f13.net

I guess it's a bit too soon to have good answers on this, but I must admit I am curious.

Are there rumours, or better official words about the endgame and raids? From the max numbers of players in a raid up to what kind of high end stuff you can expect, I am interested so if you have links to posts, articles or whatever about it I'd like to read it.
Plus, with all the lore craziness out there, what kind of things are you supposed to whack at max level that aren't involved with the main story thing? I am not into Tolkien so the answer to this could be obvious but I have no clue.

Back to the original point: How's the endgame, if any, and beside Monster Play?

Let me put it this way: I have every confidence that Turbine can make an enjoyable, involving game as you level. Raiding of the sort that Blizzard has raised to an artform requires attention to detail and numbers which I have no confidence that Turbine can handle. My best suggestion would be to pretend that the endgame doesn't exist.

By the time I get there I'll have PotBS, Conan or Spore to fuck around with.

Well, let's say I am just curious. I seldom reach the endgame in MMOs but even if just for 20 levels I need to know what kind of carrot I am running for.

Anyway that was my guess, about the non existant endgame. Just tried to be surprised.
Not today.

The raid interface currently supports having 4 fellowships. I can't remember the max size of a fellowship/group. 8? 10?

Tolkien lore has Belrogs and Dragons. Also have the option of facing just waves and waves of goblin, orcs, or the like. In an expansion Helms Deep could make an interesting raid instance.

LotRO devs on raiding: http://lotro.turbine.com/article/130

 :roll:

Thanks Zub.

And Sky, what are you eyerolling me for?

I think the eyeroll was aimed at raiding not you.

Yes. Turbine just did a bitch roll-over-and-take-it. I especially liked the part that told soloers they can choose not to partake in raid content. ORLY?

 :|

I guess that's what you get when your game is trying to be WoW with Tolkein IP.

Pre-order cancelled.

Sooner then expected but basically inevitable. I would have told ya, but  I figured you'd get there yourself before too very long.

LOLers.

Who gives a shit?

People playing LOTRO hoping for something different?   :roll:

I did not mean about that; I was prefacing the inevitable snivelling from people who will not see the content.  Or something.

I really don't think there is a great deal of angst. It's WoW, with LotR Lore, smaller with less solo and content. Believe me, it give me zero heartburn that most here won't like it.

Nothing to see here. Move along.

Exactly. I'm not surprised LotRO is moving toward WoW, it's all the mmogtards in /ooc talk about.

What's surprising is that I'm still enjoying EQ2, for the most part. I guess it's about the devil you know or whatnot.

I guess I did slug it out all the way to 30 in EQ2. That a DIKU record for me.

I may get further in Lotro. Or not. The equivalent level is likely 40 or some such.

The main point being that there are enough different games now that diehard allegiance is almost completely a thing of the past except among a few.. ah.. diehards.

And that's a good thing. I want to see the death of the fanboi. It's never going to completely happen but I can switch games with reckless abandon. They're games, not lifestyle choices.

Well, that's the thing, there. It's so tired to see the same old mmogtard crap dragged out in every beta, and much worse to see companies capitulate (like the topic of this thread).

It's ok to not be WoW. Just make a good game that's profitable. There should be games that cater to hardcore raiders, casual raiders (if they exist), soloers, socialites, open-rules pvp, structured pvp, everything. Instead there are a few great niche games but mostly a bunch of halfassed attempts to please everyone.

And that sucks for all involved.

Preach it, brother!

Tossing in every “good” feature every other game has just makes the whole thing bland. I suppose its the safe course when you have spent tens of millions on development. I guess we won’t see a decent range of games until some “game building system” like Multiverse is made to work. 

It seems to me that LoTRO would have been the ideal candidate for a “casual only” game. Instead, casual play is nerfed to allow for sixty hour a week play. Making it unattractive to a whole bunch of people who would play, but don’t want to put the rest of their life on hold to do so.  Bah!

Also, the whole naming thing shouldn't be misunderestimated. The lore geeks were the core audience Turbine should've been shooting for. My supervisor was considering picking up WinXP so he could Boot Camp his mactel...just for the LotRO beta I gave him (from our PC Gamer sub at the library). He still might though I tried to talk him down, because he'd be one of those pissed about the mmogtardation.

Sure, it's niche, but a couple rp/lore only servers would've kept that game open for a decade. Last I checked he still plays Warbirds, fer crissakes. Loyal fans that wouldn't give a shit about nerfs, but won't stand for mmogtardation.

Ah, well. The lesson will be learned the hard way. Again.

Me, I like choices.  I mostly solo, but I do enjoy grouping up as well.  Even a raid now and then can be fun.

LOTR isn't just WoW.  There are some very different things going on.

I'm not looking for a place to live or a game to live on, I just want to have some fun when I do log on.

End game doesn't interest me.  Playing the game interests me.  If it's boring now, I won't play.

I'm having fun.  When it stops, I'll cancel, and if they toss in something new for me to try, I'll likely resub.  I've gone back to CoX 3 or 4 times and will likely revisit it yet again (although the door is closed on DAOC finally, I think - no real desire to play that one again).

Any news on this?

I am lev 41 now and I must say I am very happy with the instances, the bosses, the scripted stuff and encounters in general.
Loved Great Barrows and enjoyed the hell out of Ivar and the Red Maiden. I am going to tackle Fornost and I must say the first part of it rocked. NOTHING REVOLUTIONARY, but definitely better than I expected/hoped.

I'd say I am pretty optimistic about a working and entertaining endgame and raidgame, but until I won't see it with my eyes I'll be cautious.

Anyone of you out there knows anything more on it?

I think this is a good time to note that there are some posters on f13 that relate end-game raiding to punching themselves in the junk repeatedly, and some of us who just don't really give a crap either way. I don't think it is just to disparage a game simply because when you hit maximum level there is content that is not tailored specifically to your gameplay. I played Everquest, made it to 58 during the Velious age and only did a few Kael Arena groups -- but the gameplay is still one of my fondest memories when I think of MMOs. Extrapolating this idea to LOTRO, to simply say "This game won't get my $45 USD because it succumbed to the raid monster" is puerile. There is much enjoyment to be had in the game without the raid content -- I guarantee you this. I'd be willing to shell out two buddy keys to anyone who thinks that he/she cannot have fun in LOTRO because of the end-game content. I know that your opinion will be changed because you will have fun through your travels and you won't even make it to the end-game before your key is consumed.

That being said, I think you really have to weigh both sides of the issue as far as LOTRO goes. From what I hear, there are -lots- of things to do as a solo/duo/trio player. Reading through the official forums is a huge waste of time as most of it is mindless drivel, but the overall feeling I get in the game is that there is a ton to do (monster play, deeds, crafting {which I think is too easy}, titles) without running through all of the content in a week and getting stuck.

Well, at least I'm trying to run through all the content, but I'm still level 14 after a week.

cmlancas,

you admitted your fanboism elsewhere, and I am level 41 already so as I said I am on the verge of that "title" myself too.

But this thread is about endgame, and (eventual) infos about it. There's nothing wrong in enjoying a MMORPG and, at the same time, expect it to not be over when you reach the maximum level.
It's not like, by asking for endgame infos, I am implicitly saying that the game sucks or will suck.

Fair enough. I'm interested to see the endgame too though. I tried to navigate the official boards, but it is impossible to glean useful information from it.


OMG Y AM I...... sigh. My eyes spew blood.

The patch notes for the June patch say that there will be a 24 man raid instance included.  I'm not a raider so I'm guessing the endgame for me will be working on an alt or two and checking out whatever non-raid storyline content gets added over time.  Eventually (3-5 months from now if the pattern from previous games holds up) I'll let the sub lapse and move on to something else until they release an expansion box or something.

The way i read it raids are only one of the alternatives, just because it is there you will neither have to do it nor will you be gimped if you choose not too. That is going way back to this Developer Diary

http://www.lotro.com/article/130 (http://www.lotro.com/article/130)

I bolded the most important part of this post IMO. Raiders are already screaming on the forums that the best loot has to come from raids. Period. That if you want comparable loot from another source then you just want the easy path. The question boils down to several things:

1) Will comparable loot be available from different methods? This is by far the most important question.
2) Will all of the really cool areas in expansions be raids? For instance, Moria. Every fanboy wants to see that place. Will it be raid only? What about Helm's Deep? This could be a make it or break it situation for lore lovers who also don't like raids. And I suspect this is a very high number of people.
3) Will future content be balanced to raiders or to non-raiders? This ties into #1. If raiding is the only way to get uber gear, how will future encounters be balanced?

IMO, a good way to handle Helm's Deep would be to make a raid instance that is linked (possibly) to small group/solo tasks.  Basically, if people want to participate in Helm's Deep, they can do other tasks that make things easier for the raiders or something. 

I'm working on my first cup of coffee so that's all I have in the detail department.  But hey, it'd be kinda neat. 

Moria had better be not entirely raid....that'd suck.  I don't mind having to group to see Moria, but ffs, it's not like the Fellowship went in there with a raid group.

-That's because they were keeping group spaces open for minstrels while Gandalf spammed the [LFF] channel.

Well, it was their fault for bringing along a gimp loremaster.

I've gotta agree. The fellowship was on an escort quest for a bunch of worthless hobbits who keep making noise and summoning waves of orcs and goblins. I'll bet they walked REALLY SLOWLY too. The loremaster did okay, but they would have had an easier time with a minstrel.

I've pretty much run out of solo quests to do at 32.  I might have one more.  I have a shitload of group quests though, none of which I particularly want to do.  So I'm kind of not playing much this week.  The new patch should alleviate this issue for me.

Some good points, and I agree with pretty much your entire post. I guess we will just have to take a wait and see approach at this time. This is my first experience with Turbine , however I have seen them dig in their heels a couple of times in beta and while acknowledging the forums basically told us to suck it up. They are still making gradual readjustments back toward the middle ground from the great super nerf patch from hell that they dropped on us just before release, and the boards were spammed with " I am canceling my preorder threads" when that occurred. I guess what I am saying is while it seems as if the Devs do pay attention to the community they stick to their guns on the overall development.

Psychologically,  it's better to have things a little weak at the real start of the game and continue to draft goodies in rather then have a couple classes eat big nerfs at the start of your game.

As for the raiders....   I wouldn't be averse to doing some of it every now and then,  but it sounds like the raider crowd wants the end game focus.  I'd rather have continued additions to the neat new sections of the game (achievements and deeds),  with some mild inclusive raids rather than the regimented hell it sounds like WoW raiding devolved into from friends.

It'll be interesting to see how Monster Play works out when the first big surge of pop starts hitting the 45-50 range.  I'd like to see the power level of freeps over creeps stay the same,  while giving some tangible benefits to mob players for indulging in getting slaughtered...  Tie new traits into creep play?  Make creep play an effective method of revenue generation?


I'd most like to see a change in big events from "you need 40 heros to beat 1 mob" to something approximating CoH style....  Your 24 players need to defend against a horde of mobs or somesuch.

Level 36 now,  and in the same place Xanthippe seems to be....   few solo quests,  lots of group quests that aren't particularly endearing.  Have a decent friends list of good and fun to group with folks,  but gawd beating on elites 5 levels lower than you in a group for 2 hours to finish up one quest is boring.

I hope Turbine can find an answer to this, but they'll need to be very smart. It seems to me that raids need to give better rewards than normal group quests or solo quests, as it just seems dumb that a ridiculously difficult quest doesn't lead to a better magic sword than a normal quest. But then you do need to tailor new high-level content around the fact that some players will have these uber items . . . placing people without the uber items at a disadvantage. And I personally don't want to go raiding.

Perhaps a raid could just lead to *more* loot, as in you get a sword and a shield instead of just a sword.

Personally I hope they consider just putting in very hard high level 6-man dungeons. Gath Agawen (a level 35 or so dungeon) is already very long and hard, for example. It has a lot of the ingredients of a raid - the length of time needed to do it, the high chance of death, the need for player discipline - except that it only needs six people. Some level 50 versions of that would be fun.

this Dev Chat had some interesting info in it, looks like some aspects of the "end game" at least  will have noting to do with raids

http://lotro-forum.onlinewelten.com/showthread.php?p=1663605 (http://lotro-forum.onlinewelten.com/showthread.php?p=1663605)


and the raids themselves will be able to be done in several sittings rather than a 6 or 8 hour marathon session.


this is the part I find most interesting since it would make raids more palatable for me at least. I am skeptical about how practical this will be in actual practice however. What if 20 out of 24 people show up for session 2 but 4 just can't make it due to real life commitments , what happens then? Do the other 20 just pack it up and do something else or can you get 4 new additions or try and finish it with 20?

After my experiences with WoW reputation this just sounds horrid. There's nothing more soul-crushing to me than realizing all the months of hard work to gain hero status must be leveraged to appease some factions who didn't get the memo on how badass I am. What disappoints me most is that I can't think of something better for endgame content. In some ways, it seems the best approach is to change the game entirely to keep it fresh and interesting. But, if the change is fun (maybe even more so) than the rest of the game the leveling process becomes a roadblock. I guess the finite nature of game content will always be doomed to have a life-cycle.

before making "the sky is falling" assumptions why not wait and see how they are going to implement this and what it entails. I never played WoW past lvl 25 so I have not the slightest clue on how Blizzard did it on the othwer hand I am enough of a Turbine fanboy to have a bit of faith that they would not screw up the game too badly after working so hard to make the core game enjoyable. So far it looks as if they are accommodating several different play styles unlike some game companies that insist on you playing it their way or hit the highway. The more options I have the better I like it.

My guild has already started a DKP system.  As the highest level Minstrel in the guild I am in much demand.  However a big FUCK YOU to that crap.  I'm only playing to have fun, not to get some shiny after 30 repetitions of a raid.

I did MC three times.  Three.  Because I wanted to see it and twice more because I wanted to see all of it.  If Turbine makes good raids (fun) I'll play them, otherwise no way.

A recent Dev chat had some discussion about raids and loot. They said in Shores of Evendum and also in future expansions that all loot, including the armor sets, will be available through raiding, crafting, questing, and even solo play. How it will work I don't know.

I don't understand why it's just assumed now that anything mmo needs 'end-game' and 'raids'. I see red when I'm playing a fun game and mmogtards start spewing that shit.

Because there's such a dearth of games with raids and endgames for you to waste your time with.

I completely agree. Raids are a very, very hot topic on the LOTRO forums at this time and it is only looking to get worse. Raiders are of course saying that the best gear should only be in raids, and non-raiders are saying it should be available to all even if it takes longer than a raid. This is probably the one part of LOTRO I'm fairly worried about. If the endgame devolves into Raid or go home like in WOW it'll kill this game for me.

Yup, so far in every game that is raid or go home I've chosen to go home and I'm fairly certain that will be my choice if that is what LOTRO turns into.  Actually I quit the game when it starts to feel like going to work rather than recreation so I rarely even make it to end game. 

/signed

/agreed

whatever

Yeah, if there's an end-game of raiding added, it's on to the next mmo for me.

They raid menu was in closed beta. Why would you sign up for a game with a raid menu then quit when they add raids?

I don't care if there are raids, what I care about is if they are the only thing to do when my character hits max level.

Jeff Anderson had this to say about the endgame over at GamerNode. He goes on to lob a couple of rocket shells at Blizzard. I can only say that LoTRO is my first Turbine product however I really can't say that I regret buying the Lifetime sub.  If I only play off and on until AoC and WAR launch then use it as a backup game I will get my moneys worth from it.

http://gamernode.com/PC/Previews/2949-We-speak-with-Jeff-Anderson-CEO-of-Turbine-Inc/index2.html (http://gamernode.com/PC/Previews/2949-We-speak-with-Jeff-Anderson-CEO-of-Turbine-Inc/index2.html)

Well, I shouldn't say I'll quit straight out.  I'll play until I can't solo any longer, or I've tired of whatever solo content is available (assuming I don't get into the minigame of buying/selling crap).

I prefer a pvp end game to a raiding end game, is all.  I require a game to be something I can play or not play any night; a past time rather than a job, or even a hobby.  Raiding typically means spending hours with a bunch of people, not afk'ing, having to be there at a particular time for a particular amount of time, and so on.  I don't do that because I don't enjoy that.  It's on a more serious level than what I want to do.  I don't play games to have more responsibility in life; I play games to get away from my responsibilities in life.

I've already gotten my entertainment value from LOTRO, just from playing since launch.  But I don't want to live on an MMO.

Yeah that would be better.  Instead of raids, why not content updates once every two months.  You can introduce a new area

Turbine Presents
The Ice Bay of Forochel
Quest within the icy realm of Forochel far to the north of the Shire!
Level cap raised to 51!
New parka armor sets
Hunt baby seals and humpback whales!
Player housing in the form of igloos!

And the next content update raises the cap to level 52 and so on...

I'll lose greenpeace faction! You have to pvp the hunters to raise it!

So....why do you even bother to play MMOs?

The whole point of an MMO is to play with a large number of other players simultaneously...it sounds like you should be playing NWN or baldur's gate with an AOL chat room open in the background.

PvP games not withstanding.

I don't understand how anyone could be shocked when a MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER online game adds content designed for a MASSIVE amount of PLAYERS.

Caps make it right.

--Zedword, right is might

This argument is so overused and tired I can't even raise the energy to respond correctly.

I suppose it's hard blindly charging into the face of logic over and over, yes.

I'm not telling you what you should or should not like, but not expecting it in every game of the genre is just ignorant and/or delusional.

If you like playing playing football on a basketball court, thats fine. But don't complain when you show up at the court and everyone else is playing basketball.

--Zedword, games are designed for me and me alone

Because up until I'm required to spend 5 to 8 hours straight killing trash mobs just to get to the boss I'm usually having fun.  Once I stop having fun I quit.  My theory is if I pay to play something I don't find fun I'm just being stupid.


Damn I thought the whole point was to have fun.    You know the funny thing is that most of what you hear about the large numbers of other players is, "I turn off ooc and zone chat as soon as I log in.", "PUGs suck I only group with my friends.", "Fucking ninja node stealing thieves..."  I will now draw the requisite bad analogy, I like living in a city of over a million people but that doesn't mean I want them all to drop by my house for coffee.

PvP games not withstanding.

I don't understand how anyone could be shocked when a MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER online game adds content designed for a MASSIVE amount of PLAYERS.

Caps make it right.

--Zedword, right is might
[/quote]

I'm not particularly shocked that these games all devolve into raid grinds, I'm just disapointed that no designers have delivered anything better to do once you hit the level cap.  So if you like raiding then by all means enjoy those games that cater to your tastes and I will continue to do the same.

There are things to do, and i'm not saying games shouldn't have more than that, but they can (and should) have raids and raid like content. That is one of the main draws and retention factors, even though we all complain while going through it, of the genre.

More casual players are fickle, they come and go. The player base that delve into the more logistically complicated and time consuming portions of the game are your most loyal and steady fanbase, so even if they are a minority to overall numbers, they are the ones who will get drawn in and subscribe for years.

To not produce raid content, in a non-pvp oriented game, is to lose some of your most consistent and loyal subscriber base. Who are also more likely to spread the gospel of your game, since they spend every waking moment playing they don't have much else to talk about. That isn't changing  any time soon, so to not expect that type of content in any Grade A MMO is just silly.

So again: i'm not telling anyone what they should or should not like, but to be put off or surprised when an MMO isn't ignoring the M's in it's acronym is quite perplexing.

--Zedword, tailor made

Oddly enough I haven't been saying that games shouldn't have raids but that if they want me to stick around they need to have something else to do that I find fun.  I'm pretty sure that dedicated raiders who actually enjoy the process are a minority of any games customers but they tend to be very loud and active on the boards so they get a lot of attention.  Plus building them content is easy, I mean how many times does a raiding guild run through the major raids trying to get everyone their class specific drops so that they can move on to the next raid?

I think that it should be EQ1 Luclin style where you get Nazgul-Bane weapons that suck for everything else except appeasing the raiders. I was a raider once upon a time. I just know that there is more to games than just that now.

Oddly enough, i was speaking about the sentiments held in the entire thread, not just you :)

And some people seem to believe raid content -> time to leave.

--Zedword, it's a lower case t...for time to leave

Some people have learned (especially from WoW, apparently) that a raid focus indicates a resulting lack of content for solo and small group players. Others feel that it leads to a lack of content for casual players (who may have interest in a group quest that is longer but not a multi-hour, pee-in-a-can affair.

Games should provide equally compelling and interesting rewards for this kind of play at the level cap, just as they should reward the people who enjoy raiding.

If some people decide to leave before being disappointed, well, a game that proves that it can balance all playstyles may see those people come back.  Too many folks have been burned too many times to exhibit a large amount of trust, even moreso at this particular forum.

Ya I guess I was just curious, as the game obviously was giving the message Raids are Coming as early as beta, if you are going to leave when they appear, why sign up to begin with?

If you think Garth Agarwen is long and raid-ish, wait to see Fornost. I love it, but it's exhausting. Too much trash. Once you beat the first wave of trash obs, you have beaten them all and you are just wasting time until the next named.
But it's not a LotRO issue, I know. And as I said, I really like Fornost.

Zed, you're retarded but I'm going to respond anyway. Your argument was tired the first time it was spouted on the IGN boards and it continues to be so. First off, most solo players aren't running around  in a vacuum ignoring the fact there are other people around them. They do groups sometimes. They talk in guild chat, talk to friends in-game, in ooc channels, etc. Second off, guess what? Just because you have no life and believe spending 8 hours a day in a boring farming raid is the end-all be-all doesn't make you some kind of MMO god. It doesn't make you right.

If you're going to be a nit-picker about the games titles they are all called MMORPG. Remember? How much roleplaying do you do? Why are you raiding in a game designed for RP? I mean, you can play softball on a volleyball court but that's not what it's designed for. So don't complain when you show up with your softball and everyone else is playing volleyball.

I really think that if they imp Nazgul-Bane stuff to where the raids are assaults on Dark Riders and defeating them, the raiders can be appeased at the same time the casuals can. Give out +Nazgul bane weapons and -Nazgul poison armor that is only good inside the raid. Welcome to appeasement, folks.

Or,

Why not go back to epic quests EQ-1 style (And before you flame me, read this entire damn sentence) but WITHOUT the mindless rare spawns and ridiculously stupid raid encounters. Who cringes when they hear the name Ragefire or Timorous Deep? Just make a ridiculously long quest that a casual could complete in say... four to six sessions to complete a piece of comparable epic armor to what would drop in a raid encounter. Why any MMO (That I can think of, perhaps I'm wrong) has not done this yet I cannot FATHOM as many casuals who hate the 60-70 grindfest that they have to do inside a raid instance for one freakin' piece of armor that they had to spend...you get my point...have quit because it's just not worth it. My e-peen is not enlarged due to the number of purples I have on any given character.

Riggs, I tend to agree with you, but calling someone retarded right before you try to intellectually dump on their argument just makes you sound puerile. Don't do that. Just treat the troll as what he is and nothing more.

Again: I'm not telling you how you should or should not play, I think they should have small and large scale content...you're complaining they are adding raid content at all, when it is one of the defining mechanisms of the genre...which is just fucking stupid. You're complainig they aren't making the game for players like you and only like you...and you aren't that important, hate to break it to you.

Sorry you can't get into a decent guild, keep applying :(

--Zedword, but i'm important! look at me!

I know but it felt good at the time. :) Ironically, this happened on the main LOTRO boards but it was reversed. A 56k player was whining about patch size and saying he'd quit over it. I said something to the effect of "this is very common for mmos. Get a real connection." The last part intended to be funny (I need green text over there!) and he lambasted me with the whole "I own a company and am a smart guy. You live in your mommy's basement" followed by another poster who said people with broadband are slaves to the consumer ethos and are going to destroy the planet.

I didn't have to do much at all in the thread except the one reply I made which was something like "you had good points but all your name-calling undermined any credibility you could have had."

I'm complaining because past experience has taught me that raids can turn into a downward spiral where all future content is balanced with raids in mind and dev resources get sucked up trying to create new raids. Look at WOW. The 60+ game is nothing like the 1-59 game. Turbine has said they plan to make loot and other content available to all playstyles. Which is good. If they mean it. If they don't cave to the massively whining raiders who say only they deserve the good stuff.

What in the batshit fuck are you talking about? Decent guild? This is by far the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. The game is 1-50, not 50-50. Christ Jesus. There is so much more to LOTRO than a raid. How the hell can you not see that? And I'm sure as shit that there are more people like Riggs than you'd like to believe. Unfortunately, your head is crammed so far up your ass that you cannot see the base of LOTRO players past yourself.

I can guarantee you that Turbine cares about the casual gamer. I can guaran-fucking-tee it. Just look at World of Warcraft; I'm sure that there must be some casual players.

By the way: "Defining Mechanism of the Genre?" What in the fuck are you talking about? It wasn't defining at all. Raiding in general (EQ1--which is where I start my argument against yours) was based off of a mechanism on Sojourn MUD. Many MUDs have it because many MUDs act like smaller scale guilds (I stole this from Yoru from a different thread -- thanks Yoru). It might be PART of the genre, but it surely doesn't define it. I'd say the defining mechanism of the genre is an online adventure with many other people that are enjoying the same experience as you are. Not raiding.

EDIT: My internet is being moronic and dropping me every five seconds + clarification.

I know, damn those people who put in way more time and effort than you into a genre of game based upon being a time sink getting better stuff than you. It's so stupid.

rewards are the carrots in front of us, the horses pulling along the MMO companies. The more rewards we get, the more we pull. The longer it takes us to get each particular reward, the more we pull. Changing that principle drops subscriptions, dropping subscriptions drops the bottom line. Looking for changes to a cash cow's bottom line because you don't/won't/can't put in that kind of time is a sisyphysian labor.

Love it, or more than likely hate it, raids are an integral part of the MMO dynamic. Again, look at the alternatives to production....there is a huge overhead involved in creating an online game. If you are going to put in all these complex systems for small-solo player content, that also dramatically ups your development time, and thus your overhead. Why put all that effort into systems that don't need your huge network infrastructure to support. Fiscally, those systems and design mythos make much more sense in offline or small (bnet) type multiplayer games

Love them or hate them, MMOs are first and foremost made to be addictive and time sinks...thats what pays the bills.

--Zedword, dollar dollar dollar bills ya'll

So you think the defining mechanism is a lot of people enjoying the same experience.

And what is a raid? an in game experience with a lot of people simultaneously.

Hrm.....

--Zedword, wooosh

Twenty or Forty as opposed to thousands.

Thanks, please drive through.

How many of those thousands did you talk to today? How many are on your friends list? Name 40 people, their class, and their spec (if applicable.) what are they like to talk to? what do they do in real life?

Your argument is totally and completely self centered. You're getting upset because god forbid someone make content not specifically for you.

Again: no one is telling how or how not to play. Developers should make engaging large and small scale content. But for ANYONE who more enjoys one to complain about the other is just stupid. The game is there to provide both, even if /gasp, you don't do one of them!

--Zedword, but i want it now daddy

How in the fuck do you make assumptions as to what I do/don't do? I for one WILL be engaging in raid content if it is presented, but I do defend the casual who won't be. MMOs can't just cater to the hardcores that want to stick their cock in a vice and turn the knob for days upon days just so they can be shiny. I honestly believe those days are gone.

Unfortunately you just called me names instead of attacking my argument. And telling me what developers should do and calling me stupid doesn't say anything about my post. l2argue, plz.

He is right. Sad but true.

You are and you aren't in the same breath. You're simultaneously saying "you don't have to play my way" while also saying "but if you don't you don't deserve any kind of good loot, you know, those carrots that make the game go round I just talked about." do you not see the disconnect there?

Because typically I enjoy the game from 1-50.  The raiding game at 50 is not fun for me.

Unless there's something else to do at 50 that I find fun, it's time to bail.

Like I said before, I don't need a game to live in.  I just want a game to play. 

He is sort of right.

If it takes me too long to get to max_level and I stop having fun along the way (see CoX), then I stop playing.  Too much repetition and grind.

If I'm at max_level and I stop having fun (DAOC, WoW, Guild Wars, various muds), then I stop playing.  Seen everything I want to see, and I hate raiding.  Made plenty of alts to see all the content I want to see.

I am wondering how long Zedword has been playing and raiding. Maybe I've played too long, slain too many mobs, been on too many raids.  It's just not fun for me any more.

There are other models out there besides a raiding end game.

There is nothing to argue, you have no point other than "nuh uh, we get stuff too!" You're not arguing, you're crying, or crying for the casuals like the martyr you claim to be, because someone else got a new shiny legendary item and won't share it with you. Tough nuggets.


No, i don't. Because i don't think you necessarily are entitled to the same loot as someone who plays 50 hours more than you a week...you think you are. That's YOUR problem, not the developers.

The entire genre is based on 1 defining principle: time invested yields reward. Rewards make you play. More rewards make you play longer. Playing longer makes you keep your subscription going. That is the premise MMOs are built upon, that is what pays the bills.

And no, paying the same monthly subscription does not entitle you to the same rewards, it entitles you to the same opportunity to earn those rewards.

I never said don't play how you want...but, just the same....the games are about choices. If the choice you make is to not partake in X epic quest, you don't get X quest's epic reward. That was your choice.

The two MMOs i played the most, though i've played most all of them, were everquest and wow. I was always casual in everquest, i did not have a full weekend to invest to camping spawns or plain raids. In WoW, i started off as a casual player, though eventually became a daily raider.

At no point, through years of everquest or wow non-raiding did i ever feel I was entitled to the same rewards as those that did. It's a LOT more "work" than small or solo content will ever be. Did I think i deserved great items? Sure, and I went out and farmed the instances and spawns available to my play style and had the best gear possible for my character, and the choices I made with my play time and style. Did the fact that Basementdweller and the rest of the DragonKillers had better gear bother me? No, as it did nothing to diminish what I had accomplished which was making my character the best he could be, for me.

Notable exceptions to this are pvp-centric games, which...most all of them provide ways for you to get superior PvP gear through PvP, in a reliable and modular way. This was a major problem in wow, for instance (even though calling wow "pvp centric" makes me cringe) back when the PvE tier sets were the best gear in the game for all circumstances, but that has since been rectified through the expanded crafting and arena/bg reward systems.

Is raiding as it stands in games today perfect? No, far from it. But neither is solo content. Both need work, and any decent PvE MMO should focus on making BOTH better...for solo content that typically means more dynamic, more entertaining, less grindy, and more expansive beyond the level cap. For raiding, that means less repetitive less like "work"

Taking either out of a game, or not giving either the attention they deserve is foolish.

--Zedword, foo foo foo fooolish

I think you are confusing what is being said.

I don't think anyone is saying that casuals want the same loot as raiders.

However, casuals want the same amount of developer resources going toward _their_ end game.

Because, you know, casual players actually pay the same amount of money per month, while costing less, than raiders.  So MMO companies end up with a greater net gain from casual dollars than raider dollars.

Casuals are also a lot more fickle, and quit a lot more (for reasons other than "not enough content"). Raiders are a smaller, yet much more loyal fanbase. Raiding also serves a motivational factor for a lot of people who aren't even raiding, as they'll continue on thinking one day they'll get a chance to go on a raid.

The main problem lies in the gray area between the two demographics. Raiders have raid content to keep them happy. The MAJORITY of "casual" players will take so long to get the level cap, they already have years worth of content available to them. There are people still going from 60-70 in wow, still experiencing the first of the burning crusade instances...that is what the speed the majority of casual players operate at, thats why they get content updates less often, since it takes them longer to go through what is given.

The problem childs are the ones who act like they are casual, but still play 20+ hours a week. What do you do with players like that? It doesn't matter what content you put out practically, they'll still finish it in a month (outside of the raid content they choose to not endure) what enjoyable content is there for that type of player? A crafting system? Still mastered relatively quickly, and very difficult to make "fun" Repeatable quest system that generates new quests? like in Coh? /seppuku sounds better than killing the band of X in the cave/castle/fort/enclave of the Y again.

Adding in a bunch of story driven solo quests? thats a lot harder to regularly implement than 1 raid instance that will keep thousands people busy for 6 months.

The problem is, casual players who don't play with casual time....they are the hardest to provide for. (and,  quite honestly...seem like the smallest minority of players)

--Zedword, is what it is

While I understand what you're saying, I don't buy it.

If a game is in decline, ok sure, maybe your argument about player retention and loyalty (better known as Obsessive-Compulsive Addictive Behavior) comes into play.  Casuals may be more fickle but there's a hell of a lot more of them.

Dark Age of Camelot was quite successful _until_ they added high end game raid content.  A lot of people quit after Trials of Atlantis, because they wanted to pvp, not level their equipment (one of the dumber ideas in mmo development).

I played a mud for years after reaching max_level because it had a fun trading minigame - one that I could do alone or with people, my choice.  I stopped playing after they screwed with it so that I could no longer trade alone.

Raiders who play 50 hrs/week still cost more than double what a 20 hr/week casual player does (call these "heavy casuals).  100 raiders cost - at a low - what 250 heavy casuals cost, plus god knows how many regular casuals - another 250? seems like a safe bet still.  So 100 raiders cost what 500 casuals cost, sound about right?

Dev resources should be likewise allocated, don't you agree?  I mean, we're in agreement that those who invest more time should get better loot rewards.  Therefore, those who invest more money, or pay more money, or cost the developer less money, should get more dev resources allocated to them.

Trials of atlantis is a very poor example. That was adding a pve endgame to a game that was very much a pvp game with a pvp player base. That is exactly why i've been careful to point out needing to implement raid and casual content for pve games. pve and pvp games are two totally different beasts.

You might not buy, but every game that has flourished for years had content designed for the hardcore players, every title with more casual play in mind has flubbed or been much less successful :)

--Zedword, i like flubbing

.[/Sirbruce on] with apologies...


Actually, it very much is the developers problem. WOW is finally starting to learn this and I think it's why some things were changed in Burning Crusade. If you marginalize one playerbase for another, that playerbase will eventually stop taking it up the ass and move on to another game.


That's extremely simplistic and only really holds true for the masochist gamers and those who cater to them like EQ1, WOW 60+, and Brad McQuaid. The genre is also based on social networks and player investment in their avatars.


Right. Where you disconnect from me is you believe the only oppurtunity should be in raids. That is old school MMO thinking and a dead end for the genre, not to mention this particular game in particular. Alot of this boils down to elitism. Raids are "hard" so you and only you deserve the best.


This is again simplistic. If X raid (don't call it epic, the only part about raids that are epic are the time involved) quest takes 8 hours of butt-numbing, mind-bogglingly boring raiding and I have a life and only have 4 hours available there is not a choice, literally. I'm being told that because I have a life outside the game I am going to be literally punished for it. Now, if X raid quest and Y group quest chain and Z solo quest chain and let's not leave out W crafting quests all give X reward then what is the harm?

Let's say X raid quest requires 8 hours in a sitting and 23 other players, Y group quest requires 2 3 hour blocks and 1 2 hour block and 5 other players and Z solo quest requires 8 1 hour blocks and W crafting quest requires 8 hours of ore farming. The time involved is the same. A smart developer can make the other factors the same. So, why then, besides epeen bullshit shouldn't all four methods give a similiar reward?


Good for you. You bought the bullshit and enjoyed it. And?



Horseshit. The only "work" is rounding up the players and learning the boss mobs. And the last only applies if you're a pioneer. Any intelligent raid leader takes strategies from other guilds and uses them. At which point it literally becomes "Stand there. If the boss casts X spell, do that. If it does Y action, do that. Watch your mana and drink pots if you run low." I've done raiding too. I had alot of the higher tier raid shit in WOW. You can't steamroll me with bogus arguments. If Raiding was hard "work" for your guild then you were incompetent.


And I wonder. How much time did you invest in the game as opposed to them? They probably put more time in in a shorter period of time but I doubt if they seriously outplayed you in the long run.


On this we agree, though from the tone of the rest of your posts I suspect it's bullshit.

Errr..ignore this post. I tried to edit and hit quote instead. Silly me. :)

The casual vs. raider/hardcore debate is so tired.   Who means more to revenue?  Who is more loyal?  Who outnumbers who?

The bottom line is that a good MMO studio needs and values both playerbases.   Both playerbases consist of very loyal and very fickle players.  A perfect example is Loral from EQ1 and Mobhunter.   He was a very casual player that basically never raided even this late in EQ's life and he has remained more loyal; to that game than 99% of my close raiding friends who all jumped shit when wow hit open beta.  In the same token, My guildmates liked LoTRO but our ingrained comitment to wow and the endgame progress we have made thus far has kept us fairly well locked down.

Revenue numbers are always going to be sketchy and usually unriable and false.  Blizzard is always releasing information like XX% of our player base raids!@@!!@@@@@, but never any quantifing or qualifing statements to really differentiate who is casual about it and who is really raiding.  In the end, a subscriber is a subscriber and content needs to be implimented for all of them.

Raiding will naturally contain the greatest reward because it is the most complex and time consuming element of any current titles endgame.  Until a game is developed that has equal timesinks into the other elements of gameplay, there will not be a system that can support it, such as raid quality epics from crafting.   Moreso, if they did impliment a system where hardcore crafters could obtain priceless upgrades in the same capacity as raiders, casuals will still bitch that its a reward for "people with no life living in mom's basement" even if they are spending 40 hours a week in the city crafting or in the raid zone.

Also to all the jackoffs in this thread and every other thread who claim that people who raid  1) have no life 2) are bored 3) whatever fucking asshat comment you come up with, just fucking give up your tired argument.   I raid, have a fine life, and I enjoy 95% of my time doing it.   If you don't like it and don't have any other content options to keep you entertained fine, the MMO hasn't done enough to provide content that earns your business and should rightly lose your subscription to a competetor who does a better job of developing to all of their base, but don't fucking project your emo delusions of self-importance and superiority on those who are enjoying the content that is available.

You mean like how raiders got it added to LoTRO?

I beta'd LoTRO extensivly and there was never for even one moment hat I didn;t see a raid game being added.  It was talked about in dev chats, on the forums, in most reviews...

I don't really see how 'the raiders' got it added.   It was a feature on their design docs, whether you like to believe that or not.

Since there was specific discussion about NOT adding it, then a move towards it, I think that's really a matter of semantics.  One where you'd be wrong.

You're straight up, a fucking moron.
Let me refute everything that I can think of that is remotely close to a point you are trying to make

1) MMOs should cater to the raiders because they are the most loyal. Well, it seems to me that if you're the most loyal, you're going to stay anyway. I'm not saying shit on the raiders, but I already know I have your vote, why do I need to keep throwing more and more content just at you. This isn't EQ1, and VG failed. Sorry. If you're going to spout that hardcores give you the most word of mouth PR, I'd argue that you're slightly correct, but not as much. I think that the two party election system in the US is a good analogy. The politicians, when it comes time to vote, don't try to play for the hardline voters, they aim for the swing-votes. I staunchly believe that the same is true of MMORPGS -- they are won and lost in the "muddy middle."

2) The best loot must reflect a raid encounter. Why? Just because you and your friends got together at a certain time and downed a boss means that a solo player who has completed twelve steps to a different questline that is of similar difficulty shouldn't get the same quality loot. I call shennanigry. That's more or less saying that hardcores should be better because they gather in bigger groups. Rewards should be based on time invested (Which I think you said somewhere, so I agree), not on number of people multiplied by time invested (Which you also said, so I disagree).

3) It's a LOT more "work" than small or solo content will ever be. This was in reference to raids and loot that is earned through raids. Why the fuck would anyone play a game that felt like work? Sure, I sat in Velk's Lab when I was in high school and put up with all the bullshit that was a McQuaid grindfest, but I also have seen the error of my ways. I think WoW is good about this until 60 where the game again begins to feel like work. Notice that you pay to play this game, not get paid to play it, and you should enjoy it accordingly. If my idea of a game was work, I'd damn better be at my job in all of my free time because I can make an infinitely larger amount of money there.

4) The MAJORITY of "casual" players will take so long to get the level cap, they already have years worth of content available to them. Tell me this: What is the average level of characters in most MMORPGS. Betcha it's not the maximum! Also, let us not forget that there is such a thing as replay value in an MMO. If you're going to lie to me and tell me you've never played an alt, then fine, but otherwise, that's more money for the devs.

5) and,  quite honestly...seem like the smallest minority of players Just because you feel that way doesn't make it true. Casuals pay the bills. There is a reason why there is a debate between hardcore and casual, and it is because there are quite a few casuals out there. They aren't the smallest minority. They are the silent majority.

6) but every game that has flourished for years had content designed for the hardcore players Really? Name some examples of games that didn't have a great mid-game to go with that end-game. Notice that every game should have an end-game, I agree, but at the same time, if getting to 50, 60, or 70 sucks the shit out of assholes, then why would people do it?

7) There is nothing to argue, you have no point other than "nuh uh, we get stuff too!" You're not arguing, you're crying, or crying for the casuals like the martyr you claim to be, because someone else got a new shiny legendary item and won't share it with you. Tough nuggets. Telling me that I won't get shiny has NOTHING to do with this argument. I've been there. I've lead MC. I've lead a guild. It was okay and the people were fun, but at the end of the day, it felt like work with all the DKP and garbage and politics -- whatever. It's not about the items here, it's about gameplay. You can have your raids and maybe I'll decide to do them. But I have to be able to choose otherwise and still have fun or we have a WoW/EQ1/EQ2/the list goes on clone. You STILL have not refuted my point about raid-loot for raiders ala Luclin. Raiders will do it because they want people to know how badass it was to kill the named Nazgul or AoW or Ciquala or whatever the name may be.

I think that's about it. Best loot shouldn't be all about numbers multiplied by time. It should be about time alone. There should be different avenues for people to achieve the same goals that fit their respective playstyles. I believe that this tenet lies at the heart of successful MMORPGs.

Highlighted QFT.

Agree to disagree.  I've seen mention of raiding in LoTRO as long as I can recall.   So from where I am sitting, you, sir, are the one who is wrong.

On a slightly related note, they also unequivocally stated, no PvP and then later backtracked and added monster play to appease the pvp gamers.  So since when is a game company bound by some developers statement that was very possibly misinterpreted by you?   And why is your desire not to have raiding somehow superior to some other gamer's desire to have it?

I could give a rat's ass whether they add in raids or not. I just don't think that raids are as in-demand for a game like LoTRO, especially given the fact that they backtracked on a prior statement. I never said they were bound by it. I was simply contesting that they were planning for raiding from the get-go. Whether someone raids or does monster play or not doesn't matter to me. I'll do what I enjoy. I just think it's funny to claim that they were always planning raids, when they actually weren't.

Obviously, the input of those who enjoyed raiding and PvP changed some of the initial design parameters. The rest is a game of semantics (whether thsoe groups "got those features added").

So yeah, agree to disagree.  Except not. ;)

You're obviously only hearing what you want to. Bringing me to my first point:

You are a self centered blowhard whose butt hurt someone else got toys they didn't.

Wah.

--Zedword, my tears flow like a river for your lack of l337 epix

How the fuck did I end up on the VN boards?

I blame Vanguard.

What are you talking about man?! For Christ's sake, I'm saying that both raid and group-oriented settings can have equitable rewards as long as the time invested is similar. I'm not saying ZOMG THE SKY IS FALLING RAIDING! or ZOMG RAIDING SHOULD HAVE THE BEST REWARDS! I want a middle ground. I don't know how the fuck what you are saying is engaging this point other than saying I suck because I don't want to raid. In that case, you're wrong, because I most likely -will- be raiding. Less name calling and more arguing.

I still stand by calling you a fucking moron though since I decided to deflate most of the things you said.

(http://www.penny-arcade.com/images/2007/20070511.jpg)

Way to use the quote function, you new guys. A pleasure to read this page.

What the heck is going on in here?

I feel like somebody walked into my room and urinated on my carpet.

Fuck it people, I'm not THAT Lebowsky.

My guild tried to raid Dol Dinien today.  It was a clusterfuck.  Can't complete quests and the uber special signature boss mobs dropped trash.

Granted this isn't an official raid zone but it was so painful I wanted to chew on a broken beer bottle.

I love this game but they have a lot of work to do on it.

The 30s level range is not good. 

The bulk of the quests are group quests fighting lots of elites in either Dol Dinen, Fornost, or Garth Agarwen.  All have a high suck factor with a not great group.

Had an awful run in the Garth Agarwen instance the other day.

Supposedly, new zone will fix alot of these issues.

This is why I'm glad I haven't had a lot of time to play LoTRO. I'm only 20 now, just having gotten to Weathertop (awesome place, man there isn't a night I haven't been awed by some view). By the time I hit the 40s, we'll be well into Fall and all the lack of content for soloer issues will be solved. For me. FOR ME!!! :)

By virtue of the game mechanic they chose, they had to be planning to have raids from the get-go. The real question is whether they were planning on that with Monster Play or whether the latter got added later. Based on interviews and when the latter got added in beta, I'm inclined to think it was Monster Play as the "other" endgame that was conceptualized much later.

As an endgame activity for DIKU, Raiding is the way to go. It's not for everyone, but it's for enough people who put in the time to get there. By the time casuals get there, either the level cap has increased or they'll get there and become raiders (or alt, or quit). You can't expect to retain everyone that hits your game.

WoW tipped the scales such that everyone can hit the level cap in a fairly reasonable amount of time, but the "everyone" pool is still the Achiever archetype. There is not a truly casual gamer in that pool, just a casual achiever.

To the point though, games need diversity of players. They need people who'll alt to continue keeping the early game invigorating for newer players. They need raiders and endgame PvPers to give everyone else an insight into what awaits them, to basically market the continuation of leveling. They need natural leaders and momentary leaders and just enough crafters to ensure putting the work into crafting was worth the development resources while still ensuring the endgamers got their uberest loot from raid-required drops.

They need all of these. Smallish games aren't small because they focused on casuals. They are small because they focused on one type of player at all.

For what ever it is worth they announced the decision change on raids almost a year ago.

http://lotro.turbine.com/article/130 (http://lotro.turbine.com/article/130)

The way I see it when the game no longer is fun I will no longer play, life can be real simple. I refuse to get my ass in a bind over what may happen, at the moment I ma more concerned with what can I do in the game that is enjoyable tonight.

There's a thread on the general forums about raids, apparently there's some piece and out of a full raid, the boss drops one. A dev kicked in that this was by intention. So it looks like it's not "raiding as a hobby" it's "raiding as a lifestyle." I find that very disappointing because I like big encounters, but have no interest in repeating stuff. But I guess it will give the ubers something to do.

That sucks in ways I can't even verbalize properly right now.

I think my soul just died a little bit inside.   :hello_kitty_2: Can that make it better? 

In all seriousness, I think as long as they offer chain solo/duo quests (Hell-fucking-o? Two god damn hobbits walked to the mouth of Mount Doom for fuck's sake, why can't we have long quest strings....) to balance this, it isn't a big deal.

Ok. I read the thread. Also saw your post Numtini.

The big issue seems to be that there is some concern that the quest in question is actually a class quest, which puts the lie to "multiple paths to advance with none required."

Yikes. I had enough of crappy epic quests in EQ1. Thanks.

Ok, now that things have calmed down it appears there are other routes with the class quests. Basically there is a raid class quest, but there are also non-raid class quests.

Now it's back to: do only raiders deserve the best loot?

What you need to ask yourself is do you prefer to have a fulfilling real life and second rate gear in a virtual world, or your dominant hand as your primary sexual partner and some kick ass uber armor in a virtual world. Kind of puts things in perspective for me at least. I could really give a shit about whether that guys avatar has 2048 AC and mine only has 1859 at the end of the day. Even better is the fact that you  know that the uber armor the guy spent xx hours attaining will be second rate after the next expansion releases.

This argument is supremely tired and a waste of boardspace. Saying that casual A has a better life than raider B because he spent twenty less hours a week in-game is puerile. If you want to say that you choose not to raid because it is mind-numbingly boring most times, then fine.

My fiance and I play MMOs together. Sometimes even naked. Does that mean my hand is still my primary sexual partner?

But it's true. Most of the times.

what you and your hand do behind closed doors is none of my business, however lets be real here raiding leaves precious little time for a social life be it a board cliché or not
(http://tolkiengateway.net/w/images/a/a0/Get_Fuzzy_-_3-22-07.jpg)

You didn't engage my post at all. More or less you said "C'mon, I'm right!" Well played, sir.

Not in the slightest. It was quite possible to raid 3 hrs a night in WoW and still have good progression. I've done it. If 3 hrs is too much for you I don't know what to say.

I hate the idea of raiding to get the best loot.  This has nothing to do with disliking raiding as a game mechanic nor to do with being a casual.  I'm casual from the point of view that I don't repeatedly raid.  I'm most definitely not a casual that I can spend as much time in game as the average raider. 

It's to do with the fact that raiding is just like this argument - repetetive and dull as fuck.  If you want to get a full set of epic raid armour in WoW, let's say tier 2, you've got to do Blackwing Lair how many times?  30? 40? More to make sure that everyone in the raid has all the pieces they need?  That's before you even get into Onyxia's Lair or MC.  That's assuming that your lucks in with the drops.  Defeating a raid once is an achievement and is great and all but having to repeatedly do it is just becoming a hamster in a cage peddling away at its wheel. 

What I don't understand is the reluctance of raiders to concede that if a solo player or members of a small group spend an equivalent amount of time on a quest chain or otherwise working towards some loot then why shouldn't that loot be of comparable worth as the raid earned loot? 

Well this whole thread is moot anyway if I interpret the posts in this thread correctly, according to MadeofLions posts in this thread there are no raid specific drops.

http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?&postid=791146#post791146 (http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?&postid=791146#post791146)

If you dont want to raid then fine, seems as if you can get the class specific legendary armor pieces  from solo and group play

These fuckheads would get bitchslapped by VN.

Yeah. I saw that post. In another thread Raiders are actually going "the guy who asked the question asked if you could get stuff 'like' epic armor sets. So of course you can. They just won't be nearly as good. But they'll be sets." And then of course linked a much less powerful set piece a raider got while soloing.

Well, yesterday as I logged back in I was offered a new quest, that led me all around the world map to get the new raid quests. I ended up, in about an hour, with 12 new quests, all into the new raid instances and definmitely raid quests (as in the title beginning with "Raid: go there and fetch that blah...").
Rewards ranging from 10 cookies to some Unique weapons.

So basically, no matter what they say, there are at least 12 quests as far as I can see after 2 hours into the post-patch game, and rewards (some great), that are definitely raid only.

Those weapons are what caused the big uproar over on the general forums. Those are the ones that

1) Can only be gotten in raid.
2) The end boss only drops 1 for the entire raid, meaning a minimum 24 times for everyone to get one if you stick with the same raid group every single time and you don't get useless drops for classes that already have their weapons. For PUGs and a group that changes alot and/or has bad luck it could be 100's of times before you get your weapon.


Well, there are supposedly over 100 quests in the patch, so 12 out of 100 isn't really that bad at all and if they keep it at about this percentage I think things will be fine. Let's face it, you don't need more than 10 or 12 quests in a raid. Most people go for the loot and the loot alone.

Are you sure about that? Those are quest reward so I guess as long as you complete the quest (and usually everyone in a group get credit/token for killing given mob) you should get yours. The uniques I am referring to aren't drops, just quest rewards. You go in, kill the boss, get credit for it, go back to quest giver (giant Arifael IIRC) and get your unique.
Are you implying that the item/token needed to complete the quest is dropped for just 1 raidmember out of 24 for every single instance? Honest question, as I didn't read the official forum yet.

That's what the forums are saying and a dev confirmed is working as intended.

That is exactly what I'm saying, and MoL (something of Lions) said that is by design and the raids are not supposed to be casual friendly (from that standpoint.)

here is the thread http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?t=68414 (http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?t=68414) and MoL's post is on page 3.



 This just plain sucks and makes me a little less enthusiastic about the game today than I was yesterday. What I am waiting on now is for someone to get a epic drop from a solo mob to compare against the raid drop.

Holy shit, that sucks.
Not because you may raid for nothing for 6 hours (or more) straight. But because of all the trash mobs you'll have to kill, day after day, until you drop your token (and after that you have to do it again to help guildees).

After a bit of reflection I decided I am back to the opinion of I don't care about the raids one way or the other as long as I have plenty of content as a solo/small group player. If someone wants to spend 30 or 40  hours of their life each week chasing some virtual armor that is 5% better than mine then let them knock themselves out.

Back to WoW for me, then. 

And waiting for the next MMO that doesn't have this kind of raiding.

Some types of repetitive gameplay is fine (fishing ftw!), but raiding as repetitive gameplay, no thanks.  If I'm in a raid, I want to be fighting a war against other people, not pushing the same buttons for the same encounters for the same mobs over and over again week after week. While some might enjoy that type of static gameplay, I do not, and will not pay for it.

Come to Dath'Remar!  Dath'Remar loves you!!!!   8-)

So because LoTRO puts a raid in you go running back to a game that has dozens of raids...umm right. If you prefer WoW over LoTRO that is all well and good but please do not insult my intelligence by saying it is because of a raid instance.

In WoW you can fight in battlegrounds to (eventually) get raid-type loot. Notice her sentence about fighting a war against other people.

I really still think they are missing the boat by not enabling lengthy solo quests with raid-type rewards. Is there a fundamental flaw in it?

I don't raid in WoW at all any more.  I rarely run instances.

My hobbies include AV, crafting and leveling alts.  Mostly AV and crafting.

Extra work which may be multplied by the fact that classes have differing solo capabilities. E.g. instead of tailoring one set of encounters per quest you might need up to 7 and then when you multiply that by the number of steps to reach the end reward you are looking at a gineormous amount of additional work.

The beauty of it is that doing only that you will have plenty of epics.

Fair enough, but having done too many dungeon crawls that take forever, I think a change of pace would be refreshing to many in-game. Agree?

LoTR lives to put you through endless dungeon crawls as discussed on the other thread, so what makes you think they wouldn't just do more of the same for a group quest? From the imagination they've shown so far, a long group quest would involve returning to the same instance for a rare drop off one of the bosses for all 6 people in the group. And endless trash clears. Even worse if they put it outdoors in an elite area. Which is essentially what the raiders have to deal with and many of the single group fans say they'd be fine with it too. Turbine's quests are all over the map from my current experience playing a few characters, with the L30 guardian quest being a total joke.

Then she should say I am going back to WoW because I prefer the battlegrounds over the MvP

In Lotro you can get raid type loot by doing group and solo quests and if PvP is your thing you can fight against other people in the Etteinmoors (sp?). Good god they add one raid and the sky is falling the sky is falling mentality runs rampant. If people like WoW or EQII or Eve or whatever better that is fine, what  saying I am quitting because they added a single raid instance is about a weak of a excuse as you can get. So far it has not changed the game for me one iota. I solo'ed all Friday evening and duo'ed for a few hours yesterday and those people raiding did not seem to affect me at all. Wonders never cease.

Let us not forget, friend, that people have their owen opinions as to what is fun and not fun. Clearly in X's post she says that she will -not have fun- raiding. Therefore she has no interest to play the game anymore.


Doesn't seem like "OMG TEH SKY WTF!1!"

and as I pointed out wtf is the difference between raids in LoTRO  and raids in WoW? If someone prefers the game play or misses their old friends that is fine , I understand completely. It is the oh my gawd they put a raid in I am leaving part that baffles me.

The "OMG TEH SKY WTF!1!" comment was made in response to this entire thread because as I pointed out they snuck this one in on us, they only announced that the game would have raids last JULY http://lotro.turbine.com/article/130 (http://lotro.turbine.com/article/130)

Therefore nothing. There's no therefore.
There's plenty of things to do beside raiding right now and there will be even more.
Actually, raiders have one instance while other players have the whole rest (99.5%) of the game.
How can that make for a "Therefore she has no interest to play the game anymore"?
It's not like they said "we are done with the group content, now we'll just focus on raids".

You're missing the point, I think.  It's not just raiding.  It's the direction of the game, and the responses of the devs to problems known since beta.

I'm going back to WoW because I have more non-raid things to do there.  I dislike the direction LOTRO is heading.

The quote by MoL indicates the direction the devs are taking things.  No thanks.  I'll repeat it here.


I like new shiny things.  This is neither.

Monster play is a supreme disappointment.  Great idea, poorly implemented.

The Loremaster class not only is disappointingly weak, but there are no plans to beef it up for _months_.  Unacceptable.

Crafting is uninspired.

Notice, I'm not saying that everyone should stop playing LOTRO immediately because it sucks.  It doesn't suck.  It's just that I'm not finding it fun.  Whether they make it more fun for me in the next months is irrelevant as to whether or not I should continue to pay money now instead of cancelling.  I've gotten my money's worth out of it so far, but I don't plan on continuing to pay for something that's heading the wrong direction for my fun.

It seems to me that people think I should continue to play a game _they_ think is fun.

No Xanth, I got you right. I know how you feel about it.
It was his "therefore" I didn't like. Call it nitpicking, but I was bored due my server's unexpected downtime.

I dunno. It's not like they didn't say it, either. If people are concerned when the design focus turns to raids, it's because some of us know what historically has started to happen at that point in live management on MMOGs.

It goes something like this:

1) The first raid added causes balance problems that ripple through the game, especially with a PvP component. Either the gear available is substantially more powerful than other endgame-available gear (problem) or it's not (problem in that there is then very little incentive to run the raid, and the raider subculture complains bitterly).

2) Powergaming raid guilds rip through the raid fairly quickly, gear up fully, and complain of boredom. Sometimes they go off and do the PvP component, but now that they're so geared up, they pretty much discourage almost everyone else from doing PvP.

3) Non-raiders arrive at the endgame and no thought has been given to other game systems which might occupy them except for PvP, which may become prohibitive because of raider participation, and possibly crafting. Designing non-raid endgame content is conceptually too difficult for the team, so they don't try. Because even non-raiders are max progression, the live management team increasingly sees no point to adding new low-level or mid-level content.

4) Hence, the content development largely prioritizes raids until the next major expansion-level update.

----

I see the potential for a lot of this cycle with LOTRO. The devs didn't do a good job with crafting, and clearly don't have much of a feel for what it entails. I doubt they're going to make it a preoccupying system in its own right. They don't seem to have a sure hand when it comes to mid-level content beyond the stuff they did right on the first pass (particularly the Epic quest line, which is great). Raiders are the most skilled group of "lobbyists" when it comes to connecting with devs and getitng service for their own interests, even when it's not a matter of collusion between devs playing the game and highlevel raid guilds. Plus, the paradigm for raid design is now well-understood, and you can buy off-shelf dev talent from other MMOGs who have done raid design. Other kinds of sub-systems are conceptually more complex, and there just aren't that many people in the business who understand them well or have good ideas about how to work with those systems.

I can also see a lot of monster players just giving up if raid-geared level 50 freeps start to pour into the Ettenmoors in increasingly large numbers. As it is, I've found that well-geared freeps are hanging around just outside of Gram's picking off monster players as they log in and go off to quest. There's no dynamic spawn as in WoW, so it's pretty easy for even a small group to just sit around ganking people and killing NPC spawns as they appear. The safe zone for monsters is pretty small.

We don't really know what Turbine has in mind as far as content development past the introduction of player housing. If I had to put a wager down, I'd say the next major addition of substantive content is going to be another endgame raid or something close to it. Either that or adjustments to the PvP system, but that will become entangled with raiding over time.

Khal,

Monster play adjustments are actually coming before housing. I don't know any details however.

Turbine in the past has been real good about adding interesting things to their games. That said, I don't know how many LOTRO devs worked on their pasts games, particularly AC1. If the percentage is high I think we'll be fine based on how they worked in the past. They usually have interesting ways to gain gear and do new content.

I agree with your post to some extent as that is exactly what happened with WOW. However, I blame alot of that on two things:

1) Tigole being a major player in the WOW designs. This was the writing on the wall honestly.
2) Blizzard's glacially slow update process.

Turbine has one major update out, the summer solstice in a few days, the monster update in the late summer, and housing in October. At least one of those, Housing, WOW still hasn't done and has been out for years. The summer solstice is like things WOW used to do on major holidays but to my knowledge have sort of stopped doing. That major update, Evendim, was something it took many months for Blizzard to do. I'm only comparing the two btw because there are some similiarites and I didn't play enough EQ to make any valid comparisons.

It's the differences that will determine LOTROs fate. If it does the same endgame shit as WOW I predict it will die. It has a ton of players who are burned out WOW players who will leave if it follows the raid or die endgame plan. Right now, it appears that is not the plan, but time will tell.

That's one step short of paranoia.

Honestly, and I was thinking again to Xanthippe's position, I don't see this dreaded direction LotRO is heaading to. It's obvious they have to give some love to the raiders, but I still can't see why they should stop making content for groups. LotRO has its audience and it's not a WoW kind of audience. I seriously think it will stay a mainly group oriented MMORPG, and it's not because of the first patch (which again is for the 90% filled with non-raid content) that we can predict an incoming raid dictatorship.

I read your notes Khaldun, and of course new raids need to be added to the game, and they will. But the same is true for regular 6-chars group instances, some of which just entered the game through the patch alongside the raid instance. I don't think they'll botch it killing a different playerbase just becasue "crafting group content is harder than raid content" (?).

If anyone feels like leaving now to avoid greater disappointment later then it's more than ok. But I really think there's too much fuss just because A (one, as in the first one) raid has been added to a game which already has tons of content.

Good point that there's a scheduled monster play update, I forgot that. Hopefully they'll make it easier to power-up the creeps so that there's still an adequate supply of creeps to make it interesting. I've already noticed that one major group of freeps in the zone are just there to mine in Isendeep: Turbine probably needs to keep a lot of creeps coming just so it doesn't become Farmer Central.

AC1 was the king of content updating. I think I may work up a mini-essay about the entire problem of content updating with AC1 in mind. My sense is that they were able to do it because: 1) they had one dev who was insanely, wonderfully committed to the development of the world lore; 2) they were willing to do new content fast and dirty, without over-testing it too much. Sometimes they got in trouble because of that, but still, it was a good way to go on the whole; 3) the graphics and underlying tech were simpler than today's standards, and so a smaller team of people could do more in a shorter amount of time.

I think you're right that if LOTRO gets trapped in the raid-development cycle it will in fact die. But man, that dev statement that appeared on the official forums in the raiding thread was a flashing red alert signal that they're getting caught up in that mindset--it was like watching an alcoholic fall off the wagon.

Call it wariness based on having watching most MMOGs have a "tipping point" at which raiding or something like it (Trials of Atlantis in DAOC) change the entire state of the gameworld system and suck up all the design energies.

WoW is a great example. As Riggswolfe points out, that has a bit to do with personnel, with Tigole coming on board. But seriously, it was actually a pretty head-scratching pattern to watch. Blizz spends endless time and care in crafting a game that's inviting to a very big market, and then once the game goes live, dumps about 75% of their design energies into developing content that a very small percentage of the playerbase can access. That says to me that there's something structural here, that raids as a subsystem in a DIKU have a way of changing the entire logic of live management. EQ and EQ2 and Lineage started with a powergamer/raider logic deeply embedded in their DNA, so I guess you can't look at them as examples of a "tipping point". But I can really see it happening to LOTRO unless the devs are incredibly clear-headed about limiting the influence of raids and devoting a very fixed percentage of effort to their future development. Right now, I don't see any signs of that clear-headedness in the limited kinds of statements that are coming out of the dev team.

In fact, the LOTRO dev team has gone very, very quiet as a whole, except for the guy who works on monster play.

My sense is that they're busy squashing bugs and reacting to some of the issues from the patch, real and percieved.

As for the raid stuff, I wouldn't go off of that one dev's posts. One, he seems to be mainly a raid dev, and two, he was somewhat defensive in his replies since it was a very anti-raid post he was responding directly to.

No.  No they really fucking don't.

*SOME* love. Why not? This is like solo players hating group content.

What's wrong with that?  This is our revolution, baby.

They've been hating on solo content long enough.  It's time to bring them down!

I have to agree with Xerapis here. The average raid-only player is not that tolerant towards different playstyles. They tend to take over games once they get a foothold in due to their dedicated playstyle. I saw it since Everquest. Remember that there only were two raids there at the beginning?

I'm not seeing it in Lotro yet, but being wary about it is something the past should have taught us, not paranoia.

If you are roleplaying some faction hate, I am in.

If you are serious, I am out. I think LotRO could be the first game with a good balance between solo, group and raid content.

Of course that won't make anyone happy, cause whining is free and apparently cathartic.

EDIT: spelling.

Right now I agree with you completely. The question is if the developers give in to the whining of one of these groups and destroy that balance. Only the future will tell.

And having been in a raid guild in both Everquest and World of Warcraft, from the internal boards I can tell you its hard to find better whiners than raiders if they set their mind to it. Which is only logical if you think about the fact that they are used to group efforts which Soloers obviously are not.

I'll agree with you here. I think they may be the first game to truly do it right if they add some solo content from 40-50 and some lengthy solo/group quests (that aren't raid oriented).

It's not just playstyle, but time they have to dedicate to said whining, and the numbers they can muster to do it and their tendancy to congregate on your forums.

Yeah, your game may be 90% soloers, but if that last 10% makes up 80+% of your board postings you're going to pay attention to it.  You see this with class balance, content balance and overall game balance time and time again.  It's part of the reason I think official boards suck.. but then again, if you didn't have those boards they'd just be spamming /suggestions or /bugs about the lack of content.

You know which other game promised a good balance between solo, group and raid content? Vanguard.

Just saying.

These are not promises. There's a whole game with 50 levels of more than enough content for solo and group players. Raiders just got their candies.

Brad used to talk a lot while LotRO devs were busy actually crafting a finished game.

WOW did as well.

No, I'm not completely serious.  Maybe a little serious, though.

If I could be guaranteed the shiney in a reasonable amount of raiding time, I might care more about raiders.  Same thing if I didn't keep hearing over and over again "no hunters wanted".

Raid advancement isn't an open free field trip that all players can join.  Raiders don't all live in their parent's basement watching Star Trek and eating KFC right out of the bucket.

My hate is truly reserved for the fact that incessant raider-whining focuses the endgame on them always.

There are other, better options.

Personally, I think that everything should be 5-man-able.  But that's just me. ~shrugs~

I'm not going to engage in any sort of personal attack or anything, but yes, I hope very much for the imminent demise of the large raiding lifestyle.

Did my first raid today, and it is very annoying that the boss (spider queen in this case) only dropped one copy of the quest item you need. It's okay for me that she only dropped two pieces of nice lewt between 24 people, but only one of you gets to complete the quest as well? Blah.

Ugh, I hate that noise. But it does seem in keeping with the rest of the game when drops are part of what is needed for a quest. I probably will have quit before I get to the point where I even need to wonder about setting aside my natural dislike for raiding though :)

Still not sure why people feel the game is ruined because the Devs added a couple of raids. If you don't care for em the just ignore them. Looking at the high end crafted stuff itappears to be just as good, and in some cases better than the raid gear. I am wearing all Padded Pristine stuff a tailor friend of mine made and when that stuff is critted it is better than anything I can get from a drop, raid or other wise.  Same with the items obtained in the Ettienmoors. I could give a fuck about the raids myself and plan on concentrating on the PvMP when I max out. If people want to raid then more power to them, it does not mean I have to or need to.

That is just poor game design.

Haven't tried the raids yet, and from what I've seen, I probably don't want to.

High-level dungeons in this game need a lot of work.  Hell, it takes 10-30 minutes (depending on your groups competancy) just to get into the Carn Dum / Uru instance.  God forbid someone leaves or gets disconnected once you're in; everyone has to go back out and escort the person back in.  The one res spot at the bottom of the Angmar is pure cockblockery, too.

The starter raid quests in my log have horrible rewards as well.  I guess they're the beginning of other raid chains, but I'm not impressed with the whole dangling-carrot thing.  They really need to learn from WoW's mistakes, and focus on solo and small-group content.

If you are a caster (will/fate person), Barad Gularan has some great rewards for a level 50 6-man. The final boss is a total bastard though.

Considering they haven't added any new servers, nor made any proclamations of new records broken, I think players are going to soon start trickling away before they get to the endgame. Therefore, smaller raid group sizes are in order. 12 people max in my opinion.

I know about 8 of us who have trickled away.

I seriously doubt that anyone did not think there was going to be churn, or that the game would fit every player. Just a guesstimate here, but our guild has had about a  50 or 60 percent retention of the original launch members.

I can't find it now however somewhere there used to be a site with a page that showed the  average time played in MMORPGs, Themis or Daedalus maybe?  Looking at my own play habits, out of all the level based MMO's I have played over the past 10 years I only achieved max level with at least one character in DAoC and EQII. Most of the rest I canceled somewhere in the mid 30's if I even made it that far. Some that never made it through the free 30 days were EQ1, AC1, CoH, and WoW. Not because they were bad games, just they never hooked me.

Oh, I wasn't decrying the churn. It happens. The amount of months the average subscription-based MMO account was open was about 5-6 months prior to WoW's launch. That number shot up to 14 months, but that was of debatable relevance because a) more than half of all MMO players in the West were in WoW; and, b) that measure was taken 14 months after WoW's launch. I imagine that's trickling back down though. LoTRO designed their raid size partly based on history and partly based on post-BC WoW raid sizes. Why not? If it works for one, why not another?

You need an endgame and raiding has worked for other DIKUs, so it could work here. But not to the degree it works in WoW. First, there are going to be less players than WoW in LoTRO forever. Second, the same percentage of them are not motivated by the same need for the best of the best gear. Monster Play is more appropriate as an endgame for the LoTRO player (in my opinion) than straight-up raiding, as it arguably has some impact on some part of some nugget of the story. But otherwise, it's just a fun way of still-raiding, like BGs in WoW.

I'd like to see raiding cut down to one full-size group, maybe two. I'd like to see this implemented before the majority of the playerbase hits the later levels rather than after the fact when they realize they aren't retaining endgamers because they can't muster the appropriate force size in appropriate frequency.

I'm in danger of trickling away.  Getting tired of Evendim solo and when I play it's hard to find a group.  Every damn quest seems to want me to swim across the goddam lake again.  I am 38, and there just isn't enough solo quests.  This is Turbine, monthly content is what they DO. 

I may unsub but will come back for Moria unless it's lvl 50's only.

Currently playing ST Legacy for the 360 and making-history.com (http://making-history.com)

I think they already have what you are asking for, as the end game dungeons like Cair Dun and Urugarth are already mini-raids, and damn annoying ones at that. It takes about an hour to reach Urugarth and longer to reach CD as you fight through pointless trash outside the instance. Then the trash begins in serious numbers inside. Most groups I've done  CD with always want to skip a lot of the mobs and then one group member goes LD and has to try to make it back alone from zone in. It rarely works; then a couple more decide to go back and help then they die too and it spirals out of contro. Even if they convert all the 24 man raids into 12 mans you're still going to have to deal with that crap.

I've trickled away myself.  I spent a week away from home and my computer and realised when I got back that I had no compelling reason to log in; so I cancelled.  It meant giving up the founder's rate but since I rarely go back to games I've quit it's no big loss.  I'm not particularly interested in any of the games in the pipeline and since there's a new combination coffee shop and game store near the house I may end up playing some kind of in person game again.  If nothing else they have monthly sealed deck Magic tournements that I can get into for less than MMOs charge.

I totally agree. To me, "raiding" is the entire event, from log in to log out. Most people do not have time to sit down for multi-hour sessions or the genre wouldn't continually drive towards more casualization. Turbine seems to have taken a step back here. Maybe it wasn't tuned enough, or they paid too close attention to the only beta-testers that accessed that content. Seems to me you don't want to design Raids for today's Raiders but rather design them for today's gamers. You'll get the Raiders no matter what you do, but there aren't enough of them to pin the hopes of your entire endgame business needs on them.

You should be able to log in, join raid, enter the raid zone, complete it and log out within a few cumulative hours, allowing for incremental log outs through the week (otherwise why have the RaidID used in some games). And your graveyard should be in the zone, behind a safe wall no mob trains will cross. Or it should be just outside the entrance not surrounded by mobs. Whatever gets in the way of the players before they start raiding has got to be considered as part of the total "raid experience" or it's just categorized as annoying cockblockery.

I think this is a  bit of creative bending of the truth. I was 30 when evendim came out and have done litteraly all the quests in the zone and I'l say closer to 30-50% are group quests, lableled or not. Some of them are freaking tough to do solo like the ones in the valley with the beast men series but in general most quests there are properly labeled and soloable.

Compared to the Agamaur quests they replaced they are a soloer's dream really.

Exactly. The main problem comes from a combination of factors imo. The design of elite mobs is the start. It takes a ridiculous about of time for a full group to bring one down, thus making the killing of trash annoyingly painful. That combined with the cordon of elite mobs they put surrounding dungeon/raid content adds to the tedium. Hell, the only dungeon I can think of that doesn't use this pardigm is Helegrod where you walk up the twisted stairs through mostly light grreen mob, Their 20k and 30k mobs should be reserved as guards in a boss encount, not as wandering patrols on a quarter mile long stairway.


Theire raid flag system is a  bit better than originally describe though still not perfect. I was able to do two trips to helegord last week because the second guild hadn't killed the spider and neither had I.

I don't understand why Turbine hasn't put DDO best feature in this game. In DDO, you can repeat quests as often as you want if you want multiple items from the reward list. Because of that, people do some of the group quests many times and looking for group isn't an amazing pain in the ass.
When the population at your level is scarce, and all you have left requires group/raid, you'd better have good incentive for people to redo content they have already done.

Ya and as I've said, no game provides less incentiiive to go back to an instnce you've done than LoTR. Unless you are helping a friend or guildmate there is absolutely no reason I can think of to ever go back to one. I way pefered WoW for thism where I remember going back multiple tims to the wailing caverns dispiite having finished all the quests there. Not to mention Scarlet Monestary,

I agree. I understand that Turbine wants people to get away from the dungeon grind farmfest, but there should at least be a little bit of incentive to go back. It creates a huge dichotomy between those who have and those who have not.

I agree as well. Unless they start getting into a true cycle of advancing the storyline monthly, they need to give people something to do meanwhile. Heck, how often do the people of Eriador continue to return to places to ply the resources from them? Wasn't like the Fellowship was the first to enter Moria, nor didn't return in some form :) And Elves? Come on. If you live forever, you're bound to see something more than once ;)

Perhaps they could add some xp/gold/item/craft content that isn't gamebreaking but still fun for the higher levels?

Something akin to Zul'Gurub or Velk's Lab?

I think that farmable gear is completely against Turbine's agenda, but if there were some decent tradeable items or crafting mats from instance runs, perhaps we would see more repeats.


On another note, why not award Destiny Points for helping others do quests multiple times? Make it so that it isn't horribly abusable: 100DP for the first, 50 for the second, 25 for the third, etc, etc.

Personally, I think Moria sets the perfect stage for repeatable content. Between the long-buried/rumoured Mithril and the various odds and ends the Orcs have picked up since kicking the Balin and his kin out/dead, there's quite a lot of opportunity for expeditionary forces to make repeated incursions into the place. They need to make the zone anyway if we're going to continue helping the Fellowship behind the scenes. I can see many different quests where we're asked to cut down on the number of Orcs that catch up to them in the Library, or at the bridge. Then there's that big Boss encounter :)

So yea, I'm with you on adding repeatable rewards. I think Moria would be perfect for it. Maybe Dul Guldor, which the Fellowship never goes to, but which featured big in Sauron's (and Gandalf's) life before Mordor. Gotta be things to uncover there too, and that's not so far from a content/world standpoint from Moria nor Lothlórien.

I'm really not sure turbine is against farmable content. Your class quest, at 45, requires drops from named in Urugarth and Carn Dum. Obviously, the drop rates for these items isn't 100% and each item is used by more than 1 class. So chances are you'll have to do these dungeons multiple times.

One of the bosses in Urugarth was close to the entrance. We actually reset the instance 5 times to get the item for everyone in our group. The funny thing is that i saw 4 different items on this boss loot table. It might be even deeper. So if you want a particular item off this boss, you'll probably have to farm the place a while.

Then again, that's the easiest way to do content for people at max level so i shouldn't be surprised.

And all the trash stuff you have to collect doesn't support this against farming theory in the slightest. 25 worm scales, 15 bat talons and a 10 or so of a couple of other things I forget now for my guardian's quest. Or legendary trait books? Damn that looks a hell of a lot like farming. And if they are so against farming why are the mob traits in higher level zones 320 or more. Sure looks like farming to me. I tried doing the warg and bear ones in misty mountains while mining only killing bears or wargs that agro'd me and damn it would take forever to finish them if you don't buckle down and start killing exclusively. After a while I just had to ask myself. is 30 hp worth this work. the answer,for me, was no.

As to the idea of having multiple quests in Moria, I suspect they'd just fuck it up by surrounding the mines with a 2 mile wide cordon of elite mobs you have to fight through. If you haven't done Augmar they already tried something similar there where the quest objects were much less than even 3 ppl would need to finish the quest, thus requiring multiple trips back in. It was pretty horrible, especially when augmar was the only real place to level for the low 30's before they put in evendim.

The drop rate will be increased to 100% in book 10. http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?t=75147&page=6&highlight=winged+dominance (http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?t=75147&page=6&highlight=winged+dominance)

 That was about a stupid way to do things. Once again I  am glad I played alts a couple of weeks waiting on the Evendim expansion so I am slightly behind the front runners in our guild on the leveling curve but seem to be dead on track with the expansions now..

Reeking fanboyism maybe, but LotRO really isn't grindy in any major way.

Actually, none of that is that bad. I got my Lore of the Blade with a maximum of four hours farming (and it's completely kick-ass, I tell you! ;). I got three out of eight pages from normal questing and would have got two more while doing the relevant quests for the area (I didn't have them at the time.) You can be insanely unfortunate and spend many, many hours getting the last page, but that goes for every random drop system. Overall, it's not that bad considering the two I've farmed this far.

The class-quests aren't that bad either bar the last step with the raid drop (trade with guildies and buy cheap stacks from the AH when they appear), however they are said to start dropping in larger quantities so they'll find the AH at decent prices. Right now they're priced around 7 gold on my server, which is a lot of money, but not that much if you're really motivated. We're talking quested, epic gear, of course it's going to be a decent amount of work to get it. Post-Book 10 we should be seeing them at lower prices, especially as more and more people hit 50 and enter Helegrod.

As for virtues... yes, they are grindy. They will be lowered in Book 10, but they are also miniscule buffs, not crucial to your character. As you said yourself, they aren't worth it in general, but you'll complete them sooner or later. It's more like a nice extra when it happens rather than intended to be farmed.

In my opinion farming only gets bad if you -have- to farm insane amounts of hours just to get what you're meant to have, but as I see it now, none of those skills require that much effort after all. Sort of grindy, yes, heinous, not really. :)

I agree except for the bit about traits. There are a few that are hugely useful, mostly the class and racial ones. Of course, you said "virtues" so I am guessing you only meant virtues and not all trait/deed rewards.

I did mean virtues (as it was the example Phred brought up), but indeed, some are obnoxiously grindy. They are however in clear minority and even the class (use skill X Y times) deeds can be gained relatively painless by just altering your play style a bit. The later Enmity-deeds are however pain, I'll agree to that. (Enmity of the Drakes, booyah! <cries>)

I meant gear-farming, not quest farming.

How many of you in this thread sat for days at the Frenzied Ghoul just to get a chance for a FBSS?


That's gear-farming.

Sorry, I don't understand Elite, you need to speak Nub. :-D

I cry at the memory of how many hours of my life were wasted in Lower Guk.  It amazes me the things players tolerated endured in the early days of EQ. 

Funny you mention LGuk. Merusk just posted a good impression (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=10615.msg331500#msg331500) of the feel of that era:

In terms of farming, i went from 41 to 43 just by killing for the pages for one of my book. Now at 50, i still havent finished another book (stuck on 3/4 pages, been 9 hours since last page dropped). Of course, perhaps the drop rate for hunters is abysmal because we kill faster, but i dont want to know how many mobs i've killed so far for that stupid page. That said, i'm reknown for my shitty luck with rare drops in mmo so it might be normal.

The funny thing is that when i got to 41, i had almost no solo quest left. The grind from farming for pages actually allowed me to bring some solo content within reach.
(i still think the angmar/misty content is a lot crappier than the early game content, but it's normal considering what was mostly beta tested). When the game released, quests were fine until you arrived at north down. The critical mass either didnt get to north down in beta or the dev didnt get to polish from that point on.

Angmar, in particular, is a serious pain in the ass to quest in. Between the 2000 archers on road, the invisible spiders that root and the fact there's no horse route to get to the ranger camp or the dwarf fortress, it is an exercise in frustration getting anywhere in the zone. Getting to Carn dum or Urugarth is also one of the biggest waste of time i've had the displeasure of knowing in an mmo endgame.

The thing I like about the Deeds is that, yea, it's farming, but you can do that while doing other things, or if you don't feel like doing other things. I don't get to play often these days, and there are times I just don't feel like grouping or instancing. It is better if I can do a Deed while finishing a Quest (like Killing X Orc in North Downs). But that's not a requirement either.

It's like EQ1 faction farming except for a more personal reward.

Don't forget the 1 graveyard in the whole zone. Sucks major ass if you die with no rezzer around.
On page drop mobs. I have a feeling they drop from the mobs in certain areas more than others. I spent 3 days trying to get guardian pages off fire worms in that swamp in Angmar, and got 1. Then while passing through I noticed a worm up on the banks above the swamp dropped a page, so I stuck around that area and got all my pages in about 3-4 hours.

North Downs deeds are trivial to get. Wait until you get to higher level zones and are looking at 420 to max the second part of the deed. It's not something you can do while doing other things, as was already covered by a previous post.

Bah, people always say that like I'll survive to that point in the game :) I have a very low threshold for that sorta thing. As it is, the 260 Orcs I need for the second part of this Deed I wouldn't bother with unless some of it was supported by quests. I'm very much not a completest when doing so means hammering my head.

Ya I get kind of anal about filling out as much of my char as I can, especially at max level, and that particular deed did give nice stats for a tank (30 or so hp per level. Not much for 1 but it adds up when you have 7 or 9) As it was though, once I hit 50 and maxed my metalworking, which was a major grind in itself (like 1.1 ancient iron bars per skill point), looking at those deeds and how little dent a couple of hours killing put in them just had me going fuck it. Unfortunately, other than repeating the same 2 instances over and over, that's about it for the end game in LoTR right now. Combine that with the incredibly pointless nerf to horses and bleed effects on guardians I just said fuck it and went back to WoW.

Since this thread is about endgame, here're the recently announced changes to PvMP in Book 10 (the next free expansion)

http://lotro.turbine.com/article/392

The future addition of a dedicated healer for the creeps will be interesting. I'm also interested to see how the healing buffs they've added to existing classes will change things.

I agree. I have always felt, if an "End-game" is required, then something is seriously wrong with the "Body" of the game. As in, the journey must have sucked if the destination is the only goal.

Endgames are for people who don't want the game to end at the level cap and from companies that can't afford to have an endless stream of brand new content (like, everyone).

If you want the game to be over at the cap, great!

I think you missed my point.






Also, i have never been one to like levels in the first place. Its just a sliding scale, and your fighting creatures that are basically the same threat as the ones you fought at level 1, you both just have more numbers now.

Maybe it's just a misnomer. "End-game" implies something one does at the end of the game. However, this is not the case. Rather, end-games are really something you do to continue growing/customizing your experience, which most times just means your character, but sometimes includes virtual holdings.

In other words, the end-game in these games is just as much a path-oriented progression as the level 1-cap game is, albeit at a different and/or slower pace. So just like the level 1-cap game, some need to like the progression in order to fully appreciate the rewards.

Basically, there is no "end game", because there is no end. Unless you voluntarily quit :)

I understand what it is.

I still say: I have always felt, if an "End-game" is required, then something is seriously wrong with the "Body" of the game. As in, the journey must have sucked if the destination is the only goal.

And why "End-game" seems to just be another word for "Raiding" (As in huge areas requiring lots of people, and many hours) is also something that is wrong with gamers expectations.

This is a problem.

Players determine whether to focus on the endgame or on the path. The game doesn't decide that for you. DIKU-inspired games are all about giving you just enough rewards to keep you playing for the next one. Some people want to cut through the low rewards to get to the "endgame" rewards, but that doesn't mean they're finished. They just want to skip the lowbie path to get to the endgame path. Someone who grinds through the level 70 in WoW is doing so to be at the level where they can raid to get better gear. It's the same path. "Endgame" is not a goal. It's just a milestone.

Unless they're there to PvP in BGs or Arenas. But those, too, are about having fun on different paths to achieve incremental goals to be better at achieving incremental goals. And then there's how different a pre-NGE SWG "endgame" is from WoW. And UO. And SB. And Eve.

As to Raids in a DIKU, yea, it's an old and semi-boring formula. Seems to work for now. But I prefer the theory of a well-implemented open-world type lifestyle as an endgame, ala pre-NGE SWG, UO, SB, and Eve :)

Endgame is just another way of saying "something to do for those of you who hate leveling"

Leveling + Quests are not really fun unless they lead somewhere for many people. And "end game" is a solid goal where you get to fuck off the grind and enjoy the things you want to do, not the ones you have to.

"I want to go to fight dragons!" "Sorry, you have to crawl through 30 hours of collecting pumpkins first." "But will I ever get to do it?" "Sure you wiil! Dragons and all your other desires are what awaits you in the End Game, when you can finally say goodbye to all this shitty other stuff we have you do and just do what you want!"

Which is not to say that all, or even most, people dislike levels or quests and shit. But for those that do an "end game" promises something else that might actually be fun - because it's different.

The last part of that brings me right back to this: "I have always felt, if an "End-game" is required, then something is seriously wrong with the "Body" of the game. As in, the journey must have sucked if the destination is the only goal."

I agree that end game shouldn't be a cop-out for unfun journey.  But having an unfun journey isn't the only reason to have end-game.  The journey can't last forever;  the rate at which players consume content vastly outstrips it's production. So either you give them an endgame or basically tell them to piss off.

The end game doesn't have to be raids.  But it is the easiest.

And again, the point is that it's the player that determines what is fun, for them. The devs just provide the tools for them to make that call. Think about how many people play in the endgame versus those still along the leveling curve, on their main or alts. There's a wide disparity, heavily leaning towards people not living these games at the cap, even if they achieve it.

You know, I would almost welcome a 'You Win!' graphic for the end game.  This gives you a clear indication that you have conquered the game and can get on with your life or reroll. Every time Turbine adds more content, they can push the ending after it.

It might prevent a lot of mental illness.  :-)

Still have traits, crafting and houses (soon) to keep you somewhat busy until the next content patch.

Guild Wars: Factions and Nightfall both had very solid, satisfying storyline endings after difficult, impressive boss fights. I'm not saying the storylines were solid or satisfying (though I was quite pleased with several parts of Nightfall), but they ended well. The giant congratulation orgy at the end of Factions is something I wouldn't mind seeing copied because it's relaxing and fun. The video game equivalent of a curtain call. I've actually heard that the Draenei get something like it at the end of their starting area.

You weren't done with the "game" but you were definitely done with the storyline and got some special goodies to show for it. Now go farm or PvP or run people between the missions, or do challenges, or whatever.

You don't automatically decimate your playerbase by offering a YOU WIN graphic. You may actually bring in a few gamers who wouldn't otherwise be interested in getting involved in your game, and you can keep the other ones by having fun non-storyline objectives and gameplay.

Developers made "The end game" a goal.

They couldn't figure out how to keep "Games that never end" , from ending... (I blame liner, vertical power progression)

The "End game" or even that word on players mouths didn't exist until they continually made it so, by creating such activities, instead of creating a more compelling, horizontal progression, or expanding the body of the work to offer different progressions (Such as many different story lines, instead of one direct one start to finish, or course, you need to get rid of the metric of levels).

I am quite sure that the whole concept was to appease the minority of players that consume content beyond the normal progression curve.. As in, "Hard core" players.. (I'm not talking about people that "Really like games" as brad from vanguard tried to coin it, im talking about thoes with 30+ hours a week to play..etc..).

Point being, people think an end game is fun, because its something that developers started making THE goal for (MMO) games, and that makes everything else that came before it, Trivial, and thats bad (Not saying the individual feature/mechanic are not fun, they can be, but why make it so you can only particeapate, or be completive at "The end"?). Sometimes i feel bad for writers of quests, because i know not a single person is going to read what they worked on, no wonder the "Kill 10 rats" is such a constant...

I don't recall an "End game" being required in earlier MMO's, That is, required by the players to define a "Full" game.

End game to me is a flaw, not a feature. As most endgame solutions are nothing but time sinks, grinds, and things that require an insane amount of repetitive actions. There is nothing compelling about current "Endgame" solutions, aside from the possible competition that comes from it, but then again, that could easily be a "During the entire game" Feature, and not one only at the end.

Again, End game to me is a flaw, not a feature (Just like binding items). I feel its bad for the industry that its now required to have, no one even tries to make a compelling, fun, non-ending mmo... Because of a minority.

A lot of my friends play wow, and they all say the game doesn't start till 60-70.. To me, im like "WTF, game must suck then".

To its credit, i think i have enjoyed the body of LOTRO content more than any game i have played yet (Save for SWG-Pre-CU, but that is a different beast). I couldn't care less about it NOT having an "Endgame", i having to much fun reading the quests, and questing and adventuring in the "Mid-game" to care..

I'm sure i haven't explained my thoughts on this very well.  :-o

EDIT: then again, "Endgame" is a great way to keep subscriptions... Especially if you keep raising the "End game" starting point by 10 levels every time you tack on an expansion (And the 10 levels are exponentially expanding XP, Grinding, or IRL time requirements! YAY!)  :-D

What bothers me about the use of "endgame" is that people think it's a label for some specific experience. It isn't. Worse, the assumption that because EQ1 had it and then WoW ripped it off, the entire genre is defined by leveling until Raiding (or sport-PvP raiding by a different name).

Every game has some sort of experience the veteran players play once they're done learning the game. And that's what the pre-endgame levels technically are. You're learning new skills while advancing your character through a series of story-based scenarios, RPG-style. The big departure from the RPG game so many anti-endgame folks seek is that an RPG is a linear game with an ending in an environment where you're the guaranteed hero. But they're in the wrong genre for that. MMOs are virtual worlds in which you play a role alongside a bunch of random other people doing the same. The concept of MMOs implies a virtual lifestyle but the RPG-trappings guarantee the need for an ending. So what you get is the dichotomy between metaphor of "learning" and the lack of need to actually quit the game when you're done with that learning.

Think back to Morrowind. The Second Coming of Robot Jesus. Where is it today? A wonderful nostalgiac trip for fans, but it was designed to be consumed and then for people to move on. To Oblivion for example, which will go the same route. These games have start, middle, and ends.

MMOs do not have that. They can't unless they kick people off the servers once they reach the last level. And nobody wants to do that. So instead of creating content for 50-80 hours of a typical big RPG, they need to create content for 500 hours and still give you something to do when you get to the end of the levels. Or they tweak how long it takes to reach the cap.

But you need to keep in mind that every game takes a different amount of time to "learn", and that only some games (albeit the biggest subscription-based) use "levels" as a metaphor for learning (as in, here's new abilities you learn and maximize and then here's the endgame in which you apply that learning). For example, EQ2 takes much longer than WoW and therefore has far less a percentage of total players at that endgame.

And heck, this is just covering the DIKU-inspired games. Habbo? Club Penguin? The concept of "endgame" doesn't really exist in those games because their more an aggregative of mini experiences than a linear progression through static content.

These worlds are designed to last forever. But you need something to do in them too. The content eventually dries up because players progress much faster than new stuff can be introduced.

...um, correct me if I'm wrong here, but I seem to remember that after you "beat the game" in Oblivion you can still, for example, walk around the Imperial City with the endgame damage having happened, and take the capper quests for the Fighter's, Mage's, or Thief's guild, or do some more assassinations.

It wasn't the same way in Morrowind? You couldn't still play the game after you'd ridden the Plot Train to the last stop?

Yes, but did you? And if not, why do you stick around after you hit the level cap here?

Someone needs to cut out all that levelling crap. Problem solved. Unfortunately, character advancement is so ingrained into peoples' minds that the idea of this makes smoke come from the ears and makes people say "Illogical illogical FAULTY FAULTY OMG FAULTY!!!"

So to me, what we do and how we apply what we've learned is merely wrapped with a metaphor in any game. Many MMOs use levels, but there's other ways too, some not defined by the game itself. Like in SWG, I wasn't rewarded by the game itself for the number of clients I had for my Energy business. And yet I had still definitely "advanced" to some "level" of business acumen to have achieved what I got. In fact, at the time I was barely competent with a Carbine and had merely lowbie level surveying skills since that's all I needed.

Other examples might be elder Guild leaders of large guilds. No game-applied reward there, but definitely a big achievement, to run a large guild of many personalities, keep things together when people leave, form alliances.

Still others are what players learn in terms of playing, notably an FPS game. You could play the exact same map over and over and become better at it in time. Learn more tricks, learn your opponents. The game isn't rewarding you for this in any statistical/mechanical form beyond kill count, but you definitely feel the improvement.

So how can we migrate from easily digestible stat-based obvious advancement to making people feel their improvement while still being part of an ongoing story, with soloable PvE, and wanting to partake of content 100s of hours long?

What is this "here"? I haven't played LotRO since the beta.

All I'm saying is that Oblivion didn't have a game over screen. You could still play it when its plot ended, in a post-plot world with a post-plot character. The "end of Oblivion" is much more likely to be player-determined, not game-determined.

I meant "here" in this genre.

I'm curious why anyone who would complain about the endgames in an MMORPG has no similar complaint about playing an RPG after you finished the storyline. And corrollary to this, if you weren't focused on finishing Oblivion to do that endgame exploration, why would you feel focused on finishing the levels of an MMORPG rather than playing it for the pseudo/light RPG it's trying to be?

(and I mean "you" in the general sense :) ).

Morrowind I loved so much it's the first single player RPG that I've  immediately restarted with a new character after accomplishing the main plot's goals. Oblivion not so much, though after saving the world I went back to an earlier save and wandered around doing a lot of quests I missed the first run through. Your point about end game in games like that is well taken, IMO. people sure as heck aren't going to be power leveling to max level in those games.

I don't understand the people who say the game begins at max level or feel like questing in WoW is a grind. Maybe because I am a fast reader and can read the quests and npc conversations in a few seconds most times so don't tend to skip them or something but I enjoyed most of the way to 60 on several characters, and even leveling those characters now to 70 isn't that bad. There's so much content I even vary my routes to 70, skipping terokar on one char, skipping instances on another. I took my mage to 70 without even leaving nagrand, but that was working on faction.

I think the guys at AOC said it best in a recent Q/A:


I don't mind an "end game"... I just do not enjoy ANY of the mechanics currently used.


As a side note, i enjoy the early stages of any RPG (Of any type) better than the later stages. Its more fun to be "Up and comming" and "Poor" in RPGs, than when your hitting yet another mob for 99999.

Well, I play CoH, where the endgame is "roll an alt". I have... um... at least a dozen, but I only regularly play about 5 of those, two on dedicated nights with dedicated teams. They're not at 50 yet.

My two 50s are both tanks. I pop back into them to look at new stuff expansions open up for 50s to do, even if it's just a few badges or taskforces. In a month or two when my SG pulls through heavy RL workloads I'm probably going to take my 50 tank with them around the Rikti crash site, since you can do everything there when you're a 50 and it's all pitched to 50.

End games ought to be like the older text-based MUDs. Remorting or, hey... here's a thought... hero classes that become immortals who must then WORK for the game. Muhahahahaha! Imagine the amount of development that could occur with a few hundred thousand immortals. Heh. Imagine the shitstorm. It's a thought though.

I very much agree with you and have on multiple occasions posted stuff like that. I think it's a better alternative to a true "endgame."


Just stretch out the max level to include sublevels. :)

Not having played anything like your speaking of.

But isn't that what LOTRO does? you can play as a monster... While it may not be the "arenas 2 factions" system we see, i can see this as an endgame where most content is created by players.

I bet they will expand this out more..especially when they get to things like helms deep ETC.

Fortunately by this point everyone has read The mythical Man-Month.

Yes, that's quite similar, but they could expand it further and make it quite a good system. If you remember the whole Ryzom Ring (http://www.ryzom.com/ryzom-ring) project, Turbine could capitalize on the way they have their game set up. What I am getting at is that they can ramp up and get players into generating content for the game, but build upon it as time passes. If they at some point down the line provide a toolkit for players to create content, as the Saga of Ryzom (http://www.ryzom.com) did, then they might be on to something new and potentially more fun than the neverending grind or ubiquitous raids. Possibly. It was popular amongst the player base in Ryzom, but it did not make Ryzom a major contender in the MMOG market. I think with the LoTR license, Turbine has a chance to make this type of end-game work. I hope they expand it out, but ... what the hell, I'll throw caution to the wind and call upon my oracular powers here... Turbine will make a better end-game that focuses on player created content and other gameplay mechanisms as time goes on. But, it will not allow them to unseat WoW as the subscription leader in the genre. Not that it matters... you can check my prediction in a year. ;)

How the heck are you going to rely on user generated content when your whole game has to be approved by the Tolkien estate?

User-gen and IP-based directed-play experiences do not mix. But LoTRO is at least going in a different direction from WoW first with Monster Play and soon with Houses. In time I expect it to be a DIKU-spin on the old SWG concept where you give players enough tools and they'll go figure out an endgame for themselves.

Monster Play, Houses, Music, maybe in time some vamped crafting system and NPC underlings, you could have a virtual-lifestyle game with a thin DIKU veneer, never having to worry about advancing the storyline at all :)

It is possible to do. Mind, the players would not have as much freedom as they would in a generic MUD with no license to maintain, but they could create mobs, items, etc. Rather than adding their own names and stats to these things, they might just have to pick from a pre-approved list of suggestions. Surely someone could write an estate approved name generator. Hell, I know of several Tolkien MUDs that can already suggest appropriate names. But that's just one aspect. I never said it would be easy, but it is definitely doable if they take their time and do it right. I stand by my prediction.

The general problem of the endgame will not be resolved until the emphasis in MMOs is on what happens to and in the world rather than making the only measurable unit of change through play being in the individual player-character.

If my character very rapidly progressed to the point where I was as powerful as I could become and I had made some branching linear choices about my development (what kind of skills I wanted, factions associated with) and then the real game was about working to make things happen in the world that were permanent and substantial, and the world therefore evolved dynamically, there would be no need to invest endless developer hours trying to desperately get ahead of the players with more content.

So why not do that? Two reasons. One is technical, the other is risk-aversion. The technical problem is that we can't have a game with a dynamic-state virtual world where things change permanently in response to player actions until we have strong autonomous-agent AI in such a game. E.g., creatures and NPCs will need to respond independently of developer control to things that players do, and their responses will have to be complex and at least have some element of randomness to them. Anybody remember the Against the Giants modules for AD&D? One of the things I loved about those was just the suggestions at the end about things the giants might do if the players went away to heal up and came back two or three days later--fortified guard posts, traps, movement of troop positions, ambushes. A dynamic-world MMO is going to need AI that can respond both tactically in a given location in that manner AND an AI that can handle long-term shifts in the way that particular agents behave in response to players. A dynamic-world MMO is also going to need deformable terrain, collision detection, etcetera: all very technically challenging.

The second reason, though, is what keeps anyone from taking even baby steps in this direction. Because an MMO that was oriented on trying to change the gameworld rather than levelling up your character would have to accept the possibility that the world could enter a structural cul-de-sac and need to be ended. This is one of the problems Shadowbane had when it was actually working: you could get a configuration of guild alliances that could effectively lock up the gameworld and make it lifeless and boring. Good design could prevent some of this--making a huge world helps (as with EVE Online), making it a closed economy with resources helps, good map design helps, but you'd still have to accept that a world could evolve to the point that it was no longer fun in any way, and needed to be rebooted. Until a designer can accept that this is the new meaning of live management--basically acting as stewards to a living, evolving world--nobody's going to start actually messing around with the technical work that's needed.

So instead they're all going to try and keep designing enough bells, whistles and raid dungeons to keep terminally bored levellers paying a monthly fee.

Right, but that evolving world model you described and the possibility for a cul-de-sac is something that even text MUDs of the past have encountered and dealt with. It's not a one or the other issue. You can still have developers making new content. You can still have hero players making content, or raise contributing players to "immortal" or player developer status to allow them more freedom to create (not destroy) the world. As the players contribute, so to do the developers. The two can work in conjunction. This allows for more time given to the developers to deliver new content and allows devs to make content/whatever to reroute cul-de-sacs or potential cul-de-sacs. There would still lbe a probability there, but then I suppose it would be up to the players to accept that there could be a "reset" as it were. That would not be pleasant for all involved, but is something that some players accept and embrace and something that can draw new players. There will always be turnover of the playerbase. You are correct that developers would rather go the safe WoW-style route and just keep pumping content. It's less risky for player turnover and certainly more lucrative. The ideas we're discussing are potentially lucrative, but not proven, except perhaps in pay-to-play text MUDs.

UO and SWG had their share of static spawns, for the same reason any game does. But they also allowed for dynamic player interaction. Mob lair spawn patterns would (for the most part) change. Mobs all had rudimentary collision detection so they weren't roaming through houses. Any dynamic element originally placed where houses/structures could be placed were affected by the placement of that structured because at their foundation, they were based on formula rather than static conditions.

The best examples are Mission Terminals from SWG and Treasure Hunts from UO. Both are dynamically generated missions that point to dynamic locations in the world. They provide rudimentary directions to that location and then respond by spawning level/mission appropriate content to fight.

Both games also went one step further. In outdoor public adventure spaces, the games would dynamically spawn mobs to fight you based on your level, whether you were grouped/etc. It was within reason (so like a newbie zone wouldn't spawn level 90 stuff if a level 90 group happened to be passing through). The closest I've come to this outside of SWG and UO is CoX, which does similar both outside and within instances.

The above two examples show games that had formula-based foundations light years ahead of even WoW.

The problem is WoW is way much more popular. And there's a very basic reason for this:

Well-conceived and designed content, no matter how arbitrary, feels much more fun than any formula system could ever reproduce. Formula systems feel better for simulation environments where the goal is to engender immersion. Static spawns are XP and money gates. The average player can feel the difference and so far tend to prefer the latter.

The lesson of this point still goes unlearned for MMO designers. Namely, if you're going to go diku, if you're going to make all of the persistent aspects of gameplay center on the progressive empowerment of a character rather than the dynamic alteration of a world, you're going to need more than just "content". You're going to need:

a) a lot of content at launch
b) really good content at launch, e.g., content which is both aesthetically satisfying AND game-mechanically satisfying (in terms of character progression)
c) a model for generating lots of content after launch.

All of that can only be done in an artisanal fashion, e.g., you can't just roll out generic piecework content. Meaning, it's going to be expensive.

Add it up. A company that's planning an MMO is ultimately not "playing it safe" if they decide to imitate WoW unless they've got the same deep pockets as Blizzard, the same willingness to pour a lot of money and time into content design. If you're going to cut corners, you might as well go for a dynamic world-oriented design where at least some of the content comes from player actions and some of it comes from more automated or emergent sources.

I feel like this is one of the key mistakes that Turbine has made with all of their post-AC1 MMO projects: they're going with a content-centric design template but they're not resourced to keep up with what that means. So the content they do have is more threadbare, and the time sinks are way more screamingly obvious. Just the trash clearing involved to get into some of the later LOTRO instances is enough to underscore just how underresourced they are as designers. With WoW, you really had to get pretty deep into its endgame in the first 18 months or so to find the place where the designers were crying uncle and admitting they'd run out of content. (Molten Core, for example). With LOTRO, some of that shortfall shows up visibly well before you hit max level.