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.

NO MORE HUGE RAIDS!

PLEASE!! MAKE more content that people without ten thousand reliable friends and 8 hours of their life to waste can play. damn blizzard.

Re:It's all about your epic gear

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.

Re:True Casuals

Just four hours a day? That basically means doing nothing else with your free time if you have a job.

Too much "stupid" loot already ruins the game.

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)

Re:Too much "stupid" loot already ruins the game.

Let me explain what you mean. You're complaining about a system where 'rewards' (loot, xp, money, etc) materialize out of thin air. When you killed that merloc and looted its corpse, the money you got from it didn't come from anywhere, the merloc didn't 'earn' it. The merloc didn't spend 10 years eating saltwater fish to grow the [Thick Merloc Scale] you tore off it. It never gathered the raw materials for a [Cracked Short Bow]. In five minutes another identical merloc is going to appear with some more crap on it, all out of thin air. You think that's stupid. Of course it's stupid. The alternative is to have a system where players and non-player characters have to compete for persistent, LIMITED materials/resources/loot/energy. A system where not everyone can be winners, and hard work doesn't always pay off.

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.

Re:NO MORE HUGE RAIDS!

It is.

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.

Re:NO MORE HUGE RAIDS!

If you include alt-replayability (new content, not just same content with a different class) and two factions, you're looking at potentially 500 hours of unique content - all new quests and such.

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?!"

Re:NO MORE HUGE RAIDS!

POST ON YOUR MAIN, N00B!

oops, wrong forum.

/o-rly?

Re:NO MORE HUGE RAIDS!

This is one of the main reasons I stopped playing WoW. I'm a very solitary player, and while I don't mind joining up with two or three people for company, having to schedule end-game content just seems impractical to me. I want to see a massive sprawling, complex dungeon designed for three people, with traps and puzzles and such meant for three people to solve.

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.

Re:NO MORE HUGE RAIDS!

One more bad thing about raids is that they force players to specialize and makes the game more boring and actually easier than an equally hard 5-man instance. Hardcore players that doesn't want non-uber-guild players to have access to good items usually claim that raids should have better items because it is more difficult. The truth is that the most difficult thing about raids is organization. And in my opinion, organization shouldn't affect rewards, atleast not much.

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.

What is a "raid zone"?

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"?

Re:What is a "raid zone"?

Hmm, I thought TFA explained the concepts pretty well, but I'll explain it again.

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.

all the time in the world

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.

Elite Quests and Dungeons

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.

Re:Elite Quests and Dungeons

My experience has been almost the opposite. I leveled up to 60 at a relatively brisk pace, absorbing the game as I went along in the solo quests. I have 2 brothers who have been playing for quite a while now (and were the main reason I picked up the game, after thinking it was a waste of time for so long). I found the solo quests got boring an monotonous after a while. There's only so many times you can do the "Go speak with X" or "Go gather 10 of item X" or "Go kill 25 of X" before it starts to get repetative, just involving more damage, or more kills, or lower drop rates for items.

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.

WoW is getting out of hand

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.

A little less MM MMORPG?

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.

Leeroy Jenkins!

That's all I've got to say about that.

Expansion pack will fix a lot of high end problems

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.

public service message

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.

how wow works

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.

World Of Raidcraft.

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..

Too much fun, literally

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.

   

One of the problems with WoW

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.

Piers Anthony

Peirs Anthony had predicted these kinds of elaborate games a decade or more ago. He also predicted their wealth generating potential from intangible creations.

Raids

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.

Why is WoW Any Different?

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.

What casual v. hardcore is really about...

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).

High end raids causing plug on new characters?

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?

WoW has diverged from its what caused its success

from http://web.archive.org/web/20021202071205/www.worl dofwarcraft.com/wow/faq/ [archive.org] :
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.

WoW's dirty secret...

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.

On Malganis...

Join Grog Addicts FTW!

http://www.grogaddicts.org [grogaddicts.org]

7

Well, I'm cancelling.

My roommate and I are the perfect example of the raider/casual oddcouple. She's in the major uberguild of the server, is one of the primary healers and can spend anywhere from 6 to 20 hours a day raiding. I've seen her go from Onyxia to BWL to MC all in one spree. She enjoys it and coincidentally met her fiance through the same guild (one of the lead warlocks). She is also unemployed, living off of her family inheritance.

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.

Typical...

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).

No diff. than EQ any longer?

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 :)

Haha interesting times

or what passes as them to gamers

Quiet, whiners!

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.

MMORPGs are sooo 2000

And WoW's graphics look like it too! /clap

Raids don't have to take that much time.

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.

Yiiiipppeeee!!

How many copper bars am I going to have to collect to open this elitist dungeon?

insightful article about mmorpg's

I think it is time to look back [slashdot.org]

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

Once I hit 60...

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.

Idiots

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!)

Bad answer

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.

Whatever

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.

By "hard, really hard" he means...

Inadequately tested, and likely unfinished, upon release. Initial MC, BWL, and 40 man AQ instance anyone?

Fair warning!

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!

WoW Patch Notes

From Penny Arcade [penny-arcade.com]:

The Timesink Cavern

Timesink Cavern is a four-hundred man raid instance that requires seventy-six consecutive hours to complete.

"LF399M TTC PST"

Re:Definitions Please

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.

Re:Definitions Please

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.

Re:Definitions Please

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?

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 ... at least not to the end boss, and not without a lot of added risk.

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.

Re:Definitions Please

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 :)

 

Re:Moreover, Interestelingingy enough!?!?

Agreed. They are rather offensive, but somehow amusing . . . I wish they'd post more often and maybe get away from template-based posts.

Re:Raiding is *gasp* Fun

No game is going to last forever.

Nethack

Re:Definitions Please

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

STARCRAFT 2! STARCRAFT 2!

This decade please, damnit! PLEASE!! PLEASEEE!!!

Re:Anti GLBT bias in WoW.

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.

Re:expansions....

Blizzard have released quite a lot since release. See for yourself: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/underdev/imple mented/index.html [worldofwarcraft.com] (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.

Re:Anti GLBT bias in WoW.

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?

Re:game time limit?

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.

Re:game time limit?

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.