NYT interview and some info on the next time sink.

[Fabricated]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/28/sports/othersports/28vide.html?ex=1296104400&en=42c55c3188d54208&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

...But because the game from Level 1 to Level 59 is so easy, there are a ton of Level 60 users who don't know how to be team players and don't have the time or inclination to learn. And that is the root of the current conflict. Casual players complain that they can't get rewards comparable to those earned by hard-core raiders, like the Claw of Chromaggus or Mish'undare, Circlet of the Mind Flayer. Raiders like me often respond that casual players just want a handout.

No Tigole, we just would like to experience some fucking content without having to get into uberguilds and iron-clad raiding shedules and other stupid shit like that.

Bah.

[NiX]

As much as I hate Tigole for making WoW so damned Raidy I have to call you on that quote. It's not Tigole you're quoting it's the writer. Heck, Tigole even admits that they'll be adding more casual friendly level 60 dungeons into the mix with the expansion. Also, casual friendly sets of armor? Hell yes. Of course they'll pale in comparison to some of the shit you get in BWL, AQ and all the other big name places, but that's expected whether you like it or not.

[Fabricated]

I misread that then. Shit. Respect for Tigole +1, respect for writer -10 then.

I'm not exactly sure why a 5-10 man instance with nearly 40-manner equivalent loot would be a "handout", considering you still need to you know...complete the instance and win your respective rolls.

[Paelos]

It's not a handout. Their idea of an epic loot program for lower level instances is like the Foror's book for the epic sword out of DM, and the epic armor quest out of UBRS. They'll make you run them a thousand times before you ever get one as opposed to running a 40 man 10 times to get some loot.

Blizzard is cruel like that.

[Righ]

If you could get the same level of gear from an instance that took between 1/4 and 1/8 the number of people and it took as much time to complete as the 40 person raid content, you would get that gear 4 to 8 times as quickly due to the reduced competition on rolls, which would in turn mean the devs would need to make that much more content.

How many people here would be interested in 40 person raid content if they could get the same spoils in a much smaller group that would likely contain a higher proportion of agreeable personailities? There's probably somebody, but then there's apparently people who get off on having their genitals tortured with woodworking tools too.

Then there's the hangers on. If you've raided in WoW you know them. People who come along for a free ride, and who AFK, auto-attack, and macro their way through raids whenever they feel they can get away with it. Minimal participation for maximum gain. They'll be the ones keen on sticking with raid content if there's a smaller group alternative, because they're too busy in real life to pay attention to the game - they just want the rewards. So if you do get your jollies from raid content for some reason, they'll be the only people you'll be able to raid with.

In summary, you wont get good small group content in WoW ever because Blizzard can't even code quick enough to satisfy the hardcore raiders. Raids are ways of diluting content so that you need to repeat the content much more often to get the desired results. Undermine them, and you have to work exponentially harder to satisfy the hardcore gamers, and Blizzard show no signs of doing that.

[TheWalrus]

Much rather do a five man. Thats 35 less people to deal with.

[schild]

This is a touchy design choice.

Once you've put 40 man raids in, you've effectively fucked your entire game. Your best gear and loot simply HAS to come from raids where maybe 5-10% of the people actually leave with anything. You can't put in a 10 man raid and expect people to do the 40 man raid anymore. Basically, Blizzard fucked themselves from the getgo with Onyxia. It's only downhill from here. For the the players that is - Blizzard execs are still diving through their coin banks McDuck style.

[Kageru]

Actually compared to EQ, WoW's direct ancestor, a 40 person raid is quite small (it was 72 there).

Large raids do have some advantages. They're a remarkably efficient multiplier of content because
even with a steady stream of shinies it takes a good many runs to gear up everyone. In a 5 man group
you get loot rotting very quickly. It also allows for guild activities and the formation of decent size guilds.
In the 5 man equivalent the ideal guild size would be... 5 people. It's also more tolerant of class
distributions and attendance. Split your guild into 5 person groups and you have to have almost perfect
class balance / attendance for it to work.

Frankly the idea of launching a MMORPG without raid content (/laugh at DDO) would be the design
fault.

[HRose]

I misread that then. Shit. Respect for Tigole +1, respect for writer -10 then.

NO. You didn't misread ANYTHING. Because what Tigole says is EVEN WORST:

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. As soon as we give more equal rewards across the board, for a lot of players it will diminish the accomplishment of killing something like Nefarian.

Btw, guess who says the same things? Brad McQuaid:

Then let me touch on a controversial topic that is definitely related: entitlement to content vs. opportunity to experience content. This is hotly debated, has been, and will be. Because, really, nobody is right except when speaking for only them. The reality is there are, in this case, two types of people: those who want to play a game where they are entitled to experience everything, obtain everything, etc. merely because they pay the fee and put some time in, though it had better be time in allotments and at a frequency that works with the rest of their lives. And then there are those who want more of a challenge and don’t mind indirect competition and finite resources and realize, that unless they really try hard, they’re not going to achieve everything, or see everything – but they also think that’s fine – in fact, arguably, it makes the world more real – you can’t see every square foot of the real world, after all – and you always need something to dream about, or another goal to head towards..

[Ironwood]

those who want to play a game where they are entitled to experience everything, obtain everything, etc. merely because they pay the fee and put some time in, though it had better be time in allotments and at a frequency that works with the rest of their lives.

I want someone to go up to Brad, mash him on the forehead with a ball-pein hammer and scream 'It's a FUCKING GAME YOU RETARD'.

If it's NOT time in allotments and at a frequency that works with the rest of their lives, then what the fuck is it ?  A fucking addiction, you cunt-whore.  STOP BEING A FUCKING DOUCHEBAG PUSHER YOU WANKHANDLE.

I'm speaking as someone who lost his wife (AGAIN) for 7.5 hours last night in BWL, simply due to peer pressure and guilt.

Why oh why oh why are we designing recreation activites with this mindset ?


EDITED TO ADD :  Having read the article, Tigole didn't come off that bad.  Sure, he's saying that large groups should get better rewards, but that's just common sense.  He also talks about putting in content for both playstyles and, really, isn't that all you want ?

[Trippy]

EDITED TO ADD :  Having read the article, Tigole didn't come off that bad.  Sure, he's saying that large groups should get better rewards, but that's just common sense.  He also talks about putting in content for both playstyles and, really, isn't that all you want ?

Why should large raid-style groups always get the better rewards? The formula for getting the raid items is on a first-order approximation:

<number of players> * <number of hours put into the raid> = <quality of item received>

If you reduce the number of players from 40 or whatever down to 5 that would mean the number of hours required to get the item would go up almost by an order of magnitude but if you broke up the task into smaller chunks, each doable in a couple of hours or so by a 5 man group then it would still be possible for casual people to acquire the items. Think the original long-ass multi-part EQ epics except that the steps that required a full raid group (back in those days I'm sure it's trivial now) would be doable by a 5 person group.

[angry.bob]

Having been on a couple MC raids now, I honestly have to say that the smaller stuff I'd been doing was way more challenging and took much more skill. WIth 5 people total everyone has to be on the bounce and know what to do. With 40, the superstar "A" group does most of the work while most of the rest of us did the equivalent of reading a TPS report so our boss thinks we're busy. Spamming heals and cleanse at our guild's super-ego, attention whore main tank is not the height of accomplishment.

And honest to god, the egos that these turds in the "A" group get, you'd think they're curing cancer while they win the superbowl. Shut up retards, you're just spamming hotkeys in better gear than I am.

[Zetor]

That might be true for MC, but ZG is very different... everyone needs to be on their toes and react to stuff appropriately, at least on boss fights. It's actually a pretty enjoyable dungeon, a pity the rewards aren't really worth the bother for the most part.


-- Z.

[HRose]

That might be true for MC, but ZG is very different... everyone needs to be on their toes and react to stuff appropriately, at least on boss fights. It's actually a pretty enjoyable dungeon, a pity the rewards aren't really worth the bother for the most part.

...No.

ZG is pretty much straightforward. Just tuned up. And it's mostly about having competent healers and a Main Tank in uber gear. I've killed Hakkar with my guild and I didn't see anything too crazy. It's fun the first few times, there's WAY TOO MUCH trash mobs to fight and it takes a huge amount of time. But then you only need to "learn" it. Then it requires very little attention (I read the forums while I'm on raids..).

I started to take some notes because I was planning to write a summarized guide to give an idea about what sort of gameplay it offers. These are some examples of those notes:

Bat mob - High Prisetess Jeklik
Raid split in two groups, one takes the swarms of bats coming from the wall and keeps switching between boss and bats till the boss drops below 50%. Then the spawns stop and everyone focuses on the boss. Use shield bash to interrupt heals and have to run out of flame AOE (bomb). The ray seems more to distract you from the bombs and heals than anything.

Snake mob - High Priest Venoxis
MT runs on boss and pulls it in the left corner of the room. The other snakes are sheeped or sleeped. Then kill one by one (easy). Then everyone on boss. Have to move away from poison AOE cloud. (need to decurse too in some cases).

Mounted bats - Tanks tank them, everyone else fires at range. They blow up when low on health, so start to move away before (for those in melee). Bats not mounted are mages and warlocks duty with AOE.

Blood Drinkers mobs (stay away and range while the MT is on them. They heal if there are other players near)

(warrior mob, forgot to take name)
Every time someone dies, the boss levels up. So don't die and don't accept res from the ghosts in the area. MT on main boss, while another tank aggro the raptor. Wait for aggro to build up, then everyone on raptor till it dies. After the raptor is gone everyone joins the MT on the boss. The boss spins for huge damage. Try to move back. If MT loses aggro, everyone stops till he has it back. If MT dies the other tank takes his place. The boss calls names. The player who is called need to stop doing anything. If he doesn't, he dies (and levels up the boss, hence screwing up the encounter).

There isn't anything complex or challenging. Just need cooperation and some practice (and good gear for the key classes).

[Threash]

There isn't anything complex or challenging. Just need cooperation and some practice (and good gear for the key classes).

Thats why he said "compared to MC" which basically requires 80% of the raid to simply be there.

[Righ]

Aqualung was a good album though.

[Paelos]

I MT in MC now for my guild alliance. I don't think it's super special, so most of the time I'm doing it while drinking a good bit and making drunken southern jokes over TS to the people who are getting all serious.

Yesterday I tanked most of the trash mobs in one of those pink dresses you get from the Lunar festival. Comedy gold.

[Ironwood]

I MT in MC now for my guild alliance. I don't think it's super special, so most of the time I'm doing it while drinking a good bit and making drunken southern jokes over TS to the people who are getting all serious.

Yesterday I tanked most of the trash mobs in one of those pink dresses you get from the Lunar festival. Comedy gold.

Here's a ticket.  You may claim sixteen beverages of choice at my house any time.  I have a fine selection of Whisky.

[Ironwood]

Why should large raid-style groups always get the better rewards?

Because, to my mind, they're masochists of the highest order and that always deserves summat.  Either that or they're clinically insane and we should treat our insane with compassion and generosity.

Also, I don't mind what they're getting as long as I'm getting something too.

[Rasix]

This is a touchy design choice.

Once you've put 40 man raids in, you've effectively fucked your entire game. Your best gear and loot simply HAS to come from raids where maybe 5-10% of the people actually leave with anything. You can't put in a 10 man raid and expect people to do the 40 man raid anymore. Basically, Blizzard fucked themselves from the getgo with Onyxia. It's only downhill from here. For the the players that is - Blizzard execs are still diving through their coin banks McDuck style.

A full Molten Core run yields 20+ pieces of epic loot. Over half of your guild can and often does get something. For Onyxia it's 4 pieces (10%) and takes a mere 30 minutes to complete.  These aren't your daddy's EQ raids.

Putting in new 10 man stuff would just mean more stuff to do on off days/time for raiders.  MC is done in a day. Onyxia takes a spare half hour.  BWL can be done in a day.  Well, I guess that's where AQ comes in.

But yes, they have backed themselves into a corner.  Everything has to be balanced in respec to the 40 man instances, which may make some of the 10 man stuff look unappealing when the math is done and the loot tables are put in. 

Yesterday I tanked most of the trash mobs in one of those pink dresses you get from the Lunar festival. Comedy gold.

We had a shaman tank Lucifron yesterday.  He did a really good job.

[Paelos]

I MT in MC now for my guild alliance. I don't think it's super special, so most of the time I'm doing it while drinking a good bit and making drunken southern jokes over TS to the people who are getting all serious.

Yesterday I tanked most of the trash mobs in one of those pink dresses you get from the Lunar festival. Comedy gold.

Here's a ticket.  You may claim sixteen beverages of choice at my house any time.  I have a fine selection of Whisky.

Woohoo! I love me some whisky!

[Morfiend]

1) HRose, they have said in 1.10 they are removing some of the trash mobs in ZG to make it less of a time suck.

2) MC is stupidly easy. Only Domo and Rag actually take raid skill.

3) BWL is MUCH harder, and MUCH MUCH more fun.

It was a mistake that MC was put in to the game as it was because it is to easy in terms of skill. BWL and ZG are much more challenging, and better dungeons. I have a blast in BWL, even though we spend a ton of time wiping, its still more fun the the snore fest that MC is.

[Threash]

1) HRose, they have said in 1.10 they are removing some of the trash mobs in ZG to make it less of a time suck.

2) MC is stupidly easy. Only Domo and Rag actually take raid skill.

3) BWL is MUCH harder, and MUCH MUCH more fun.

It was a mistake that MC was put in to the game as it was because it is to easy in terms of skill. BWL and ZG are much more challenging, and better dungeons. I have a blast in BWL, even though we spend a ton of time wiping, its still more fun the the snore fest that MC is.

I wouldn't call it a mistake, more like a learning experience.  I doubt they could have put together a raid dungeon like bwl or zg without trying something like MC first, the same way dire maul is more challenging and varied than places like scholo.

[Righ]

2) MC is stupidly easy. Only Domo and Rag actually take raid skill.

3) BWL is MUCH harder, and MUCH MUCH more fun.

Domo and Rags take next to no skill for the bulk of the raid group either. Domo requires one person to be choreographer, some mages to sheep stuff, and a couple of tanks to switch targets once their first chap is dead, and a pair of tanks on Domo and/or a hunter using distracting shot when the main tank has to return from being ported. Nobody else need to do much more than /assist the choreographer. As somebody who's done the choreography a couple of times, I can't say that is terribly involving either. Rags is game of getting enough fire resistance, having a dps race, and everybody running to a collapse point so that the tanks can easily pick up sons. Have enough FR and doing a few dress rehearsals of the collapse so that even the brain-dead get it, and its one of the most easy encounters.

BWL is probably easier than MC (it certainly has less worthless trash mobs) if you can get more than 50% of your raid group to pay attention and show initiative. Which is why its generally perceived to be so much harder. Also, it tends to cause people to blame the strategy and whole classes rather than identifying the brain-dead, which results in the famous "our raid group split up because of BWL" stories. Drama++. I haven't bothered playing my hunter for a month partly due to not having the time available any more, but because the retards decided to blame the shamans, then the hunters, then the whole strategy, then the tanks, controllers, etc, back and repeat. I guess that unlike others, I don't find a bunch of college kids throwing tantrums a fun way to spend every evening.

[Sairon]

I remember MC as being very challenging and fun in the begining. Of course doing MC now, more than a year after it's release, is piss easy.

[Margalis]

EDITED TO ADD :  Having read the article, Tigole didn't come off that bad.  Sure, he's saying that large groups should get better rewards, but that's just common sense.  He also talks about putting in content for both playstyles and, really, isn't that all you want ?

It's not common sense at all.

If you want to give out loot based on time spent (let's say man hours) then you can just adjust drop ratios.

If a 40 man instance takes 2 hours that's 80 man hours. If a 5 man instance takes 2 hours that's 10 man hours. So make the best drops drop 1/8th as often. If you want to adjust for the time and effort it takes to organize a 40 man instance then you can and double that to 160 man hours or something. But the point is it's easy to adjust drop ratios such that large groups and small groups are rewarded about evenly.

Common sense DOES NOT IN ANY WAY dictate that larger groups should get strictly better rewards.

[Morfiend]

I think you are wrong.

A raid has to have much more coordination to do BWL than MC. Lucifron vs Razorgore? Magmadar vs Vaelstraz? The BWL encounters take much more skill.

[Ironwood]

EDITED TO ADD :  Having read the article, Tigole didn't come off that bad.  Sure, he's saying that large groups should get better rewards, but that's just common sense.  He also talks about putting in content for both playstyles and, really, isn't that all you want ?

It's not common sense at all.

If you want to give out loot based on time spent (let's say man hours) then you can just adjust drop ratios.

If a 40 man instance takes 2 hours that's 80 man hours. If a 5 man instance takes 2 hours that's 10 man hours. So make the best drops drop 1/8th as often. If you want to adjust for the time and effort it takes to organize a 40 man instance then you can and double that to 160 man hours or something. But the point is it's easy to adjust drop ratios such that large groups and small groups are rewarded about evenly.

Common sense DOES NOT IN ANY WAY dictate that larger groups should get strictly better rewards.

Um.  Ok.  I can see you've been throbbing about this.

[HRose]

Some people here should remember that "challenging" =! requiring better gear.

Because that's what I'm seeing. What scales up is the requirements, as to do Rag you need huge Fire Resist gear.

[Venkman]

If a 40 man instance takes 2 hours that's 80 man hours. If a 5 man instance takes 2 hours that's 10 man hours. So make the best drops drop 1/8th as often. If you want to adjust for the time and effort it takes to organize a 40 man instance then you can and double that to 160 man hours or something. But the point is it's easy to adjust drop ratios such that large groups and small groups are rewarded about evenly.

It's not just about man-hours, but the coordination during too. By virtue of the quantity of real people alone, coordinating 40 people for 2 hours is much harder than coordinating 10 for the same time period. That's before taking into account anything about the encounter itself, which mostly remains "challenging" until the single best strategy is devised to defeat it repeatedly.

As such, those who can attend and thrive in a 40-person group are in a more difficult encounter than those in a 10. Yes, this should mean they are more rewarded for it. That this pisses off people in not-40-person groups is not my problem. I feel bad for those new to the genre, but nobody here is.

[schild]

I'd like to go back to what Kageru said, though no one else has to...

Actually compared to EQ, WoW's direct ancestor, a 40 person raid is quite small (it was 72 there).

Large raids do have some advantages. They're a remarkably efficient multiplier of content because
even with a steady stream of shinies it takes a good many runs to gear up everyone. In a 5 man group
you get loot rotting very quickly. It also allows for guild activities and the formation of decent size guilds.
In the 5 man equivalent the ideal guild size would be... 5 people. It's also more tolerant of class
distributions and attendance. Split your guild into 5 person groups and you have to have almost perfect
class balance / attendance for it to work.

Frankly the idea of launching a MMORPG without raid content (/laugh at DDO) would be the design
fault.

Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzxrt. What's the difference between a 40 man raid that takes 100 runs to gear everyone up and every single mission in DDO with a difficulty setting that may be take 5 runs to gear a full group up? (though I realize DDO doesn't work quite this way). I find large raids reprehensible and think it's the worst design idea in the history of gaming. Having to do a quest more than once because loot for everyone doesn't drop is just weak sauce. But then, the gameplay in all of these games is total ass, why shouldn't the end game be as well? And I think that's exactly what creates this sort of bullshit content.

[Righ]

I agree with schild, except that I think that the term "weak sauce" is self-referential.

[Margalis]

It's not just about man-hours, but the coordination during too. By virtue of the quantity of real people alone, coordinating 40 people for 2 hours is much harder than coordinating 10 for the same time period.

So then scale drop rates accordingly.

There is nothing you guys are talking about that can't be dealt with by addition and multiplication.

If a 40 hour instance vs. a 5 hour instance is actually 20x as hard, make good drops drop 20x as often relative to number of participants. This is 3rd grade math. (Although you can dress it up as a Nash equilibria and pretend it's really advanced)

Concrete example: 40 man raid drops 10 really good items. 5 man raid has a 50% chance of dropping ONE really good item. Problem solved. For everyone in the 40 man raid to get a good item it takes 4 runs. For everyone in the 5 man raid to get a good item it takes 10 runs. Is that not the desired ratio that feels fair? Then multiply some more.

You can weight it so that they are exactly even and it's just personal preference which one you do, taking into account the frustration factor of 40 man raids vs. 5 man raids. In the end if you balance time, effort, difficulty, organizational time, etc, you can make them exactly equivalent and the only way one is better than the other is which you prefer.

IMO it's fine to say that since 5 man raids are easier to organize the average reward is less. What is not fine is if you can never ever get items as good as you can get in a 40 man raid.

[Venkman]

So then scale drop rates accordingly.

There's a lot here to cover:

Gear limitation is a growth opportunity for a linear game. These games aren't about items. They're about trying to get them. That itself sets up a large scale between Haves and Everyone Else. As long as there's something to try for, there are very many ways to keep it within just-close-enough reach to keep people trying.

They don't want 5-man groups getting Legendary gear yet. That lets them promise it for the expansion (which they have). It also means they have an easier time of it until then because apparently millions of people like to endlessly repeat content they've long been able to defeat with their eyes closed. Less content is less expensive.

There's also general game balance to consider. If they allowed 5-mans to get the same gear, even eventually, as 40-mans, then people wouldn't need to put up with 40-mans.Greater influx of uber gear.

Mulitpliers would help, but if a 5-man group could do in 10 hours what a 40-man group could in 2, then everyone would go 5-man. You can do that more often. You can take 8 groups of 5 and gear up 8 times faster. The easy answer here is to work the multipler, but to what end? All you're doing is pushing off the inevitable, and people would figure out a way around that too. The pull of a 5-man is much stronger than a 40, and much less than a solo.

Finally, it can't be ignored that the best gear is really only required for the best encounters. You only need uber shit if you're PvPing or raiding BWL+. It's a tech tree to be able to see bigger and better things. Otherwise, you can solo just about everything you're supposed to be allowed to solo with crap you can buy on the AH. Yea yea, the pull of bling is impressive and what not. But by the strict rules of the game, if you've soloed to 50 and farmed for the best gear, you've won. Game over.

Your choice then is to move on or enter into the next set of game rules.

There's other factors too, but the above is the general idea. Everyone is not entitled to the same gear unless they accept the same rules everyone else does. And there's many rules.

[HRose]

There's also general game balance to consider. If they allowed 5-mans to get the same gear, even eventually, as 40-mans, then people wouldn't need to put up with 40-mans.Greater influx of uber gear.

And from when a more flat power curve in a MMO that brings the players together instead of apart is bad?