Aug 17 2008
Raiding Provides a False, Deceptive Sense of Real Accomplishment
I had so much fun trashing raiding as it exists in current graphical MUDs over here, I might as well take another hack at it. I will explain how raiding as it is generally implemented in graphical MMOs provides a false, deceptive, and personally damaging sense of accomplishment.
False Sense of Accomplishment from Raiding
One of the very serious, negative effects of the current design of “raid content” is the false sense of accomplishment it gives people. I was checking a couple of WoW blogs recently, and many of them have gigantic, gushing stories about the enormous sense of glory and accomplishment they felt when they finally downed some boss that had been wiping them for weeks or months on end. The way posters glowingly patted themselves on the back you’d think they had just earned a huge promotion at work or won the Nobel Prize.
Accomplishment is Good to a Certain Extent
Now, it is wonderful when games give people a sense of accomplishment. In fact, this is important for a well designed game. But raiding really exaggerates this feeling in the way it sucks people in. All the guild drama, arguments, roster debates, loot arguments, planning sessions, strategy sessions, video viewings, strategy readings, experimental tests, and wipe after wipe make it seem like something far more important is happening than a pile of pixels being killed.
The Effects Can Be Very Real, and Very Negative
Why does this matter? Because this is one of the ways MMOs can actually cause real harm to the lives of its customers. According to Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, self actualization is the ultimate need that people have. They need to feel successful in life. Most healthy people fulfill this need through accomplishments with their family, marriage, child rearing, career, education, etc. These are very productive ways to fulfill this need. People that get massively sucked into raiding fulfill this need through raid success. As a result, they often have less of a drive to work on their family, friends, children, spouse, job, or school. So the actually important things in their real life suffer because this crucial need is being satisfied through MMO raiding.
My Own Personal Vortex
I experienced this phenomenon myself in Dark Age of Camelot. The Realm vs. Realm combat was so incredibly engaging, and felt so meaningful, that successful RvR nights actually made me feel “good about myself.” My work suffered, and the time I spent with my family suffered. It did not just suffer because of the time commitment, it suffered because I felt self actualized through the game. That’s bad.
What Can Developers Do to Limit This Effect?
There is not much game designers can do about this. Their job is to make the most engaging game possible. But the one thing they CAN do is not foster an environment where raiding is looked upon as some Holy Grail type activity. In many MMOs, if customers peep up on the forums saying they’d like to do something besides raid, they get shouted down. Raiding is held up as the most awesome, challenging, uber thing you can do. If you don’t want to raid, you suck, and if you are good at raiding, you are a god. Developers should squash that type of mentality whenever they see it start to grow.
I think one of the things they should do is provide alternate methods for end-game advancement. They have to have the willpower to ignore the raiders that insist that raiding should be the only way to get good gear(or whatever else they are using as end game character advancement). Pvp, rvr, and crafting should be equally viable substitutes to raiding as far as character advancement goes. If raiding is no longer the only or the best way to advance your character, it loses alot of it’s prestige and it’s no longer seen as the most uber thing you can do.
I know an absolute TONNE of WoW players that claim the month before the Burning Crusade expansion hit was the most fun they ever had in WoW(I’m one of them, and Cambios is also one if I’m not mistaken). What went on in that month? They made pvp gear(which was fairly equivilent to raid gear) easy to get. Everybody and their dog pvped their ass off for that month basically. On my server, people were constantly talking about how it was impossible to fill a raid group in that time period. As soon as they were given a better way to gear their character than raiding, a tonne of raiders abandoned raiding and did that instead. These people really aren’t their for the raid content. They are there for the character advancement that comes from the raid gear.
I returned to WoW right at that patch as well and had a great time in the start. Must admit that doing the same pvp area over and over again gets me bored as well, but it surely beat raiding.
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Best time for me is a challenging 5-man instance, but I am actually one of the few who love to grind as well. It is relaxing in some strange way to just plow through the mobs. The only problem with grinding in WoW is it caps very early when it comes to advancement. Only real need for grinding is to help cover your raiding expenses.
I was sharing an apartment with two friends. One of these friends were in one of the top 10 raiding guilds in the world if I remember right.
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From my experience he optimized his life very much around the raids, but he still made sure he had time for friends and still handled his job well. He never braged about progress or anything like that. My experience is that he just won’t bother with the game if he don’t plan on being among the best.
135 IBM employees played WoW as a test their leadership abilities.
I originally read about it in a local paper, but found the following article through Google search.
http://tinyurl.com/5bvod2
The original study is from Harvard Business Online, but only the first page is for free.
http://tinyurl.com/6mynld
Sentinel: I think Cambios is saying that developers should squash “L2RAID NOOB” mentality.
A developer that is in the business to make money isn’t in the business to make great games, and he should be criticized and decried until he either delivers are stronger game, or gets run off.
Your D&D argument is a little off the mark. ‘The old D&D made me kill myself,’ bit was driven by hyper-conservatives and fundamental Christian zealots, and not an argument being made by guys like Gygax, hence it bears no merit. Also, D&D is always played in very small doses when compared to the average raider’s habits.
Here’s the thing, graphical MMO raiding is really only an exercise in human conditioning, not skill, not pluck (no death penalties) and not wit.
Watch this and see what happening with modern raids:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_ctJqjlrHA
Great minds think alike…apparently so do ours.
My son reads this blog daily and refuses to comment so I am doing it for him. He says that you for the great information and wants to know which of the new games coming out would you recommend as far as graphics?
Designing a game to offer multiple ways to advance (whatever that may mean in any particular game) seems like a way to attract a wider variety of player types and keep them interested in playing.
One troublesome bit though is keeping things balanced because the power gamers will find and exploit the quickest route to advancement. For example, if a game has fighting stuff and picking daisies as ways to “advance” but picking daisies is a quicker way to level-up (or whatever is considered advancing in the game), then the power gamers will go that route. Of course, this assumes that choosing the picking daisies path doesn’t block them from doing certain other things they may want to do.
If in-game choices have consequences, then nobody may choose to pick daisies because they can’t use that experience to go do other things way want to do.
Wow… A lot going on here. This was a post I didn’t really initially intend on responding to since I couldn’t offer anything early on. But, what I see is a bit confusing here.
I guess I didn’t take the original entry to say that all raiding is bad and raiders are all the same. But I did take it as a general statement. A guild would and should feel good about downing a boss fight that is/was particularly difficult for them. I think you agree with that statement. What I thought you were saying, is generally it’s not healthy for a human being to derive all of their sense of accomplishment from a game. I would have to agree with this. This isn’t a WoW specific thing, this applies to all games. My guild was founded on that principle. Real life takes all priority.
I thought that the purpose of the post was to point out a problem where people get absorbed into a game and then offer a small resolution of denying a “raid is all” mentality by offering other content.
So correct me if I’m wrong here
I can’t tell if you hate raiding entirely or not. Personally I like it, but I also wish to have other options and content. I’m very much looking forward to the new WoW expansion since my guild will be able to fully progress through the game. We dont have enough people to raid 25 mans, and after trying it a few times with other guilds, I’ll be very happy to go back to just us. Most of the experience was just plain horrible, since we have to deal with the inmaturity of all the other people we ran into. Not all were bad, of course, but even some of the better experiences were marred by selfish inmature people. So, I think Blizzard is taking small steps to alleviate part of the problem. 25 mans raids are simply not reasonable to most of the playerbase. I would also agree that there needs to be another piece to end-game. If raiding is all there is, that’s all that people will do. And of course you will lose a lot of them over the long haul. So, hopefully the next mmos will take that into consideration.
I would also like to point out that if were able to fill a roster of 25 people we would certainly tackle that content. But we will never openly recruit, it just doesn’t suit our playstyle. But I think 10 man content will appeal to a larger group of players. Also the time commitment to complete raids and 5-mans are being addressed. It shouldn’t take 4 hours to complete a raid segment, simple as that. That opens up the door for players without as much time to commit. We talked about that in the last post.
Now here’s a question to ask of yourself and especially the poster Lume. Would you raid if there was no loot at all? Personally, I would. If progression were solely based on beating the previous instance, I would still do it. I believe you may feel the same way, but I bet a lot of folks that currently DO raid would not say yes. In the end, it would help you and I find more like minded folk to play with. This isn’t a reasonable answer to fix the problems, but it does get you thinking about it. There are a ton of loot whores and raid snobs in WoW. I wouldn’t say all or most, but there are certainly a lot. Offering another form of progression based on PvP and other community based “things” seems like a superb idea. Then everyone could easily ignore the morons because raiding simply wouldn’t be the only progression.
Another big issue that I think was being touched on is: Why tolerate morons in a raiding guild? I don’t think every guild does, but there are so many guilds with horrible people in them. I think they tolerate them because they feel they can’t replace them or doing so would set them back for too long. Ding ding ding! This is a core problem in raiding. Raid leaders shouldn’t be put into that situation and it should be something possible to develop around. DPS should generally be fully interchangeable. Given the holy trinity (until we can get around that too), it shouldn’t matter the kind of tank, healer, or dps in a given encounter. It should be possible to defeat an encounter with all hunters, or all rogues as dps. It shouldn’t be easy, it should probably be near impossible, but to do otherwise is a failure, imo. We can’t defeat this boss because we don’t have X class is an utter failure. Players should be able to get together and defeat any boss with a handful of classes, not specific ones given tank, healer, and dps. Here’s the boss, here’s his abilities; now you figure out how to kill him. Giving a boss abilities that negate ranged or melee dps is just plain stupid. Gruul is a perfect example of a poorly thought out boss. You should be able to bring your tanks and healers and all melee dps and defeat Gruul. But you can’t because of splash damage, and that makes an encounter lazy on the devs part. Why not make it so you have 5-8 seconds to get away from each other before the ground pounding? That’s not a hard fix, and makes it possible for melee to be nearly as useful as ranged. Another example, Kael’thas in MgT. Nearly impossible with 3 melee dps. Why? Give more time for dps in beween gravity distortion. A melee group will deal with more overall, but the encounter would still be beatable without being way overgeared. It seems so simple to make all encounters beatable by any mix of classes.
Lastly, there is a lot of merit to the over simplification of stand on X, and press 1. When you start, the boss fight is hard, when it’s on farm the boss fight is the exact same thing every time. I don’t care how complex the Kil’jaeden fight is, it’s all memorization. A random event is the same event every time. you learn how to deal with it, and everyone gets to the point where it’s all just the same fight over and over. The hiccups happen at different times. This is the biggest hurdle to overcome. How can you make a truly dynamic fight that is also satisfying? Again, not on me, that’s the job of the developer. I have said that I think those kinds of encounters are great for the lower tiers of a raid. Working your way to the lady Vashjs and Illidans should be a little more arbitrary. But the big bosses should be something really special. Adding in random shield spawns or whatever is artificially inflating the difficulty, which a lot of guilds just overcome eventually. I’m bored with kara, it was really fun to learn all of the fights, but now they are repetitive. It was a great introductory instance for learning to raid. But, I’m sure most people get bored with repetitive content. How can you make raiding more dynamic? I’m not entirely sure, but if it means a human being takes control of the big boss, then so be it. How satisfying would it be to beat a boss that no one else has, and they can’t do it the way that you did it? Maybe that is an answer. But for the content to be anything other than Scheduled reinforcement it needs to be drastically changed.
I do get a little miffed about the word skill being thrown around as well. It’s very subjective, and I don’t think skill applies in every situation it’s used. Being in a guild that has progressed farther than I have in raid content ≠ skill. A guild defeating a tough boss has some skilled players, and it has tag alongs as well. But yet you see it time and time again; We beat X boss, so we are more skilled than Y guild. And a guild will jump to the defense of their unskilled tag alongs when someone calls them out. If skill boils down to researching how to play your class and your role in a raid, than no one who plays the game is more skilled than I am. Many are the same skill, but no one can surpass me. Now, there must be some merit to this, since the vast majority of players don’t even know which attributes they need and what priority. This is the fundamental problem with claiming skill in raiding. Either skill is researching your class and the fight mechanics, or skill is an individuals ability to adapt to a situation and use their skill set in the most effective manner in any given situation. But where does the monkey training end and the skill begin? You can teach unskilled players just enough to get you through a raid encounter, even if the majority of the raid is unskilled. Why? because you make a conditioned response. Given a set of variables, you teach the player to respond to those variables. Don’t move in the flame wreath, monkey training. Fearing off a mob that is chewing on the healer (while your focus is on the boss), skill. This is purely subjective, and it’s one person’s opinion. I think PvP is arguably the best place to throw the word skill around with any merit. One player can visibly be better than another player. Those who can use their skill set quickly, and respond to more changing situations are going to be better at arena. This is funny because I am not a big PvPer. But I can see skilled players beating less skilled players. Raiding doesn’t ever seperate skill from scrub. You only have to be good enough, as a group, to beat an encounter. This is where work should be put. How do we make it easier for a skilled group (not a GEARED group) to defeat an encounter? How about more customization of a character? If every mage, warrior, and priest have the exact same spec/gear/enchants then I think you’ve failed. Why is there 1 single best? Why can’t there be more individuality leading to more varied encounters? Which is better, a priest that casts slow big bomb heals, or a priest that casts quick, small heals? Neither imo, why can’t we have both? Let a player have an actual choice in how their character turns out. It should be up to blizzard to supply more, but appropriate, gear options. I should be able to gear for high healing power, quick spell casts, high damaging spells, quick melee strikes, or any other combination and have them all mean something and be perfectly viable. Then we can talk about skill in raiding. While you can min/max all day, it shouldn’t matter. If playerX was actually able to be good at their class, they can be one of the best without worrying about spec and gear. The gear especially should be secondary to being good at your character’s abilities without having to be told what to do.
Hey Gustov, I think lots of people would ‘try,’ raids if there were not leet purples, but I’m fairly certain that most days of the week the raids would all be silent. You mentioned yourself how boring it gets once you’re on farm status. Except for guilds competing in some sort of ranking system, I wouldn’t expect many to be raiding.
Lume, I read some of your blog, and you indicated there is a pretty strong friendship in your guild. Real friends are the only thing I can see that would make me enjoy raiding again. When I lived in Korea, the Americans with me all started playing WoW, and eventually we raided. It was fun then, because my friends were around in-game, but once we started getting things down on farm status, pretty much everyone left it for PvP, and then most just left the game.
Onto the topic at hand, “Raiding’s false sense of accomplishment…”
When one raids, another should always ask, WHAT DID YOU ACCOMPLISH!?! There are no death penalties, there is no gear loss, there is no risk other than wasting time. You didn’t do anything? Games need risks to be exciting, loss of levels, loss of gear (when you’re looted, or when a monster eats you) and other features to make death BAD.
First I’d like to to respond to this:
“WotLK 10 man stuff: I have read that this is kindof another WoW bait and switch. The 25 man versions still have the best loot, so the 10 man raiders are still the red headed step children.
”
I think having a 10 man progression is a pretty big deal. It should be like this: Every expansion is 3 tiers of gear, 10 mans will max out at tier 8 whereas 25 mans will get the full tier 9. Why? Because it’s harder (logistically) to do 25 mans. Now, I do think it should be the other way around, but a lot has to change first. In my experience, which only extends to Mag/Gruul/TK/SSC in small doses, it is easier to pull people along in a 25 man. When you are not fully geared (as in just starting), Kara needs all 10 people to be near the top of their game to beat. But with a mix and match team of my guild (all kara geared) and another guild (some kara geared, some greens and blues) we were able to fairly easily beat the encounters. The tanks had to be good and the healers had to be good, but dps was pulled along in a few cases. Now I know you can pull people along in Kara as well, but not really without any gear to begin with.
I think a 5 man heroic is the measure of a player, that’s where you see how good they are, because a few of them require all 5 people to be very good. If you can go through them without wiping, that’s usually a skillful endeavor. Now, I think what Cambios is saying is that why, when 5 mans are harder because they expose your weaknesses, should those players get lesser gear than the 25 man raiders? If your argument is that they are harder, I disagree based on what I’ve just said. For progression raiding, you physically need better gear because you get hit harder, and the bosses have more health, so you need to do more damage to keep up. This is what he is reffering to as an arbitrary element. Shouldn’t the measure of progression be based on the dificulty of the fight, not just increasing the numbers?
This is where I don’t have any answers, just ideas. There has to be a way to make fights harder without requiring gear. How about the warlock being required to fear at certain points in the fight (or equivelent CC)? The simple fights, and there are a few, are the least rewarding, I believe. Prince is not a rewarding fight, it’s very easy. Your success is based on how fast you can kill him and if your healing can keep up. Most fights aren’t that simplisitic, but I feel like they are a waste. I play an affliction lock, so I have one of the more dynamic roles of dps in that I have a lot more buttons to press. But the hunter, who basically presses 1 button ( a macro) and I are doing the same methodical thing over and over again until the boss dies. Boss fights should have a hunter and warlock doing more then pressing a button, and moving from point A to B to C and rinse repeat. How about throwing in a need for a hunter/warlock/others to have to use a bunch of abilities in a fight? Give the tanks something to do other than stand/move out of the way.
How about Intercept being a required skill in boss fights? The boss peels off because the mage just critted and he’s pissed off. Aggro tables aren’t dynamic enough when you can just watch it and make sure you don’t pass the tank. How about a boss fight where the raid takes DoT damage the entire time? (maybe there is one
) A fight where dps/tanking is almost irreleveant, it’s all on the healers shoulders, maybe it’s a timed event where you have to survive for 10 minutes, there is no boss, just adds. Lets vary the encounters greatly, not the bosses abilities but the circumstances of the boss fight. Make a player use most of their abilities in a boss fight, don’t make it all dps based. Bosses don’t need 6 million health if you have a hard time getting to the boss to begin with. How about a castle courtyard with adds streaming in constantly, so much so that you can’t afford to put more than 1 dps on the boss and only a pet can be afforded to tank the boss? The boss is fearable, sheepable, but so what, until he’s dead, those adds are gonna keep coming. We should be asking for more dynamic content, make the boss fights feel very different from one another. That’s one step towards an epic boss fight. I would imagine a boss like Gruul or Mag to have a lot of hit points since they are big hulking messes. But a lot of other bosses are just tall 
But one thing that just sits sour with a lot of players is gear disparity. If I can only play for 2 hours at a time, other than speed of earning the items, why should I not have access to the same items other do? Or because I only have enough friends to put together 10 man raids. Players are not created equal, but gear puts people into castes. If you are not able to raid prior to joining a raiding guild, how would you get in? You could never be in a top raiding guild, unless you betrayed another guild. Why are the mechanics of the game built that way?
If you believe that 25 man raiders should get better gear because they “deserve” it, imo that is straight up loot whoring and cat assing. That’s 5-10% of population. Do an armory check on Kara geared folks, low numbers based on total population. We could satisfy cat assing by giving 25 man raiders, 10 man raiders, and 5 man players different sets of gear. Stats nearly the same but completely different visual style. Then everyone would still know you and your chums downed Arthas in a 25 man environment. And the rest of us could continue to not give a crap. I will continue to raid 10 mans, get my cat assing gear, and be perfectly happy. If you can’t be happy with an arrangement that gives more players access to the same stats, why? They have played for just as long and deserve to have their content eased for beating it. All it takes is a system that rewards in different ways, but still requires commitment. For the raiders, they need gear to drop in successive instances, no problem there. For non raiders there has to be a system to build an entire set of epics equal to the other sets but they don’t need to get there as quickly, but they still ought to be able to get there. 25 mans, quick progression based on downing bosses. 10 mans, medium progression based on downing bosses and badge system. 5 mans based entirely on badges with slow progression. If a 25 man raider wants the badge gear, it’s still there. And 5 man and 10 man players just take longer to accumulate their sets. I see no harm no foul. You could even make 25 man stuff have like +10 stats, 10 man stuff +5, so that there’s a tiny margin of improvement. Or how about the raid bosses have abilities that the gear addresses? So raid damage reduced by 5,10, 15% as you progress, making the current dungeon easier, resetting with each new instance area. The 5 mans would become easier based on location also. The new gear incorporates all previous content, but needs upgrading. Maybe it’s a set bonus
Anyway, ideas to improve the arbitrary difficulty slider and rewards for all, not some. How about some more ideas?
All this chest thumping by Cambios about his exceptional qualifications reinforcing his world view reminds me of other such Luminaries ..
Like John Romero and Alan Emerich
Dude,
Stop assuming your personal experience is common to everyone.
It’s not.
Stop thinking we all play for the same reasons you do.
We don’t.
And puffing up your personal opinion by tacking on nonsense like “it’s a statistical fact” is the kind of thing that gets you called ignorant.
I don’t really see much value in your post.
Every activity takes away time that you could spend on other activities. You claim that gaming is bad and family is good. Why is family good or better than gaming?
What if I fished the entire day for fun just to get that big fish? Or if I trained the whole day just to get a medal some day? Or work the entire day just to have big pile of money some day? Or to stick with family: What if I raised a boy just to see him become a genious when he grows up? Why is a real-life-accomplishment better than any virtual accomplishment. It’s only an accomplishment if it is one in YOUR head - no matter where it comes from. Everything is just in YOUR head.
Oh and they did mass PvP back then because everybody knew by then that raiding was senseless because those green questrewards in HFP would be way better than anything they could get in the old world.
A PvP-player in all s4-PvP-gear was patient enough too. Patient enough to waste tons of hours to play a game while he could do other things. A millionaire was patient enough to watch the AH … errr … market or whatever to collect that much money. No difference - patience/determination is usually part of going for an accomplishment.
Reading some of your comments in this post makes me believe that your post isn’t really about virtual accomplishments but the people feeling superior because of them.
I see more superior attitude in real life. Isn’t it as bad in real life? Why should it be different in a game?
Valthan, I can’t find the article from a Jeffrey Kaplan interview where he stated the less than 15% figure, but it’s out there. Anyway, he was being generous, just look at wowjutsu and do the math for how many people have dropped Attunmen:
51,287 guilds ran Kara,
512,870 players ran Kara
84.45% dropped Attunemen
433,118 Players total out of 4,205,277 (US&EU Servers)
9.7% of players have raided.
Granted those numbers are from the summer, but it’s still a pretty compelling snapshot. Anyway, if I find the Kaplan article where he himself states that less than 15% of players raid I’ll send it over.
No one here is against gaming, Cambios IS a game developer, and obviously everyone of us who has taken the time to comment is an avid gamer. The main point of this post was to bring more light to what Cambios thinks of as a flawed design aspect, raiding and the false sense of accomplishment from raiding.
Every blog I’ve found praising raiding, and defending it against ‘attack,’ (mostly from casual gamers it seems) use the keypoints of: It takes dedication to study strats, to set up class combos, to set up gear and specs, to farm proper resist gear and consumables. These things are what us on the other side of the fence are calling out as a pigeon box, and not good game design.
Dear Cambios,
I think you misunderstand both raiding in WoW and human nature. It makes me think that your blog is rather poorly researched. If you were one of my students, I would send you back to the data-gathering stage. In addition, you’ve got a hysterical tone going that does not exactly inspire respect. This is a rant, pure and simple, and you’ve done neither the research to quantify your assertions about human psychology nor bothered to investigate what WoW raiding is all about. Siha’s point is actually correct–the skills one learns organizing a raid transfer to real life. No one has an ideal team of raiders–we all work with what we have. Try reading up on the subject! There is a lot of good information out there if you’re open to it.
And about casual gamers: every WoW raider I know is happy that there are non-raiding aspects of the game to enjoy. A lot of us do things outside of raiding or raid prep, and we’d be thrilled if there were even more fun little things to do. I personally loved the Midsummer Fire Festival quests. It made me play more that week than usual–and it was a purely “casual” pursuit. Most of us know, respect, and like purely casual players–I am glad to see anyone play my game of choice and enjoy it, regardless of the particular content they enjoy. However, raiders are also glad that WoW allows the possibility of raiding. The game does not have to be one thing or the other, and its greatest strength is its variety.
Yeah I was a little reluctant to use wowjutsu. I read that it had become much more accurate, but you know how off anything from the armory can be.
I quit playing WoW after we finished AQ40, so I haven’t seen any BC stuff, that’s why I haven’t commented on boss fights specifically. I’m sure that all TBC raids are challenging in a sense, but it seems to me that they could be set up in a different, and more dynamic fashion, that would still be equally challenging. I’m not a game designer, and I honestly can’t say exactly what it is that would make me enjoy the raid itself more, but I do believe that MMOs as a whole would be better off if raiding wasn’t the sole end-game. If the game’s goals were more player driven, and player institution driven, then the chance of them becoming stale would be greatly mitigated. Of course for this to work, a lot of serious core changes would have to be implemented in the general MMO scheme, IE: death penalties, player killing and player looting, player politics and player justice. I think that these things will come in graphical MMOs in time, after they become cheaper to develop, and maintain. We’ll see.
@tuna:
Yeah my math was off, my operations were correct (thanks windows calculator), but my process was just silly…I think it’s all the pot and heavy metal in my life finally addling my brain.
Appealing to credentialism won’t improve the cogency of what you’ve already posted.
If you’re too lazy to support your own position with facts you already have, that speaks for itself.
And if you haven’t figured out that much of the flack you’re deservedly getting is due to the inane and unprofessionnal tone of your replies, then perhaps your employers aren’t getting their money’s worth.
Analysis - data = speculation
At this point it’s a question of credibility and professionalism.
Not to mention how the loss of both would reflect on your employer.
Way I see it addictions like WOW raiding or slot machines are actually indicative of a far deeper problem with modern society in general. That is the fact there is very little to nothing in most people’s lives to actually give them a real sense of accomplishment.
Work in particular is the worst culprit here, most people have jobs that place a premium on putting in time on mind numbing tasks, or running around after other people trying to get things from them or fix their screw ups. Advancement tends to be heavily dependent on “loyalty” aka how long you’ve been in the job.
I myself currently work in statistical analysis/programming, but I”m getting out of the field. Fact is the vast majority of my work requires about a fifth the mental effort of a good tactical PVP battle. This is for a job most people say is complicated. I turn my brain back on when I game.
You can’t blame the game devs for doing what sells the most copies which is gameplay that is based on the same sort of repetitive mundane garbage people fill their days with….only adding on an extra “ding”/accomplishment. It’s all a symptom of a society that supports conformity and mediocrity. Get up, go to work for 8 hours of mindless monotony, come home for hours of domestic monotony and TV, if you’re lucky you have 2.5 children and a house. No wonder people turn to cyberspace to fill the emptiness.
I think the need for change can be most simply stated as a requirement that Blizzard change its development focus.
The raids are constructed the way they are precisely so a small number of groups can reach the top, because the game wants a small number of people to reach the top. Is it fun for them? I daresay it is, it’s nice to be on top, to be the first guild on your server to clear ‘x’, to strut around Orgrimmar with your full tier 6 gear on display.
I think it’s a similar situation with the season 4 PvP gear with the arena rating requirements; I cannot conceive of the amount of time needed to accumulate the number of points and the rating to get the most expensive bits of gear.
As I see it, while Blizzard continues to see these hardcore groups as paramount to their gaming experience all the other problems will continue. Essentially the issues you have with raids can be envisaged as hurdles, and only those with an incredible, possibly unhealthy amount of time to dedicate to the game will be willing and/or able to pass them.
Blizzard has a very broad development focus, though. The game world itself is very large and every system in the game is rather extensive. Raiding is there for people who want to invest the time in it. Do you have to raid? No, but it is accessible (and grows more accessible with each content change) to anyone who wants to do it.
As far as Arena PVP gear is concerned, the reason for rating is because in a system designed for player versus player competition, people weren’t competing. You had teams called, “In for 10″ or “Just for Points” who would queue into games and lose every single one, just to farm points to purchase high quality items. The Arena point system rewards players who compete and try, giving you more points the more you win. Players who try and win points through competition get access to the quality gear fairly quickly.
With 10 million players and growing, it is a very hard thing to say that all they care about is hardcore raiders or hardcore PVP. In fact, you can’t say it at all. What you can say is in your opinion, the development emphasis is not to your liking. That is a fair thing to say. But Blizzard design is successful and I think their growth, staying power and numbers support that.
From the company’s point of view, there is only so much they can do to prevent people from destroying themselves. Allowing people to set up control on their own accounts that they have to go through a series of steps to change can help.
More importantly, more content needs to be focused around making casual gaming the standard, not hardcore hours and hours and hours per week.
Whether you play 10 hours a month or 10 hours a day, they still receive the same amount of money each month.
And if you’re playing 10 hours a month, it’ll take you a lot longer to get through the amount of content they can develop.
I mean, think about it. How often do you go to the movies?
If you’re a real movie buff, maybe once a week, at most? Maybe watch a movie you’ve already seen at home as background to doing something else, like laundry.
They make quite a pretty penny, and they’re counting on you seeing their movie maybe once, or a second purchase if you get the DVD.
So why does a MMORPG / MUD have to eat your soul?
You’ll have less player burn out, it’ll become more widely accepted, and your player base will keep it’s size at least, and possibly widen.
As has apparently been discussed elsewhere, the hardest core raiders make up a surprisingly (to me at least) small number of the population. And if you supported more things to allow them to do other things as a guild they’d probably pursue them, similar to the opening of the Ahn Qiraj gates in WoW. That was a big thing with everyone on the server able to feel like they were involved somehow. True I didn’t do it all, and some played much larger roles than others, but it was cool to have played some part in it, as well as having reaped some of the rewards.
To sum up, play it cool and keep it casual. You can do that while keeping the hard core crowd interested.
>To sum up, play it cool and keep it casual. You can do that while keeping the hard core crowd interested.
Quoted for Truth.
So much of the content in the comments here which seeks to detract from Cambios’ point in this article seems to summarize as, “You’re not l33t enough to ‘Get it’, n00b.”
Um, fuck you? The thought of having to waste HOURS and DAYS preparing for something which is going to take even MORE hours to finish, at the end of which I MIGHT get a piece of virtual clothing is the biggest exercise in futility I can fathom in a game. The end game lore content is probably about the only thing which would compel me to do it, but considering how often Blizzard have been buggering canon to introduce new Uber-Bosses, I’m not sure it would be worth it anyway.
I can pretty much say the other members of WoW’s oft-vaunted “Ten Million Plus” who classify as ‘casual gamers’ feel the same way. All you have to do is read the forums to see that non-raid players are getting REALLY BORED!
Ignoring the elephant in the room won’t make it go away, lads.
Easiest way to make raiding in particular more satisfying and less time consuming is bringing back the skill component. Make raid bosses more trigger/random timer based and less scripted. Ideally, the way it should work is that everyone doing thier job and reacting properly matters more then how much gear your main tank has.
Look to older games for inspiration where in boss fights you reacted to what the boss “telegraphed” or patterns…and took advantage of openings. There is some of this in raiding now, but it is very secondary to the gear factor. When skill and reaction time matters alot more, it also limits the raw amount of time people can continually do a task. Compare say playing streetfighter or counterstrike to raiding.
But yeah it’s high time skill came back to mmos in it’s true form rather then masquerading as a massive grind.
I enjoyed reading your original post. I probably spent the last 45 minutes reading the back-and-forth after. I’m going to try to avoid commenting about things outside of your original post.
Just as a little background for those that require it, I play a holy paladin healer. I’ve been playing World of Warcraft since the Burning Crusade expansion was released and have been raiding literally since the first day I hit 70 starting with Karazhan. While working through Sunwell, I was raiding with a hardcore raiding guild that was world ranked 12 (not server rank, mind you) at the time I quit raiding with them. I’ve done everything from Attumen to Kil’jaeden, from raiding one night a week to six nights a week.
Outside of WoW I’m a network engineer for an ISP and technology consulting company. I have a bachelors in computer science and have several professional Cisco certifications (CCNP being the most “noteworthy”). I am single and own (rather, I’m still paying for) my own house. I’m 24 years old.
Back to the feedback though, I agree with some of the points you make but with varying degrees. I don’t think that raiding provides a negative false sense of accomplishment. Learning a second language or running a successful business are accomplishments that are generally accepted as “valid”. My point is, not everyone takes pride in these things and I think that you should respect the fact that everyone has varying opinions on self-worth.
Just because one person uses accomplishments in a video game and another in the office, doesn’t make one person better than someone else. I think you’re simply saying, “I don’t care that you killed Illidan because of X, Y, and Z reasons. If you’re an accomplished swimmer or linguist, then by all means, take pride in yourself.”
I understand that you might identify with yourself as a successful business owner, which I would agree is impressive. But I think you’re being a little elitist to simply say, “I’m better at life for running a successful business and all you did was beat computer pixels.” What is impressive or important to you might not be to everyone else.
Now, what you will probably think is, “the fact you see killing computer pixels as impressive or noteworthy in life is sad in general.” Well, it might be sad to you, but they don’t need your pity. In the end, we’re all just dead anyway. Whether you die a millionaire or die as a member of the best WoW raiding guild, you’re still dead. Who decides that your life was more “accomplished” because you did X or Y? Or that mine was less because I didn’t or because I chose to spend my time doing something else? What difference does it make in the end on how the world viewed your legacy? You’re still dead, you won’t care at all.
I agree with your point. My wife and I were both in WoW together, and quit when our guild merged with a high-end raid guild. We had both done our share of raids, but when you have a full-time job and two kids, you don’t have five+ hours a day, three-to-five days a week to play a game.
You play when you can.
And yes, that’s a fairly accurate percentage…the percentage of players of any MMO that are regular raiders is very low. A much larger percentage will dabble in it a time or two, but the group of players that regularly raid is much smaller than most people think.
And WoW did not base their game on the wants of a small percentage of their market…that’s why WoW is one of the (if not the most) soloable MMO on the market. Blizzard achieved the massive breakthrough in subscription numbers it did due, in large part, to being more casual-friendly than other MMOs on the market.
Raids are not, I repeat NOT “casual friendly,” and no amount of discussion will change my opinion on that, no matter how much farther into the high-end instances you think I should have progressed to “get it”.
However, Cambios:
[quote]Doing well at raiding does not benefit you anywhere OUTSIDE of WoW. [/quote]
Well….absolutes are not your friend. True, the “outside world” benefits are far less numerous than the same benefits from the other activities you listed, but…well….
[url=http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.04/learn.html]Stephen Gillett might take exception with the word “anywhere” in your quote.[/url]
I’m definitely on-board with the idea that the benefits are extremely few and far between, but apparently there are [i]some[/i].
I went back and read some of the posts I skimmed over when I posted, and Cambios, ignore the detractors, you’re right on target. From what you’ve said about yourself, it seems like you’ve got plenty reason to be secure anyway, but just thought I should say that. Keep rockin’.
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to: Cambrios
[quote] The problem is that like it nor not, some accomplishments are objectively better than others. Things that improve your lot in life, or your health, are objectively superior to things that serve no purpose outside of the context itself.
[quote] Doing well at work benefits you OUTSIDE of work.
[quote] Doing well in a sport or with an exercise regimen benefits you OUTSIDE of the gym.
[quote] Doing well at raiding does not benefit you anywhere OUTSIDE of WoW.
While I wholeheartedly agree with all of the points in your disagreements with Blizzard’s raid model (in another post, not this one. XD), I think some of the grumpiness you’re seeing here might be because the tone of THIS rant devalues something people find important to them.
I understand where you’re coming from, saying that raiding doesn’t benefit you outside of WoW… but to then throw the pride that people take in it, if they do take pride in it, in the trash - seems to be a bit much.
I paint (digitally) these days, and I don’t do it for a living (unfortunately). Because I don’t make money from it, and I don’t get anything from it, and as digital paint, it’s ‘just a bunch of pixels’, does that make it a worthless pursuit, and me a ’sad’ person for doing it at all? Obviously I don’t (like) to think so. XD
Sooooo to reiterate - while I dislike Blizzard’s raiding model greatly (they’ve basically turned me off PvE raids in MMOs), maybe some of the emotional negativity you’re seeing in the posted replies is because you’re perceived to be unrepentantly denigrating something that others view as a part of their self worth.
Just my two cents!
This was a great read. I’ve actually SEEN this happen. A few of my best friends are into WoW, and they all raid constantly. And now when they get tossed into very real life situations, such as not getting enough hours from their respective jobs, or needing to find a place to move into, they really don’t do much about their lack of income, they just sit back and play WoW all the time.
Now I’m not an MMO player, and I don’t knock the genre. I have plenty of friends who are all into games like this, but they don’t let it get in the way of their livelihood. I can understand fully the sense of accomplishment from taking down a ridiculously hard challenge, but at the same time, your priorities need to be correct.