Raiding has got to be the worst thing that ever happened to gaming... let alone civilization as a whole. It's completely and totally retarted. Doing the same boring thing over and over and over... takes no skill, just horrible amounts of time... so lame. So very, very lame.
I can't even begin to tell you how much I hate raiding....
Bit extreme, but I agree 100% with everything save the worst thing that has happened to civilization bit.
I like thinking on my feet in games, and having to react and make decisions based on what is happening. This requires that things change and aren't the same thing over and over and over.
Also, it is an immersion-destroying grind.
Edit: I led raids for a while in WoW and it is a very unforgiving job as others have noted. Part of that is the Holy Trinity system, which places severe requirements on group makeup, meaning you often can't take friends who'd like to come along and have to search around and try to recruit others. It's awful, and then you have to work week in and week out to keep everyone bloody happy, because some moron is guying to whine about random loot drops no matter what loot system you have. Others will complains about giving loot to newer players who haven't "earned it" even if no one else wants the loot. Of course you have to take all these worries very seriously because if someone doesn't want to play anymore then it messes up that delicate balance you have achieved in your raid makeup. All that work and at the end of the day, like I mentioned above, it isn't even fun.
let me tell you why i stop raiding, well i used to play Ragnarok back in 2002, before any of the now big titles such as WoW, AoE etc
i never knew what a raid is, because we dont have it in Ragnarok, there are MVP bosses, but we does not require anything elitist like WoW raid needs to
ok so time moves on, i finally play WoW, it completely took me to the whole new level, with their raiding
i used to go crazy and hardcore, because it's new right, i never had this raiding experience, so i used to go crazy on it
but as everyone else, the raiding system is getting ridiculous nowdays and im getting bored of it
im not blaming the game, but the system the user itself implemented that became a standard in the typical WoW MMO
-you need to apply to a guild as if you are gonna apply for a real work, some even ask you to write a story about you, saying that they might get to know you better bla2, i call BS, once you're out of the guild, we're back on a complete stranger to each other
i never have to use this kind of appliocation back in the BC days, i just get recruited and tought on each encounter, eventually i learnt, nowdays, you will be rejected if you are new and does not have any experience, thus, forcing you to learn all those strats like it's an freakin EXAM or something..
-the time needed to raid really took everyone's daily routine life, this is a common fact, i've been there done that, i wont do it anymore ( exception of a casual guild that only raid 3 hours per day, but dont see that alot )
-the same content each week and each week and each week and on... i cant even count how much i have downed Ulduar
-it's all about loot, and it's getting repetitive in today's MMO ( cmon, dont lie, you only raid because of loots, otherwise, why bother killing the same boss each week if you say you just want to clear the content? )
-limited to the end content, this, if you dont raid, you wont clear end content, thus if you are dedicated to see end content, you must raid, even if you dont feel like it..
games like GW2 where world events can become part of the end content is what interest people the most nowdays
Raiding is a get together for your guild, have some fun and chat to your mates. If you see it as a chore then you have the wrong attitude going in. I would rather spend time with guildies than do another evening solo.
got a Girlfriend, need to spend more time with her than I do raiding, also Raiding annoyed me eventually since the items that dropped where never teh ones I needed for my main and I always had to take my alt raiding as it was one class we were short of and everyone else wanted to take their main adn i was being told 'Your not that good of a tank tbh...'
I used to love raiding in EverQuest, there were so many raids to do that it never felt like a chore, and when Planes of Power came along there was a progression to the raids so it always felt like we were achieving something. But then, I played a Monk so loot was never a reason to be going to raids, as Monk loot was so incredibly rare. I used to just like hanging out with the rest of the guild, as they were a funny lot and there were a lot of hysterical moments. Great fun.
Why did I stop? I was tired. Literally. I was on a US server (I'm in the UK) and sometimes the raids were going until 8am my time. I just couldn't do it anymore so asked a guild on a euro server to take me in, which they agreed to. I paid for the server transfer, back when you transferred naked, went up to the guild and said "I'm here, I'll need some equipment.". They said they changed their mind so now I was a raid character of max level with flags for Planes of Power that had no equipment and no friends on the server. Needless to say, after killing a fair few Rathe Giants for platinum, I decided to call it a day and quit.
So if it wasn't for those dicks on the euro server, I imagine I'd still be there now.
The excitement from raiding and immersing in whatever storyline you get from raiding only derives from the first few times you raid whatever you're raiding. After you've done it 20-30 times its no longer "fun". Only reason left to do it after the 30th time is, from my experience, loot. Bearing in mind what you want may not drop, and when it FINALLY DOES, 4-5 people may want the same item. This becomes more tedious than fun if u ask me, it becomes a 2nd job when i reach home after my 1st day job and have to go through the exact same raids, mainly just to have a chance at getting what i need loot-wise for character advancement/itemisation. After repeatedly doing this 50-100 times, you eventually feel like a bot, with a 2nd job.
Getting a group set up for a raid if it's a PuG can take anywhere from two minutes to an hour, then completing a raid can take anywhere from 10 minutes to never.
-People
Most people don't take failure in MMORPG's very well and will generally at least in PuG's begin riding on other people to beef up their characters or how much they suck; while some can do this very encouraging and at least help the player upon the next encounter, many don't and will simply resort to insults.
-The Encounters just SUCK
Seriously this the the biggest problem with raids, it's not the gear I will do a dungeon for but messing around with guildies and at least being challenged. The static encounters in instances in all MMORPG's is just terrible and really no amount of loot can make me want to run an instance repeatedly simply because I want the carrot on the stick. I'd rather be challenged and have to play a character to the limit of it's ability and think outside the box then just spamming a few abilities to do my job in a group.
Raiding just isn't a delightful experience and neither are dungeons in MMORPGs there's just no dynamic interactions and when the loot no longer is relevant they no longer get used. Thus showing just how shitty the instance design and mechanics that MMOs implement truly are.
Getting a group set up for a raid if it's a PuG can take anywhere from two minutes to an hour, then completing a raid can take anywhere from 10 minutes to never.
-People
Most people don't take failure in MMORPG's very well and will generally at least in PuG's begin riding on other people to beef up their characters or how much they suck; while some can do this very encouraging and at least help the player upon the next encounter, many don't and will simply resort to insults.
-The Encounters just SUCK
Seriously this the the biggest problem with raids, it's not the gear I will do a dungeon for but messing around with guildies and at least being challenged. The static encounters in instances in all MMORPG's is just terrible and really no amount of loot can make me want to run an instance repeatedly simply because I want the carrot on the stick. I'd rather be challenged and have to play a character to the limit of it's ability and think outside the box then just spamming a few abilities to do my job in a group.
Raiding just isn't a delightful experience and neither are dungeons in MMORPGs there's just no dynamic interactions and when the loot no longer is relevant they no longer get used. Thus showing just how shitty the instance design and mechanics that MMOs implement truly are.
Did you ever play Everquest? It has the BEST raiding of any MMORPG and nothing has ever come close to it. Have you ever joined a large guild that has planned raids? That makes it easy to do and your with people who have common goals. I also gather you have not played LOTR as the Moria expansion which is virtually a huge dungeon is AWSOME.
Why did I stop? Because I got tired of listening to 39 then 24 other newbs huddle around a internet version of game informer reading paint by numbers boss strats to each other over Vent.
Five to six days a week, listening to some douchebag raid leader and needs to go afk for a glass of strawberry milk, while the healers try to hide from their parents because its pass their bed times by going Afk every other pull.
Paint by numbers bosses + immature children on a power trip + Repetitive bullshit for loot just to replace more loot = me never raiding ever again!! Ever!!!!!!
You should try doing raids for the lore and not for the loot. I tried that for a while and it made me want to do even more raids. I started to build up on what I already knew about the lore and it was quite interesting, I haven't killed the Lich King though, because I have none to raid with now.
The thing I learned about WoW that suited me the best was: Don't raid for the loot, while it is somewhat important don't rage if you get the piece, just think about the good time you had with your friends. Yes I said friends, I know this means that I don't like to do instances with random people and it is true that I really don't. It was almost vital for me to play with friends in order to keep the game attached to me.
TL;DR version:
1) Immerse yourself in the lore.
2) Play with friends.
Oh and the people that say there is no lore in WoW and that WoW killed the Warcraft lore, they are those kind of people that don't know what they're talking about (although it is an opinion).
You should try doing raids for the lore and not for the loot. I tried that for a while and it made me want to do even more raids. I started to build up on what I already knew about the lore and it was quite interesting, I haven't killed the Lich King though, because I have none to raid with now.
The thing I learned about WoW that suited me the best was: Don't raid for the loot, while it is somewhat important don't rage if you get the piece, just think about the good time you had with your friends. Yes I said friends, I know this means that I don't like to do instances with random people and it is true that I really don't. It was almost vital for me to play with friends in order to keep the game attached to me.
TL;DR version:
1) Immerse yourself in the lore.
2) Play with friends.
Oh and the people that say there is no lore in WoW and that WoW killed the Warcraft lore, they are those kind of people that don't know what they're talking about (although it is an opinion).
That would work if you didnt need to run each raid 30-40 times for badges/loot.
If i had an option lets say a casual mode that gave me a few quests to go inside a raid complete it with normal gear and never need to enter it again WoW would be fantastic.
As it is now going in strictly on lore fails due to the much needed repetition of the progressive mechanic that is raiding.
I stopped raiding in WoW because they moved away from DPS management and more towards positional and scripted combat. I prefer tank and spank over the safety dance so they lost my sub.
The other games I didn't really get into enough to start raiding.
"The liberties and resulting economic prosperity that YOU take for granted were granted by those "dead guys"
I concur with most of the post that I read.. For me I hated the time investment ( I have a family and life)... I hated the grind and confines that raiding seemed to spawn... I'm not much of a raiding fan, BUT the best times I had when I did some some raids here and there was back in my EQ1 days.. There was 2 types of raids at that time.. The random world spawn of a dragon and dungeons like ToV.. I like that raids then did not have gear requirement or number caps.. If you showed up wearing WoW equivilant of greens and blues, you were still accepted.. When raids turned into an E-sport like WoWs version, that was a game breaker and one major reason why I left the game.. In EQ1 raiding I was one of 30-50 people raiding that night (notice there was no hard cap limit) as I recall.. anyways.. If we were doing ToV and I was only there for 2 hours and had to leave, no biggie.. LOSING me or others was not a raid breaker.. If someone came in late that night.. NO worries.. just add him to one of the groups and keep on going..
That type of raiding I enjoyed.. BTW.. there was no ID bullshit, gear score, blah blah blah.. at least not when I left EQ1.. Give me a game that has casual raiding like the good ole days.. along with other features, and I'm all game for it.. But I do not have the time or the patience to play this E-sport Epeen Raidcrap..lol
I'm in the same boat here, it became like a second job and as soon as it started to resemble work it no longer was fun. Most people work because they need money to live, and if given the oppurtunity they would not work. Well I feel the same way about raiding the way it is done today. I do like raiding but it's just not fun anymore in it's current state.
Raids take too long to complete, in a lot of cases there are too many psycophants kissing up to the raid leaders to gain favoritism, and the elitest attitudes that go along with that whole aspect of gaming is just a big turnoff. I really wish i could just collect a handful of friends and log on and raid at will for an hour or two. That would be an ideal raid for me.
That and most raids run on weeknights and run late. Well that interferes with my job so I had to give it up, raiding that is, for that reason as well because when it comes to raiding or having a roof over my head and food to eat. Well that's really a no brainer.
I didn't. I love raiding. I love yelling at retards who literally beg for the chance to be taken on board and given the chance to pick up some loot. Their lives lack so little in the way of any real achievements themselves that loot in a game is the only chance they'll ever have to move beyond their dead end job.
Buy new game, pay levelling service, buy strats, build guild with ten core friends and bunch of losers who will let us play our sick perverted games with their egos and dysfunctional social skills. Hey it's something to kill the time while wiating for my next trust cheque.
Raiding I love it. And I love the whines like those represented here even moreso...
I don't raid anymore and don't participate anymore. There was a time where I raided pretty heavy (think WoW pre BC) but it was getting to the point where I didn't mind getting called up at 3am in the morning to go on a raid. So, I took a step back. Of course I don't pass the opertunity if I happen to be in the right area at the right time but as a result of my now casual playing towards group content my gear isn't up to scratch and don't get taken on raids anyways. But that is my choice. It's funny how people are nice to you when you have the best gear and I got tired of all the brown nosing and my involvement now is i'll help if required but won't go out of my way to do so.
My wife and I did a lot of raiding. We were some of the folks that showed up on time, prepared, knew what we were doing, and actually expected success. The real issue was that half the guild wasn't like us. They would show up unprepared, with no clue what we were supposed to be doing, no knowledge of the raid zone, poorly speced without the mods needed to succeed. All the nifty meters and stat mods that we used only shined the light on their shortcomings. Trying to help them would only lead to drama because they really didn't want to put any effort into actually succeeding. They didn't seem to care that they were wasting everyone's time week after week ignoring advice and unwilling to even try to improve.
So F-that. Its much more pleasant to not give a crap about other people by not having a competitive raiding environment. I get along with people much better when I am not depending on them for anything.
....while players that pretty much roll their faces across the keyboard end up with the best gear in the game because they have more time to dedicate to sitting in front of their computer. ....
Hah, I knew that guy in EQ, or one of the worst of those guys. Honest to God, the single worst player I ever knew in EQ and he was decked out in high end gear for exactly that reason. Not because he was good at playing his class or even good at following instructions (I could tell a story about a time he died about 20 times in a row because he couldn't follow simple instructions) but just because he was in a top raiding guild and willing to put in his time.
I'll spare you a long story but circumstances conspired to put me in groups with that guy on a number of occassions and I'm not exaggerating when I say that my real life friends and I still (after five years) sometimes reminisce about the monumentally stupid things he did. But...he put in his time and showed up for his guild's raids so he got the gear.
EQ is the only game I've ever raided in and I can't even begin to express how much I hated it. My God, it was soooo boring. It was so much bullshit. It was so much drama. It was hours and hours of hurry-up-and-wait. It was guild leaders with the little dictator mentality thinking they were big-shots because they knew that they had their members by the short hairs because gear advancement was dependant on raiding and on the guild leaders whims. It was scheduling your life around the game instead of scheduling the game around your life. It was just fucking horrible in every way.
In EQ I swore to all that is holy that I would never do that crap again and so far I haven't. I love grouping, in small groups, if I can hop in and out by my own schedule...but raiding, raiding can go to hell where it belongs and burn.
The attitudes of players who are too heavily focused on end-game raiding is generally very poor. They only care about items and advancement, and treat others as merely statistics. I remember raiding back in EQ, though the boss fights were much simpler then (in general), it was more about banding together for a common cause other than just loot upgrades. Not to say there weren't hurdles to overcome such as levels and keys to even get a chance to see the content, but players cared much less about your stats than your ability to focus and follow directions. There were unpleasant players back in those days also, but they were a minority. I have not had the same experience raiding in WoW after Molten Core.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
It was guild leaders with the little dictator mentality thinking they were big-shots because they knew that they had their members by the short hairs because gear advancement was dependant on raiding and on the guild leaders whims. It was scheduling your life around the game instead of scheduling the game around your life. It was just fucking horrible in every way.
Don't know what your guild leaders were like, but organizing and leading a raid is a lot of work. You need to find the times everyone can do it for one. Then you need to deal with every little complaint everyone has so that everyone is as happy is possible. Even if 3/4 of the people don't complain, the 1/4 that remains is a major headache and you can't tell people to just be quiet since if they leave your composition is screwed up. And those things are just the tip of the iceberg.
I stopped large raiding because my favorite fantasy stories were about small groups of people, sometimes even solo, defeating epic evil and accomplishing amazing feats of strength.
I put-up with 10 people requirements at max... mainly because I know that many people who i would invite on any type of adventure with... but I do not agree there should EVER be a "required number"
A "raid" should be doable by as few as 3 people, and as many as 200... with the encounter scaling and adjusting to accomodate the number. Yeah... that would be terrible to program for, and would "cheapen" the rewards if everyone could get the same loot.
But loot and epeen be damned... i'm there to enjoy time with my friends, however many that might be, and I do not believe my party size should be the limit to what I can do.
I stopped raiding because it began to feel like a chore... a neverending one at that, as the one absolute is that the 'top end' gear will always be devalued next content patch.
But as to why it began to feel like a chore... that's the important part.
It's because the raids, at least in WoW, have been more and more about commiting convoluted gimmicks fights to memory and then executing them near flawlessly, between every raid member, than actually about playing your class and role efficiently and effectively. What's even more frustrating, is that it always seems to be the same 5-10 people who can't quite seem to either grasp the mechanics or simply don't have the awareness and/or reaction time to execute every single one of the gimmicks that holds back the raid from progressing. Which is silly because these same players are otherwise good at playing their class, and in earlier raids had no problems whatsoever. Replacing them would be a really crappy thing to do too, because they're still friends.
I just find WoW raids to be ever growing in the direction of being needlessly convoluted to the point of beign tedious and simply not fun to even do anymore. On top of the whole fact that the only reason to chase the raid carrot is for gear, which becomes devalued next patch anyways when equivilant can be obtained rather easily later on.
I never did raid. I see endgame content as a fundamental laziness on the part of game developers. Rather than build a game world that offers enough variety to keep people interested, they make these treadmills for people to run through over and over again in search of loot that they can use to run through the treadmills over and over again with.
This. Only that I DID raid until I realized that the cycle really HAD become endless, pointless, and full of selfishness and drama. I hate drama. I haven't been in high school for 30 years, and I have no desire to go through witnessing the equivalent of high school melodramatics every night over something as trite as gear upgrades that were just going to be replaced by more gear upgrades and more drama. /puke
I used to really enjoy raiding. But eventually it became like a digital reenactment of slamming my head into a brick wall repeatedly and then wondering why, at the end of the night, I had a massive headache and hated other human beings and MYSELF for subjecting myself to such an experience repeatedly.
If a game ceases to be FUN....or if a game mechanic ceases to be fun...I either stop and do something else in that game (if I think the game has value over all and ALLOWS me other options of enjoyable things to do) OR....I quit the game entirely and move on to something that DOES allow me more OPTIONS
I pretty much LOATHE the entire idea of "end game" in MMOs. What I look for in MMOs is a persistent WORLD of exploration and discovery, fun "a-ha" moments or moments of adrenaline surges when you run into something unexpected, or the comraderie amongst guildmates who truly DO get along and want to actually enhance each others gaming experience by doing fun things together and/or FOR each other, like crafting for each other...NOT arguing over a piece of digital clothing.
Sure I love epic battles. But they're only epic when you're not forced to repeat them ad nauseam every day. And I'm also not that nuts about "dailies" (in any game) other than the gold you get from them. And I agree with you....a few of those types of questing mechanics and dungeon "variants" (like do it on normal, then heroic, then super dooper epic pooper scooper level) are just symptoms of lazy development, IMO.
Even though the raid content in WoW was interesting and fun, I stopped because of the low amount of loot compared to the amount of time spent in those raids. And that actually goes for PvE in general.
Things just take too much time in PvE. I know this is a vague statement but that's how I feel. It's like, unlike PvPers, PvEers are supposed to have more patience and more time to waste. I don't subscribe to that.
If you want me to consider PvE, then reward me more. For example, a 4-hour raid should not give me a 30% chance of getting a new item. Probability should be more like 150%.
Comments
Bit extreme, but I agree 100% with everything save the worst thing that has happened to civilization bit.
I like thinking on my feet in games, and having to react and make decisions based on what is happening. This requires that things change and aren't the same thing over and over and over.
Also, it is an immersion-destroying grind.
Edit: I led raids for a while in WoW and it is a very unforgiving job as others have noted. Part of that is the Holy Trinity system, which places severe requirements on group makeup, meaning you often can't take friends who'd like to come along and have to search around and try to recruit others. It's awful, and then you have to work week in and week out to keep everyone bloody happy, because some moron is guying to whine about random loot drops no matter what loot system you have. Others will complains about giving loot to newer players who haven't "earned it" even if no one else wants the loot. Of course you have to take all these worries very seriously because if someone doesn't want to play anymore then it messes up that delicate balance you have achieved in your raid makeup. All that work and at the end of the day, like I mentioned above, it isn't even fun.
let me tell you why i stop raiding, well i used to play Ragnarok back in 2002, before any of the now big titles such as WoW, AoE etc
i never knew what a raid is, because we dont have it in Ragnarok, there are MVP bosses, but we does not require anything elitist like WoW raid needs to
ok so time moves on, i finally play WoW, it completely took me to the whole new level, with their raiding
i used to go crazy and hardcore, because it's new right, i never had this raiding experience, so i used to go crazy on it
but as everyone else, the raiding system is getting ridiculous nowdays and im getting bored of it
im not blaming the game, but the system the user itself implemented that became a standard in the typical WoW MMO
-you need to apply to a guild as if you are gonna apply for a real work, some even ask you to write a story about you, saying that they might get to know you better bla2, i call BS, once you're out of the guild, we're back on a complete stranger to each other
i never have to use this kind of appliocation back in the BC days, i just get recruited and tought on each encounter, eventually i learnt, nowdays, you will be rejected if you are new and does not have any experience, thus, forcing you to learn all those strats like it's an freakin EXAM or something..
-the time needed to raid really took everyone's daily routine life, this is a common fact, i've been there done that, i wont do it anymore ( exception of a casual guild that only raid 3 hours per day, but dont see that alot )
-the same content each week and each week and each week and on... i cant even count how much i have downed Ulduar
-it's all about loot, and it's getting repetitive in today's MMO ( cmon, dont lie, you only raid because of loots, otherwise, why bother killing the same boss each week if you say you just want to clear the content? )
-limited to the end content, this, if you dont raid, you wont clear end content, thus if you are dedicated to see end content, you must raid, even if you dont feel like it..
games like GW2 where world events can become part of the end content is what interest people the most nowdays
So What Now?
Raiding is a get together for your guild, have some fun and chat to your mates. If you see it as a chore then you have the wrong attitude going in. I would rather spend time with guildies than do another evening solo.
got a Girlfriend, need to spend more time with her than I do raiding, also Raiding annoyed me eventually since the items that dropped where never teh ones I needed for my main and I always had to take my alt raiding as it was one class we were short of and everyone else wanted to take their main adn i was being told 'Your not that good of a tank tbh...'
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/ab/Norsefire-logo.png
I never really started.
Closest thing to raiding I ever found fun was setting a bane in Shadowbane.
I kill other players because they're smarter than AI, sometimes.
I used to love raiding in EverQuest, there were so many raids to do that it never felt like a chore, and when Planes of Power came along there was a progression to the raids so it always felt like we were achieving something. But then, I played a Monk so loot was never a reason to be going to raids, as Monk loot was so incredibly rare. I used to just like hanging out with the rest of the guild, as they were a funny lot and there were a lot of hysterical moments. Great fun.
Why did I stop? I was tired. Literally. I was on a US server (I'm in the UK) and sometimes the raids were going until 8am my time. I just couldn't do it anymore so asked a guild on a euro server to take me in, which they agreed to. I paid for the server transfer, back when you transferred naked, went up to the guild and said "I'm here, I'll need some equipment.". They said they changed their mind so now I was a raid character of max level with flags for Planes of Power that had no equipment and no friends on the server. Needless to say, after killing a fair few Rathe Giants for platinum, I decided to call it a day and quit.
So if it wasn't for those dicks on the euro server, I imagine I'd still be there now.
Purely my own experience and reason:
The excitement from raiding and immersing in whatever storyline you get from raiding only derives from the first few times you raid whatever you're raiding. After you've done it 20-30 times its no longer "fun". Only reason left to do it after the 30th time is, from my experience, loot. Bearing in mind what you want may not drop, and when it FINALLY DOES, 4-5 people may want the same item. This becomes more tedious than fun if u ask me, it becomes a 2nd job when i reach home after my 1st day job and have to go through the exact same raids, mainly just to have a chance at getting what i need loot-wise for character advancement/itemisation. After repeatedly doing this 50-100 times, you eventually feel like a bot, with a 2nd job.
<QQ moar plz. kkthxbai.>
Why I hate raiding
-Time involved
Getting a group set up for a raid if it's a PuG can take anywhere from two minutes to an hour, then completing a raid can take anywhere from 10 minutes to never.
-People
Most people don't take failure in MMORPG's very well and will generally at least in PuG's begin riding on other people to beef up their characters or how much they suck; while some can do this very encouraging and at least help the player upon the next encounter, many don't and will simply resort to insults.
-The Encounters just SUCK
Seriously this the the biggest problem with raids, it's not the gear I will do a dungeon for but messing around with guildies and at least being challenged. The static encounters in instances in all MMORPG's is just terrible and really no amount of loot can make me want to run an instance repeatedly simply because I want the carrot on the stick. I'd rather be challenged and have to play a character to the limit of it's ability and think outside the box then just spamming a few abilities to do my job in a group.
Raiding just isn't a delightful experience and neither are dungeons in MMORPGs there's just no dynamic interactions and when the loot no longer is relevant they no longer get used. Thus showing just how shitty the instance design and mechanics that MMOs implement truly are.
Did you ever play Everquest? It has the BEST raiding of any MMORPG and nothing has ever come close to it. Have you ever joined a large guild that has planned raids? That makes it easy to do and your with people who have common goals. I also gather you have not played LOTR as the Moria expansion which is virtually a huge dungeon is AWSOME.
Why did I stop? Because I got tired of listening to 39 then 24 other newbs huddle around a internet version of game informer reading paint by numbers boss strats to each other over Vent.
Five to six days a week, listening to some douchebag raid leader and needs to go afk for a glass of strawberry milk, while the healers try to hide from their parents because its pass their bed times by going Afk every other pull.
Paint by numbers bosses + immature children on a power trip + Repetitive bullshit for loot just to replace more loot = me never raiding ever again!! Ever!!!!!!
Playing: Rift, LotRO
Waiting on: GW2, BP
You should try doing raids for the lore and not for the loot. I tried that for a while and it made me want to do even more raids. I started to build up on what I already knew about the lore and it was quite interesting, I haven't killed the Lich King though, because I have none to raid with now.
The thing I learned about WoW that suited me the best was: Don't raid for the loot, while it is somewhat important don't rage if you get the piece, just think about the good time you had with your friends. Yes I said friends, I know this means that I don't like to do instances with random people and it is true that I really don't. It was almost vital for me to play with friends in order to keep the game attached to me.
TL;DR version:
1) Immerse yourself in the lore.
2) Play with friends.
Oh and the people that say there is no lore in WoW and that WoW killed the Warcraft lore, they are those kind of people that don't know what they're talking about (although it is an opinion).
Eleanor Rigby.
That would work if you didnt need to run each raid 30-40 times for badges/loot.
If i had an option lets say a casual mode that gave me a few quests to go inside a raid complete it with normal gear and never need to enter it again WoW would be fantastic.
As it is now going in strictly on lore fails due to the much needed repetition of the progressive mechanic that is raiding.
Playing: Rift, LotRO
Waiting on: GW2, BP
I stopped raiding in SWG because of the NGE.
I stopped raiding in WoW because they moved away from DPS management and more towards positional and scripted combat. I prefer tank and spank over the safety dance so they lost my sub.
The other games I didn't really get into enough to start raiding.
"The liberties and resulting economic prosperity that YOU take for granted were granted by those "dead guys"
I concur with most of the post that I read.. For me I hated the time investment ( I have a family and life)... I hated the grind and confines that raiding seemed to spawn... I'm not much of a raiding fan, BUT the best times I had when I did some some raids here and there was back in my EQ1 days.. There was 2 types of raids at that time.. The random world spawn of a dragon and dungeons like ToV.. I like that raids then did not have gear requirement or number caps.. If you showed up wearing WoW equivilant of greens and blues, you were still accepted.. When raids turned into an E-sport like WoWs version, that was a game breaker and one major reason why I left the game.. In EQ1 raiding I was one of 30-50 people raiding that night (notice there was no hard cap limit) as I recall.. anyways.. If we were doing ToV and I was only there for 2 hours and had to leave, no biggie.. LOSING me or others was not a raid breaker.. If someone came in late that night.. NO worries.. just add him to one of the groups and keep on going..
That type of raiding I enjoyed.. BTW.. there was no ID bullshit, gear score, blah blah blah.. at least not when I left EQ1.. Give me a game that has casual raiding like the good ole days.. along with other features, and I'm all game for it.. But I do not have the time or the patience to play this E-sport Epeen Raidcrap..lol
I'm in the same boat here, it became like a second job and as soon as it started to resemble work it no longer was fun. Most people work because they need money to live, and if given the oppurtunity they would not work. Well I feel the same way about raiding the way it is done today. I do like raiding but it's just not fun anymore in it's current state.
Raids take too long to complete, in a lot of cases there are too many psycophants kissing up to the raid leaders to gain favoritism, and the elitest attitudes that go along with that whole aspect of gaming is just a big turnoff. I really wish i could just collect a handful of friends and log on and raid at will for an hour or two. That would be an ideal raid for me.
That and most raids run on weeknights and run late. Well that interferes with my job so I had to give it up, raiding that is, for that reason as well because when it comes to raiding or having a roof over my head and food to eat. Well that's really a no brainer.
I didn't. I love raiding. I love yelling at retards who literally beg for the chance to be taken on board and given the chance to pick up some loot. Their lives lack so little in the way of any real achievements themselves that loot in a game is the only chance they'll ever have to move beyond their dead end job.
Buy new game, pay levelling service, buy strats, build guild with ten core friends and bunch of losers who will let us play our sick perverted games with their egos and dysfunctional social skills. Hey it's something to kill the time while wiating for my next trust cheque.
Raiding I love it. And I love the whines like those represented here even moreso...
I don't raid anymore and don't participate anymore. There was a time where I raided pretty heavy (think WoW pre BC) but it was getting to the point where I didn't mind getting called up at 3am in the morning to go on a raid. So, I took a step back. Of course I don't pass the opertunity if I happen to be in the right area at the right time but as a result of my now casual playing towards group content my gear isn't up to scratch and don't get taken on raids anyways. But that is my choice. It's funny how people are nice to you when you have the best gear and I got tired of all the brown nosing and my involvement now is i'll help if required but won't go out of my way to do so.
This isn't a signature, you just think it is.
My wife and I did a lot of raiding. We were some of the folks that showed up on time, prepared, knew what we were doing, and actually expected success. The real issue was that half the guild wasn't like us. They would show up unprepared, with no clue what we were supposed to be doing, no knowledge of the raid zone, poorly speced without the mods needed to succeed. All the nifty meters and stat mods that we used only shined the light on their shortcomings. Trying to help them would only lead to drama because they really didn't want to put any effort into actually succeeding. They didn't seem to care that they were wasting everyone's time week after week ignoring advice and unwilling to even try to improve.
So F-that. Its much more pleasant to not give a crap about other people by not having a competitive raiding environment. I get along with people much better when I am not depending on them for anything.
Hah, I knew that guy in EQ, or one of the worst of those guys. Honest to God, the single worst player I ever knew in EQ and he was decked out in high end gear for exactly that reason. Not because he was good at playing his class or even good at following instructions (I could tell a story about a time he died about 20 times in a row because he couldn't follow simple instructions) but just because he was in a top raiding guild and willing to put in his time.
I'll spare you a long story but circumstances conspired to put me in groups with that guy on a number of occassions and I'm not exaggerating when I say that my real life friends and I still (after five years) sometimes reminisce about the monumentally stupid things he did. But...he put in his time and showed up for his guild's raids so he got the gear.
EQ is the only game I've ever raided in and I can't even begin to express how much I hated it. My God, it was soooo boring. It was so much bullshit. It was so much drama. It was hours and hours of hurry-up-and-wait. It was guild leaders with the little dictator mentality thinking they were big-shots because they knew that they had their members by the short hairs because gear advancement was dependant on raiding and on the guild leaders whims. It was scheduling your life around the game instead of scheduling the game around your life. It was just fucking horrible in every way.
In EQ I swore to all that is holy that I would never do that crap again and so far I haven't. I love grouping, in small groups, if I can hop in and out by my own schedule...but raiding, raiding can go to hell where it belongs and burn.
The attitudes of players who are too heavily focused on end-game raiding is generally very poor. They only care about items and advancement, and treat others as merely statistics. I remember raiding back in EQ, though the boss fights were much simpler then (in general), it was more about banding together for a common cause other than just loot upgrades. Not to say there weren't hurdles to overcome such as levels and keys to even get a chance to see the content, but players cared much less about your stats than your ability to focus and follow directions. There were unpleasant players back in those days also, but they were a minority. I have not had the same experience raiding in WoW after Molten Core.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
Don't know what your guild leaders were like, but organizing and leading a raid is a lot of work. You need to find the times everyone can do it for one. Then you need to deal with every little complaint everyone has so that everyone is as happy is possible. Even if 3/4 of the people don't complain, the 1/4 that remains is a major headache and you can't tell people to just be quiet since if they leave your composition is screwed up. And those things are just the tip of the iceberg.
I stopped large raiding because my favorite fantasy stories were about small groups of people, sometimes even solo, defeating epic evil and accomplishing amazing feats of strength.
I put-up with 10 people requirements at max... mainly because I know that many people who i would invite on any type of adventure with... but I do not agree there should EVER be a "required number"
A "raid" should be doable by as few as 3 people, and as many as 200... with the encounter scaling and adjusting to accomodate the number. Yeah... that would be terrible to program for, and would "cheapen" the rewards if everyone could get the same loot.
But loot and epeen be damned... i'm there to enjoy time with my friends, however many that might be, and I do not believe my party size should be the limit to what I can do.
Particularly in a fantasy setting.
I stopped raiding because it began to feel like a chore... a neverending one at that, as the one absolute is that the 'top end' gear will always be devalued next content patch.
But as to why it began to feel like a chore... that's the important part.
It's because the raids, at least in WoW, have been more and more about commiting convoluted gimmicks fights to memory and then executing them near flawlessly, between every raid member, than actually about playing your class and role efficiently and effectively. What's even more frustrating, is that it always seems to be the same 5-10 people who can't quite seem to either grasp the mechanics or simply don't have the awareness and/or reaction time to execute every single one of the gimmicks that holds back the raid from progressing. Which is silly because these same players are otherwise good at playing their class, and in earlier raids had no problems whatsoever. Replacing them would be a really crappy thing to do too, because they're still friends.
I just find WoW raids to be ever growing in the direction of being needlessly convoluted to the point of beign tedious and simply not fun to even do anymore. On top of the whole fact that the only reason to chase the raid carrot is for gear, which becomes devalued next patch anyways when equivilant can be obtained rather easily later on.
This. Only that I DID raid until I realized that the cycle really HAD become endless, pointless, and full of selfishness and drama. I hate drama. I haven't been in high school for 30 years, and I have no desire to go through witnessing the equivalent of high school melodramatics every night over something as trite as gear upgrades that were just going to be replaced by more gear upgrades and more drama. /puke
I used to really enjoy raiding. But eventually it became like a digital reenactment of slamming my head into a brick wall repeatedly and then wondering why, at the end of the night, I had a massive headache and hated other human beings and MYSELF for subjecting myself to such an experience repeatedly.
If a game ceases to be FUN....or if a game mechanic ceases to be fun...I either stop and do something else in that game (if I think the game has value over all and ALLOWS me other options of enjoyable things to do) OR....I quit the game entirely and move on to something that DOES allow me more OPTIONS
I pretty much LOATHE the entire idea of "end game" in MMOs. What I look for in MMOs is a persistent WORLD of exploration and discovery, fun "a-ha" moments or moments of adrenaline surges when you run into something unexpected, or the comraderie amongst guildmates who truly DO get along and want to actually enhance each others gaming experience by doing fun things together and/or FOR each other, like crafting for each other...NOT arguing over a piece of digital clothing.
Sure I love epic battles. But they're only epic when you're not forced to repeat them ad nauseam every day. And I'm also not that nuts about "dailies" (in any game) other than the gold you get from them. And I agree with you....a few of those types of questing mechanics and dungeon "variants" (like do it on normal, then heroic, then super dooper epic pooper scooper level) are just symptoms of lazy development, IMO.
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
Even though the raid content in WoW was interesting and fun, I stopped because of the low amount of loot compared to the amount of time spent in those raids.
And that actually goes for PvE in general.
Things just take too much time in PvE.
I know this is a vague statement but that's how I feel. It's like, unlike PvPers, PvEers are supposed to have more patience and more time to waste. I don't subscribe to that.
If you want me to consider PvE, then reward me more.
For example, a 4-hour raid should not give me a 30% chance of getting a new item. Probability should be more like 150%.
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Waiting for: GW2
*thumbs up*: GW, Eve(, WoW)
*thumbs down*: MO, GA, FE