If WoW is really that bad and raiding that dull, then why does the playerbase only increase in WoW?
Wow is popular and has made lots of money. All Blizzard games have. Blizzard are masters at simplifying a game and a UI so that anyone can play it.
Blizzard did not invent the rts or the mmo. They just dumbed them down (made them intuative) so that anyone could play them (mass market appeal).
It is not the raid content that atracts people to WoW. Blizzard as a company and game designer are very skilled at making a game intuative and easy to use (point and click). That is thier success. The raid modle trancends Blizzard games. That is the problem us players are voicing. End game PvE content as most games implement them now is a negative to the game and mmos in general.
So the fact that popular games have end game raid content is irrelevant. Our argument is that does PvE raid content make a game better? I think not.
Wouldnt a better solution be no level or soft caps? Another good solution would be an almost infinate crafting system. Another good solution would be a PvP oriented end game. Another solution would be a classless system where you could explore many skill trees. There are many better solutions for end game content. But if they made the game truely open ended.. how would they get you to buy expansions?
To be honnest, doing Scholomance for the 100x time for one item is also stupid and dull. It's all grinding, just like raiding. Thinking of it, MMO's are all about grinding. Grinding for gear, grinding for crafting, grinding for reputation, ginrding for quests, grinding for PVP.
I really think it doesn't matter how large a party needs to be to do a dungeon, people will still complain. Some are already complaining about the 5-man instances blizzard made, too difficult. Raiding is here to stay, there is always a target too large to kill alone. Grinding is also here to stay, no boat or house is build with one chopped down tree.
Just curious though, when is raiding called raiding? Doing some instance 100 times for one drop is called grinding and NOT raiding.
I had tons of fun running instances like Stratholme and Scholomance for first timers, despite me doing them for ever and my guild being deep in Naxxramas. There is fun learning new encounters and there is fun learning how to combat and outsmart the deficiences of your own team and make it through the instance. I must admit that when you raid with people (or group for that matter) for a long time, you learn to play with them. You learn to anticipate their actions and complement their moves. This is what mostly puts off experienced groupers-raiders-whatever. It's not that they are part of a guild and the others are not. It's because they spent all these months together learning to act as a team, that they find it hard to play with people they know little of. I could adjust better than most, but maybe it was the class that helped as well.
There are the elitists out there of course. Funnily enough, I've met such people outside what you'd consider "the best guilds in the server". They seem to think they were too good for them. It's a fine line between being proud for your achievements (no matter how shallow considering this is just an online game) and being arrogant and stiff-necked.
PS1: I thought I knew everything there was to being a good raid priest. Boy was I for a surprise when I entered the behemoth instance that Naxxramas was and needed to re-evaluation my own skills as well as the guild needed to evaluate their skills as a whole.
PS2: My guild stopped raiding 1 week before Christmas while the rest of the server stopped 1-2 months earlier. Everyone knew that the gear would be obsolete with the coming of the expansion. Noone cared. We wanted fun and we wanted progress. And it was all that mattered.
I have the feeling that the biggest handicap of a casual player is that he can not plan in the depth of time (RL interferes way too much ). To make a good raiding guild you need to have a collective goal, a vision, to plan ahead of time and to not panic when things don't go as planned. It does have it's frustrating moments but it also has it's rewarding moments. One thing is certain. When you manage to pull something like this, you do feel good about yourself and the people that surround you. And if people mistake that for arrogance, they just don't know the meaning of the word.
To be honnest, doing Scholomance for the 100x time for one item is also stupid and dull.
But it's accessible. It doesn't take 6 hours a go. Fewer people needed means you are not at the mercy of uber guilds or uber guild alliances just to maximize your toon. No raids or no forced raiding means everybody will have a means of optimum character progression. What you are talking about is a different discussion altogether. A good discussion but nontheless different. This isn't so much a boredom issue as much as it's an accessibility issue.
I don't mind an occasional raid. Once or twice a week, take down some Boss_Mob_01 and maybe get some nice goodie. To me, it's seeing a rarely seen (cept in screenshots) area that I find more fun than the actual acquiring of Da Lewts.
However, too many games seem to have devs that feel raiding is The Fun Thing To Do at the level cap. EQ1 was raid heavy, if you didn't or couldn't raid you were S.O.L. sorry to say. WoW pre-BC was essentially PvP or Raid with no other options available. That is what bothers me the most the fact that the devs are basically forcing me to raid to progress at all. I don't mind doing a scholomance or such many times as it's a smaller instance, can get a group and get going much quicker than a raid. Plus in the single group dungeons people are far less anal about loots.
Which brings up another point, too much raid content really begins separating the community. The raiders begin to think themselves "better" than Those Other People. Guilds which were helpful and friendly begin getting greedy when they see the first shiny bauble drop, as some people feel they "earned" more right to it than that other guy. Heck you get someone that raids too much and they actually forget how to play in a single group (like that tier 2 warrrior that wouldn't stop pulling everything in strath that one time). You don't have several healers to back you up here Mr Uber Dude.
Finally some of Mr Fortier's comments seem to be either (1) clueless or (2) elitist to me. I can't see how he thinks raiding will be a social outlet, as most of the time when you're raiding the leader wants chatter kept to minimum. Hard to socialize when you're not allowed to talk to anyone. Plus I fail to see how raiding and pvp are requirements for each other. I've known people in full raid gear that couldn't pvp for diddly and on the other hand people in more common gear that really pvp well. As I've always said, Sklll > Gear.
Back in my SWG days shortly after launch when it was still a mmoRPG and not a mmoFPS, great hunting parties were formed (guild or no guild) and we would tromp off into the wilderness in search of big game and massive exp. On one hand being a medic was great, I ran around and healed everyone with my then-original super buffs, was extremely vital to the group and monetarily well-rewarded, and I even took a few pot shots now and then at a very pissed off Krayt Dragon. Sure there were 30+ other people shooting, a hilarious Teras Kai martial artist trying to run up and kick the dragon then run away so he wouldn't get hit, and the invaluable bots and creatures tanking for us on the front line, but it WAS fun. You had the newbies panicking and running around trying not to get hit, afraid they would lose their then-rare "jedi robe" if they got killed, and then there were the hardcore gamers like myself who were calmer, thinking, and actually making progress. Laser blasts coming from every direction made it sound like you were in a Star Destroyer space battle, general chaos, and again... one very pissed off beast having done nothing more than killed a few of the group members when they attacked it first all by their lonely, supremely out-matched selves. Great fun!
The incredible charge I felt seeing a huge beast fall knowing I was a true part of the victory made me feel like I did when I first beat Koopa in the original Super Mario Brothers. That electric excitement and sense of true accomplishment rarely felt in real life. And then there were the rewards that poured in of exp that I couldn't hope to gain by myself in a month of grinding on lower beasts, and the jubliation of returning to a bar and collectively bragging about what bad-asses we all were and how that particular animal was unique within the game for one reason or another... fish stories exist even in cyberspace, too!
But soon I found myself logging on exclusively for those raiding parties. Looking for them, organizing them, watching most fall apart and everyone wondering what went wrong and the inevitable backlash of backbiting and finger-pointing. Being a medic usually saved me from said blame, but eventually I tired of the endless bickering, politicking, and lack of loyalty. I would say at the very most 10% of these raids were successful back then, but I have no idea what they would be now. My reason for being in SWG went from feeling like a part of the true Star Wars experience to making expensive, time-consuming medicines or raiding. That was the beginning of the end.
Take it or leave it, I believe raiding will always be a part of MMORPG's. Like everything else in life, there are always pros AND cons.
"Yeah, I was an original Star Wars: Galaxies player. Addict would be more accurate. What would you call 18 hours a day after launch for three months solid?" SOE: "Why did you leave us?" "I signed on for a MMOR.P.G. Not another frickin' MMOF.P.S. you arseholes!"
I'd love to hear from someone who actually likes raiding. Sometimes, I think they're more mythological than the dwarves and elves we pretend to be.
The hardcore raiders are too busy maintaing their websites where people have to fill out applications and actually setting up 20-40 main raids (well, no more 40s now, i guess!) where they spend two hours in prep, yelling at all the inexperienced players on Vent for failing to do things exactly as they are told, followed by 8-12 hours of running through the same dungeon over and over again hoping that staff that drops is specced for your druid and not the mage next to you, while trying to accumulate DKPs to even have a shot of earning it.....
So we won't see too many hardcore raiders defending themselves here, man! They've got an important job to do, you know.....?
To be honnest, doing Scholomance for the 100x time for one item is also stupid and dull. It's all grinding, just like raiding. Thinking of it, MMO's are all about grinding. Grinding for gear, grinding for crafting, grinding for reputation, ginrding for quests, grinding for PVP. I really think it doesn't matter how large a party needs to be to do a dungeon, people will still complain. Some are already complaining about the 5-man instances blizzard made, too difficult. Raiding is here to stay, there is always a target too large to kill alone. Grinding is also here to stay, no boat or house is build with one chopped down tree. Just curious though, when is raiding called raiding? Doing some instance 100 times for one drop is called grinding and NOT raiding.
MMORPGS with hardcore raiding: The spiritual successors to Space Invaders!
Hell, what were all those great arcade games back in the eighties but eternal grind fests? I think I finally understand, now.....Scholo and other sites should have virtual quarter slots at their entrances; Blizzard might make even more money that way...
Comments
Wow is popular and has made lots of money. All Blizzard games have. Blizzard are masters at simplifying a game and a UI so that anyone can play it.
Blizzard did not invent the rts or the mmo. They just dumbed them down (made them intuative) so that anyone could play them (mass market appeal).
It is not the raid content that atracts people to WoW. Blizzard as a company and game designer are very skilled at making a game intuative and easy to use (point and click). That is thier success. The raid modle trancends Blizzard games. That is the problem us players are voicing. End game PvE content as most games implement them now is a negative to the game and mmos in general.
So the fact that popular games have end game raid content is irrelevant. Our argument is that does PvE raid content make a game better? I think not.
Wouldnt a better solution be no level or soft caps? Another good solution would be an almost infinate crafting system. Another good solution would be a PvP oriented end game. Another solution would be a classless system where you could explore many skill trees. There are many better solutions for end game content. But if they made the game truely open ended.. how would they get you to buy expansions?
To be honnest, doing Scholomance for the 100x time for one item is also stupid and dull. It's all grinding, just like raiding. Thinking of it, MMO's are all about grinding. Grinding for gear, grinding for crafting, grinding for reputation, ginrding for quests, grinding for PVP.
I really think it doesn't matter how large a party needs to be to do a dungeon, people will still complain. Some are already complaining about the 5-man instances blizzard made, too difficult. Raiding is here to stay, there is always a target too large to kill alone. Grinding is also here to stay, no boat or house is build with one chopped down tree.
Just curious though, when is raiding called raiding? Doing some instance 100 times for one drop is called grinding and NOT raiding.
There are the elitists out there of course. Funnily enough, I've met such people outside what you'd consider "the best guilds in the server". They seem to think they were too good for them. It's a fine line between being proud for your achievements (no matter how shallow considering this is just an online game) and being arrogant and stiff-necked.
PS1: I thought I knew everything there was to being a good raid priest. Boy was I for a surprise when I entered the behemoth instance that Naxxramas was and needed to re-evaluation my own skills as well as the guild needed to evaluate their skills as a whole.
PS2: My guild stopped raiding 1 week before Christmas while the rest of the server stopped 1-2 months earlier. Everyone knew that the gear would be obsolete with the coming of the expansion. Noone cared. We wanted fun and we wanted progress. And it was all that mattered.
I have the feeling that the biggest handicap of a casual player is that he can not plan in the depth of time (RL interferes way too much
Guild Wars 2 is my religion
I don't mind an occasional raid. Once or twice a week, take down some Boss_Mob_01 and maybe get some nice goodie. To me, it's seeing a rarely seen (cept in screenshots) area that I find more fun than the actual acquiring of Da Lewts.
However, too many games seem to have devs that feel raiding is The Fun Thing To Do at the level cap. EQ1 was raid heavy, if you didn't or couldn't raid you were S.O.L. sorry to say. WoW pre-BC was essentially PvP or Raid with no other options available. That is what bothers me the most the fact that the devs are basically forcing me to raid to progress at all. I don't mind doing a scholomance or such many times as it's a smaller instance, can get a group and get going much quicker than a raid. Plus in the single group dungeons people are far less anal about loots.
Which brings up another point, too much raid content really begins separating the community. The raiders begin to think themselves "better" than Those Other People. Guilds which were helpful and friendly begin getting greedy when they see the first shiny bauble drop, as some people feel they "earned" more right to it than that other guy. Heck you get someone that raids too much and they actually forget how to play in a single group (like that tier 2 warrrior that wouldn't stop pulling everything in strath that one time). You don't have several healers to back you up here Mr Uber Dude.
Finally some of Mr Fortier's comments seem to be either (1) clueless or (2) elitist to me. I can't see how he thinks raiding will be a social outlet, as most of the time when you're raiding the leader wants chatter kept to minimum. Hard to socialize when you're not allowed to talk to anyone. Plus I fail to see how raiding and pvp are requirements for each other. I've known people in full raid gear that couldn't pvp for diddly and on the other hand people in more common gear that really pvp well. As I've always said, Sklll > Gear.
Back in my SWG days shortly after launch when it was still a mmoRPG and not a mmoFPS, great hunting parties were formed (guild or no guild) and we would tromp off into the wilderness in search of big game and massive exp. On one hand being a medic was great, I ran around and healed everyone with my then-original super buffs, was extremely vital to the group and monetarily well-rewarded, and I even took a few pot shots now and then at a very pissed off Krayt Dragon. Sure there were 30+ other people shooting, a hilarious Teras Kai martial artist trying to run up and kick the dragon then run away so he wouldn't get hit, and the invaluable bots and creatures tanking for us on the front line, but it WAS fun. You had the newbies panicking and running around trying not to get hit, afraid they would lose their then-rare "jedi robe" if they got killed, and then there were the hardcore gamers like myself who were calmer, thinking, and actually making progress. Laser blasts coming from every direction made it sound like you were in a Star Destroyer space battle, general chaos, and again... one very pissed off beast having done nothing more than killed a few of the group members when they attacked it first all by their lonely, supremely out-matched selves. Great fun!
The incredible charge I felt seeing a huge beast fall knowing I was a true part of the victory made me feel like I did when I first beat Koopa in the original Super Mario Brothers. That electric excitement and sense of true accomplishment rarely felt in real life. And then there were the rewards that poured in of exp that I couldn't hope to gain by myself in a month of grinding on lower beasts, and the jubliation of returning to a bar and collectively bragging about what bad-asses we all were and how that particular animal was unique within the game for one reason or another... fish stories exist even in cyberspace, too!
But soon I found myself logging on exclusively for those raiding parties. Looking for them, organizing them, watching most fall apart and everyone wondering what went wrong and the inevitable backlash of backbiting and finger-pointing. Being a medic usually saved me from said blame, but eventually I tired of the endless bickering, politicking, and lack of loyalty. I would say at the very most 10% of these raids were successful back then, but I have no idea what they would be now. My reason for being in SWG went from feeling like a part of the true Star Wars experience to making expensive, time-consuming medicines or raiding. That was the beginning of the end.
Take it or leave it, I believe raiding will always be a part of MMORPG's. Like everything else in life, there are always pros AND cons.
"Yeah, I was an original Star Wars: Galaxies player. Addict would be more accurate. What would you call 18 hours a day after launch for three months solid?"
SOE: "Why did you leave us?"
"I signed on for a MMOR.P.G. Not another frickin' MMOF.P.S. you arseholes!"
The hardcore raiders are too busy maintaing their websites where people have to fill out applications and actually setting up 20-40 main raids (well, no more 40s now, i guess!) where they spend two hours in prep, yelling at all the inexperienced players on Vent for failing to do things exactly as they are told, followed by 8-12 hours of running through the same dungeon over and over again hoping that staff that drops is specced for your druid and not the mage next to you, while trying to accumulate DKPs to even have a shot of earning it.....
So we won't see too many hardcore raiders defending themselves here, man! They've got an important job to do, you know.....?
Current MMOs: Rift, GW2, Defiance
Blog: http://realmsofchirak.blogspot.com (old school tabletop gaming and more)
MMORPGS with hardcore raiding: The spiritual successors to Space Invaders!
Hell, what were all those great arcade games back in the eighties but eternal grind fests? I think I finally understand, now.....Scholo and other sites should have virtual quarter slots at their entrances; Blizzard might make even more money that way...
Current MMOs: Rift, GW2, Defiance
Blog: http://realmsofchirak.blogspot.com (old school tabletop gaming and more)