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The future is now: Another anti-raid rant.
Neanderthal
Member RarePosts: 1,861
As some of you know I am one of those guys who can't stand raiding. However, I happen to have a real life friend who does raid and has been in a big raiding guild since they heyday of EQ. His guild has been playing WoW since release and currently are keeping busy farming the raid instances.
I usually call him before I stop by his house and if he's raiding I don't even bother to drop by. But one day I stopped by without checking ahead of time and, naturally enough, he was in the middle of a raid. So, ok, I hung around for a while and watched.
I can't tell you what instance they were doing because I don't play the game myself and am not familiar with the different areas.
Alright...before I start the rant proper, let your minds drift back to an earlier time. To a time when games were supposed to be fun. Remember, if you will, the early days of your first mmorpg. Back when you were a true newby.
Remember when your first virtual world seemed so full of potential? When you dreamed of heroic adventures? Try hard to remember the time, so long ago, when you didn't know how it was all going to turn out. When you had never even heard of raiding, grinding, farming, camping or any of those depressing things.
Remember the hopes and dreams you had...and contrast it with this:
My friend sat in front of his computer looking tired and bored. A squeaky male voice was yelling at people over the voice-chat channel. I didn't hear anyone else talking, just that one squeaky, annoying voice. He was telling all the people in the raid just exactly what to do and became quite irrate when someone didn't hop right to it and follow his instructions to the T.
As far as I could tell nothing was actually happening. To me it looked like a bunch of characters just standing around. The squeaking voice barked at my friend to do something. He grumbled to me that he had already done it. I told him to speak up and tell Squeaky so. My friend said, "Oh no, I'd get kicked out of the guild. Nobody is supposed to talk except the raid leaders."
So I stood there and watched and listened. Watched them milling around. Listened to Squeakie's voice get higher and louder as he cursed and yelled at people. Watched my friend, a six foot four inch adult male, slump in his chair and submit to the verbal thrashing of a squeaky voiced little prick. Watched my friend sigh in exasperation.
When some action did happen I listened as Squeaky dictated to all of the people in the raid just exactly what they should do and told them, in a running play-by-play direction, when to do it. And I couldn't help but think, these people aren't playing the game. Squeaky is playing the game and all the others are just acting as his henchmen bots. Remove the humans behind the other characters in the raid and give them some AI that allows Squeaky to control them directly and there would be no noticable difference in what is happening here.
....
The future is now. Is this really what we hoped the future held in store for us in those rose-tinted early days when we started playing our first mmorpg? Is this the heroic fantasy we dreamed of...being little more than a mindless bot for an annoying control freak?
I make no secret of my feelings on the subject. But how can it be that anyone actually WANTS games to end up like this? That is what I will never understand. Oh, I can understand why people like Squeaky want it to be this way. But what about the people like my friend?
I've asked him why he puts up with it. I've asked him why he puts himself through it when he so obviously doesn't enjoy it. The only answers I can ever get from him is that he needs X item or that he does it out of loyalty to his guild.
But I point out to my friend that he wouldn't need X item if he quit the game.
And loyalty? Loyalty to people who treat you worse than I treat a misbehaving dog?
But my friend just shrugs. He has been sucked into this mentality for so long that he can no longer see how insane it is to tolerate it. For him it's just business as usuall and this is the way these games are.
Yeah, it's the way they are...but they don't have to be.
Comments
That was an interesting read and a sad story. I would be exactly the same way if I found a friend in the same situation.
I find myself thinking more and more about this sort of thing. I'm beginning to conclude that as you quite rightly allude to, when we first started playing MMO's they seemed to have this fantastic potential for what they could be. I didnt get back into computers till a couple of years ago so I was not around when the first MMO's came out, perhaps they met those potentials in some sense, I cant comment about them. What i can do on the other hand is testify to having those same feelings of potential when I joined the growing trend of MMO gamers.
The question that I personally keep returning to is: Could it be that the reason that is causing so many of us to return to single player games or other types of multiplayer platforms be the result of the fact that these potentials have not been met yet by any MMORPG? Or have been realised to some degree but not enough to keep us all content in the genre?
[EDIT: That is to say, that the potentials have not been realised enough to keep us all content and happy to play the games in the genre over the long-term, that after we realise that they don't meet those fantastic potentials that they lose their 'magic'? I'll leave it up to you all to decide individually if that is the result of over-expectations from us when we were naive and new members to the genre or some lack of creativity and genius on the part of developers. Perhaps a little of both though.]
I mean when you see new threads and posts everyday about how there are no good MMO's left on the market then you have to start wondering why people are continually asserting it.
I'm not gonna say that catergorically there are or are not any good MMO's or that there are or are not any MMO's that have met that fantastic potential we first felt when playing this genre but it might be something to consider. It seems a plausible answer to this question that seems to bother me more and more of late.
Nice post Neanderthal, it should draw some interesting discussion. We can but hope that people in the development side of the industry will pay attention to these sinister trends in online gaming.
Raiding life is pathetic.
Like your friend said, he does it because of wanting the best items which are always found in raid content in games that have raiding. Developers reinforce this linear playstyle by making high end raid drops non tradeable. They believe that endless mindless grinding raiding is a way to keep players subscribed longer and they are too lazy to develop more innovative end game possibilities. The developers are wrong though as the players have matured and are realizing that raiding sucks and more and more refuse to support games that are raid centric.
"We feel gold selling and websites that promote it damage games like Vanguard and will do everything possible to combat it."
Brad McQuaid
Chairman & CEO, Sigil Games Online, Inc.
Executive Producer, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes
www.vanguardsoh
Oh, definately some of both.
A lot of the disappointment that people feel is because their expectations were too high at first and the disallusionment that followed. But once you get past that you have to lay a lot of the blame squarly on the shoulders of the developers, who don't even seem to be trying to make these virtual worlds live up to those early hopes and dreams. And a lot of the blame goes to all the players (like my friend) who seem to have simply given up and just accept that this is the way things are.
Somehow the genre fell into this rut and now it's almost as if people can't even imagine anything different. And it's not just the raiding thing. But the raiding end-game, in my mind, is like the poster child for how these games have gone wrong.
I've had every argument you can possibly imagine about raiding. But to everyone out there I would ask you to put all of that aside for a moment and just seriously step back for a moment and look at it with the eyes of your former self. Is this really what you dreamed of doing when you first started playing mmorpgs? Can you no longer even concieve of anything different.
Is this really the best we can hope for from mmorpgs? Grinding, farming, and camping are symptoms of the disease of replacing fun and adventure with bordom and repetition. Raiding is the ultimate expression of that with the added twist of reducing people to servile automatons.
I don't know...sometimes the insanity of it just really hits me hard; like when I was watching my friend the other day. And I have to wonder, if people had started out doing the raid grind from the very first day of their first mmorpg, how many would have accepted it and continued to play and how many would have though this is f--king insane and would have never gotten sucked into the genre in the first place.
YOu should convince your friend to join a nicer guild. Spending 10min of your time on WoW searching for a nice guild wouldnt hurt you.
Im sure he would have alot more fun then he is right now, and still be getting the items out of it that he needs.
True; it's not always like this, although admittedly one of the most consistent problems with large raid guilds is that the leaders tend to be idiots. Those who bother to start and run large organisations in games tend to be motivated by less than admirable reasons. That said, the person described in the OP's post sucks exceptionally bad even for the normal tyrannical guild leader; their tendencies don't usually come up unless their decisions are being questioned.
Raiding at its best is kinda like any group based performance art - PvE as a whole is focused on perfecting each fight, and that requires a repeatable, perfected performance of every member of the group. This is where the appeal of raiding comes from - there is a real sense of accomplishment in having dozens of people execute fluid, perfected movements like clockwork, until at last the death of a boss confirms that the performance is complete.
The process, however, can be rather frustrating, especially when the leaders do not possess the necessary insight and strategic ability to run the show, and are instead trying to rely on little more than copy-pasted web manuals and brute force. This can be extremely frustrating for an intelligent player, but often the feeling of "getting it right" (also known as "first time kill") is enough to compensate. What the OP saw was just the process, not the success.
Raiding is PvE endgame; what I would like to ask the OP is, what sort of endgame would he enjoy? PvP endgame is entirely different because the mentality is entirely different; would you enjoy that instead? Or can you come up with some sort of new and exciting option that developers haven't thought of yet? If you can, then I would honestly be interested in hearing it. The real problem is that in order to create a new type of endgame, one has to thoroughtly understand a mentality which is not his own; a challenge which most people tend to find impossible.
So you don't like raiding and the lifestyle that raiding requires.
Others do.
There are games made for you, and games made for raiders. You clearly need to stay away from the games made for raiders. It's a very simple issue, and a very simple solution.
No, raiding is a 'raiding PVE' endgame. An obvious option would be to have a grouping PVE endgame, where players progress through areas in reasonably-sized groups. Structure the endgame exactly like raiding, except scale the encounteres so that a social-sized group can do them. I'm not really sure why so many MMORPGers act like the only possible PVE is raiding (or in some cases raiding and soloing), it's not some kind of tricky concept.
For that matter, the basic concept of 'endgame' is tied into the game either being 'level up to be ready to raid' or 'level up to be ready to PVP'. There's no real reason that the game should have two completely distinct phases like that, it would be pretty simple to make a game where gameplay is more consistent throughout the game (like Mythic says they're doing with WAR).
I like that the guy doesn't address the patheticness of what the OP described, just calls it the raiding lifestyle and moves on. The fact that playing a video game becomes a lifestyle is part of what people who don't like raiding object to.
I like that the guy doesn't address the patheticness of what the OP described, just calls it the raiding lifestyle and moves on. The fact that playing a video game becomes a lifestyle is part of what people who don't like raiding object to.
It's okay.
That's also the lifestyle where people don't have any social life.
Then they cry on their livejournals during downtime between raids about how girls don't like them cause they're "the nice guys".
When they're really just ugly and using that as an excuse.
By the way he made that post in the amount of time he had between a wipe and getting rezzed.
I could go for that, although at least in WoW I tended to get tired of the small group endgame instances. Perhaps it's because there was no progression like in raid instances (MC -> BWL -> AQ40 -> Naxxramas) - you could walk right into any instance, and they were all equally hard (or easy). So there was no sense of progression, no real goals to strive for. But assuming normal instances were also stacked raid style, wouldn't that still be the same thing as raiding? You would still need a static group of people to play with - people who can be counted on to be available. The one thing it might do though is improve the atmosphere, since the smaller the group, the nicer and friendlier the people in it tend to be.
But it's still raiding, IMO.
I respect your opinion and your right to have it ianubisi but I dont agree with it. I dont think it is such a very simple issue although you can view it in such terms. One part of the sinister trend that I see in MMORPG's today will come from the following paragraphs.
MMORPG's originally were not designed to last forever, they were not designed to be world's that you will be a member of for many years although most companies now expect this to be the case from at least a 'hardcore' of subscirbers. Like most typical RPG's up until the creation of MMO's they were designed to be worlds that you immerse yourself in temporarily, take part in, improve your character in and alter the storyline in them to some degree and then you walked away from them and found something else to play/entertain you.
Now what end-game raiding is, in my opinion, is just a convenient way for MMORPG companies to draw a lengthier subscription from you for as little content as they can get away with. Not much content because end game raids are very difficult to organise and usually take a considerable length of time to complete (hence the need for raid leaders to control and organise them efficiently). Therefore because most of the loot from end game raids (at least those I have experienced) are non-tradeable items then one end game raid can increase the length of a determined raiders subscription by quite a long time as they may have to complete the raid numerous times until it is their turn to get the loot they need. Start adding more and more items that you need from end game raids and you can quite easily get another year, perhaps more, of a subscription from a player that is determined to create the best character for him/her in the game.
I'm not saying there should never be a situation where you need a few teams to take out a boss but it seems to me like MMO companies are flogging this idea to death. Anything more than one or two raids that you need an end game item from is just vampirish to me. I like the idea of raiding, don't get me wrong, I just don't want to spend months doing it again and again to make a great character when in a year or so I'm gonna want to try a new MMO but find that I have nothing to show for all this repetitive, robotic and mind-numbing fun (and raids do get like that once the novelty of doing them once or twice wears off).
If virtual worlds lasted forever I might see a better argument for the length of time consumed by these raids but the rate of advances in hardware don't allow for software systems that can exist like this, well not if they want to remain groundbreaking and competitive anyway (at least not yet).
Alternatively if their was some sort of cross-game transfer system that the companies supported then I could also see a better argument for lots of end-game raiding. At least that way you would be able to transfer the time and resources you had invested in one game to another in some form (I don't mean a straight swap of an endgame character in one game for an endgame character in another cause that kinda misses the point of playing RPG's) but MMO companies dont want to give you or allow you to trade any advantage because then you will spend less time sub-ing to the game which just speaks volumes about the general attitude of the people that run these games. Players being able to legitimately trade between themselves in some form would also help to drive out farmers from the games, why spend my hard earned rl cash on items or what have you when I could swap some virtual items from game x to game y. I dont mind subbing but I dont like the feeling of a company trying to milk me dry when they could make more money if they just remained innovative.
I'm a human being, I expect to be treated like one and treated with respect, not treated like some junkie that will jump through hoops when they tell me to because that is the only way to be 'ubah'. I expect to have to work for success and advancement, I'm not trying to say they should make MMO's easy, but they can come up with better methods than just this one for sure.
Your simple distinction with the issue is why I'm not currently subscribed to any MMO companies at the moment. I'm playing single player games and finding other forms of entertainment until next summer. Once a lot of the new games have been released next summer I'll come back and see if it is still the old mentality of get as much money out of them as possible first and make the game fun second.
That's how I see this issue. A little more complex than how you view it but I'm really not trying to have a go at you here, or get into a flaming match or what have you. Your entitled to your opinion, I'm entitled to mine and I'm sure there are a lot of other factors that effect this issue that I have neglected to mention, hell, if I'm being honest I'm probably wrong or a little unfair in places myself. In fairness though, I think you'll admit your simple solution isnt very helpful. You obviously like raiding which is good, you obviously like putting a lot of effort into your characters and want some distinction for those efforts with regard to some player that does not put in as much effort, this is also reasonable and good. What I'm trying to say (and I'm pretty sure the OP has a similar view although I can't speak for him) is that there has to be other options for creative MMO dev's to come up with rather than endgame raid, rinse, repeat.
Maybe I've just come to the conclusion that spending that much time and adopting that lifestyle does not equate to the value of the products you get from it. Like I say, these are my opinions and I'm not about to tell you that you are wrong to play this way or even perhaps 'enjoy' it? The more I learn about MMO's, though, the more they remind me of a new wave of cult-like online communities sucking people in with cunning psychological manipulations and spitting them out with no thought to the impact they can cause when allowed to be mis-used. I wonder how long it will be till we get a 'Scientology' MMORPG
Sorry for the length to anyone that actually took the time to read my post, I can get carried away with myself.
This cold sure is giving me some weird thoughts, some psychoanalysis and now this.
Yes you're quite right with regard to; I have no right whatsoever to tell you that the rewards are not worth the efforts. I have no right to tell you that you're wrong to do it. I don't think the rewards are worth it but that is just my opinion.
However, I'm not so sure that it is as simple as to say that Blizzard has had so many accounts created, a substantial permanent group of subscribers and a large return in revenue because of the end game raids though. There are other factors; the previous warcraft games and fans, the marketing strategies adopted, copying different aspects from games that came before because that was what the company, that was relatively new to a genre still in its infancy, believed players would expect from them.
WOW has no small group endgame instances, they're all level 50-something instances. The only endgame instances in WOW are raid instances. While you talk about stacking instances 'raid style', you don't seem to really get what I'm saying - I'm not saying to 'have group dungeons like the group dungeons in WOW or EQ', I'm saying 'base the PVE endgame off of grouping and not raiding'.
"Having a progression of difficulty or gear" and "raiding" are two completely different things. For example, DAOC's endgame raids don't have a progression IIRC, they're like WOW's post-50 group instances in that there's stuff you want from all of them but no real progression.
No you don't, because you only need half a dozen people instead of 3-4 dozen. If you have a guild with 50 members, for example, you need to schedule a specific time for a 40-man raid and coordinate it carefully with the schedules of the 50, and make sure you've got the right classes, no way it's just going to happen. But if you're just doing a group, then it's easy to just find 4 other people in the guild, or do a quick 'lets run that one on Saturday at 2'. There might be a couple of people left over on a given day, but they can go off and mess around with something else.
You don't really even need the guild, asking around on your friends list or on forums can easily assemble a small group, which kills the whole 'must join an uberguild to progress' issue that's a major objection to raid culture. And it's far more friendly to people who have jobs and other commitments that don't let them raid on any of the big guilds' raid nights, it's a lot easier to locate 5 people who are free monday afternoons than 40.
Most significantly, it keeps the game functioning like an MMORPG instead of a large LAN game; you should be adventuring with people all over the server, not just one tiny group of a few dozen people like you do in raiding. While you won't group with random yahoos for a tough instance, you certainly can group with your a priest you knowt who likes a warrior that you've never met and your druid buddy that neither of them have ever seen before.
It's not a coincidence, it's a fundamental part of how humans socially interact. Take a party with 100 people in it. You won't see people all mob up, or even form 4 groups of 25 to talk. You'll see them split off into bunches of little clusters, generally half a dozen or so at a time. One of the key problems with raiding is that it involves bringing more people to raid than can actually socially interact, with reasonably-sized groups you don't need to allow just one squeky control freak to talk on vent.
or
you can play something like cox (city of...). have an ever growing multitude of classes/powersets/etc to choose from. have characters you can intentionally gimp and would still be viable at a high level. build bases with tons of goodies. but go thru fighting the same few dozen mobs over and over in the same caves/buildings/etc (for a lot of the time).
so i could spend a few weeks killing those bugbear guys up in felwood/the cold place next door, to get faction up with them... same guys, over and over, fighting over the spawns with a bazillion others grinding for faction with that ONE group... JUST so i can be the same.
or raid, starting with mc, and then progressing, over and over and over and over again, stuck for however many hours the guild has agreed upon.... JUST so i can be the same.
or.... again, using the COx example... i can go to the same mission buildings over and again... which, by the way, seems to gain more types/variety with every new issue cox produces. plus you have heroes and villains and there's lots of added variety in the mission buildings and even in the types of missions they're putting out... anywho, the premise is still there... i go kill things again and again and again... but, odds are, even if i pick the EXACT same powersets as someone else, my actual powers will be totally different. my look will be completely different, any of my five costumes that i can have will be completely different, yet i'll have all the powers that i've chosen... my hideout/base will be very different from everyone elses (i've played off an on, and my villains are all in the same SG, the only ones in the sg, and with my on/off playing it's a normal base with a lot of functioning rooms/devices, especially so with the el cheapo add-on rooms they just recently added)....
i think ddo with some of it's puzzlestofinishquests is kinda different in that aspect of games, but everything else has "let's kill a bazillion things to gain power" (except eve, it's missions are pretty standard but you gain power with time, not by leveling)....
so the raiding thing isn't quite moot, only in the sense that you have to do a lot of grinding regardless of the game (as the rule, with noted exceptions and probably others as well)... but the question YOU have to ask yourself....
do i want to be like everyone else?
still ONLY comparing COx to WoW...
say i'm a hunter, and i'm part of a raiding guild... REALLY, how many different talent builds are there for me?
now, pick let's just say... brute or tanker (villain/hero versions of the same *class*) if i'm a hero and i get in on hamidon raids, or a villain doing whatever with my group.... how many different viable builds of EACH powerset combination are there?
i used to despise COx because of the lack of differences just the mission buildings (where you'd go into the instance for your mission)... so many were just the same bloody thing over and again... they've added a LOT of new stuff to their missions, plus, with the villains expansion, it opened up a whole new world of stuff.
for me, i guess it's coming to terms with a lot of games will have a grind to them... it's finding the game where my toon can be different, unique, personalized, built how I want it built, able to do cool things I want it to do.... i think that's where it's at for me.
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
What makes you think raiding is the cause of Blizzard making so much money? None of the game reviews praising WOW, or the magazine articles from people who tried it, or even WOW's advertising is about raiding, it's about the 1-60 game. Of the people I know and have read stuff from who've quit, raiding is the number one reason. Even the numbers that Blizzard has released show that only something like 25% of their US players have gotten into raiding (killed the first big raid boss), I don't think an activity that 75% of players don't do is the real source of cash for the game.
I think it's pretty telling that Blizzard only releases overall numbers now (reflecting lots of new players in new markets), not the US-specific numbers that they used to, and that one of their big selling points for burning crusade is reducing the size, number, and importance of raids.
What the OP raises is an excellent player pespective in regards to raids. Devs will hail raiding as some community builder where friends can build relationships, etc.
To this I say, Spare ME! I found my friends and forged the majority of my bonds at earlier levels. When it comes to these raid type game style where you are barely playing,,,
Bah
Content is king. Raids are an excuse.
However, there should be a means for a large group to be able to attempt challenging scenarios that a small few cannot. Just make the rewards appropriate. Do not make them endgame in value.
I believe a MMORPG should give an opportunity for a solo or small group to slay even the mega boss mobs, provided they undergo lengthy, multi-step mini quests which eventually results in a no drop /trade gear which provides the player/group with a fighting chance to beat a Boss. Perhaps a Fire Immunity buff against a Fire breathing dragon, etc. Now, there would be two ways to accomplish this feat, take the time and effort with a multi quests which is designed to keep an individual busy for weeks, or form up a raid group and take it down in hours. Raiding is therefore not enforced.
Which FF Character Are You?
I'm glad to see so many sharing my opinion. I thought it was a pretty lonely side of the coin. I usually play MMORPGs until there is nothing left to do but raid and then move on to another game. My brother-in-law came to visit a few months back and was in the middle of a large raid in WoW. Had been sitting in the seat for hours doing pretty much what was described in the OP. He actually turned to me and said, "Doesn't this make you want to come back to WoW?" Only 3 words came to mind. "You're kidding, right?"
326
three2six
http://www.soundcloud.com/three2six
I think most people know the kind of play described in this topic is uninspired and bland; including developers and producers. They're protecting their bottom line. Here in Michigan, there have been auto parts suppliers that have actually driven themselves out of business by making too durable a product- causing little demand for more.
Business takes notes of examples like this- the strongest evidence coming from an increasing trend in disposable products. I hear CVS will be offering disposable digital video recorders soon for $30. No kidding. Is it so hard to imagine though- that MMORPGs are so drab on purpose? Almost disposable ? You burn out on one, you move onto another offering the same experience all over again, which has been probably made or produced by some of the same folks who made the last one. (EQ, and Vanguard for example)
If there were just a handful of MMORPGs that satisifed the broadest groups in the entire market- then lots of developers and producers would find themselves out of work, or hard pressed to cut in on the action. Maybe they're not methodically calculating some sort of conspiracy- but they're definitely taking their sweet ass time on progress; and milking the current trend for all it's worth.
Hope you got your things together. Hope you are quite prepared to die. Looks like we're in for nasty weather. ... There's a bad moon on the rise.
Related to what I said earlier, I think this is because raids take the "MM" out of MMORPG; once you get into raiding, you consistently play with a raid guild that includes a few more people than the raid size and pretty much only that guild. At earlier levels, you can group up with someone you don't know for a quest, or invite a buddy for an instance run, so you spend time with new people and can really see that there's a Massive Multiplayer game there, not just 50 people, half of whom only logon for raids.
Plus you can't make friends in a big group of 40 people all on one channnel; in a 5-man group you can crack jokes back and forth, comment on things, and get to know your fellow adventurers. With 25/40/70, you're either a cog in a machine or barking out orders, not socializing.
Pantastic:
>The only endgame instances in WOW are raid instances.
Stratholme, Dire Maul, Scholomance and Blackrock Spire are all for level 60 characters; good players can do them a few levels short but not by much. I would call those "endgame instances".
>"Having a progression of difficulty or gear" and
>"raiding" are two completely different things.
Then please define what you mean by "raiding". To me, raiding is the progression, not numbers, so even a group of 5 is still a raid as long as they are progressing from easier instances to harder instances by means of gear or other abilities. Without progression there is no reason to keep going; I can do an instance 100 times if that allows me to see and experience new content that I would otherwise not be able to access, but if I can see all content without progression, I only go in once or twice to see how each place looks and quit the game. I enjoy instance runs, but I need a reason to keep doing them; the progression is what gives me that excuse, otherwise it would get boring.
I mean, if you define a raid by group size alone, what group size does it take to count as a "raid"? Upper Blackrock Spire is a 10 man raid, and I can see no practical difference between a 10 man raid and a 40 man raid. Should the company be allowed to advertise that "they do not have raiding in their game, only 40 man instance runs"? I mean, everyone you ask as to how many people is a raid will give you a different number, so you need something more solid than a completely subjective numerical value, IMO.
>But if you're just doing a group, then it's easy
>to just find 4 other people in the guild, or do
>a quick 'lets run that one on Saturday at 2'.
Wrong; you can only take people with you who pretty much know all the encounters up to where you have gotten so far (and I'm assuming there's a progression because, as I said, without a progression most raiders wouldn't play longer than 2 weeks anyway), and their gear/skills might not be good enough yet, so your picks are extremely limited. Well, at least if you are significantly past the beginning. You need a static group which knows the tactics, has the gear, and is used to working together as a team; otherwise you spend the entire night teaching everything to newcomers.
> One of the key problems with raiding is that it
> involves bringing more people to raid than can
> actually socially interact,
I do agree with smaller group sizes, and always did; but it's still raiding as far as I'm concerned.
> Of the people I know and have read stuff from
> who've quit, raiding is the number one reason.
They don't quit because of raiding, they quit because they can't get into it, usually because of the time investment raiding requires. Smaller group sizes would allow a larger amount of people to get into it, because it provides more flexibility with time schedules, but it's STILL raiding.
> only something like 25% of their US players have
> gotten into raiding (killed the first big raid
> boss),
Raiding can keep people playing for two years, while non-raid content (with the possible exception of PvP) tends to run out in two months. Publishing enough content to keep the non-raiders happy tends to be impossible, and even with Blizzard's financial resources, could easily eat up any gains made from keeping them playing longer. Therefore, as a rule of thumb, one raider counts for 10 non-raiders in terms of subscription fees. So those 25% more than make up for the other 75%. If you know a hook that keeps those 75% playing, I'm sure some game company would be willing to pay huge sums for the info, but it seems that as of yet nobody has come up with an idea like that; one that works.
Blizzard is not reducing the number or importance of raids, they are only reducing group sizes; if anything the BC will make raiding MORE important, with 10 new raid instances coming with the expansion. They know where the money comes from, but they have to maintain a careful balance: lowering group sizes will bring more people into raiding, but it may also make raiding too quick and easy, thus losing subscriptions because players finish content too quickly.