While I have not experienced WoW's LFR, I will say that Rift's summoned raids and GW2's open world bosses are not friendly enough. No one will help do a summoned raid in Rift unless they need something so if you're short a few people, tough luck. Meanwhile in GW2, I have 50 attempts on Teq and Wurm having never succeeded even once.
For a genre that has moved in the direction if convenience, its certainly made playing with your friends as inconvenient as possible.
I don't know about Rift, but I know that when people complained in GW2 that world bosses were not hard enough, ANet made them harder and now I see people complaining. Otherwise, Tequatl is not that hard to kill now that the Megaservers are up. He's not easy either. Have you tried since the patch?
If I've learned anything about what sucks the fun out of MMOs, an over-emphasis on efficiency by players is #1. The number crunching, the aforementioned refusal to bring people who aren't over-geared, and the response of devs to this drive which prevents those who are playing a different kind of game from participating completely turned me off raiding. WoW wants to make changes, but for me it's too late. I've moved on. Had I been able to raid in a way I would have enjoyed when I was playing WoW, I would have.
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.
I know in the future, raiding in a mmo using VR technology and an "out of body" VR becoming a thing in the future, raiding will become hard, hard like reality. Controls in VR going to change everything in the game, as we no longer react with keyboard and mouse, those things will no longer exist, instead we react by movement. When we block, we really have to catch the blow with shield, staff, or sword. If you have to dodge, you really have to step out of the blow... if you really want to duel wield in the game, you really need to learn how to hold and use a weapon on each hand, you will probably be taking almost medieval military lesson on how to wield a blade, how to use magic, and how to better yourself... you will have an alternative life experience like you was born in a totally different planet and face a different reality... That's the future that I see in raiding in mmo's is that it's coming so close to reality, that we all going to feel it and we are all in for a surprise... watch how hard it really is to take down deathwing himself in a VR game.
I'm in complete agreement with the exclusionary statements in this article. In WoW on my huntard i was told if i did not bring (at the time) VERY SPECIFIC pets with me, with VERY SPECIFIC pet talents, and have my toon's talents PERFECTLY MIRROR the fotom for my class then i was NOT ALLOWED TO RAID.
when my OWN guild told me this, after i had been rep grinding and dungeon crawling for gear mind you, i took it to mean "if i want to enjoy the end game content to a game i'm paying to play then i have to do so in a way that is not up to how i want to play the game i am paying to play."
I've just gone through a guild schism in Rift where the most hardcore raiders suddenly departed, decimating the guild and officer ranks, and not leaving not much of anything remaining except to start over. Looking forward to seeing how WoD's raid revisions pan out.
Regarding the social part - that goes for general PVE/PVP as well. The most fun I think I had in terms of "grind" was in SWG pre-NGE. The way combat was, you could actually type in chat and get some nice (and sometimes less) conversations out of the whole thing. That wasn't possible with the NGE combat. Neither did I ever encounter this in any MMO again after that, hence making grind dull and boring and can't understand how some people find it "attractive" necessity in an MMO. Guess that's what happens if their is no content or if it is gobbled up too quickly.
In a way the same with Raid (also, generic dungeon grouping) - it is and always has been easier if you had RL friends - they take care of each other in a different way, they respect each other differently, I suspect for one thing at least since the anonymity aspect is gone. And if there is no social interaction (still not everyone uses voice nowadays), then it is just mechanistically treadmill and that is not everyone's cup of tea.
Here again, the best fun with Dungeon runs was years after SWG in WoW where friends were dungeon & quest grinding/boosting each other. Dungeons were fun since you actually could have a look at them and not just zombie through them. Without that, WoW ended up being a single player game again.
In the end, what do you expect people to do with a game after a while? There are 2 kinds - either you want something new after a while and you won't stick with same thing over and over, or you like that you can use your knowledge and seemingly advance (and perhaps some nostalgia of feeling "at home"). The latter will do raid, the former won't. Or?
I learned to hate raiding in EQ -- it put a bitter taste in my mouth that forever left a dark mark on my soul.
You cannot talk about raiding in EQ without mentioning heal rotations. It turned ordinary players into machines, and if you were not like a machine (except if things hit the fan and you had to compensate on the fly), you were doing it wrong. You had to literally count seconds between each heal and press a button. Most of the time it was done with macros, but that didn't change the soul-killing effect that it had on people. Clerics in raiding guilds would suffer burnout at unprecedented numbers, plus if you were a cleric, you were REQUIRED to do the equally soul-killing water sprinkler of Nemh Ankh quest which meant incredibly frustrating drama with other guilds having to wait in a queue that could be months long for a specific dragon to spawn, and if someone happened to steal the loot, you would lose your place in line and have to wait months longer. If you were a cleric, raids would not happen until you got there. (I was a top cleric in a top raiding guild). If you were late, and dps, no one cared. If you were late and a cleric, never mind excuses, never mind that maybe you had to work late, everyone was miserable and give you a hard time.
It wasn't until I spoke with other EQ clerics that I found out that it wasn' t just me that had learned to hate raiding. Besides, raiding has always been too much of a military operation and not enough of a fun game-like activity. You have to follow orders to the letter. You can't make mistakes, or everyone is miserable. If the cost of a mistake is misery, then there's something very wrong at the root of it all.
Retarded causal players ruined raiding. All this small scale walking in and beat everything in an hr or to style raiding is terrible. Hopefully wildstar can restore raiding to what it supposed to be: NOT CASUAL!
I know in the future, raiding in a mmo using VR technology and an "out of body" VR becoming a thing in the future, raiding will become hard, hard like reality. Controls in VR going to change everything in the game, as we no longer react with keyboard and mouse, those things will no longer exist, instead we react by movement. When we block, we really have to catch the blow with shield, staff, or sword. If you have to dodge, you really have to step out of the blow... if you really want to duel wield in the game, you really need to learn how to hold and use a weapon on each hand, you will probably be taking almost medieval military lesson on how to wield a blade, how to use magic, and how to better yourself... you will have an alternative life experience like you was born in a totally different planet and face a different reality... That's the future that I see in raiding in mmo's is that it's coming so close to reality, that we all going to feel it and we are all in for a surprise... watch how hard it really is to take down deathwing himself in a VR game.
Ah to be young and possessed of lightning-fast reflexes again! By the time something like this comes along I'll be geriatric and in need of serious augmentation to stand a chance of raiding. It does sound fun, though. No ageism, whipper snappers!
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.
I like this column it pokes at the real issue in raids and how they have changed over the years. I remember the open world raids of EQ and in 2004 I was doing some open world raiding in WOW. but then things changed.
I am not a fan of the modern raiding system. To me it seems less targeted at the challenge and difficulty of getting a large group of players to work together to accomplish a goal. Instead its a number based system that requires you to have a set number for gear level and not all that challenging.
As far as your comment on an open world game that will offer real raiding again that has no instances and relies on a social structure all I can say is pay attention to Citadel of Sorcery. It is the only MMORPG that i have seen that is breaking the mold and pushing both the MMO social aspect as well as new style game play to the limits.
I've never properly got into raiding, ever. This will be my chance. Flexible raids are one of those things where you wonder why it didn't happen sooner.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
When we refer to raiding I think instanced raiding for fixed sized groups and dynamic free sized scalable groups that happen in the world should be separated.
Instanced raiding is generally not very massive. Console multiplayer games have larger group sizes than 10 mans. So I'm not sure there is anything super special or unique about small group instanced "raiding" in MMOs. Dynamic content in a massive world with flexible groups sizes though are something you don't really find anywhere else.
What WoW has done with their instanced raids by making them for everybody, is they made them mediocre for everybody and created a lot of unnecessary conflict in the community. They should have kept their instanced raids for the hardcore and provided other content to more casual players to provide them with progression, and this could include content types similar to Rift Instant Adventures and World Events.
As far as MMOs vs. MMO's goes, generally speaking you don't use an apostrophe in the plural form of an abbreviation however it is not a hard rule and is acceptable if the author thinks it makes it easier to read.
Comments
I don't know about Rift, but I know that when people complained in GW2 that world bosses were not hard enough, ANet made them harder and now I see people complaining. Otherwise, Tequatl is not that hard to kill now that the Megaservers are up. He's not easy either. Have you tried since the patch?
Freely admitted
Jeremy Gaffney
Executive Producer, Carbine Studios (Wildstar Online)
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.
~Albert Einstein
I know in the future, raiding in a mmo using VR technology and an "out of body" VR becoming a thing in the future, raiding will become hard, hard like reality. Controls in VR going to change everything in the game, as we no longer react with keyboard and mouse, those things will no longer exist, instead we react by movement. When we block, we really have to catch the blow with shield, staff, or sword. If you have to dodge, you really have to step out of the blow... if you really want to duel wield in the game, you really need to learn how to hold and use a weapon on each hand, you will probably be taking almost medieval military lesson on how to wield a blade, how to use magic, and how to better yourself... you will have an alternative life experience like you was born in a totally different planet and face a different reality... That's the future that I see in raiding in mmo's is that it's coming so close to reality, that we all going to feel it and we are all in for a surprise... watch how hard it really is to take down deathwing himself in a VR game.
when my OWN guild told me this, after i had been rep grinding and dungeon crawling for gear mind you, i took it to mean "if i want to enjoy the end game content to a game i'm paying to play then i have to do so in a way that is not up to how i want to play the game i am paying to play."
i've never looked back.
I'd really like to see more open world raiding, especially within games with a pvp focus.
Id also love to see some pvp raid dungeons.
Well thought out and written post, Ryahl.
I've just gone through a guild schism in Rift where the most hardcore raiders suddenly departed, decimating the guild and officer ranks, and not leaving not much of anything remaining except to start over. Looking forward to seeing how WoD's raid revisions pan out.
Regarding the social part - that goes for general PVE/PVP as well. The most fun I think I had in terms of "grind" was in SWG pre-NGE. The way combat was, you could actually type in chat and get some nice (and sometimes less) conversations out of the whole thing. That wasn't possible with the NGE combat. Neither did I ever encounter this in any MMO again after that, hence making grind dull and boring and can't understand how some people find it "attractive" necessity in an MMO. Guess that's what happens if their is no content or if it is gobbled up too quickly.
In a way the same with Raid (also, generic dungeon grouping) - it is and always has been easier if you had RL friends - they take care of each other in a different way, they respect each other differently, I suspect for one thing at least since the anonymity aspect is gone. And if there is no social interaction (still not everyone uses voice nowadays), then it is just mechanistically treadmill and that is not everyone's cup of tea.
Here again, the best fun with Dungeon runs was years after SWG in WoW where friends were dungeon & quest grinding/boosting each other. Dungeons were fun since you actually could have a look at them and not just zombie through them. Without that, WoW ended up being a single player game again.
In the end, what do you expect people to do with a game after a while? There are 2 kinds - either you want something new after a while and you won't stick with same thing over and over, or you like that you can use your knowledge and seemingly advance (and perhaps some nostalgia of feeling "at home"). The latter will do raid, the former won't. Or?
--------------------------------------------
Youtube newb:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC96N3cxBuqKTPV2BQNlzGUw
I learned to hate raiding in EQ -- it put a bitter taste in my mouth that forever left a dark mark on my soul.
You cannot talk about raiding in EQ without mentioning heal rotations. It turned ordinary players into machines, and if you were not like a machine (except if things hit the fan and you had to compensate on the fly), you were doing it wrong. You had to literally count seconds between each heal and press a button. Most of the time it was done with macros, but that didn't change the soul-killing effect that it had on people. Clerics in raiding guilds would suffer burnout at unprecedented numbers, plus if you were a cleric, you were REQUIRED to do the equally soul-killing water sprinkler of Nemh Ankh quest which meant incredibly frustrating drama with other guilds having to wait in a queue that could be months long for a specific dragon to spawn, and if someone happened to steal the loot, you would lose your place in line and have to wait months longer. If you were a cleric, raids would not happen until you got there. (I was a top cleric in a top raiding guild). If you were late, and dps, no one cared. If you were late and a cleric, never mind excuses, never mind that maybe you had to work late, everyone was miserable and give you a hard time.
It wasn't until I spoke with other EQ clerics that I found out that it wasn' t just me that had learned to hate raiding. Besides, raiding has always been too much of a military operation and not enough of a fun game-like activity. You have to follow orders to the letter. You can't make mistakes, or everyone is miserable. If the cost of a mistake is misery, then there's something very wrong at the root of it all.
At least they are honest and open about it.
Wildstar is about to launch and bring bigtime raiding back.
-Trion sends its shill with an article about Rift endgame raiding http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/431/feature/8471/Rift-Eyes-on-Endgame.html
-Blizzard sending a shill with this article.
Ups, did i say "shill"? Of course i meant "freelancing author"...
Ah to be young and possessed of lightning-fast reflexes again! By the time something like this comes along I'll be geriatric and in need of serious augmentation to stand a chance of raiding. It does sound fun, though. No ageism, whipper snappers!
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.
~Albert Einstein
I like this column it pokes at the real issue in raids and how they have changed over the years. I remember the open world raids of EQ and in 2004 I was doing some open world raiding in WOW. but then things changed.
I am not a fan of the modern raiding system. To me it seems less targeted at the challenge and difficulty of getting a large group of players to work together to accomplish a goal. Instead its a number based system that requires you to have a set number for gear level and not all that challenging.
As far as your comment on an open world game that will offer real raiding again that has no instances and relies on a social structure all I can say is pay attention to Citadel of Sorcery. It is the only MMORPG that i have seen that is breaking the mold and pushing both the MMO social aspect as well as new style game play to the limits.
Played: UO, LotR, WoW, SWG, DDO, AoC, EVE, Warhammer, TF2, EQ2, SWTOR, TSW, CSS, KF, L4D, AoW, WoT
Playing: The Secret World until Citadel of Sorcery goes into Alpha testing.
Tired of: Linear quest games, dailies, and dumbed down games
Anticipating:Citadel of Sorcery
Please learn to apostrophe.
Even amateur game journalists should know or at least learn that "MMO's" is not a plural, but a possessive of a single MMO.
Boobs are LIFE, Boobs are LOVE, Boobs are JUSTICE, Boobs are mankind's HOPES and DREAMS. People who complain about boobs have lost their humanity.
wrong
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
When we refer to raiding I think instanced raiding for fixed sized groups and dynamic free sized scalable groups that happen in the world should be separated.
Instanced raiding is generally not very massive. Console multiplayer games have larger group sizes than 10 mans. So I'm not sure there is anything super special or unique about small group instanced "raiding" in MMOs. Dynamic content in a massive world with flexible groups sizes though are something you don't really find anywhere else.
What WoW has done with their instanced raids by making them for everybody, is they made them mediocre for everybody and created a lot of unnecessary conflict in the community. They should have kept their instanced raids for the hardcore and provided other content to more casual players to provide them with progression, and this could include content types similar to Rift Instant Adventures and World Events.
As far as MMOs vs. MMO's goes, generally speaking you don't use an apostrophe in the plural form of an abbreviation however it is not a hard rule and is acceptable if the author thinks it makes it easier to read.