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Next World Of Warcraft Raid Dungeon
Posted by
Zonk
on Sat Jan 28, 2006 03:31 PM
from the paladins-mount-up dept.
from the paladins-mount-up dept.
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.
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NO MORE HUGE RAIDS! (Score:4, Funny)
RTFA (Score:2)
Too much "stupid" loot already ruins the game. (Score:5, Insightful)
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)
Parent
problem is (Score:3, Insightful)
it's just not worth it to do the art/balance-testing for something that only two or three people are going to see.
Re:Too much "stupid" loot already ruins the game. (Score:5, Insightful)
But we get plenty of that in real life, which is why we play games. Games where EVERYONE can be a winner, and the least amount of effort (clicking buttons, sitting in chairs, barely thinking) can ALWAYS produce 'rewards'.
You can't have it both ways, either a realistic system where rewards are limited and people lose as often as they win, or a fantasy system where rewards appear out of thin air.
Parent
Re:It's all about your epic gear (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:True Casuals (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:NO MORE HUGE RAIDS! (Score:2)
Molten Core is now doable in sections of 1-2 hours at a time with 30-40 players with only gear from Dire Maul or the first few (easy) bosses of ZG. People need to stop deman
Re:NO MORE HUGE RAIDS! (Score:2, Insightful)
Sounds pretty hardcore to me.
Re:NO MORE HUGE RAIDS! (Score:5, Insightful)
WoW really is a very short game. You can reach end game extremely quickly, and for the most part, the game has no dynamic end-game content.
You get to Level 60 and then you have to join a massive guild to make it worth your while. The only thing left to do now is get "uber" gear. To do this, you have to do instances like Molten Core over, and over, and over again. You can't just do it once, because there are a lot of people in the guild and a lot of people in the instance on the particular raid.
Once you reach Level 60 you join a massive guild and then have to play for at least 1-2 hours at a time, 3 days a week, on a fricken schedule just to advance your gear. It's not even a game anymore, it's work. Every night, 7pm log on and get ready to raid. For ever raid you participate in you get "points" within your own guild, and if you do it enough you get a chance to spend those points on the gear that drops in the instance. This is how most guilds work.
Basically, when you get to this level, it's not a game anymore. It's a job. You get paid per hour in points, and then you may spend those points to advance your characters stats. Don't show up to a bunch of raids? You might get fired. Don't do your job well? You might get fired.
Once you reach Level 60 in WoW it is ONLY for the hardcore.
Parent
Re:NO MORE HUGE RAIDS! (Score:4, Insightful)
You MUST be joking. "All new quests?" By the time you've gone through Deadmines/Wailing Caverns, you've played through all the quests the game has to offer.
* FedEx - Bring Item X to npc Y
* Orkin - Kill n monsters
* Search Party - Find the missing NPC. Bring him (or more often, something he was carrying before his horrible death) back.
* Hunter/Gather - Grind Monster X for n item Ys.
* Assassin - Kill boss monster X. Return with $BODY_PART
* Class - Use class abilities in meaningless ways to acheive some end (unless you're a rogue.)
That's all there is to it, and you play through all of them, except perhaps the last one, repeatedly on the FIRST run through. You're response is "If the end of the game isn't fun, just do it again?!"
Parent
Re:NO MORE HUGE RAIDS! (Score:2)
I'm quite happy with my green/blue gear. I just want something to do with my level 60 characters. I just do not have the kind of time to sit and LFG for an hour (sometimes longer) before a raid then struggle th
Re:NO MORE HUGE RAIDS! (Score:4, Funny)
oops, wrong forum.
Parent
Re:NO MORE HUGE RAIDS! (Score:2)
Although smaller 20-man raids like Zul'Gurub are available, they too require a large investment of time. When you
Re:NO MORE HUGE RAIDS! (Score:5, Insightful)
Make it challenging, make it complex, make it interesting, but don't make it all colossally huge. I started playing WoW because it was 'the MMORPG for the rest of us', for the people who don't have eight hours a day to devote to dungeons and instances and plotting. I would like to see more 'lone wolf' content for people who can't join a guild and/or commit to certain times to be online and play.
Maybe that's just me though.
Parent
Re:NO MORE HUGE RAIDS! (Score:5, Insightful)
When it comes down to gameplay raids is basically a healer/tank/damage dealer/crowd control game. Each person specializes on one thing and basically has to use only those skills for the whole raid. Also, due to there being 40 people, the death of any one person has less impact on the overall performance of the raid.
In a 5-man instance each player will have to use most of their skills because there aren't enough people to specialize. A single death will reduce the group size by 20 percent and things like mindless healer rotation is impossible.
Of course it is possible to make raids challenging in other ways, but it is also possible to make 5-man instances more challenging and without forcing people to join uber-guild to have fun.
Parent
Re:NO MORE HUGE RAIDS! (Score:3, Informative)
all the time in the world (Score:3, Insightful)
Elite Quests and Dungeons (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Elite Quests and Dungeons (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Elite Quests and Dungeons (Score:2)
Re:Elite Quests and Dungeons (Score:5, Insightful)
With the instances/raids though, there's a dynamic that has to be present to be successful. I'll agree if publicly Looking For Group, you may end up with a group that makes the experience miserable, but at the same time you have a good chance of meeting new friends to quest with later. With both my brothers already established players on our server, I was accepted into their guild, and the end-game instances are a blast with them.
The thing that makes the raids and dungeons interesting is it's not the same old kill/gather quests, but rather a dynamic group effort requiring different skills and talents to be successful. Take Molten Core- There's a number of boss fights there, each with different strategies to take them down, from Lucifron to Ragneros. Beyond that, head into Blackwing Lair, and face even more difficult fights. As far as elite quests being a cop-out, I'd say it's the opposite. More thought and planning goes into creating an elite/boss fight than typical trash mobs. With the higher end bosses, you need a clever combination of talent, from healing, to banishing, to sheeping/sapping, to all out DPS'ing. All in all, it's refreshing to see a group come together to use each classes unique skills as one solid unit, to take down otherwise impossible enemies.
For people who don't want to join guilds or cooperate with 39 other people, there's still Blackrock Spire, Scholomance, Stratholme, Dire Maul, and a few others that can be done 5 or 10 man. Group together with some people, and if you have fun with them, add them to your friends list, and ask if they'd like to quest together in the future. Amass a few friends, and you have the beginnings of a guild of your own.
I can't sway anyone's opinion on end-game Warcraft, and it's not my intention to try. Everyone has a personal preference, and my personal experience has been thus far positive. As with any game, YMMV.
Parent
Re:Elite Quests and Dungeons (Score:3)
A lot of people are becoming disallusioned with WoW because of this, myself included. A new 40 man dungeon that's harder than anything in the game? Why not expend al
WoW is getting out of hand (Score:5, Funny)
A little less MM MMORPG? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:A little less MM MMORPG? (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's say doing a raid takes 3 hours of planning and 7 hours to complete. That's 10 hours of time expended. Coul
Re:A little less MM MMORPG? (Score:3, Informative)
You can make it to the "end" without joining a huge guild or raiding all the time. You'll simply reach the "end" sooner if you don't do those things. There is a finite amount of content in the game, whether you're into small group stuff or raiding. The raiding content
Leeroy Jenkins! (Score:4, Funny)
Expansion pack will fix a lot of high end problems (Score:4, Insightful)
public service message (Score:2, Insightful)
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
how wow works (Score:5, Insightful)
World Of Raidcraft. (Score:2, Insightful)
One of the problems with WoW (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Why is WoW Any Different? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
What casual v. hardcore is really about... (Score:3, Insightful)
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).
High end raids causing plug on new characters? (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
WoW has diverged from its what caused its success (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Well, I'm cancelling. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Well, I'm cancelling. (Score:3, Interesting)
Quiet, whiners! (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Idiots (Score:4, Insightful)
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!)
Bad answer (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Whatever (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:What is a "raid zone"? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:What is a "raid zone"? (Score:5, Informative)
A typical "raid zone" (in the context of the article) signifies a dungeon that requires a massive number of people (usually 40) teamed up to beat it. There are several such dungeons in the game. Alternatively, there are other dungeons that can be beaten with a small group of 5, or even smaller.
The Eastern Plaguelands [wikipedia.org] is just a location in the game. The Undercity [wikipedia.org] is home to one of the WoW races, the Forsaken Undead. The wiki links have a lot more information about WoW locations in general, as well as game lore regarding them.
Parent
Re:What is a "raid zone"? (Score:2)
As for the Plaguelands and Undercity: The Plaguelands were once the most fertile parts of Northern Azeroth. If you played warcraft 2 or 3, and remember the paladin Uther, that was his home. When 10 years ago the great plague broke out in the north, the dead rose as minions of the evil Lich king (who is actually an Orc spirit incased in magical ice that demons had doing their bidding). The lich
Definitions: (Score:3, Informative)
Eastern Plaguelands: [wikipedia.org] 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 -
Re:Definitions Please (Score:2)
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.
Effective
Re:Definitions Please (Score:2)
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
Re:expansions.... (Score:3, Insightful)