Fuck quest driven content.

[Fordel]

I would love raiding if I could make X number of clones of myself to do so.

[Venkman]

I've always wondered if the people who dislike raiding also abhor team sports.   That's the view I've always taken of it, and why it's fun for me.  Accomplishing things as a group that you couldn't accomplish on your own.  Yes, it's sort of a forced and contrived method of doing it, but then so are sports.  1v1 is never as much fun as team play, imo.  If there was no loot progression, I'd still do it.

I think this a great introspective question. And I think it changes for everyone as they go through life stages. It certainly has for me and many of my friends. What I liked and wanted to do at 29 is very different from 39. I actually love team sports but mostly dislike raiding except in short spurts. For two reasons:

• Team sports are PvP against an adaptive AI. So while the activity might be easy (catch and run, or just catch, or bump-to-spike, etc), the ever-changing conditions keep you constantly engaged. Raids never change, unless they patch something.
• Team sports are generally short-ish in duration by comparison. I'm no pro athlete, so softball is something you play on and off for a few hours between beers and food. 15 or 21 point volleyball can go by pretty quick so you can get a bunch of games in, between beer and food and socializing. Raids require constant focus for a duration that'll only change after a few weeks or months of getting better at serious practice.

The closest comparison I've found to the team sports I play is FPS games and DoTA-style matches like LoL. I'm not in a clan or anything. I don't care to make that kind of investment. But the match types I play require just enough mental process to coordinate at a level I want to invest against the kind of changing conditions I want to adapt to.

Ultimately, I reach a threshold where I know that to "get better" at something requires a deeper investment. But with my current lifestyle, I need to channel my "get better" desires to other things.

[Merusk]

So.. basically the argument against raiding is, "I might find a guild full of assholes, and I can't be bothered to quit them and find another guild.  So instead I'll denigrate those who have bothered to find folks they like playing with, because it makes me feel better."

Because hey, if you're avoiding stuff because you might meet assholes, make sure you don't go out in public.

[Draegan]

So.. basically the argument against raiding is, "I might find a guild full of assholes, and I can't be bothered to quit them and find another guild.  So instead I'll denigrate those who have bothered to find folks they like playing with, because it makes me feel better."

Because hey, if you're avoiding stuff because you might meet assholes, make sure you don't go out in public.

There are a few types of mindsets that dislike raiding.

• The lazy people, as you describe.  Can't be bothered looking for a group of like minded people to have fun with.
• The sensible group who are like Darniaq.  Boss fights are fun for the 5-10 minute duration.  The boring "dungeon crawling" aspect where you go through a few tunnels and pull trash.  Yawn.  There is no sense of danger or mystery.  Overall the experience is still staring at your computer screen concentrating on something but not enjoying the gaming session.
• The other group of sensible people who dislike the time investment or just don't like grouping with other people.

The only mentality I never understood were the people who think that since they solo they should be "entitled" to the same rewards of doing dungeons, whether they are single group or multi group dungeons.  What I do get is their frustration if their progress is stunted due to lack of content and the only new stuff being added are dungeons and raids.

Good post though Darniaq.

--
Edit to add:

I still hold that the "next best thing" or whatever you want to term it, will be an MMOG that is more action oriented.  Like a Zelda or Demon Soul or Borderlands.  It will not be another MMOG with autoattack and hotbars.

[Koyasha]

Requiring concentration from the majority of the raid on the trash clears is one of the things that kind of irritates me about more recent MMO's.  One thing I notice, looking back at EQ, was that for the most part, trash clearing was a background activity.  It occupied time, but you didn't have to pay so much attention to it that it prevented you from socializing or going afk relatively often.  It was not uncommon to have 1/8 to 1/4 of the raid AFK at any given time during EQ trash clearing phases, another 1/2 barely paying attention and just hitting their assist button and autoattacking, while they watched TV or chatted with their friends, and just the few people who played key roles (and enjoyed the constant attention requirement) were the ones concentrating on the raid.

As for action MMO, YES PLEASE.  No, not this faux-action shit that Champions tried to foist on us, where it's still exactly the same as any other MMO with its standard 'target enemy, use abilities' combat, but real action combat like you see in action games.  The only quasi-MMO I've ever played that did this well, and it did it really well was Phantasy Star Universe.  Unfortunately that game had so many other problems with it I never stuck around, but if you gave me that kind of combat in a real MMO instead of a game where there's ten little instanced paths filled with mobs to go through (only two or three of which are good enough on the difficulty to reward curve to actually do) I will buy that game and play it probably for a very long time as long as there's no glaring flaws to drive me away.

Edit to add: And with a game like that where the combat itself is really fun just going out and killing stuff, you could get rid of 90% of the quests so this quest grind nonsense wouldn't be there either.  Instead you'd just have a few large overarching goals within each zone.  Kind of like Aion's campaign quests, only bigger and a little less discrete.  Give a final goal and some suggestions on how to accomplish it, but don't require anything but the final goal.  Give as many potential ways of accomplishing it as possible too, this'd naturally branch out into allowing for both group and solo play.  Taking a quick example from Aion since it's on my mind, if your goal is to destroy an abyss gate, you could systematically weaken the enemy in various places in the zone, thus permitting you access to secret, less defended passages (since you consumed much of their strength, they can't defend those passages) to let you sneak in and sabotage it.  Or you could get a group of friends together, screw weakening the enemy, and just make a full frontal assault. 

And since you don't have to constantly lead people by the nose since hey, going out and killing shit is just plain fun, you don't have to give them all these mini-goals that quests do in current games just to keep the person engaged.  Give the players more and more combos and that sort of advancement path and make them entertaining and visually appealing and they'll want to go out and kill shit.

[Sjofn]

Requiring concentration from the majority of the raid on the trash clears is one of the things that kind of irritates me about more recent MMO's.  One thing I notice, looking back at EQ, was that for the most part, trash clearing was a background activity.  It occupied time, but you didn't have to pay so much attention to it that it prevented you from socializing or going afk relatively often.  It was not uncommon to have 1/8 to 1/4 of the raid AFK at any given time during EQ trash clearing phases, another 1/2 barely paying attention and just hitting their assist button and autoattacking, while they watched TV or chatted with their friends, and just the few people who played key roles (and enjoyed the constant attention requirement) were the ones concentrating on the raid.

Lord above, that sounds horrible. Really, really horrible. I understand people do different things to turn their minds off but it just seems to me like cutting raid sizes down to, oh, 10 or 25, where they all have to, oh I don't know, do something crazy like play the game they have logged into and are paying for is a better way to do it. And I dunno about non-WoW raids, but you can still watch TV and clear trash in WoW, just don't suck at two things at once. 

Blizzard is getting better with the trash I think - I like that I have to give a shit on Ulduar trash, and it doesn't make me want to punch people because there isn't much of it (pre-watchers, anyway, Thorim is the only watcher that doesn't seem to have way more trash than is necessary). We'll see how Icecrown is.

[Khaldun]

So.. basically the argument against raiding is, "I might find a guild full of assholes, and I can't be bothered to quit them and find another guild.  So instead I'll denigrate those who have bothered to find folks they like playing with, because it makes me feel better."

Because hey, if you're avoiding stuff because you might meet assholes, make sure you don't go out in public.

Come on. Most people avoid situations where they might have to spend multiple hours cooped up with total strangers trying to accomplish an objective. Most people even screen opportunities for socializing around the question, "Do I think I'll have fun with these people on this occasion?" We all accept that some public activities carry a risk that you'll end up having to deal with an asshole. If I go to a baseball game, I know there's a chance there will be an asshole in the stands next to me. But that's different from investing time in a leisure activity where the average experience is going to put you with a bunch of strangers who are very likely to be off-putting at best.

It's not that raiding with likeable people that you feel connected to is bad. It's that most group-oriented content in a MMO needs to be targeted at experiences that require less time, less prior organization, and less strong social connection during the experience, where grouping is a more spontaneous and less demanding dynamic. Again, I think Toontown is a pretty decent model: it encourages grouping in two different contexts (street fighting and cleaning Cogs out of buildings), the grouping is semi-automated, it is more fun to be in a group in several respects (as well as necessary for building content), but the groups don't need to be persistent and the coordination of group activity is fairly undemanding.

[Nebu]

It's not that raiding with likeable people that you feel connected to is bad. It's that most group-oriented content in a MMO needs to be targeted at experiences that require less time, less prior organization, and less strong social connection during the experience, where grouping is a more spontaneous and less demanding dynamic. Again, I think Toontown is a pretty decent model: it encourages grouping in two different contexts (street fighting and cleaning Cogs out of buildings), the grouping is semi-automated, it is more fun to be in a group in several respects (as well as necessary for building content), but the groups don't need to be persistent and the coordination of group activity is fairly undemanding.

If MMO's want raiding, PQ's are the better way to go.  No organization, no lengthy setup, and no social heirarchy required.  Fast in, fast out while still requiring a gaggle-o-people to complete.  Something similar to epic mobs in CoH coupled to a WAR PQ would do the trick nicely.  It would be easily accessed by casual players and reduce the barrier to entry for those players with limited play time. 

[Draegan]

I don't mind the organization or the time required for raiding or any other complex game elements.  It's the actions that I'm performing while doing so.  When I raided, it was boring as shit until we got to a boss.  We would stand in one spot and pull mobs and kill them in a predetermined order.  The bosses were fun, and the sense of "beating" an encounter was pretty good, especially with a group of friends.  Everything in between was dull and non-engaging.  Outside the Tank, Leader and/or Puller/Marker everyone was just a lemming and you were not required to think at all.

..

Khaldun:  Most people do avoid situations where you're with strangers for multiple hours.  That is why it's important to find a good social circle of people in game and get to know them.  Unless you PUG everything all day.  That can become awful.

I also disagree group oriented content should require less and less time.  Organization? Purhaps.  There are games coming out with "soft" grouping.  I know Jumpgate discussed that to a certain degree.  There is room for a lot of different play styles I think.

Edit to add:
Nebu I think PQs are a great idea if the were done differently that WAR.  It's got to be more involved other than killing 100 random mobs in this area, then 10 elite mobs then one big boss.  It needs to be more of a scripted event, even if it's instanced.  I always like that boss fight in ZF in WOW where you fight on the stairs.

I also think there should be raids as well.  But PQs are great thing.

[Nebu]

I would happily engage in raiding if I

a) didn't have to have my time wasted by inattentive people.

b) didn't get berated for my lack of knowledge, gear, guild, etc. 

c) didn't have to play my toon, that I'm paying for, in a manner prescribed by someone else. 

First game to allow me to do dungeon crawls and raids in a more user-friendly manner than WoW will get my money.  Hell, give me henchmen (a la Guild Wars) and I'll do it myself.   

[Koyasha]

Only, with PQ's, the fights couldn't actually involve any serious amount of coordination or challenge.  I mean, shit, look at pug raiding in wow.  Even with as easy as a lot of those fights are, and as overgeared as people are for them, it's still infuriating just to try to get a bunch of people to not be complete idiots for 5 minutes.  And that's with some actual organization and leadership, and a tiny bit of screening out the worst of the idiots.  I didn't get past the first dozen levels in WAR.  Were there any PQ's that actually required coordination and organization?  Were they completed on anything resembling a regular basis by randoms, if there were?  Or were they all like the lowbie zone ones, 'kill a bunch of shit, kill some more shit, then pile on the boss until it dies'?

It's fun having to have a reasonably organized force doing reasonably organized and competent tasks in order to win.  Some of the mechanics need a good bit of work, but there's nothing wrong with the concept of fights that require coordination and competence that is simply unavailable from 'whatever random people show up'.

[Khaldun]

It's not that raiding with likeable people that you feel connected to is bad. It's that most group-oriented content in a MMO needs to be targeted at experiences that require less time, less prior organization, and less strong social connection during the experience, where grouping is a more spontaneous and less demanding dynamic. Again, I think Toontown is a pretty decent model: it encourages grouping in two different contexts (street fighting and cleaning Cogs out of buildings), the grouping is semi-automated, it is more fun to be in a group in several respects (as well as necessary for building content), but the groups don't need to be persistent and the coordination of group activity is fairly undemanding.

If MMO's want raiding, PQ's are the better way to go.  No organization, no lengthy setup, and no social heirarchy required.  Fast in, fast out while still requiring a gaggle-o-people to complete.  Something similar to epic mobs in CoH coupled to a WAR PQ would do the trick nicely.  It would be easily accessed by casual players and reduce the barrier to entry for those players with limited play time. 

And it's not entirely automatic or without skill. A well-designed PQ still has a failure possibility. A PQ shouldn't just be built around zerging. Using the Toontown example, if you're in a Cog building where the players aren't vastly overlevelled for the Cogs in the building, you succeed or fail based on whether players coordinate their actions well either intuitively or using the limited communication system. Failure isn't overly punishing, but neither is success an automatic consequence once you have enough people to overwhelm the quest or task.

[Nebu]

And it's not entirely automatic or without skill. A well-designed PQ still has a failure possibility. A PQ shouldn't just be built around zerging. Using the Toontown example, if you're in a Cog building where the players aren't vastly overlevelled for the Cogs in the building, you succeed or fail based on whether players coordinate their actions well either intuitively or using the limited communication system. Failure isn't overly punishing, but neither is success an automatic consequence once you have enough people to overwhelm the quest or task.

EDIT: Beat me to it.

The reason people flinch at the PQ concept is because it hasn't been implemented to its potential yet.  I think it's the future of raiding.  It just needs to have the kinks worked out. 

[Khaldun]

Totally. That's the next step in vanilla diku-derived MMO design: PQs that are both challenging, light in their time/commitment demands and relaxed in the prior social arrangements that have to be undertaken.

[tazelbain]

"PQ done right" is definitely an interesting design challenge.

[Koyasha]

Just because you can fail doesn't mean they require serious coordination to succeed.  They may involve challenge, but that's more along the lines of 'how many complete idiots did we get this time'.  Because if it's designed to be done by a random group, there can't be any expectation of close synergy between people, the best you can expect is a rudimentary plan that enough people will follow to not fail horribly.

It seems to me that because players keep demanding less and less involvement with other people in these games and more freedom to do whatever you want, whenever you want, MMO's in general are continually heading toward ever increasing heights of blandness that lose a lot of the stuff that is really fun but has a higher barrier to entry.

[Sheepherder]

This is why WUA is right in respects to Ultima Online.

[Nebu]

It seems to me that because players keep demanding less and less involvement with other people in these games and more freedom to do whatever you want, whenever you want, MMO's in general are continually heading toward ever increasing heights of blandness that lose a lot of the stuff that is really fun but has a higher barrier to entry.

I disagree.  I want to interact with people.  I just want to interact in such a way that they can't fuck with my gaming time.  I want to be the one to decide when I come and go without having to consider how my actions might inconvenience someone else.  I think this can be accomplished without diluting games.  I just want my games to emphasize fun more and cat herding less.

[Ingmar]

It seems to me that because players keep demanding less and less involvement with other people in these games and more freedom to do whatever you want, whenever you want, MMO's in general are continually heading toward ever increasing heights of blandness that lose a lot of the stuff that is really fun but has a higher barrier to entry.

I disagree.  I want to interact with people.  I just want to interact in such a way that they can't fuck with my gaming time.  I want to be the one to decide when I come and go without having to consider how my actions might inconvenience someone else.  I think this can be accomplished without diluting games.  I just want my games to emphasize fun more and cat herding less.

I am having a little trouble reconciling this with your stated preference for a set 8v8 group in DAOC, I think. It sounds like what you want is the Alb zerg - zone in, join chat, stick with the crowd til you need to leave, then move on. Maybe it is just a case of your taste in gaming changing over the years, or maybe you see PVP as just a different type of thing?

[Ratman_tf]

They just need to instance PQs so they can be soloed.    Maybe put some phasing in there so the world changes but only in your version of the instance. 

[DLRiley]

you may be joking but that is a good idea actually.

[Merusk]

So.. basically the argument against raiding is, "I might find a guild full of assholes, and I can't be bothered to quit them and find another guild.  So instead I'll denigrate those who have bothered to find folks they like playing with, because it makes me feel better."

Because hey, if you're avoiding stuff because you might meet assholes, make sure you don't go out in public.

Come on. Most people avoid situations where they might have to spend multiple hours cooped up with total strangers trying to accomplish an objective.

What a bullshit answer.

People are strangers because you've chosen to not get to know them.  That's no fault of theirs, it's yours.  The rest is just fluff you're using to pump a crappy answer.

See, your friends are assholes.  You're an asshole.  That guy down the street everyone likes and gets along with? He's an asshole, too.   Everyone on this planet is an asshole, there's no avoiding it.  The question of how well you know them is what mitigates that asshole factor in your mind.  I guarantee that.

[DLRiley]

So.. basically the argument against raiding is, "I might find a guild full of assholes, and I can't be bothered to quit them and find another guild.  So instead I'll denigrate those who have bothered to find folks they like playing with, because it makes me feel better."

Because hey, if you're avoiding stuff because you might meet assholes, make sure you don't go out in public.

Come on. Most people avoid situations where they might have to spend multiple hours cooped up with total strangers trying to accomplish an objective.

What a bullshit answer.

People are strangers because you've chosen to not get to know them.  That's no fault of theirs, it's yours.  The rest is just fluff you're using to pump a crappy answer.

What bullshit are you spouting? People are strangers because you are too lazy to get a chance to know them? Where do you fucking live? People are strangers because people are fucking strangers, and even if you spent 3 years sitting at the same fucking water cooler your fucking strangers. JUST because you have the opportunity to socialize, DOES not mean it leads to anything remotely desirable. The fact that you post that in this forum is hilarious.

[Sjofn]

It seems to me that because players keep demanding less and less involvement with other people in these games and more freedom to do whatever you want, whenever you want, MMO's in general are continually heading toward ever increasing heights of blandness that lose a lot of the stuff that is really fun but has a higher barrier to entry.

First you say you don't like having to have your whole raid dimly aware you're clearing trash, now you don't like that MMOs are going to get too "bland." Make up your mind! :P

I can sympathize with the people who want to do cool shit with a minimum of interaction with strangers who are possibly going to be stupid assholes, but ... I don't think "find a guild of people you like if doing cool shit that requires other people is that important to you" is an unreasonable bit of advice.

[Kovacs]

So.. basically the argument against raiding is, "I might find a guild full of assholes, and I can't be bothered to quit them and find another guild.  So instead I'll denigrate those who have bothered to find folks they like playing with, because it makes me feel better."

Because hey, if you're avoiding stuff because you might meet assholes, make sure you don't go out in public.

Come on. Most people avoid situations where they might have to spend multiple hours cooped up with total strangers trying to accomplish an objective....

I think that's only true for people who don't like raiding, which makes it a pretty circular argument.  To go back to the sports analogy, there's a pretty good chance that everytime you step onto the basketball court you're going to be surrounded by people you hardly know trying to accomplish an objective.  Same I imagine is true for softball/soccer/whatever field.  Part of the fun is winning and part of the fun is spending time with people who share a common goal, even if they're on the other team.  I think the fact that the evolution Interweb 'relationships' mirror what happens on the court and I'd assume in other places where people of like minds gather (say from, "Hey" "Yeah. Hey there" to "Fuck he sucks."  to "You live around here?") is the reason people tend to get sensitive about it.

Pretty obvious that people who don't like people won't like raiding and that a certain number of them are going to try to maximize it's negatives if only to satifsfy themselves that they're not missing out on anything; See: People will only raid if the loot is ENOURMOUS conversation.  In my experience (by that I mean almost exactly a metric fuckton of raiding) if you ask 72 people to list the 10 reasons why they raid in descending order the only thing that they'll all have in common is that loot won't be on the top of the list.  Given the amount of time you'll spend raiding between drops it seems absurd to think that it's the loot that keeps people coming back.  If that were the case Aion/L2/FFwhateverthefuck would just need to add Huge Purple Items as rewards upon levelling to keep their playerbase.  Seems unlikely.

Generally speaking raiding in it's current form offers rewards to people who enjoy team based accomplishment and is incomprehnsible and denigrated by people who don't.

[Koyasha]

It seems to me that because players keep demanding less and less involvement with other people in these games and more freedom to do whatever you want, whenever you want, MMO's in general are continually heading toward ever increasing heights of blandness that lose a lot of the stuff that is really fun but has a higher barrier to entry.

First you say you don't like having to have your whole raid dimly aware you're clearing trash, now you don't like that MMOs are going to get too "bland." Make up your mind! :P

I can sympathize with the people who want to do cool shit with a minimum of interaction with strangers who are possibly going to be stupid assholes, but ... I don't think "find a guild of people you like if doing cool shit that requires other people is that important to you" is an unreasonable bit of advice.

It's more about the buttonmashiness of newer games that I was commenting on, as well as the fact that even trash tries to tune for everyone being there and paying attention.  In WoW, in order to be effective at just about any class, I have to be pressing buttons every two to three seconds.  In EQ, depending on my class I might be pressing a button anywhere from once every three to four seconds, to once every ten seconds or even more.  More button presses don't make the combat more fun for me, but they do mean I can't do other things while I'm playing - like chatting with my friends, since I can't type if I have to mash buttons every 2 seconds.

While that advice doesn't seem unreasonable, more and more people are demanding the ability to do the cool shit that requires a group, only without a group.  The trouble is, by removing the need for a group, much of the fun is also removed.  But it's being done anyway.  If PQ's become the new raid mechanic, and they very well might, given time, then we can look forward to a future of no more fights of significant complexity.  Only rudimentary organization will be needed, because it has to be defeatable by a random bunch of people who've never done anything together before and aren't going to stick around to learn a complex encounter that requires precision timing and organization.

[WindupAtheist]

This is why WUA is right in respects to Ultima Online.

Everything in WoW (which is to say, modern diku in general) is way too tightly controlled. PVE can't be unpredictable, it has to be rigidly scripted so that the boss can have it's damage turned up 2% and it's health dialed down 3% because the spreadsheet says this is optimal for the rate of content consumption the developers want to set.

Anything that drops really good loot has to have some sort of lockout timer, otherwise players might get geared up faster than the schedule the developers have in mind. And everything has to be soulbound, because heaven forbid someone skip part of the designated course of content consumption.

There's a line of solo content that pretty much has a sign on it that says "THIS IS THE SOLO PART, AREN'T WE COOL FOR HAVING THIS? GROUP UP FOR THE BETTER SHIT!" because for some reason the game is built to encourage cooperation and logistics first, and fun second. I'm sure if you polled a bunch of raiders none of them would check the "Validating my life through e-peen!" box, but I have too many friends/acquaintances who raid and talk shit to me about their idiot guildmates to buy that they're all just doing it for the fun and camaraderie.

[Zane0]

It's more about the buttonmashiness of newer games that I was commenting on, as well as the fact that even trash tries to tune for everyone being there and paying attention.  In WoW, in order to be effective at just about any class, I have to be pressing buttons every two to three seconds.  In EQ, depending on my class I might be pressing a button anywhere from once every three to four seconds, to once every ten seconds or even more.  More button presses don't make the combat more fun for me, but they do mean I can't do other things while I'm playing - like chatting with my friends, since I can't type if I have to mash buttons every 2 seconds.

This is ultimately what drove me away from blizz' raid design as they ratcheted raid sizes down and skill requirements up, replacing organization and social capital with min/maxing and reaction time as the main determinants for success. It was fun for a while, but this ping-intensive, small scale, visceral gameplay (not bad per se but increasingly preeminent) also sidelines the principle virtue of the genre: the "Massive" in "MMO" -- the marvel of politicking, competition, community, directing large groups of people; all this is lost as devs try increasingly to shunt people off into their own little directed experience: safe from 'assholes', variability, or really any unpleasantness at all.

But what the fuck is the point? I see increasingly little reason for the "massive" part at all in modern game design.

[Koyasha]

That's one of the things that has always irked me greatly about WoW raiding.  They seem to have this need to control every little thing.  And instead of designing monsters and letting us figure out how to defeat them, they design exactly how the monster is intended to be defeated.  And anything that varies from that intended plan is either an exploit or gets nerfed.  WoW takes this to an extreme that isn't seen in most games.  Even among dikus it is the pinnacle of lead by the nose and allow no one to deviate even slightly from the prescribed path.  

You never saw that level of it in EQ, for example.  There, you clearly got the sense that they designed a monster, gave it abilities they thought would be interesting/challenging/cool, and then left it up to us to determine how to defeat it.  If it turned out easier than they expected, there was always the next one down the road.  If it turned out harder than they expected, well that's how it goes.  Only on a few rare occasions did you see them get bent out of shape because players came up with an unexpected and creative strategy.  This was pretty similar in other games I've played too, except WoW, where pretty much anything other than the exact strategy they plan for us to use is disallowed.  And of course there was even less guiding back in UO, at least when I played, since it pretty much just plunked you down in the middle of Britain and sent you on your way to figure everything out on your own, and didn't ever seem to change the rules just because you got creative.  'Least, not in the early days, don't know about after I left.

And no, none of us that like raiding are doing it just for the fun and camaraderie.  There does indeed have to be worthwhile loot - if there's not enough of a tangible bonus, we won't do it.  Because as fun as it is, it's also a lot of work, and the fun comes from the key moments, while the work is pretty much constant - especially for the leaders.  And yeah, there's always the idiots, gone back to all the raids I've ever been in there's always someone, or a few someones.  (And the idiot quality seems to be improving, by which I mean they're getting stupider and more annoying).  But there's always the people that you do like, unless you joined a guild full of people you hate just to get the loot and nothing else.  And again, unless you're in the wrong guild, the ones you like, or are at least neutral on, are the majority.  And you know, when you finally defeat that hard boss, especially before strategies were spoonfed from websites and you actually had to put effort in with your guildmates in learning and figuring things out for yourself, there's that moment of awesome and even the idiots are part of that awesome, if only for a moment.  I remember many fights from EQ when we finally won, how fun it was working up to that and how great it was winning.  My favorite raid I've ever done was the first one I led, and the first time I set foot in the Plane of Sky.  We didn't know much about the place other than a few basics from some descriptions.  Learned everything as we went along.  Didn't make it to our goal, but it was still the best raid I've ever done.  I don't remember many like that from WoW, because I always felt like the only thing holding us back - since we had the strategy spoonfed in the first place - was the idiots, so instead of a moment of awesome it was just 'sheesh, finally they stopped screwing up for once'.

To sum up: Tightly controlled, 'theme-park' content sucks, whether it's quests leading you through a bunch of predetermined points of interest in a specific order while killing 10 rats at each one, or whether it's raids that you must follow a specific developer-designed strategy and anything else is disallowed.

And yeah, you're right about UO - I know I would jump at playing old UO, updated for the new age.  Especially if it had pvp, perhaps on a system similar to the way I understand EVE's is, where you go from 'almost complete safety' to 'wild frontier' gradually.

[Merusk]

And no, none of us that like raiding are doing it just for the fun and camaraderie.  There does indeed have to be worthwhile loot - if there's not enough of a tangible bonus, we won't do it.  

No, I pretty much do it for the fun and to blow a few hours in a game with folks I know entirely online and enjoy hanging around with. Much like BSing on this forum it gains me nothing but entertainment.

It's why I still run through low level instances or will run dungeons I need nothing from.  I gear up only to help the raid and because it's required to hit that next tier.   I'm very much a team player and social animal.. something that is unusual for traditional vid. gamers, I know.


Anywho, I agree with Koyasha on the strictness of WoW raiding, it's very unforgiving to a degree.  I believe part of it stems from the fact that even though there were many ways of killing a mob in EQ (including Zerg rush!) there were only one or two "Best" or "Most efficient" ways.  Given the Min/Max nature of MMO players, that meant there was a defacto  one or two ways to kill that boss.   Blizzard just seems to have codified that by scripting encounters a lot more.   Their view appears to be that your chance for doing things differently is swapping the distribution of and number of classes.  Yes, you may need to avoid this and hit that widget at a certain time, but you don't have to have a warrior tank and 5 priests chaincasting while limiting the number of melee due to mob pushback or else you fail.  Something you had to do in EQ and seems obscured by the mists of nostalgia.

Also, we forget that a lot of the scripting was added because Tank and Spank was incredibly boring for healers.. and most of EQ's and MC's bosses were just that. The majority of the activity was done by the melee dps and the tank.  Ranged and healers just stood around 90% of the time or moved back into position after a knockback.

[ghost]

Fuck Quest driven content-  Fuck 10 rats.

[Ratman_tf]

Fuck 10 rats.

In a row?

[WindupAtheist]

I still want to see somebody copy the Doom Gauntlet from UO.

You go down to the dungeon, and there's a quest you have to do first. You need to go farm X number of bones from dungeon creatures, with tougher creatures dropping more, in order to get a gold skull that acts as a key for you and your party to get into the gauntlet itself. It doesn't take terribly long, but if you don't like it you can buy the skull directly off another player. Or if you don't mind farming, you can farm the shit out of it and sell the skulls to people as a way of making cash. Whatever.

Then you get in there, and it's a huge chamber with five large rooms connected to it. Each room spawns anywhere from one to four bosses at once, depending on how many people are down there at the moment. The spawns are cycled such that each room needs to be cleared in turn, so that everyone is making a big circle through the gauntlet. Once a full circuit has been completed, the main boss(es) spawn in the center chamber for everyone to try and kill. When they die, the whole thing starts over again.

There's no rolling. Loot drops directly into your inventory, and your odds of getting a drop depend upon how much damage you've done to bosses and how many kills you've participated in. (There are no dedicated tanks or healers obviously.) An hour and a half will let you do two or three circuits and that's usually enough to get you a drop. If not, you're pretty much guaranteed a quick drop next time since your kill points persist and only reset when you do get something.

You can go down there solo, or with a couple friends, or as part of a large guild group. There's no guarantee that what you get will be what you want, or even particularly useful to you. But there's no such thing as soulbound gear, so you can sell/trade the stuff you have to get the stuff you want. Or you can just brush off the entire system, make money doing something else, and buy all the stuff you want without setting foot in there.

It has it's weaknesses, but never did you feel a developer's hand on the back of your neck, pushing you into what they think you ought to be doing. I'd REALLY like to see such a system done as something more than a mid-life addition to a very old game. Of course the guy behind the expansion that added it to UO was Evocare, aka fucking Kalgan at Blizzard now. Go figure.

[Sheepherder]

A significant portion of WoW's problem is still that the assholes have more control over what a raid costs you than you do, and furthermore, after the raid is done you are forced to compete with them for loot.

[Ashamanchill]

I still want to see somebody copy the Doom Gauntlet from UO.

You go down to the dungeon, and there's a quest you have to do first. You need to go farm X number of bones from dungeon creatures, with tougher creatures dropping more, in order to get a gold skull that acts as a key for you and your party to get into the gauntlet itself. It doesn't take terribly long, but if you don't like it you can buy the skull directly off another player. Or if you don't mind farming, you can farm the shit out of it and sell the skulls to people as a way of making cash. Whatever.

Then you get in there, and it's a huge chamber with five large rooms connected to it. Each room spawns anywhere from one to four bosses at once, depending on how many people are down there at the moment. The spawns are cycled such that each room needs to be cleared in turn, so that everyone is making a big circle through the gauntlet. Once a full circuit has been completed, the main boss(es) spawn in the center chamber for everyone to try and kill. When they die, the whole thing starts over again.

There's no rolling. Loot drops directly into your inventory, and your odds of getting a drop depend upon how much damage you've done to bosses and how many kills you've participated in. (There are no dedicated tanks or healers obviously.) An hour and a half will let you do two or three circuits and that's usually enough to get you a drop. If not, you're pretty much guaranteed a quick drop next time since your kill points persist and only reset when you do get something.

You can go down there solo, or with a couple friends, or as part of a large guild group. There's no guarantee that what you get will be what you want, or even particularly useful to you. But there's no such thing as soulbound gear, so you can sell/trade the stuff you have to get the stuff you want. Or you can just brush off the entire system, make money doing something else, and buy all the stuff you want without setting foot in there.

It has it's weaknesses, but never did you feel a developer's hand on the back of your neck, pushing you into what they think you ought to be doing. I'd REALLY like to see such a system done as something more than a mid-life addition to a very old game. Of course the guy behind the expansion that added it to UO was Evocare, aka fucking Kalgan at Blizzard now. Go figure.

THis does sound awesome. Goddamn it WuA, I was much happier not   knowing a system like exists or has existed. Usually I am pretty happy with WoW (kinda like that Churchill quote about Democracy being the worst form of government, except for all the rest), but that sounds fuckin ballin'.

Actually my favorite dungeon crawl experiences was in a game that sucked-DDO. My friends and I would all play healer hybrids, so it was our own responsibility to heal ourselves, and mobs in the dungeons we did weren't calculated to tear the shit out of anyone who didn't bring a dedicated healer (no we didn't play on hard mode). We had the most fun in the world all just dpsing and competing to see who could get the most kills. In hindsight the system was flawed as hell, but it was fun at that time.

After that we moved onto WoW, and we we introduced to the tank, healer, dps system.

As I've said before, I'm not totally disatisfied with the holy trinity, and kill ten rats over here, now kill ten foozles over there, now run Howling Caverns twice, system. But damn that Doom Gaunlet sounds fun.