, everything else is gravy.
Wow what a long post and ugly post.
Personally, I dont think you’ve made a clear case for anything. You’ve just vomited your cynicysm, arrogance, frustration and superiority all over your blog. I think your comments are largely irrelevant, and I shudder with disgust at the internal state of your mind, that you would feel compelled to rip something apart so viciously.
How can you be so vicious and angry about a LEISURE activity that you CHOOSE to participate in? Dont you think that’s insane?
(Unless your post is some kind of clever parody of self importantant blogger irrelevancy. In which case I’ve entirely misread you, and you’ve done a fantastic job. I apologise)
I came here from a link you left somewhere. I shall not be returning. Next time you leave a link on someone else’s innocent, happy, flower filled wow blog, please leave a warning that you are a frustrated arrogant nitwit.
YUCK
WoW is all about gear, ask people in those raiding guilds how many are really playing for content. Once people get a full set of T6 they drop out and role another character. Your level of gear determines your proximity to “end-game”, “end” as in the end of your interest in improving your character. I don’t imagine anyone would run around all day living their life in WoW, most people play it to get uber gear. That’s why you see people getting power leveled to 70 and hit Kara in all green to dress up. No one in all honesty is going to be content in rag-looking gear and getting obliterated in PvP.
Sorry, said all that before getting to the point, which is why raid encounters are designed to be almost impossible if you don’t maximize the effectiveness of your group. If it is that easy to gear up your character everyone would have tried every single class and unsubscribed by now. Game companies need to feed their people so they have to put road blocks on progression and give them breathing room to develop more. The fantasy world of a game is built on rules governing the real world, however illogical it seems to the player.
Regarding raid boss being immune to alot of abilities, that could be very frustrating at first because you feel a certain degree of flexibility has been taken away. But to really think about it, which key skills are you not able to use on a boss? Fear, CC, movement reduction, casting speed reduction, interrupt? I’m not sure if I left anything out, but of all the above, if a player could really utilize all these abilities then every single boss would be tanked by a kiting shaman, you might as well bench all the tanks. I think the bosses are designed so that you really need a combination of players to finish it so you can’t have say a group of 25 rogues and stun the boss to death.
I do agree with you about the monotonic fighting during bosses though. For example mage and warlock could be so boring, that if you look at Recount after a boss fight, you’ll see a total of 2-3 skills being used the entire time, and one of them accounting for 95% of the damage delt. These class would actually enjoy some trash waves in between bosses so they can workout their other 3 fingers. This is extreme of course, but pretty often in end-game. You’ve got give the developers credit that they didn’t make the encounters any more complex because only this way they’re able to attract people of all ages/sex into this game, this is smart.
The real solution would be creating some content so that players can feel accomplished without entering a raid. I know they’re coming out with the achievement system in wotlk, but I think that’s bs, a line of text showing on your head is not good enough for hours of hard work. There has to be something a player can show to others in order to satisfy the materialistic nature of people. But on the other hand, you have to carefully tune the balance between all aspects of end-game. Like now, that PvP and PvE gears are pretty much tiered in the same fashion in stats and design, so that neither group feels inferior.
If you want one game to suit the interest of all people and at the same time make everyone feel successful, that’s one tough job. Human psychology does not permit that, for most, satisfaction develops under the feeling of being superior.
Why do you think that just because 5%-10% of players have raid-epics that the other players don’t/wouldn’t have fun raiding? They didn’t ask the players now did they?
Maybe its because most players don’t have the time to commit to raiding, just maybe? Maybe its the grind you have to do in order to be able to participate in raids (fraction-reputation or pvp-grind in order to get THAT trinket or just gold for the buff-foods/flasks …).
The 5-10% figure is central to the discussion, yet again.
Tuna’s numbers are far more compelling then Cambio’s oft-repeated quotes from work he didn’t do, taken from sources he can’t confirm.
[quote]If you only assume the average is 6 characters made per account, that’s 60,000,000 characters.[/quote]
If you’re forced to assume that the MAJORITY of the WoW population have over 5 level 70 alts to support your position then it’s time to rethink it.
After serious pressure to back up his 5-10% figure, Cambios decides to raise the bar into the “Raider” club instead.
I see where this is going…
Yeah, it’s a bit tough to glean indisputable info from the numbers. However, the less than 10% does pop up quite often, but it may not mean anything.
Regardless of how many players do raid, I still think it’s a crappy end-game focus. Look how many people listened to The Back Street Boys, numbers may bring in money, but they don’t indicate quality or satisfaction.
I came across this player’s two copper while I was reading up on Nick Yee’s statistics…
http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/000858.php?page=4
Now that sounds like fun end-game, more players are involved, and it’s definitely more dynamic. Seems like the developers can do a lot more for the game outside of re-hashing Naxx, and implementing new instances.
Just stumbled upon this. Pretty good read and I mostly agree. The amount of time/effort/drama/money (both real and virtual) needed to clear 25/40 man raids in WoW, versus the tiny amount of loot rewarded is really broken.
There should be quests that reward 1 nice loot item, PER CLASS, that you get ONCE, in addition to random drops. After you get your guaranteed item that’s actually useful to your class, it’s up to you to roll the dice and grind out more gear.
It’s awful that players feel they need to experience this content instead of just rolling a new class and learning to play a new class.
Not that end-game raiding is a bad idea, it’s just executed poorly. It shouldn’t take weeks of wiping just to orchestrate a victory against a senseless raid boss encounter. A team of well versed, decently equipped players should be able to maybe struggle through a few wipes but eventually figure it out. Is it a bad thing if it takes you 3 months to level a character to 70 (theoretically), and another 5 months to ultimately complete everything task a game has to offer? No. There’s other games out there! In fact I wish I could experience more of them myself.
But since Blizzard is taking TWO YEARS to develop more content, I can see why people are resorting to the nuts-to-the-cheese-grater process that is end-game raiding.
[q]Just stumbled upon this. Pretty good read and I mostly agree. The amount of time/effort/drama/money (both real and virtual) needed to clear 25/40 man raids in WoW, versus the tiny amount of loot rewarded is really broken…
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…But since Blizzard is taking TWO YEARS to develop more content, I can see why people are resorting to the nuts-to-the-cheese-grater process that is end-game raiding.[/q]
It sounds as if you last played WoW either shortly before BC or shortly after BC came out (something which I sense that is the case with the majority of the posters involved with this thread and similar ones). I do apologize if I am incorrect in my assumption, but I do not believe a current player who put thought to raid design in MMO’s would make these statements, especially if they kept up with content changes.
Since WoW Classic, raid design has improved substantially, with several shifts, including redesign of raid stacking/class balance, encounter design, encounter difficulty and encounter size.
Naxxramas was the last 40 man instance implemented and all instances since have been 5 man instances (with a normal and Heroic difficulty), 10 man raid instances (Karazhan and Zul’Aman) and 25 man raid instances. In Wrath of the Lich King, all new 25 man encounters will have 10 man versions and 5 man instances will be available again. Raid saving was another feature that became very prevalent in BC, which allows players to take instances and raids in chunks. This will allow more players to experience raid content without having to be “srs bizness” raiders.
Loot has also improved since WoW Classic, with set tokens and Badges of Justice (a currency acquired by killing bosses in Heroic/Raid instance used to purchase high quality gear) being implemented. It is set to improve once again in Wrath when itemazation is changed so that more classes will be able to make use of the same loot/items. This means that while the armor piece that dropped in this instance may be optimal for class a, class b will still be able to make use of it.
Instance and raid difficulty has become more intuitive, in my opinion, allowing players to experience a fight a moderate amount of times before they are able to work out their strategy. It is a totally different situation if, even with a strategy, worked out, the players are unable to execute it. In my experience, the majority of players that believe themselves to be “well-versed and decently equipped” are in fact, not either. Especially if you are not getting the encounter down within a few attempts, provided a sound and executable strategy. The majority of encounter released are doable by players and Blizzard has redesigned encounters if they see that it is too difficult for the majority of players. I think that is good business and good design.
A lot of what has been spoken about in this thread and similar ones was at one time right. I emphasize -at one time- What sets WoW, and Blizzard, apart from most MMO’s is the ability to improve on what they have. They have done this and continue to do this.
On a last note:
[q]But since Blizzard is taking TWO YEARS to develop more content, I can see why people are resorting to the nuts-to-the-cheese-grater process that is end-game raiding.[/q]
They have actually released a substantial amount of content since the release of the Burning Crusade. For example:
Halloween/Headless Horseman Encounter
Festival of Fire/Lord Ahune Encounter
Zul’Aman
Black Temple
Sunwell Plateau
Dustwallow Marsh/Theramore Isle/Mudsprocket expansion
They have recently announced a “pre-Wrath” content expansion to get the game world ready for Wrath of the Lich King, adding a harbor area in Stormwind, Barbershops and related features and other new zone additions. I could continue listing new content, but then I would have enough for an expansion the size offered by your average MMO. =)
I’m not sure if it’s entirely true that the development resources are dedicated almost exclusively to raid content. Sunwell Plateau was released at the same time as Magister’s Terrace - is there any information available on how many people have been through that?
Can’t really argue with the suggestion that it’s disproportionate at any rate though, at time of writing 168 of the 97,815 guilds Wowjutsu tracks (that is, guilds which have made it at least half way through Karazhan) have cleared Sunwell Plateau. I’m obviously unsure as to why this fraction even of the most hardcore players is targeted to such an extent by Blizzard - possibly the game’s industry is still adapting to the fact being a gamer doesn’t imply being hardcore anymore.
I happened across your site, and I felt I had to chime in. I played a Protection Warrior for a while, and did some raiding pre-BC, just into Molten Core and starting to touch Black Wing Lair. Then after BC did some raiding in Karazhan, before the leaders in the guild went their separate ways and we decided that without the awesome people we enjoyed raiding with, the game was just eating too much of our time with grinding to be ready to do stuff, instead of just doing stuff.
My brother and I, as well as other friends of ours who have also quit the game like us, all agree that the most fun we had were hanging out, having fun with people while doing stuff successfully, or at least moderately so. The Five-Man instances, where you could get a small intimate group of friends or people you’ve gotten to know online together and do something that really required each of you to play creatively, and allowed you to play flexibly, were probably the best part of the game in our experience.
You had interesting challenges that had to be adaptable to different class types, since with only five you couldn’t have all of them, and they were generally designed to be, on non-Heroic, fairly easy to beat. Which meant that we could get a basic feel for the dungeon with a run or two, then come back later and do it on Heroic, which required much more planning about how to precisely do it, and was very intellectually stimulating.
As for PvP… as a Protection Warrior I HATED, absolutely LOATHED, that I had signed up on a PvP realm (was glad it was RP though, after having seen the absolutely painful names on other servers). When I signed up for it originally it claimed that there were some PvP areas, with areas of non-PvP to adventure in as well. That held true for the first 10-15 levels… then became an utter lie. The fact that Prot Warriors were basically the red-headed stepchild of PvP didn’t help things any either.
As a Warlock, however, PvP was fun and interesting. I could, with minimum gear, regularly top the damage charts in Battlegrounds that he joined, and I hadn’t done the nearly the degree of “twinking” of his equipment that most did. Skill at lower level, where grinding Raid level equipment wasn’t necessary, since there was a set of “best” equipment at that level, became a determining factor. I wasn’t about to become a High Warlord (a whole ‘nother discussion in and of itself) but it was fun.
The point of saying all that? It seems to me that WoW is beginning to learn from some of these early mistakes and correct them. They have improved what is available from five-mans, with the badges, and they have been, it seems, been moving to do similar things with larger raids as well. As for narrowly defined classes that severerly limited what you could do - as a Prot Warrior I couldn’t even do solo PvE very well since my damage output was gimped to be able to Raid Tank - they seem to be moving away from that in a big, and good, way.
They have really gone to some lengths to make sure that it is possible to substitute one tank for another and make it possible to have different make ups of the groups, specifically saying that they are trying to avoid situations where you have to have one skill or the raid dies, while rewarding you by making it a little easier if you do happen to have that one at that moment. Balanced across a dungeon with several bosses, that means that each group will have an encounter that is easier, another that is harder. And they are finally realizing that PvP is something that everyone enjoys… when they are capable of it.
Player created content is a huge draw, as players can surprise you in ways no computer can, and when everyone has a roughly even set of abilities, which seems possible with the Arena ranking system in theory if you play an evenly ranked team, you could probably have a great time.
As for 40 man content… I just want to close by saying that I liked it. There was a lot of fun to be had hanging out with people talking in the tank chat, or holding a side conversation while people sorted things out, getting a little bit of down time, and I really like encounters where each person had a vital role to play… as long as there was a little slack so that if someone disconnected or if one of the people in your raids just didn’t quite get it, it wasn’t going to spoil the entire evening.
I’m probably going to log onto a friends account to check out the new content, and maybe I’ll come back to it, if it’s everything they’re promising it to be. If I can find some friends who’ll enjoy it as much as I do… because just joining a raiding guild for the sake of raiding is no fun. Sure, if I had 40 close buddies in an apartment building maybe, that would be awesome, but it just doesn’t work out that way, even with a much smaller 10 man. How often can you get your friends together to see a movie, let alone spend 4 hours on raiding. Give me more accessible content, and equal man-hours with equal reward, when the dungeons demand equivalent skill.
That’s my two cents, with interest.
With regard to going back to old content, I find this an interesting thought; that sometimes the most enjoyment can be gleaned from not doing what the game actually wants you to.
Certainly the most fun I have had playing World of Warcraft was going through old instances with only 2 people, being challenged at each step but not insurmountably so, being, I suppose, able to set our own level of challenge rather than face some arbitrary trial by fire.
A close second was rushing through Ironforge as a Horde with the same guildie, and getting to the Stockade via the Tram - just doing something _different_, that lacks reason or reward, and satisfies at least partly for that very reason.
Wow. What a long, and unexpectedly rewarding read this was. I unexpectedly found a link to this particular post on WoWWiki whilst browsing (ironically enough) for info about the pre-BC raid instances. A number of excellent points have been made about raiding, and what i’d like to add is this:
If you take a step back from the ‘flawed system’ arguement you are making (and i’ll certainly agree that it has its flaws - without hesitation) you will realize that there are essentially only two types of players in WoW. The large bulk, and i won’t quibble about numbers because i find it somewhat irrelevant, are the casuals. These are players that enjoy the ’sandbox’ aspect of the game.
The obvious minority is the hardcore raiders. These players race eachother through new content in order to say they did it before anyone else.
While i understand the point you make about WoW “catering” to these players by devoting supposedly massive resources to new raid instances, my viewpoint is as such:
Blizz HAS to cater to those players. Casuals don’t care about new endgame because they are amusing themselves collecting cats, perfecting dungeons, exploring old content, etc. But the raiders are racing through content as fast as Blizz can release it. As a game developer yourself, i’ll ask this: What would happen to your business if 5-10% of your subscriber base suddenly vanished? At 10 million subscribers, this figure would have Blizz losing between half a million and a million subscribers. That is an unseemly number of customers for any corporation to lose.
I’ll also point out that Sunwell was not released in and of itself. At the same time, there was a whole new area of the world opened up. The introduction of a whole new series of daily quests (certainly requiring no hardcore raid gear to accomplish) and a new five man instance. They also released new badge gear, a whole new faction to acquire rep with and tweaked several minor issues of class balance, etc. So in all actuality, how much of their resources were devoted to Sunwell? One new raid instance, and MONTHS of new content for the casual and semi-casual player.
Several of the points you make are well-founded about how Blizz could diversify and improve their content, and if it would help, i’d very enthusiastically add my voice to those of any others asking for it. Unfortunately, the vitriol in which they are encased will likely have them falling on deaf ears. Instead of railing AGAINST raiding, how about spending more focus on the aspects that could be improved? Speak positively instead of the rabid denunciation of something which at least 5-10% of Blizz’s subscriber enjoys.
Many players who are not hardcore still enjoy the occasional raid night. My guild’s friday night Kara runs became a reason to stay home on fridays because they were so much fun, but we never aspired to see BT or any of the true high-end stuff.
To be fair on that matter, i should also point out, however, I should mention that i have been on both sides of this issue. I was in a top-end raiding guild through BT. I left before SWP because i needed to take a more laid-back approach to my gaming when the hours and demands of my real-life increased.
As a top-end raider, i think i can speak for all of us that were slavishly devoted to our three to four raids per week when i say that, becoming a MACHINE that utterly devoured every boss encounter before us was what we loved. You rail against having to count on everyone to do their appointed task at *just* the right time. Being part of a group that skilled, that competent, that ON, was what we all ENJOYED. Yes, it is a bit like DDR in the respect that every encounter needed to produce a new high score. That’s why people play DDR, and that’s why we love raiding. Each encounter was a chance to test ourselves and push ourselves and our group to new heights. I don’t see an issue with that.
More time on bosses than trash? That would be phenominal, and would likely drag me back into the world of raiding. It would be a dream come true. But the trash pulls are necessary in a way, because it allows raiders time to not be their sharpest. “Downtime”.
On the other side of the coin, since i left my raiding guild and joined a more casual guild (that DOES still raid, just not as often or fervently), I have had just as much fun, though in different ways: 5-manning UBRS and MC come to mind. Also, the nights when the guild was generally bored and formed a 10 man team to dominate Arathi Basin, Alterac Valley or Eye of the Storm. I STLL laugh at both the times when we stormed into EotS and immediately capped everything, and hearing our main tank (who respec’d to DPS for those nights) say on our vent channel “well, we really screwed the pooch on that one” when we LOST all four capture points in a matter of about three minutes.
The point i am trying to make is that both sides are valid, and it does not seem to me (a current subscriber and avid fan) that Blizz overly devotes resources to one side or the other.
While there are certainly aspects they could add to make the game even more rich and engrossing, at the heart of it is this:
Raiding DOES suck at times, and it’s certainly not for everyone… But there is a WHOLE WORLD, and not just raids. WoW is what you make of it, and the people you enjoy playing with. It’s unlikely that i’ll see most of the new raid content, (at least not until they release the next expantion when my friends and i can go back to it over-levelled) but that doesn’t bother me. I don’t expect it bothers the vast majority of their subscribers either. Because if it did, Blizz and WoW would not be the juggernaut that they are.
Changes could make the game a lot better, but it’s pretty damn good the way it is. And the beauty is that if you don’t like PvP or raiding or even instancing, you don’t have to! Yeah, your gear might not be as impressive as the next player, but if you aren’t raiding, PvPing, or instancing… why should you care?
My entire outlook of raiding is like this: poorly designed from MY perspective. Heres why:
Time: Im a level 31 hammerdin in SP diablo ii. It takes me over 20 minutes to tackle diablo on normal, as such I will not attempt to run him till I can do it in around 15. So I really have no patience for hour long raids unless Im with friends and the raid is relatively easy.
Raid levels: IF IT SAYS LEVEL 15 IT SHOULD BE FOR LEVEL 15s! Level 25 human paladin and I COULDNT RUN DEADMINES without dying twice.
Im actually pretty cool with the loot system.