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Next World Of Warcraft Raid Dungeon
GrandGranini writes "The New York Times has an interview with World Of Warcraft Lead Game Designer Jeff Kaplan (Tigole), in which he talks about the next raid dungeon after Ahn'Quiraj, the necropolis Naxxramas." From the article: "Naxxramas is going to be the most difficult thing in the game until the expansion pack comes out. It will be the pinnacle, and it's absolutely massive. You'll see this big necropolis floating above Eastern Plaguelands. It's a 40-man raid zone, and it's bigger than the Undercity [one of the main cities in the game]. Things could change, but we're up to something like 18 bosses in there, and they are really cool, too. But it's going to be hard. Really hard. We're hoping to release it in the spring." If you told me two years ago that I'd be reading about an upcoming instance in the sport section of the NYT, I'd have called you a damn dirty liar. May you live in interesting times, indeed.
PLEASE!! MAKE more content that people without ten thousand reliable friends and 8 hours of their life to waste can play. damn blizzard.
"If I were bound by all laws everywhere I'm sure I would have committed a capital crime somewhere."
Breakfast served all day!
For those of us who don't play World of Warcraft, can somebody explain what a "raid zone" is? What are the "Eastern Plaguelands"? What is the "Undercity"?
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
I have never played WoW - and this is something i'm very thankful for. I have a habbit of letting things take over my life a bit, especially games. It kind of makes you feel a bit like your wasting your life when they put hour counters in the games... I'm glad i've managed to keep my time.
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
This sort of thing is why I pretty much quit and make a new alt whenever I hit about 40. I just cannot stand the gigantic instance dungeons.
And really, to me they pretty much destroy the enjoyment of the game. Elite quests and instance dungeons seem like a cop out on the part of the designers -- they just make the same monsters three times as hard to kill, for no reason that makes sense in the context of the game world. It's so amazingly frustrating when you work your way through a nice story arc, with lots of challenging but not impossible quests, and then at the end of it you end up facing a dungeon which is completely impossible for the usual group of 3 that I play in. So you're stuck either never finishing anything, or having to LFG and hope you don't wind up with a bunch of retards.
But then I guess I'm cluelessly stuck on that whole "RPG" aspect of it, which is clearly not where the money is.
This is ridiculous, when I go to a movie theatre and hear someone talking about guild drama, when I talk to friends I haven't seen in years and they have a rank 8 undead mage on Archimond, and indeed, when WoW appears in the Times.... WoW has gotten out of hand.
Playing around in the world of Warcraft is absolutely amazing, due to the depth of story and rich world they've created. But I could never imagine buying and playing the game regularly unless they design a path or two you can take through the game to make it to the "end" without having to join up with a huge guild that schedules raids and grinds for gear.
Basically, I love multiplayer agmes and WoW is very good, but I can't stand playing a game on a schedule or organizing this massive efforts. Make some "end game" content that doesn't require a huge guild to complete, please. Some of us like company in the worlds we play in, but hate obligation.
That's all I've got to say about that.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
When the first person enters, a new 'copy' of the instance is created. Then only those persons who are in the same pre-created 'raid group' can enter the same copy. Maximum amount of players in a single raid is 40.
So, maximum of 40 players can enter. (8 groups of 5 players each)
If someone else tries to enter without being in the same raid group, he creates another copy of the instance, and won't see the other raid. So in theory 10 separate raids of 40 players each could be tackling the same bosses.
Effectively, a system to ensure that the top end mobs are never 'camped' by same top players, blocking access by others.
And to ensure that same people won't just sit at the boss spot for hours and kill it over and over again, each high end raid instance has a 'reset timer' between several days and a week. Nothing respawns until the whole instance resets. Also if you re-enter the area before it has been reset, it's status is the same as when you left it - you will enter the same copy, with the stuff you killed earlier still dead. Then people in your raid group can enter it with you, letting you continue clearing the instance where you left off the previous day.
People just want something to do once they reach the end of the game. The rewards are secondary, but you're so demented you can't even remember games are supposed to be fun.
Since the Expansion pack will be raising the level cap to 70 a lot of the current raid zones will suddenly become instances that players will be capable of doing with far less people. I think that is why Blizzard keeps on releasing these high end raid dungeons since they know once the level cap is raised that people won't need to be so hardcore to do them.
An instance is a dungeon to which a limited number of people have access, but of which there may be many instances running at once. Take Molten Core, a 40 person instance. At most, you may have 40 people grouped together in a raid (8 groups of 5 people). I may in a group of 40 running the instance, while someone else is in another group of 40 running the instance. We will not interfere or even see one another.
Raid -- group of groups. A group contains 5 people at most. In order to join up with more than 5, you form a raid. The raid itself gives no inherent bonuses. It eases communication, and allows easier access to how other people are doing (in health or mana). At most, a raid may contain 8 groups.
So, a raid instance is an instance which requires a raid.
Some people dislike raids because of the requisite number of people required to experience the content. You have to get 40 relative competent people together at the same place at the same time and sustain the raid for several hours. Others like raids because the bosses are harder and the loot is better.
Ok, I have not played WoW and I have no idea what a "40 man instance" or a "40-man raid zone" is. Can only 40 people occupy it at the same time? Are you facing imminent death unless you enter it with 40+ people? In the terms of WoW, what is an "instance" anyway?
... at least not to the end boss, and not without a lot of added risk.
40 man instance/raid-zone - A dungeon that has a max limit of 40 people in it at the same time, as part of the same group. You can't have more than 40 people in a raid. If you enter with less than 40 people, chances are you won't get very far
Instance dungeons - I think it's easier to describe what it is NOT. Most areas of WoW (non-instanced) are shared. You can see what everyone else is doing, even if you're not a part of the same group. The advantage to this is that it seems more realistic. The disadvantage is that people are often fighting the same enemies, so you lose a lot of the epic feel. For example, imagine you're on a quest to kill a certain boss. But when you get to that area, you see several other random folks sitting there, trying to kill the same guy. That's not very realistic.
What instances do is create a copy of the dungeon that is usable only by you and your own group members. The whole area is yours. Game designers like it, since it allows them to better script the whole dungeon experience, without worrying if some other group happens to be there already. I believe the terminology "instance" partially comes from programming, where you can define a class and then an object is an instance of that class.
BTW, WoW is certainly not the only MMO to use instanced dungeons. Guild Wars, as a matter of fact, relies on it heavily. Other games (usually older MMOs like UO and EQ) didn't originally have instanced dungeons, so you had a lot of the "gee, we made it all the way to the boss and there are 5 other groups there now, I guess we need to wait in line" problems.
-- jchenx
Instance - An area that once you (and your group) enter, you are alone. So if you and your group want to have the challenge of fighting their way through a dungeon, and killing the end boss, the game will generate a seperate dungeon instance just for your group. There can be 20 other groups running the same dungeon, each one in their own instance. So you don't have to worry about people being in the zone ahead of you. Once you enter, its yours to conquer.
:)
In WoW, there's groups (limited to 5 people I think?), and then there's raiding parties. Rading parties can hold a much higher number of people. There's advantages and disadvantages to both, but raiding parties are usually organized to attack an enemy city, or to conquer an instance. A 40 man raid instance is geared towards large raiding parties. If you enter with much less, you'll simply be overwhelmed. The hardest instances require the most coordination between members of the raiding party.. as far as healing, debuffs, etc.
Only 1 raid party of 40 people can enter that particular instance. But there can be dozens of parallel instances going at the same time. Hope that makes sense
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The latter. Dungeons, or instances, are filled with harder-than-average monsters ("elites") followed by boss monsters who require coordination to defeat. Once all of the bosses in the instance are killed, the dungeon is considered beaten and you have to wait for it to reset before going back through. The reason to do it repeatedly is that each boss drops a few (maybe 1 or 2) high quality items, and the players that can use them roll for them. Of course, there are almost always more players than items so you keep going through for fun and to get stuff :-)
So are the all the "regular" enemies still going to be the same model except slightly different sizes and colors? ^^
I've lost a ton of friends to WoW, and in fact i played beta and about 3 monthes of release. Dungeons are the biggest scams and time sinks. But you can't compete either in PvP or other dungeons without farming item after item endlessly (literally hundreds of hours spent doing the same dungeon over and over)
For the love of god, recognize this shitty, endless cycle. Your life has no purpose and that's why you play (are addicted to) WoW, but guess what? Your life has even less purpose while you play! Also, real life friends are better than loser virtual friends who only act like the like you so they can get purples.
In WoW the dungeons are "instanced" which means that when you group up with people and go into the dungeon only your party is in there, it creates a new dungeon for each party that goes into it. Regular dungeons are 5-man, meaning if you are of appropriate level it will take a group of 5 people to go through with a decent ammount of time. These 5-man dungeons are usually capped at a max of 5 people also, so you can't roll through with 20 people and get it done in 2 minutes. 40-man dungeons are the "end game" content. They are possible to do with less than 40 but it is ill-advised if you value your time. They differ slightly from regular instance dungeons in that you are "locked" into the instance once you kill a boss. From then on until the instance resets (once a week) you will join the same instance every time you go in. This allows groups of people to complete a dungeon over the course of a week which is often necisary. The first 40-man raid dungeons were Molten Core and Onyxia's Lair. Molten Core (9 bosses + 1 super end boss) is doable with far less than 40 now if your group has been doing it and has awesome gear. Onyxia is a 1 boss dungeon which is also doable with less than 40. (Average completion time is 8 hours for MC, 1 hour for Onyxia) They then released Blackwing's Lair which is a lot harder than either of the other 2, most servers have only managed to progress to the first few bosses by the time they released AQ (I forgot how to spell it..) There really is no average completion time for BWL because only a few guilds complete it. AQ was just released about a month ago, even harder than BWL, I'm not sure how many if any bosses people have killed. But to sum it up, you need an organized guild of either 40 extremely i-will-lose-my-job-over-a-game dedicated people or a guild of 80 pretty dedicated people to assure that you will be able to do one of these dungeons on a schedualed night. High end raiding guilds will usually have planned raids 3-5 nights a week going to the various dungeons which makes the end game content seem more like a second job than a video game. The harder they make these dungeons the longer it takes guilds to progress through them, the more raid time is REQUIED the less fun the game becomes.
Have fun, it's all about raids and it's why a lot of people are simply quitting the game. They seem to have forgotten the large number of people who made the game so popular..
*Fortitudo, aequitas, fidelitas.*
I leveled a hunter to 60, ran a number of raids with people in my guild, and really had a blast. My character is sitting there waiting for me, and I do plan on going back once the level cap is raised. When I was playing before, my wife was getting pretty neglected. I tried getting her into it, but I'd have had better luck trying to talk the pope into subscribing and playing an undead thief. Brick wall.
But now, she changed jobs, and starts very early in the morning. And goes to bed at about 9pm. Me? I stay up until about 1am. Lots of gaming time, wife is happy, therefore I am happy and life is good. I think I just talked myself into re-subscribing again. Where's my damn credit card.
http://cubemonkey.net/quotes -- fortune-mod quote generator
Agreed. They are rather offensive, but somehow amusing . . . I wish they'd post more often and maybe get away from template-based posts.
For some people getting the great item and defeating an extremely difficult boss is fun. But I guess everyone should play games your way.
Being a game designer, and writing my own MMO, I've been doing a lot of thinking about WoW (avid player for 6 months).
It doesn't find the happy medium. It is like a pyramid, with the middle missing. There is no spot for mediocracy. You have leetsauce gear, or you are a noob.
Every game has its roots. DAoC was a PvP game. EQ was a PvE game. WoW can't make up its mind, so its kinda half-assing it on both attempts.
I think its great for the extra publicity, as it helps us indies get a better grasp on what Joe Public wants and how he reacts to various scenarios.
Raid Zone: Huge dungeon inside a MMORPG, populated with enemy leaders and extremely valuable treasure. Takes a group of 5-40 players hours to finish.
Eastern Plaguelands: One of the toughest outside areas of World of Warcraft. The Plaguelands are the remnants of a country that was killed by a plauge and ravaged by undead. Everything is dead, rotting, and there are undead (skeletons, zombies) and huge maggots everywhere. The Eastern Plaguelands are home to two of the first Raid Dungeons of the endgame -- Scholomance, a destroyed city full of undead, and Stratholme, a ruined city divided into two, one half is full of corrupted paladins, the other half full of undead.
Undercity: The main town of the Forsaken. Previously the capital city Lordaeron, events in Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos caused it to be destroyed by an undead Army called the scourge. Later, a "free" faction of undead, the Forsaken, took it over as their home.
Peirs Anthony had predicted these kinds of elaborate games a decade or more ago. He also predicted their wealth generating potential from intangible creations.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
I feel I have to chime in here in the defense of raids.
First, I find them a lot of fun but not for 8 hours. So, I don't join competitive guilds, I join more relaxed guilds, generally with higher numbers (about 140 or so) that has people willing to go on various raids if you'd like to that week
Second, They aren't required.
I spend more of my time on wow playing battlegrounds and leveling alts. I also like the concept of making a lvl 29 WSG character (that being a character that I don't level passed level 29 so he can play in a lvl 20-29 bracket in an instanced pvp arena) and getting the best possible gear for him and seeing how bad I can beat people (since its not going to happen in the 60 bracket.) Then do it again with a different race/class.
To me it's amazing working together in a 40 person group to accomplish a goal. It's cool to see all the rogues running around and hunters and mages unleashing ranged attacks from 41 yards. But, it does get redundant. I equate getting the best gear and (in an MMO world that means being the best generally) to being a dedicated athlete, it takes boring and redundant good ol' fashioned work! The best rewards shouldn't be easy to obtain and if you don't like it you probably should stick to FPS or RTS.
The game, if I recall, was still massively multiplayer at levels 1-40. At endgame it reaches a point where you're basically forced to start raiding, or just start over again with a new character. If you think grinding the same enemies for hours with 40 other people yelling at you for heals is the only way to play an MMORPG then you need to stop playing WoW.
Seriously. Rare should mean only a few can exist in the entire world. In MMORPG parlance rare means you just have to farm the same damn mob over and over for it to drop. Nothing is Rare/Epic in WOW. It just takes longer to get. Hell most 60s are equipped in rares/epics.
Worse, its an ever escalating arms race. They keep out doing the last quest and now you have scads of level 60s running around with items that normal level 60 content can't threaten and worse, in PvP anyone not equipped on the same level is just shit out of luck.
Monty Hall.
When a MMORPG finally understand what rare means then perhaps we can get away from this incessant farming the create. Then Blizzard gets up on their high horse claim gold farmers are bad yet they continue to create the very environment which fosters them!
(sorry for the ramble)
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I stopped eating glass when EQ2 came out and my uber guild in EQ fall apart after I amassed enough DKP to get whatever I wanted, which then became totally useless. It was bad enough having to be at my computer for 4+ hours per night at the same time and participate in terminally boring raids over and over to get phat lewt, but the politics and the ass-kissing and the trivial drama just did me in.
At that point I stopped playing EQ and didn't mess with any of their competitors. But everything I'm hearing about WoW is that it seems almost identical to Everquest. It has all the same problems that plagued EQ. So what makes it a big deal? Is is just new and different eye candy but the same design? Same group sizes; same raid setup; instanced zones; epic weapons; everything?
I actually really enjoyed non-instanced dungeons. I'd argue whether the WoW and EQ2 standard is better. Yea, it's better if you want to live in a little sealed, unrealstic world, but the non-instanced dungeons were a lot more fun. Raids would accidently/intentionally train each other; opposing groups would help each other out; you could watch a powerful group break into a secured area and then sneak in and get some good loot... these are very real-world, realistic type scenarios. Instanced dungeons are lame. So exactly why is WoW such a hip game? From what I gather, it's totally derivative of other MMORPGS.
The "war" between hardcore and casual isn't a war at all. It's just casual players have reached a point in the game where they are unable to advance their characters further. They don't want epic handouts, they just want a way to continue to make progress with their character and thanks to time/skill or other factors are unable to participate in the 40 man raid guilds that allow that to happen.
It's not surprising given that it's been over a year since a new "casual" dungeon has been added to the game (dire maul).
The issue that I see with this is the fact that starting a new character nearly becomes impossible, and nearly all the end-game content for reaching 60 is limited to 40 people during a guild's raid schedule. I, at one point, had two level 60's and enjoyed the game, but I realized it actually was taking over my life.
Initially I would only space time in for WoW, but eventually I found myself moving around my own timetable *for* WoW. Once you're in the hardcore guids, there is no end to the raiding (at night...during the day there is absolutely nothing to do at level 60 beyond PvP, and the PvP items suck compared to anything from BWL). The game became an obsession, perfectly viable business opportunities and opportunities to make a significant inroad into my career were forsakeen for...well...taking down Golemagg for the 55th time.
Now, this new raid instance merely continues the chain. Once again, there's nothing outside of raiding to do once you're 60. PvP items are becoming increasingly inferior to the epics won out of BWL or even AQ40.
Now the issue with new characters is suddenly, lets say you make a new one. You get him to 60, great. Decked out in blue items if you're good and spent your time leveling the last levels in Dire Maul. With this new Nex thing, you're incredibly behind. There are the epics from Molten Core you would want to get, which then you'll need to get the items from Blackwing Lair, then hit up AQ40 for all the latest Legendary or god knows what, then you'd be on your way to Nex. This process would take nearly 2 years to complete, and there's no way in hell you're going to AQ40 or this new zone without being decked out in Epics. There's even very little use for you in BWL if you're in Blues...especially against Vael when everyone just needs to be putting out huge numbers.
Thus, it becomes alts are...well...more of a burden than an enjoyable part of the game. You're stuck on one character and you damn well better enjoy it. You're hooped if not.
If i was at Blizzard, I would be looking for more ways to extend the story at level 60 beyond "Get a group of 40 people and kick ass". ZG was slowly making it that way...but perhaps even take it further. Most people who are casual could perhaps get 5 people together. Make a dungeon where you go and kill something that will yeild an epic item with a 200% drop rate (in other words, two epics...not 3 or 4 like from the 40 man raid bosses). Make the dungeon take around 2 hours to complete for the group of 5, and give it a reset timer akin to ZG's, or perhaps even the weekly timer. The casual players will love it because they can only ever go so often, and the hardcores probably won't want to invest all that time...unless they're more interested in just killing time.
It would be a slow process, but a good one. Perhaps the dungeon (at a level of difficulty equivilant to MC) yeild items straight from MC itself. Of course, with only 5 people the game would need to ensure an item isn't going to be destroyed, thus is sensitive to the classes in the group. At this rate, the group of 5 people should have 8 epics (the number of armor slots) by the end of 5 months. Comparatively, if you have 40 people go into MC, MC yeilds around 30 epics a month, 8 slots each, you're looking at 3 months of getting entirely equipped.
Thoughts?
To make a pun demonstrates the highest understanding of a language
from http://web.archive.org/web/20021202071205/www.worl dofwarcraft.com/wow/faq/ :
How will World of Warcraft differ from other MMORPGs?
World of Warcraft will differ from other MMORPGs in many ways. One of our main goals is to ensure that players can enjoy World of Warcraft without having to invest huge amounts of playtime. Players will be able to complete quests and experience the world at their own pace-whether it be a few hours here and there, or week-long adventuring marathons. Additionally, our quest system will provide an enormous variety of captivating quests with story elements, dynamic events, and flexible reward systems. World of Warcraft will also feature a faster style of play, with less downtime and an emphasis on combat and tactics against multiple opponents. We also plan to incorporate several unique features, which we'll disclose throughout the course of development.
Once a character reaches 60, the only playstyles are to raid or grind. At 60 you can play at your own pace, so long as that pace matches that of at least 20 other people. Story elements and dynamic events are cool, but at 60 there are fewer and fewer quests that take longer to complete and are accessible to fewer people. Fighting a huge raid boss doesn't involve much tactics against multiple opponents. And to boot, the raid itemization progression (aka mudflation) has totally thrown off PvP balance between those who raid and those who do not.
No game is going to last forever.
Nethack
I don't care what youre doing so much as the idiotic way you're doing it.
Are you facing imminent death unless you enter it with 40+ people?
Nah. You just need 4 compentant players who aren't retards to survive but it just so happens the games ratio of retards to competant players is 10:1
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
I can't see that? All I said was that getting the weapons is fun for some people. You were claiming that wasn't the way to have fun. I know many people who have never seen the inside of Molten Core and have ridiculous amounts of time on their main character and love WoW. Different strokes for different folks is fine with me.
I think an easy solution to the situation is to create more tier 0 sets. One for each spec tree for each class. Add a few 5-10 man dungeons within which certain bosses drop said items (maybe make a few drop off of Strat, Scholo, etc). The casual player can get a decent blue item in a few hours of gameplay.
That should solve the problem for a number of months. The casual players get more content and the hardcore gamer keeps what's important to them, the differentiation between casual and hardcore players based upon the color of their item names.
Is that raid content is trivially easy. It takes a bit of time to learn the encounter, but once a few guilds have done it and posted their techniques, it's not hard to learn.
Within the 40 person raid, there's a few people working hard; the main tank, the leader co-ordinating, etc. But most of the 40 people are just mechanically doing their job. Working as "healbots" staring at health bars and castng heals when the health goes down, or as "damagebots" casting the same attack over and over when the leader says to attack and pausing when the leader says to stop attacking so the tanks can regain control. It's sickening how easy it is to rake in the epics. It just takes time. About 6-8 hours to complete the raid and get around 20 epics for the 40 players.
By contrast, the other content is far more challenging. Especially PvP, but even smaller high level instances like Dire Maul are much more challenging than MC. Even the blizzard quote from the article scoffs at how easy Stratholme is (a 5 man instance). Stratholme is *harder* than Molten Core. Yet Molten Core gives out epics like free candy.
it doesn't take any more blizzard man-hours to create an item for 10,000 people than for three people.
it's just not worth it to do the art/balance-testing for something that only two or three people are going to see.
lysergically yours
http://www.grogaddicts.org
7
Nom de dieu de putain de bordel de merde de saloperie de connard d encule de ta mere.
I, on the other hand, am in a guild that is essentially a small group of friends. I've never even set foot into Molten Core, since we tend to RP more than anything else. I raid every now and then, but I get terrible migraines if I have to stare at the screen for too long. Between that and my full time job, my character has completely stagnated. I've got top of the line crafted gear, but it'll never get better unless I seriously raid. In essence, I've finished the game... There's just nowhere for it to take me now.
Now we have the announcement that the next big thing is, amazingly, another megaraid dungeon. Whoop-de-doo.
The expansion will probably add a decent amount of casual-friendly content (new areas to explore, 5 and 10-man dungeons that don't have to be completed in daily segments, etc.), so I'll probably be back when that's released. But for now, there isn't a single reason for me to keep shelling out $15 a month.
This game is on borrowed time. (1) The game is currently unstable and people are having to queue for a long time to actually get to play (even on medium pop servers); (2) The end game content forces you to raid if you want to progress, even if you don't like that playstyle and would prefer 10-15 person content - the expansion will give you another 10 whole levels of play if you don't like to raid; (3) The recent anti-gay "blaming the victims" stuff is the last straw.
Some people may like this, but personally, I'm done with it, and so are the friends I used to play with.
Oh and (4): Blizzard's CMs are arrogant and ignorant cretins (except for the Mac Support people, who are awesome).
"by that I mean people who don't sit on slashdot all day wondering why everyone else isn't building robots" DECS
You know, I have played this game for a long time and really enjoyed it. But now it's turning into EQ. Kaplan and his -people- are slowly caring more and more about the "next release" and less and less about the current state of the game. It would be nice to see them fix the issue that are still open with the game as it stands. Then again, he and McQuade might be buddies :)
If you can do MC or BWL with 5 people, you need to be held as a WoW God.
Will not have been bored at endgame already... Few people can go lvl 60 faster then 15 days (thats 15x24 gameplayed hours, which is 360 hours). You have numerous classes to explore and there's tons of dungeons to explore after your lvl 60 as well. BRD, LBRS, UBRS, Stratholme, Scholomance, Dire Mauls 3 wings.
After your done with that there is much more casuals can do. IF they love the 1-59 experience they can make a new class. A new faction, try a different server type...
I personally hated grinding 1-60. I did quests and hung out with friends but most of the time it felt like a goddamn grind because it is a grind.
Also you make it out that all casuals dont' care about epics and just wnat some form of progression. HEll, spending some time in the wow general boards is all you need to know thats not true. I've seen countless people want epics of raid caliber not just from 5 man content but single man too (from a mmorpg...sigh).
Raiding dungeons can be thrilling and just 4 hours a day consistently for at least 3-4 days a week can give you significant results. Back when our guild had trouble fielding people we conquered all of molten core minus ragnaros just raiding 2-3 days a week. We conquered him when we started raiding 4 days a week. The guild has already killed nefarion now btw.
Needing to play 8 hours a day every day is a huge exaggeration.
Hmmm... Pie...
or what passes as them to gamers
Except that when Blizzard releases the new expansion raid zones, THOSE new raid zones will only be for the hardcore. And Blizzard (MMORPGs in general) typically doesn't raise the level cap too often. Don't forget, WoW initially launched with a level 50 cap and was only bumped up to level 60 because people were hitting the level cap literally a week after the launch (I think the current record is something like 4 days playtime from level 1 to 60.)
Good point about the expansion making these high end instances a lot simpler to do at the higher levels. I hope Blizzard reads some of the comments on here, and makes more light raid zones that don't require 40 people at 8 hours to complete the instances. It seams there are a lot of casual gamers that won't be able to get through some of these instances, as they won't have the time to commit to such an epic endevor. My vote would be for more simple zones for the level 50-60 players that can be done with 5 players, in 1-3 hours.
I encrypt all my files with Double XOR Encryption!
I don't know what all you casual people are whining about. There's been tons of new stuff introduced in the last 5 months for people to have fun with on their own or in a group of 5:
1) Grind furbolgs a couple hours a day for a few months and get a trinket that summons a furbolg for 45 seconds and does 300 damage!
2) Enjoy the Lunar Festival happening right now! Collect 50 coins from around the world and swap them in for..... fireworks.... and dresses!
3) A brand new Yojimba Isle. Visit there and learn about a couple of raid quests you won't be able to go on! Lots of in-depth lore if "We must kill them all" is lore to you.
4) The race to open AQ20/40! Do your part skinning 1,000s of animals or collecting 1,000s of runecloth to open up the new 20/40-man instances!
5) The darkmoon faire! Skin 1,000s of animals and collect rare drops to get trinkets!
6) The Thorium brotherhood introduced! Have you mined your 2100 ore yet? Didn't think so! Start now! Again, tons of in-depth lore and involved quests such as "give me 25 incendosaur scales!"
7) Go from Hated to Exalted with the Brood of Nozdormu. Again, tons of fun, lots of laughs!
In Blizzard's defense, Cenarion Hold had a couple interesting quests to it and the fishing tournament was a cool idea. Other than that, not much happening lore-wise or 1-5 casual player-wise.
I'm also in the same boat. Enjoyed some of the quests with interesting stories to them earlier on -- tracking down a kingdom's missing king, investigating a burnt out inn, etc. Haven't found much of that recently. Just a lot of raiding to upgrade peoples characters by 0.01%.
I've stepped away from the game a bit hoping that Blizzard puts more interesting things lore-wise into the game with the expansion. The Caverns of Time have decent potential for this, but who knows, maybe they'll just make the places you go to within the caverns lots of 20-40-man raid places with thin stories to them.
And WoW's graphics look like it too! /clap
Getting old fast, Shit!
They will make StarCraft2 when people stop buying starcraft. Please god make them stop selling SC.
I'm demented? I'M DEMENTED!? Well, tally hoe, scally wag. If I had a rare/epic for everytime someone told me that, well... I'd be playing World of Warcraft!
Toodles.
get whipped (you know you like it)
it just so happens the games ratio of retards to competant players is 10:1
That's partially due to the ratio of tards to competent people in society. It's somewhat exacerbated by the tendency for introverts to spend too much time playing these games.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
We've gotten good enough that we can do all but the last boss (rag) in MC at about 5 hours on the dot. Some guilds do it faster.
People come and go during this time too.
It is a bummer to have to rush home from work to make it to the scheduled raids on time.
However, a much larger complaint for me is pvp... With a full time job and family I just don't have the time to spend PVPing to continue building my rank up compared to a college student who is skipping classes and having his friends play "shifts" on his account.
I sure wish it was based more on skill than who has the most time to farm honor kills day and night. I should hit rank 9 on Tuesday but I really wonder if I'll be able to make it much higher.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
How many copper bars am I going to have to collect to open this elitist dungeon?
I can't believe this isn't getting more coverage!
I've already written to Vivendi about this issue. I think that in all fairness, Blizzard has good intentions. My hope is that by Monday afternoon they'll have a well-formed apology ready.
Gamertag: ChrisCasey
They seem to have some new templates though.
I wish we'd see some of their major trolls, like the fake hijacked Apple OS.
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
Blizzard have released quite a lot since release. See for yourself: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/underdev/imple mented/index.html (Mauradon, Gurubashi Arena, Dire Maul, Azuregos, Lord Kazzak, the PvP honour system, the elemental invasions, PvP Battlegrounds (unlike you, I and many others find them very fun), Blackwing Lair, Darkmoon Faire, Fishing contest, Zul-Gurub 20-man raid zone, Silithus and Searing Gorge revamps, the 4 Dragons, linked auction houses, Ahn'Quiraj (20-man and 40-man raid zones, and s***loads of bugfixes, character class fixes and revamps, and holiday festivals).
Sorry for sounding like a fanboy, but no hobby modders would be able to create content of the same quality Blizzard's content is. Creating an instance isn't simply a couple-of-days 3D Studio Max job (more like couple of weeks to get an internal release done). The thing needs to fit into the game world and into the storyline, and it needs to fulfil the needs of the players. Interesting new encounters take quite a lot of time to design, test and balance, and adding items which are useful yet not game-breaking isn't a simple task either. Then there are all the quests, sound effects and voice acting, artwork - going to concept art to the final textured model doesn't just take a day or two. Loads of people work on instances - writers, game and level designers, modelers, texturers, sound people, and lots of testers.
I don't play Battlefield, but I play a lot of Counter-Strike (been playing since beta 1) and I have come across a lot of community-made stuff (the whole game was a community-made game before 1.6), and even there 3rd party maps tended to suck. First person shooter maps are a lot simpler to create (and even they take weeks of work, lots of testing, and lots of post-release tweaking) than proper WoW instances with all the content. With newer, more sophisticated engines which allow for more polys and higher-res textures, it's getting harder and harder for modders to create high-quality content. Creating maps for CS1.6 which were as good as the official maps was hard - doing so for Counter-Strike: Source is way harder.
And even if Blizzard would let players create content, how would it be integrated into the game world? You can't just let players create new items (they'd all create uber-legendary weapons which drop off rabbits).
The only feasible thing is maybe for Blizzard to hold some sort of a "create a design for a new weapon or other visible item" contest. Creating concept art and models for itemsis something a few people in the community could do. As for whole instances, I doubt any non-professional would be able to create something of the same standards of Blizzard's content.
I think it is time to look back
I don't think anyone has ever explained better what it takes to "enjoy" a mmorpg. And no, I don't think EQ and WoW have different gameplay concepts. In the end, they are both games designed with time-investment in mind, and that's utter and wicker design
---------
Thinking never hurt anybody --MacGyver
I'm a level 48 right now. Once I hit 60, I plan to start over with a new character (perhaps a shaman, I hear they no longer take damage! :)
Sometimes the journey is just more fun than the destination.
My preferred approach to new content would be to drop pretty and thematic items in the more difficult dungeons but to not increase their power. I would much rather see the end-game dungeons center around player skill, rather than item power.
The problem with this is that it is not the best money-maker for Blizzard. The way they have it now, they have sucked a lot of hardcore players into an endless gerbil cage run of equipment upgrades. This is good for business (although you could argue that if enough people becoming addicted and seek help which involves quitting WoW, the equation will go the other way). And those that hate the end-game farming, still want the opportunity to see the cool content in the end-game, so they start an alt and get to 40. Then they become frustrated with the mind-numbing grind, and start another alt. Then they want to see the end-game and get to 40. Then they become frustrated and make an alt. Then they...
In my opinion, WoW is optimized for profit and that profit exploits the most addictive aspects of player psychology to ensure high subscription rate and revenue. The sad thing is that many players of these games are looking for an addictive behavior that will give them a cycle of "accomplishment" ("Got my next epic!") that has no end. Many people really are looking for a full escape from a real life where "accomplishment" is a lot less clear cut than reaching the next player level. Those of us that would rather pay $15/mo and log on for a few hours a week and still have a fulfilling experience are the minority. Or rather, let me say that those of us that insist on balance, and will not play a brain-sucking game that only rewards addictive behavior are in the minority. Therefore, the most money is had by catering to the majority. And that majority largely consists of the hardcore grind addicts and the people with a bad case of altitis ("How many level 40s do you have?"). I was in the latter category.
I left WoW six months ago, and although I would really enjoy taking a stroll in NEX and AQ, there is no way that I will sacrifice a few hours of life each day for 2 years to do it. I took that time over the past 6 months and found a nice house instead; a real one.
I seriously cannot believe some of the idiotic posts I'm seeing in this thread. Why do people think you're supposed to be able to play an MMO constantly, forever and ever, and always be able to have new content available to play? Are you people fucking retarded? It takes ten to a hundred times as much time and effort to create interesting content as it does to experience it. Hey, did it ever occur to you that maybe once you hit level 60, if you don't like raiding or grinding for loot, and you've finished all the available quests, you could stop playing WoW? GASP! NO! YOU MUST RAID THE SAME DUNGEON A BILLION TIMES!!! RAWR!!!!!!!111dragon
I mean, it's not like WoW has 3,000 or so quests, most of which you probably didn't do on your way from 1-60 with a given character. It's not like there are eight other classes you could play, or seven other races, some of whom have large swathes of entirely different quests. No, no, I'm going to bitch because I got to level 60 AND THERE'S NOT INFINITE MORE CONTENT TO PLAY! OMGWTFBBQORLY!!
Jesus. If you don't like raiding, and you don't want to start a new character (try the other faction! They have an almost entirely separate set of quests to do!), and you're bored with the game, STOP PLAYING. You played for a few months, Blizzard got some of your cash, it's quite a fair trade. Quit bitching like you're entitled to something which is impossible to create. Christ on a crutch.
(Lest anyone impugn my qualifications to rant on this topic, I have a level 60 warlock, 60 priest, 44 warrior, 35 hunter, 30 mage, 25 rogue, 24 paladin, and 10 druid. That's on ONE server. I played a lot until a few months ago (don't have the time now). Oh noes!)
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
That's not Blizzard being anti-GLBT, that's a guild being anti-straight. If Blizzard doesn't want guilds to discriminate based on sexual orientation, then that policy should be applied without discrimation.
I suppose if i announced that "Guild Foo is recruiting. We're not strictly hetero, but we prefer straights!" you would think that was perfectly OK?
Yeesh...you might want to trade in that English-to-Homophobe dictionary. Look for one where "GLBT-friendly" comes out as "we won't insult/harass/hate you" instead of "anti-straight".
I'm not familiar with the mentioned guild/server, but mine has a similar guild that took an extraordinary amount of flak for just trying to provide a gaming experience where you don't hear "stfu u fag" every 5 minutes. (Of course there are still plenty of "stfu u n00b", etc., but it's a start...)
Q. Why not just let casual players get rewards comparable to those from raids?
A. It would be almost impossible for us to do, and this is a philosophical decision. We need to put a structure in place for players where they feel that if they do more difficult encounters, they'll get rewarded for it.
Sadly, the above quote indicates that difficulty in the mind of WoW designers has nothing to do with player skill so much as the ability to follow a narrowly predetermined script for N hours. The sad truth is that it's really fairly simple to macro instance runs down to putting your character on "follow" mode and taping down the macro hotkey. This simply isn't the case for 5-man content as it requires a wider set of skills and the ability to adapt, since the loss of even one person can be disastrous. Now, even 5-man dungeons in WoW aren't really difficult as they too have a predetermined script to follow, but the more granular party makeup at least makes it less likely that this can be accomplished by some well-written macro code. I've long since given up on WoW's item acquisition fetish bent for Guild Wars, in which the best items in the game can typically be bought in town. In practice, this seems to refocus the game on player skill and cooperation, and "winning" the game simply can't be achieved through perseverance.
It's clear that most of slashdot is crowded with casuals.. But uh.. 4 hours for 3 days a week is um not a whole lot no matter how ou look at it.
Join a medium-high pop server and find a guild that only raids on weekends. Or join a massive guild where they don't need all of their 90 members every day for 40 man raids.
Hmmm... Pie...
This is a great fucking idea. Not only would it remove bias towards high-end raiding as you've suggested, it would eliminate lag in Ironforge. No people sitting around doing nothing but eating bandwidth! Sweet. Honestly, this solution is better than me upgrading my computer.
I like this idea, it's interesting. I would also like to see true world pvp so you can kill your own faction (those jerks) and maybe some other ways to perma-die in the game besides the time limit you mention. Maybe they could make a "hardcore" server for this gameplay mode.
He is right... alas...
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Blizzard says, 'We need to put a structure in place for players where they feel that if they do more difficult encounters, they'll get rewarded for it.' when asked why only raiders get the best rewards.
The problem is that Blizzard's idea of what constitutes 'difficult' is 90% number of people involved and 10% technical difficulty of the content and fight organization. If you need 40 people to kill something, you get epics. If you only need 20, you get blues. That's all there is to their system.
Inadequately tested, and likely unfinished, upon release. Initial MC, BWL, and 40 man AQ instance anyone?
Just to give you people a heads up... you just KNOW you're going to need exalted with Argent Dawn for some of the quest goodies! So best to start now if you've been lazy with AD faction.. ALSO, be sure to gear up on frost and shadow resist!
I stopped playing the game back in mid december. I'm not sure how i'm addicted to a game I no longer play.
there are few activities i don't spend more then ten hours on. Unless it is something truly trivial. I enjoy gaming and if i find a game i liked i will more then likely spend more then ten of the 168 hours of so availabel in the week to do so. I'm also a full time student... That takes up quite a bit more time then gaming. I also have a part time job in which i work twenty hours.
The ony thing i can think of that i spend less time doing is truly trivial like eating food or something. There are few things i "do" for enjoyment that can be fulfilling if I spend a worthless amount fo time on. The only thing I regret doing now is my part time job... i've sapped all the experience I can from that job and now everything is simply boring and repeaticuous as wow has become.
Hmmm... Pie...
How is playing with 5 or 6 good friends of less value than playing with 39 other people you don't even know? I am in a raiding guild and frankly the drama and whining is not fun, nor are the raids themselves. But having 70+ played days on my main there isn't anything else to do. There is absolutely no reason they can't make smaller dungeons on timers so they can't be farmed, with extremely difficult pulls and a collection scheme a'la Zul'Gurub. Hell, Molten Core is a 40 man that is farmed endlessly.
You don't even have to put purple gear in there, just *blue* gear of the equivalent level. You have level 83 epics in AQ, but where are the level 83 rare items? Blizz has a budget system worked out already they just need to use it to it's full potential. The way the raiding guilds farm MC already has made 'epic' items seem less than epic when IF is full of people decked out in full tier 1 gear. You can hardly tell one warrior from another anymore, they all wear the exact same gear.
I laugh in the face of people that say more people required = harder content. Zul'Gurub is a 20 person raid that requires concentration and coordination most of the time. Molten Core is 40 man, but I can go auto-follow for 30 minutes and never even be missed. The only thing epic about 40 man raids is the bellyaching over who got what item.
There is another piece to the puzzle that Tigole didn't even address there, and that's PVP. It is utterly broken as far as gear is concerned, raiding guilds field teams of players who PvP fairly little, yet they mop up the guilds who are primarily PvP oriented since they have access to superior gear. So your average player enters a battleground only to spend his time being one and two shotted by epic geared players. Kinda kills the fun when you spend more time waiting to be rezzed than you do playing.
A simple solution would be to make all skills and talents have 1/2 the normal effect inside BGs. This would shrink the gap between the haves and have nots, who would at least have time to get a few hits in before dying to that warrior with the Windseeker sword.
That sounds like your group simply knows how to do MC more than ZG. Not a lot of groups have the ZG encounters down to a science yet (and it helps that the boss encounters are scripted more creatively).
Much of the griping about Zul'Gurub right now is that it's about as hard as Molten Core and yet the equipment rewards aren't as good. What is there to do at level 60? You have two options, socialization (which I get by running either ZG or MC) and character progression (which, aside from ZG enchants, I'll only get from MC due to the poorer drops in ZG). Right now my guild runs ZG for the novelty factor and for the reputation, but that probably won't last that long.
From Penny Arcade:
The Timesink Cavern
Timesink Cavern is a four-hundred man raid instance that requires seventy-six consecutive hours to complete.
"LF399M TTC PST"
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