General Discussion

Staff Writers Dan Fortier and Derek Czerkaski square off on one of the hottest topics in MMORPGs... raiding.

Derek Czerkaski:

Raiding; the gathering of guilds and their members en masse to fight grueling, hard-fought battles against epic monsters for 1337 lewt. That's one way to look at it. I hear "raiding" and I think of a monotonous, macro-mashing time-sink. Nothing like spamming 4-5 skills over and over, for 2-8 hours at a time, because that's what real strategy is about. While raiding can be fun initially, once a god/boss/HNM/insert-end-game-title-here has been beaten enough times to where the strategy has become standardized, all the fun is gone.

Read the whole article here.

I, for one, detest raiding.  Maybe that's one of the reasons I hated EQ with such a passion back in the day :).  For one thing loots have never really been one of my main motivations to play a game.  I am more into exploration and adventuring.  So going through a raid a few times to kill all the big bad boss monsters is more than enough for me.  When I first quit wow it was shortly after helping my guild down Ragnaros in MC.  I had done everything there was to do at that time and didnt seen any reason to keep playing.  The magic of the game was completely gone.  Several months later I resubbed to wow, leveled a new toon to 60, got through MC, BWL, ZG and AQ20 and had been well on our way through aq40 when I realized that I was going to have to raid grind in order to get the loot necessary to make naxx possible.  That was the end of the game for me.  The Burning Crusade seems to have gone a bit smarter in that Blizzard is shying away from the massive raids and making higher level gear attainable by a wider group of the population and I am sorely tempted to jump back in lol.

A number of years ago a change started to take place in gaming in general.  There had always been a small number of titles enjoyable to everyone but there were a greater share of games that were most accessible to the "hardcore" gamers.  Then there was the shift.  Instead of challenging the gamers more and more games came out that were geared more towards the average gamer rather than the "hardcore".  It was a matter purely of economics.  I think Blizzard realized this as they were preparing for their expansion.  Sure there are the "hardcore" raiding guilds.  But they are the vast minority. 

On my last server in wow (a heavily populated one at that) there were a handful of people decked out in teir 2's.  The rest of the people were in varying amounts of tier1, dungeon gear, and pvp gears.  On both horde and alliance side the "uber" guilds were selling services to get through MC, ZG, and AQ20.  And only the gullible few took up those offers not realizing that that sword or staff or bit of armor was not a guaranteed drop.  Spend 1000 gp to go through a midrange raid to walk out with nothing.

Sure there is a place for raiding, however it is not what the majority of the gamers want to do.  They want to see progression for themselves as they are paying their monthly fees and raids that are formulaic in everything but reward does not exactly equate to money well spent.

I personally hate raiding.  I HATE it.  Do I want it out of games?  No.  I'm not the only person playing.  The game has to be fun and fair for everyone.  I'm not a princess and I don't expect people that DO enjoy raiding to give it up for me or anyone else, even though I hate it.  Did I mention that I loathe raiding? 

A lot of other people enjoy it.  What I'd like to see is an alternative.  I think Vanguard went in the right direction with the pause areas, where you can do part of the dungeon, log at a safe spot and come back the next day and continue where you left off rather than have to start all over at the beginning. 

People that invest so much time to raiding to get all that epic gear deserve to have it, but there hasn't been an alternative that gets the same type of reward for those that can't invest that much time, and still be fair to those raiders.  Those that despise raiding, or simply can't raid because they have families and kids in soccer practice and such are  therefore, unable to compete when the game has PVP. 

I don't want raiding to go away, I want to see alternatives.

 

 

 

 

End game raiding to compete is the main reason i quit almost every game i have played.

 

I have a familly and dont have 12 hours to devote to a game everyday hoping for the 1 in 1,845,926,834,823 chance to drop.

Hours and hours spent leveling a toon to 50 or 60 in some games to find out it was all for not because now i need to buy the next x-pac to get the next set of rare ybah drop and that means more money spent and more time nneded to do it all over again

Daoc was a good game hit 50 go rvr take keeps fun and fresh idea. then it was SI wasnt bad x=pac nothing there wasnt attainiable with a little bit of time.

then the RA system from pvp came in. Part time player 3 hours a night couldnt keep up with the people who played 10 hours a day go to Emain get to mile gate get farmed. IM rr 10 and your rr 3 , haaahahah thxs for the RP's sucka..

Then came TOA and that made 80% of the population quit the game...

Then they made catacombs totally solo player freindly with new Overpowerd ill spam my magical claw on you for the win!!!!

Vampirr skilless class for the mentally challenged. As Geiko would say Even a caveman could do it.

Then came Labrinth of the Minutaur. New rare armor drops/items new class....

In the end being the part time player with around 20 hours a week to devote to a game its not worth playing any game that has any type of super raiding that only the ones with nothing better to do everyday like the 7 million teenagers that play WOW or the person with no job that lives in there parents basement and hasnt seen the light of day in 10 years.... Game favors only those and those alone.... Part time player has no chance to compete and in the end they all eventually quit.

 

Make a game with no pvp Personal rewards or gaer that attaniable by all weither its 20 hours a week i play or 60 hours a week ....

When that game comes it would be a great day.

 

If raiding was challenging then i would be okay with it but its far from challenging, but sometimes it is fun to do, just not willing to do the same thing over and over again.The same thing my personal experiance with people/friends that really like raiding are those that don't neccesary like mmorpg but they are more into or used to be more into FPS online games, 3 of my best friends hardcore CS players really love WOW and its raiding, the people i know that really like mmorpg really don't like raiding.

Please read that this is my personal opinion and experiance and i'm talking about people i know, so i'm not saying that everyone that likes fps online games is automaticly a raider or  doesn't really care for real mmorpg.

I'd love to hear from someone who actually likes raiding.  Sometimes, I think they're more mythological than the dwarves and elves we pretend to be.

I personally find raiding fun, but indeed it takes too much time. But again, you gotta see it this way, as it has been said, its in the game because people do enjoy it. The thing is, with end-game raids that takes 2-8 hours to complete depending on the raid and the game, you lose your casual players. When all major guilds in a server has been raiding end-game dungeons for a time, they become so powerful that its not even fun measuring against them. I think the best way to solve this is still have PvE raids that takes 2-8 hours in end-game with l33t loot, but again, a system that can give access to end-game gear to more casual players, like in PvP(or RvR) or something like it. Of course, its gonna take more time for em to get to that type of gear, but instead of having to play a 6 hours instance, they gotta put 10 hours in PvP lets say, and they get access to a reward that would be competitive to end-game gear obtained in high-instances. So they dont have to put 6 hours in a row of playing, they can come in, play for an hour or 2, log off, do what they gotta do, come back and continue to accumulate their points to finally get to a fair reward. Thats 1 option.  This way, you satisfy hardcore players and you keep your casual players competitive.

Originally posted by Thony

If raiding was challenging then i would be okay with it but its far from challenging, but sometimes it is fun to do, just not willing to do the same thing over and over again.The same thing my personal experiance with people/friends that really like raiding are those that don't neccesary like mmorpg but they are more into or used to be more into FPS online games, 3 of my best friends hardcore CS players really love WOW and its raiding, the people i know that really like mmorpg really don't like raiding.

Please read that this is my personal opinion and experiance and i'm talking about people i know, so i'm not saying that everyone that likes fps online games is automaticly a raider or  doesn't really care for real mmorpg.

Thats probably because its their first mmorpg. I dont care much for the CS community seems to be populated by the same 1337 cretins that populate wow. Just my observation.


Raiding was fun the first time with a group of people you like being around. Then it just goes down hill rapidly. How developers get around this i dont know. Quests get boring. Raiding is just a massive time sink. The only mmorpg to be different is EVE, but thats far from perfect.