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.

Re:What is a "raid zone"?

[Zaxor]

• The Eastern Plaguelands are an area of one of the continents in the game, filled with upper-level monsters (generally demons and undead).
• The Undercity is the capital city of the Undead race (each of the game's races has their own capital city, excepting the gnomes and trolls).
• A "raid zone" in this context is an instance, an area which is not shared among all of the server's thousands of players but which is shared only amongst each group that enters it, eliminating competition for bosses that drop better items.
• A "raid" is such a group composed of 6-40 players who work together to defeat harder areas.

Re:What is a "raid zone"?

[jchenx]

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.

Re:A little less MM MMORPG?

[tourvil]

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.

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 simply takes longer to burn through.

I don't plan to join a raiding guild (not quite 60 yet, only 51), which means I'll probably have to settle for lower quality gear. But I don't really mind. I've had a lot of fun getting my current current character to where he is, and I suspect I'll enjoy PvP for a good while, even if I'm at a disadvantage at 60 without epics. When I get bored with the small group content/PvP at level 60, I will likely either start up a new character and try a different class or find some new games to play.

Definitions:

[_KiTA_]

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: [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 -- 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: [wikipedia.org] The main town of the Forsaken. [wikipedia.org] 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.

WoW's dirty secret...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:NO MORE HUGE RAIDS!

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you give an example of what you mean by "very short"?

Prince of Persia was a "short" game, finished in ~ 10-15 hours.

I've been playing World of Warcraft on my main for 6 days (144 hours), and I'm ~ level 40. I have 20 more levels to go of "main" content, then I can explore alternate content on my alt if I want, e.g. alternative starting area content, or even 2nd zone content.

And then I can do it all differently, with completely different quests, with a player from the other faction.

~ 200 hours to "complete" a game is by NO MEANS a "very short" game. Even Morrowind, which is an "extremely long" game has at most that much content, even with both the expansions!

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.

I understand that the game is basically dead for non-raiders at level 60, but what exactly are you looking for out of this game after it's already provided that many hours of gameplay??

Re:NO MORE HUGE RAIDS!

[afidel]

I like some of the tradeskill items. The Devilsaurs set is a good example, two-three level 55-60's can hunt Devilsaurs for a couple of hours and while there is a significant chance of death along the way it really doesn't significantly impact your progress. Once you have accumulated enough skins you are guarenteed to get a pair of decent items (assuming you know a leatherworker with the patterns) that can be used to progress through tougher content. On the other end of the scale is the swiftflight bracers, while they are a good item the sheer amount of time required to get the materials for them is absurd. I think that for the vast majority of players not having to do each piece of content a bazillion times would take very little from the game and in fact would increase their enjoyment of the game. They could always make some PvP competitions into the ultimate endgame for those people with gobs of time on their hands. I mean how much joy is there in being in 40 man raids time and again without getting any item better than those you already posses because there's only 1-2 great items each time and they inevitably aren't for your class or go to someone who's spent several times as much time raiding because they do nothing but play the game.