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Raiding in WoW ruined the game for me
admriker4
Member Posts: 1,070
I love raiding. Its not just the pretty loot. The teamwork, getting to see content, and achieving a difficult objective is why I play mmo's. Raiding in World of Warcraft though has killed my love for this playstyle.
Raiding in WoW has a way of slowly sucking the fun out of the game. It starts out with meters and ends in frustration.
First up is the vaunted meter. Guilds like to use WWS and individuals like Recount. These meters are judge and jury. They have taken over WoW. Ask someone what theyre dps was pre-bc in say Molten Core and nobody knows. But ask what they do in Uld and everyone can quote numbers.
To get into a raid or guild you must show and know your dps. The first question when trying to get into a pug for any raid is whats your dps. So you must download these addons so you can see what your doing.
Once you see your numbers more work begins. You have to research rotations to see what you can do to improve your numbers. Pretty soon your spending hours on websites like elitistjerks.com and the wow forums.
Next you find yourself working in-game to get food stockpiled for raids. You also need flasks and mana / health pots. You can either farm mats and make them or farm gold to buy them. This in itself can become a full-time job.
You cant outspend what a raid costs because you will also need to accumulate gold to enchant and gem new loot as you aquire it. So daily quests and farming become a part of prep work for raiding.
You see other players in your class doing more dps so more research is needed. Its discovered that they use addons for dot timers, cooldowns on attacks, etc so those become a necessity.
Eventually your screen is so full of addon boxes that the potential to induce a seizure is possible.
Your spending 2 hrs a day prepping for a raid that night. And for what, so you can do more dps or heal for yet another raid. And when Blizz adds another dungeon you start all over again.
during a raid you find yourself watching the meter. No longer do you do an attack because it looks cool or is fun. Its all about blowing out max damage or heals as quickly as possible. The game with all the addons turns into something nothing like a game. I feel more like an accountant plugging in numbers for some math problem. Its very stressful, are people actually enjoying this ?
And in the end you (maybe) like myself realize that the raid is utterly pointless. Its no longer about the story, content, or fun but rather simply about loot to do better numbers for some meter.
Ive raided for years in other mmo's and it didnt become the job that it does in WoW. And before I get the flames, I did quite well according to those silly meters. I just resent the fact that they exist at all.
Nobody told me my dps sucked or what rotation was I doing in star wars galaxies while fighting a krayt. Nobody asked me anything when raiding in lotr (before expansion anyway, I hear things are like wow now over there).
I cant begin to understand how anyone enjoys playing with all these addons and meters and formulas and math and macros and rotations
Comments
What I hate is everyone raids so seriously and you have to get everything right or you get shouted at. It also takes up most of your day and tbh I want some exercise aswel lol. What I loved about SWG when they did add content into it was it felt like there was no set group size to do the content. I did most of it messing about with just me and a good friend of mine and I was having fun. Maybe it's because the game was borked and buggy and SOE had yet to fix it but I prefer doing instances and dungeons with only upto 5 other people.
Sure theres a time and a place for having 40 people but thats out in the open world where you stumble upon something great like everyone raiding a city or something. I hate having to get all organised and people taking the raid so seriously just so someone can get gear. I don't care about gear I just do content for fun.
You're complaining because you need to work at maximizing your classes effectiveness in group content?
Reading strats and game guides on classes and improving your playstyle is apart of every mmo.
Even if you don;t raid you should still be doing that.
Hell im siding with WoW on this, Setting up and improving your character through skill rotation, spec and gear is a plus in that game.
Playing: EvE, Ryzom
I have also noticed the tendency for people to take everything too seriously. Wiping to a same boss for a day or two can destroy a guild in WoW these days. It used to be the norm. Heck sometimes you wiped for weeks. People also jump guilds and hostility inside a guild grows from wiping/guild hopping. It is a hard job keeping guilds together, especially true for relatively new guilds, because mostly they are used as stepping stones or glued together by greed. The first time they stumble, it will be hard to get up.
In all other games, and in WoW originally, it was a lot different athmosphere, but perhaps this was expected as Blizzard is opening raiding to more and more casual players. Social networks and personal relationships play a lesser part these days. In classic WoW I knew who was who in my server.
To me, at least, if a person has patience and stamina is more important than having DPS and skill. The latter can be easily taught, the former you are born with.
"The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in."
"You're complaining because you need to work at maximizing your classes effectiveness in group content?
Reading strats and game guides on classes and improving your playstyle is apart of every mmo.
Even if you don;t raid you should still be doing that.
Hell im siding with WoW on this, Setting up and improving your character through skill rotation, spec and gear is a plus in that game."
You sound like you're talking about a job. I do my job to get paid for the time and work involved. I don't pay to do a job and get imaginary objects as a reward.
You really think people need to do research on how...to play...a game..?
You need to go outside. This is a GAME we're talking about here.
Katsma is Lithuanian for 'he who drinks used douche fluid'.
Because the game is all about Loot.
That's the problem with WoW, Its so easy to just jump ship to a guild with content on farm than sticking with a average skilled guild struggling through 10 man content.
Imo people lack loyalty these days back when I was doing high tier raid content in Vanilla WoW I was MT of my guild. They devoted hundreds of hours to gear me up and get me my legendary tank weapon while we struggled sometimes I never once thought of joining another guild.
Todays players will jump ship even if all the guilds reasources were given to them without second thought.
Its a loot whorish game now.
Playing: EvE, Ryzom
True, in every MMORPG, you want to maximize your character but up to a certain point. In WoW, this never stops. You get a new piece of gear and you have to gem it and enchant it all up. There never is a quick and go raid. Planning and grouping up together takes a lot of time usually and when you think about it, it's really a big waste of time. I was playing WoW pre-BC and luckily, all that enchanting and preparing all your potions wasn't a big problem back then but playing with 40 people, each of them having to do a "JOB" was quite a hassle for the raid leader and for others if something went wrong. So in general, the game had just a lot of backtracking. Going back to the same dungeon over and over and over again. That's what killed the game for me, and I wasn't really immersed into the PvP as well since the ranking system was even a bigger grind than raiding.
Yep, loot whoring is not much different from Diablo 2. Those who loved to repeat Hell runs for 100th time, love the current WoW. It is a popular design. WoW at it's core utilises the same concept in a slightly different setting. It is good to remember that even Diablo 2 still got a healthy community.
I got nothing against Diablo 2 and current state of WoW. When a game is no longer fun for me, I just simply vote with my money.
"The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in."
I had to respond to this thread though I'm not quite sure how to express my feelings about this. I only played WoW for a short time and will never play it again but I have a friend who pretty much devotes his life to that game (which is why I played for a short time).
My friend is in a big guild that moved to WoW from EQ and he raids --I'm not sure but I know he raids at least four times a week, probably more. So one day I was hanging around at his place and he was talking about his guild and raiding. He told me that the guild monitors all the DPS, spells, and everything that everyone does in raids. This was quite a revelation to me as I didn't even know that was possible and never would have imagined that anyone would bother before he told me.
And then he told me that the Guild leader and officers go through all that stuff and pick it apart after every raid and if someone was a little inefficient with their mana they get chewed out. If someone's DPS was lower than it should have been they get chewed out. And so on. And this is even if the raid was successfull.
My friend was telling me this because he had just gotten his ass chewed by a guild officer because his DPS was lower than the officer thought it should have been.
Ok, whatever, it is what it is. But I have to say that when I'm confronted by stuff like this I sometimes feel like I'm in a bad episdoe of the Twilight Zone. I mean what the hell is that? It's completely insane for people to take that crap sooooo seriously. And my friend, I've tried to gently make him understand how insane it is for him to put up with crap like that IN A GAME. But he puts up with it. He lets his guild leader tell him what he can and can't do and what he must do. He, a grown man, meekly submits to his ass chewings by some random guy he happens to play with in a game and hangs his head like a little boy getting a whipping.
Yeah, like I said it sometimes makes me feel like I'm in a episdoe of the Twilight Zone where everyone else in the world has gone insane and I'm the only one who can see it.
I think this ultra serious "work" picture painted only applies to the more hardcore raiding players/guilds.
I have characters belong to TWO casual guilds and we have none of those. A good portion of the players are still leveling. And we are no where close to farming the newest content. It is a lot more laid back. No one ever discuss my dps with me.
There are plenty of these more casual guilds/players out there. In fact, Blizzard makes raiding casual enough so some of these guild can do some raiding. Otherwise, they will never have the organization to raid.
I quite often top DPS in our Ulduar raids. My secret? Not dying as much as the other guys.
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I have nothing against raiding and enjoyed Molten Core and Blackwing Lair (in WoW) quite a bit. What bothered me was how it changed my guild. We all started that first week of release and working together, both casual and hardcore, we went 1-60 and it was a blast. I think it was the most fun I've ever had playing any game. Any arguments that were had were forgotten and over with within an hour. Sacrificing my time to run Scholomance 9 times in one day to kill that damned bird/bat man to get the Warrior set boots was a lot of fun. (kept getting that damn druid helm). I'll always look back on that day and smile at the goofy variations we tried (and wiped because of) just to keep the run fresh and interesting.
Raiding started out fun then became serious work. Classes were expected to spec a certain way (with some but very little latitude) and attendance was mandatory. Slowly we watched the morale and enthusiasm of the guild fade. Some players tried to avoid others so as not to talk about raid-related stuff. We were a happy bunch until endgame.
Raiding didn't ruin WoW for me but its effects undermined my guilds balance enough to play a key role in my guilds disbanding.
Anyhow that is what comes to mind with the OPs post titled "Raiding in WoW ruined the game for me".
Anyone else have this problem with WoW or any other mmog?
Sounds to me like a competetive team sport. He is part of a team that is trying to be as good as it can and it matters to him that he is not doing his best. That is pretty common in RL so I do not see why it baffles it so. You treat the game as entertaiment, he treats it as a sport.
I'll have to agree with most of the points in the OP, I too found raidiing was becoming more of a job than an adventure, and with each expansion all my hard work was rendered useless so I opted out.
There are people who enjoy studying every aspect of their character and maximizing it to the nth degree, but you know, I actually play these games for fun and not as a professional sport.
Sure, the elite hardcore folks have a different opinion on what is fun, so I stay clear of them. Its just in WOW, that's hard to do as it seems most guilds are infected with the mania, perhaps because they have to in order to complete the more difficult raids.
Its not for me. One nice thing about EVE is I can play the game the way I want and still have fun. Sure, there's elite corps in EVE too, and its no problem for me to completely avoid them and find a bunch of like minded folks and we are able to thrive and prosper in the EVE universe.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I had a very similar experience with my old guild. pre-BC WoW raiding pretty much sucked the life out it.
The issue is that raiding really is 'serious business'. If you goof off you get the raid wiped. While an individual person might shrug the death off, you now share the responsibility for the enjoyment of others who most likely are your friends. It makes you feel bad that your carelessness or incompetence cost other time. So there is a very serious incentive for a decent human being to try to take things more seriously. You are not just playing for your enjoyment but for the enjoyment of others. Analogy: if I am cooking for myself I will likely just cook something up fast but if I am cooking for family or friends I will take extra care.
Yea I hate raiding too. Thats why when i couldnt handle the terrible balancing in PvP i quit the game.
Very good points OP. It's nice reading someone writing about WOW and that actually have played it, instead of the usual absurd bashing.
I agree add-ons have ruined much , if not all, the enjoyment of WOW.
O sure, everyone wants to improve their charachter in any mmo.
But when addons and watching DPS meters is more than the game, thats a problem.
Heh, sounded like you were complaining about LOTRO for a minute.
R.I.P. City of Heroes and my 17 characters there
I have always raided in wow, and recently went back to the game for the ulduar content. I usually play healers, but this time I thought I would level a dps, I picked a lock.
Quickly leveled her to 80, spent gold for all the boe epics, and a Naxx run later found myself in ulduar (which I must say is beautiful, the statues are gorgeous).
But; I have since left due to the competitiveness of the dps. I couldn't stomach it anymore. You get people who firstly only link damage meters when they are ahead, say you get a bad pull and most the dps wipe, and up come the meters. Or a pull when peopel are afk. Then you get people who only link trash dps, when they are a mega aoe class. And also you get people who link DPS, and not damage done. And they will link overall and not boss. The only damage that maters is actual damage done on bosses, but people don't get it.
I also got very annoyed because with my lock (destruction) I was top for dps if I actually crit, and very low when I had no crit streikes. I assume this is the same for most dps, so when it comes down to it, people are linking that they got lucky.
So, I rerolled again, a healer, leveling it healer, got up to about 63, as I was resto I did a lot of groups. And all I ever heard in groups was "Link damage" over and over and over. The last time I logged in I was healing a BF and we pulled three groups with the guys who drop the bombs, and it was a really fun mad healing dash, and when we all survived it felt really good, and I got in party chat "u shud av healed faster I almost died LINK DAMAGE"
And after that group was over, I haven't felt the need to log on again, and have cancelled my account.
I am looking foward to Aion now, becuase for its past games ncsoft doesn't allow addons, and frankly I have come to hate them.
I don't often share your opinion on things but this is one of those times where I'll have to agree with you unconditionally.
No required quests! And if I decide I want to be an assassin-cartographer-dancer-pastry chef who lives only to stalk and kill interior decorators, then that's who I want to be, even if it takes me four years to max all the skills and everyone else thinks I'm freaking nuts. -Madimorga-
You also forgot about the fact that raiding is between 3-5 days a week usually at least 4 hours each of those days. It turns into a part time job! That's why I quit raiding back in BC. Now I'm happy with getting welfare epics from the battlegrounds.
If you didn't have to work to maximize DPS and learn strats, the game would be shallow and nobody would play it.
You always have the option to casually play through easy Dungeon content, but if you want to keep playing the game at the next level you have to step things up.
I just wish they let us step things up in 5-10 mans with competitive loot. I'd rather do a slightly harder 10-man or a very hard 5-man any day, than have one of those 24 teammates consistently prevent me from progressing my character and seeing new content.
I don't want to have to hunt for the best guild on the server to see content; I just want to show up, play well, and see success as a result of playing well.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
i ran across this garbage a lot too (people constantly spamming damage meters). You cant explain to a kid that as a shadow priest on single mob trash my dps will be low. My dots dont have time to tick off fully before the mob is destroyed. So i get told I suck or worse.
in naxx25 my dps goes way up on those huge trash mob pulls. I guess that means now I dont suck.
Oh and when I save the group from a wipe by off-healing my dps goes down so again I suck.
These people are obessed with healing meters too. I had to heal one night in Ulduar 10 because a healer didnt show up. I had the healing officer and guild leader begging me to be a main spec healer at the end of the night because apparently i as number 1 on healing per second. Heck all I did was spam aoe heals, nothing spectacular or difficult about it.
and of course as a healer i had to use healbot. and since i offheal occasionally i need to leave healbot addon active. plus dot cooldown addon, omen threat meter, etc and i cant even see the dam mob im killing. the whole screen is covered with addon boxes. Im not playing a video game anymore, its more like Excel where im clicking boxes.
The game has seriously changed for the worse when its required by guilds to read elitistjerks website and post wws meter when applying. And this is on a RP server with low ranked raid guilds. Even on a more casual server (shadow council) the mentality has changed.
And dont get me wrong, I know my class. I pick up on boss fights quickly. I dont make the same mistake twice. But when guilds are using math formulas to figure out which spell is best when and which piece of gear will give a boost to dps or which talent will mean 0.005% more dps its time for me to cancel.
Its just not fun anymore
I've been saying this about addons for a long time now. I went back to WoW for a little while and outright refused to use any of these addons. I out tanked just about any douche that tried to contradict me claiming addons would make me better yet I was doing everything with greater effect then they were.
I just hope games in the future disallow these kind of damage parsers, threat monitors, and healing done over time meters. If it's not built into the game by the designer I feel it shouldn't be there. Like Admriker said, you're no longer playing the game that was designed but a bunch of jumping bars on your screen. All the tallent and effort that went into giving you lush environments and spectacular visual effects, as well as those glowing effects you so covet on your weapons are not wasted because nobody can see them.
No required quests! And if I decide I want to be an assassin-cartographer-dancer-pastry chef who lives only to stalk and kill interior decorators, then that's who I want to be, even if it takes me four years to max all the skills and everyone else thinks I'm freaking nuts. -Madimorga-
i dont recall any other mmo ive played where addons were used. in fact they were considered exploits and could get you banned. yet in wow theyre celebrated as necessary to the game.
whats really weird is that an entire generation of gamers new to mmo's thanks to WoW will expect addons in future mmo's. Is this something thats happening with new mmo's post-wow ?