"Raid" groups and quests

[kidder]

Last night my friends and I got together to do the first elite quests in the Ragefire Chasm instance.  There were 9 of us, all around level 15.  We all had the 4 elite quests in Ragefire, and the one Orgrimmar guest "Hidden Enemies" that needs to be completed in the ragefire instance.

We formed up a "raid" group, which for anyone that doesn't know, is created by converting your current group into a raid group using the socials menu and clicking on the raid tab.  Then the raid leader can invite others into the raid group and assign them to sub groups.

We fought our way in, and all the while no quest items ever dropped, and even after killing all of the named mobs nothing dropped.  We had loot on FFA, and were able to loot items and money.  We were able to complete one quest, "Returning the Satchel", but none of the combat quests.  The raid was a bust.

Is raiding just broken?  Or, will quests that can be completed via raid going to show (raid) off to the right in the quest log?  Elite quests show up as (elite) in the quest log...so I made the assumption that since they were elite, and in an instance, that it would be ok to use the raid group.  Nope.

I've only gotten as high as 15 in this game, so I don't have any experience with higher level quests, maybe someone here can tell me how the raid group works...or doesn't work.

Thanks!

[Alkiera]

It is my understanding, which is admittedly limited when it comes to WoW, that only quests specifically intended to be raids can be completed while in a 'raid'.  Other quests simply don't register 'kills' right, among other things.

Really, they should just limit the number of people to 1 group if they're gonna do that, like EQ2 does for some instances/dungeons.

Alkiera

[Jamiko]

Group Instances are identified by their blue swirling portal entrances.
Raid Instances are indicated by their green swirling portal entrances.

Raid group members cannot earn credit towards most non-raid difficulty quests (ie. Group Instances), or more specifically, the ones involving killing creatures and collecting items.

Ragefire Chasm = Group Instance (ie. max group of 5 people)

AFAIK, there is only one Raid Instance in the game so far, the level 60 Onyxia's Lair Instance.

[kidder]

Group Instances are identified by their blue swirling portal entrances.
Raid Instances are indicated by their red swirling portal entrances.

Raid group members cannot earn credit towards most non-raid difficulty quests (ie. Group Instances), or more specifically, the ones involving killing creatures and collecting items.

Ragefire Chasm = Group Instance (ie. max group of 5 people)

AFAIK, there is only one Raid Instance in the game so far, the level 60 Onyxia's Lair Instance.

Well, that clears things up.  Thanks Jamiko.

Alkiera:  I think it would be a good idea for those instances to not allow more than one group, or raid groups to zone in.  No confusion then.

[Jamiko]

Sorry, made a mistake (edited my post above).

Raid Instances are indicated by their GREEN swirling portal entrances.

Red portals are for PvP battlezones.

[Riggswolfe]

You can however use the raid system to "cheat". You form a raid group and enter an instance together then break it up into seperate groups. We've done this in my guild so higher levels could enter an instance with lower levels and help them out. Usually by healing/killing things the lowbies tagged.

[Margalis]

The movie floating around of the battle with Onyxia was so underwhelming, at this point who really cares. If fighting a boss for 45 minutes straight in a war of attrition is your thing I guess go for it...IMO any battle that takes more than 10 minutes or so is just getting silly, at that point it's solely statistical.

[schild]

Raids are the worst idea in MMORPG gaming today. They are nothing more than a battle of the bladder. The reward in WoW is possibly an epic weapon and if they ever implement them, hero classes? Lack of creativity like that shows a companies true colors. I can't imagine what kind of developer thinks this is an ok option.

[Koyasha]

As long as the battle isn't the SAME THING throughout the entire length of it, I don't mind a long battle.  EQ Luclin style raids suck.  They involve having your tank keep the mob's attention, get healed with cleric chain, and the rest of the raid do DPS.  For an hour.  They go faster these days, naturally, but I'm talking actual Luclin Age.  You stand there, beating on the mob, requiring no strategic changes, for an hour.  That is impossibly stupid, and as Thott said, an excersise in error control.  If you do not make a mistake, you will win, if you make a mistake, you still have a chance of winning.  The longer the fight the more the chance someone will make a mistake, so they made fights longer to make them harder.

On the other hand, a long fight in which the strategy changes often is interesting.  If the designers ever managed to make a mob with a series of tactical 'behavior patterns' attached to it (say 5-10 different behavior patterns), and the mob would switch between these behavior patterns based on a number of factors (and the number of factors should be made as difficult as possible for the players to figure out, so they can't game the mob into a favorable behavior pattern), then it would be rather interesting to fight a long fight, because one never knows what the enemy will try next.  Even if it was random switching through behavior patterns, at least it would seem as if the enemy was trying different tactics.

So to me, a long fight that's all the same sucks.  A long fight that changes is actually pretty interesting.

[MrHat]

So I was solo'ing my rogue out in Stranglethorn Vale fighting these evil trolls.

They had a tendancy to link, so I would open up w/ sap which knocks an enemy out of battle for 30s, then beat down his friend.  Well, the friend threw a net on me, jumped out of range of my sword and dagger, and started throwing spears at me.  What worried me was that when he jumped back, he jumped back into his shaman buddy.  As soon as the net broke, I raced to the shaman buddy and started putting the smack down.  At about this time, my sap broke.  So now I was fighting 3 evil trolls.  The fresh one threw down a net again and bounced back.  What shocked me is that when the net landed, they all jumped back.  Two spear chuckers and a shaman casting lightning bolt at me soon killed me.

I'm not sure if the AI gets better when you level, but I was pretty amazed.

[El Gallo]

posting is HARD

[Rasix]

Errrr.. wrong post there, buddy.

[kidder]

You can however use the raid system to "cheat". You form a raid group and enter an instance together then break it up into seperate groups. We've done this in my guild so higher levels could enter an instance with lower levels and help them out. Usually by healing/killing things the lowbies tagged.

So, you can just take a raid into an instance, then disband it and have someone form a couple of groups?  Nobody gets kicked out of the instance?  Nice.  I think this would work well for my game night group.  Guess we will try it this week.

Thanks for the info Riggswolfe.

[Morfiend]

Well, I dont think they should disallow more than one group. Cause quite often my guild will run a raid group though an instance just to get items and gold for our lowbies. Its fun. Yeah, no quests get done, but we know this, so we dont plan on doing the quests, just working on teamwork and getting items.