Raiding Poll

[Ironwood]

Which boils down once again to 'People don't do anything but Raiding because there's no reason to'.

Which, I submit, is wrong and not good.

[WindupAtheist]

A player in my guild could play 10 hours a week and not miss a single important raid (4 hours bwl X2, 3 hours MC), and plenty of them do.

4 x 2 + 3 = 10?

[Ironwood]

Time is different in BlackWing Lair.  And if you think that's bad, just wait till they release the Caverns of Time.

 :-D

[bhodi]

LF399M TTC PST

[Threash]

A player in my guild could play 10 hours a week and not miss a single important raid (4 hours bwl X2, 3 hours MC), and plenty of them do.

4 x 2 + 3 = 10?

Oops :P

[edlavallee]

A player in my guild could play 10 hours a week and not miss a single important raid (4 hours bwl X2, 3 hours MC), and plenty of them do.

4 x 2 + 3 = 10?

Oops :P

I find it easier to do higher math with my shoes off.

[Simond]

Off topic a bit; What is Blizzard's problem with developing a half decent lfg system? Must be a bit of passive-aggressive behavior on the part of whoever is tasked with it, IMO because no other explanation could possibly account for their failure to implement something in almost 2 years of running.

My personal theory is that meeting stones were the pet project of someone high up at Blizzard, and nobody else there has the guts to pull them and replace them with /lfg.

[Dren]

Yes, my 1.5 hours a night limits me substantially.  Typically, I just work on leveling my alts.  About once every 2 weeks I get in on a 5 or 10 man instance.

Scheduled instances for 20 or 40 man?  Nope, I typically can't get  39 people to run during my exact window of opportunity.  Strange that.  I have a strict window that I am able to play.  Anything outside of that, nope.  That means that even if something is getting started one hour into my play session, I can't join because I have 30 minutes left.

For those that say people play 10 hours and get exactly 10 hours of instance play are extremely hard to believe.  I won't call you a liar though.  I just have never seen, experienced, or heard of anyone logging in directly outside of an instance, stepping inside and starting their killing.  The game I know about requires a lot of preparation time such as selling items, buying items, repairs, travelling around, crafting, collecting, farming, rep building, etc.  Even if something is scheduled, it typically starts late, because you can't start with 15 out of 20 or 30 out of 40.  You wait.

I've found that when people say they played for 3 hours, they actually are only counting the amount of time they got to actually "play."  The other hour or two was the stuff that was just preparation or travelling.  That seems to slip people's minds.  That's not an option for me.

[Threash]

For those that say people play 10 hours and get exactly 10 hours of instance play are extremely hard to believe.  I won't call you a liar though.  I just have never seen, experienced, or heard of anyone logging in directly outside of an instance, stepping inside and starting their killing.

When you know exactly when the raid is going to happen why is that so hard to believe?  We raid at the exact same times on the exact same days each and every week.  Its not the same situation you describe, since you can only play at a specific time rather than 1.5 hours whenever you wish, but i personally have done exactly that on occassion when i didnt feel like playing much outside of raids. 

[Zane0]

Shrug.  What's being described is a problem symptomatic to every MMO I can think of.  Once again, Blizzard never claimed to have revolutionized anything.  Content is generally more accessible, though.

In the same vein, I don't believe that anything short of a content revolution with WHO will make a very tremendous impact; DAoC didn't kill EQ.

[Righ]

I wouldn't be afraid of one game killing another. DAOC did diminish the importance of EQ overall, as much by bringing new players to the fold as by picking up people who'd already "churned" out of EQ subs. I bet there's already a million or more "former WoW players" out there ready for something else that lives up to their expectations. Every service provider (hence online game) has churn. What WAR (the preferred acronym, not WHO) will likely do is take advantage of the now much larger MMO base and become a very significant player. Just as EQ stopped growing rapidly (but didn't decline a vast amount) when DAOC and other games of similar quality hit the market, so it likely will be with WoW. At some point, there'll be new shiny of whats perceived to be acceptable quality, and it'll cut into the growth of WoW. I dare say that there a lot of people playing the end-game content in WoW because its all that's there (or perceived to be there) that will feed their fix for social gameplay. A proportion of them will probably go play an RvR game if its available.

Or we could go back to trying to see everything in black and white and gainsay one another for another 92 pages. That works too.

[stray]

In the same vein, I don't believe that anything short of a content revolution with WHO will make a very tremendous impact; DAoC didn't kill EQ.

'Content' is overrated. Players are the real content for the time being. Half of the people who play for 'content' never play through any of it or see any of it anyways. And most of the people who are running through all of that 'content' sure as hell aren't doing it for the sake of doing it.

[Zane0]

Eh, the only contention I have is that my impression from WAR (sorry Righ) is that it will focus on RvR but still have a fairly wide swathe of content.  PvE is mentioned with the specific qualification that it will not sideline PvP, but it'll probably be there in all the traditional forms of which we are familiar.  Essentially, I don't think WAR will be the "endgame casual's" solution; the same problems they have with WoW will probably surface there. 

Of course, the RvR might make casual PvP in WAR more interesting than WoW's BG's, which are pretty boring by now.  Of course, that system is getting revamped soon.

Stuff

I think we are essentially in agreement, but that is not very interesting. :(

EDIT TO STRAY'S EDIT: I see most content as essentially a means of bringing people together, so revolution in my mind = entertaining stuff to do that involves every player along the spectrum far better than has ever been done, or something.

[tkinnun0]

Essentially, I don't think WAR will be the "endgame casual's" solution; the same problems they have with WoW will probably surface there. 

But, given that their PvE will be sidelined by RvR, the problems will surface sooner. So say hello to huge PvE grind!

[Dren]

For those that say people play 10 hours and get exactly 10 hours of instance play are extremely hard to believe.  I won't call you a liar though.  I just have never seen, experienced, or heard of anyone logging in directly outside of an instance, stepping inside and starting their killing.

When you know exactly when the raid is going to happen why is that so hard to believe?  We raid at the exact same times on the exact same days each and every week.  Its not the same situation you describe, since you can only play at a specific time rather than 1.5 hours whenever you wish, but i personally have done exactly that on occassion when i didnt feel like playing much outside of raids. 

"On occasion" I can beleive.  As a playstyle 100% of the time, I can't. 

[edlavallee]

Yes, my 1.5 hours a night limits me substantially.  Typically, I just work on leveling my alts.  About once every 2 weeks I get in on a 5 or 10 man instance.

Scheduled instances for 20 or 40 man?  Nope, I typically can't get  39 people to run during my exact window of opportunity.  Strange that.  I have a strict window that I am able to play.  Anything outside of that, nope.  That means that even if something is getting started one hour into my play session, I can't join because I have 30 minutes left.

For those that say people play 10 hours and get exactly 10 hours of instance play are extremely hard to believe.  I won't call you a liar though.  I just have never seen, experienced, or heard of anyone logging in directly outside of an instance, stepping inside and starting their killing.  The game I know about requires a lot of preparation time such as selling items, buying items, repairs, travelling around, crafting, collecting, farming, rep building, etc.  Even if something is scheduled, it typically starts late, because you can't start with 15 out of 20 or 30 out of 40.  You wait.

I've found that when people say they played for 3 hours, they actually are only counting the amount of time they got to actually "play."  The other hour or two was the stuff that was just preparation or travelling.  That seems to slip people's minds.  That's not an option for me.

/agree with Dren. Same boat, different harbor.

[bhodi]

For those that say people play 10 hours and get exactly 10 hours of instance play are extremely hard to believe.  I won't call you a liar though.  I just have never seen, experienced, or heard of anyone logging in directly outside of an instance, stepping inside and starting their killing.  The game I know about requires a lot of preparation time such as selling items, buying items, repairs, travelling around, crafting, collecting, farming, rep building, etc.  Even if something is scheduled, it typically starts late, because you can't start with 15 out of 20 or 30 out of 40.  You wait.

Let me give you an example. Under our "Weekly Raid Schedule" there is a post every week. Here was "May 21 - May 27"

As always, Standard Raid Time is 6:30pm server time until we stop, typically 10:30pm server time if we aren't pushing for something.   Exceptions will be listed below.

Sunday - Off
Monday - AQ - Twin Emps/C'Thun
Tuesday - AQ20+Onyxia
Wednesday - AQ - Fresh
Thursday - Off
Friday - AQ
Saturday - BWL full clearing - 6 pm server start

As always please post on our dkp site calendar and here on the forums if you will not be on ANY of these nights...knowing in advance what people's schedules are helps us call targets earlier and move a little faster.

Invites go out 15m before raid start and it's expected that you're online for that, and that you're in the zone or instance 5m before raid start. There's a DKP award for being in zone 'on time' so people make an effort not to show up late. I'm an enchanter/miner (enchanter for sharding). My money comes solely from BWL clears (20-30g per run) and the occasional disenchant from equipment upgrades. Nexus crystals net me ~75-80g per which covers additional expenses, since the guild pays for repairs on 'new content' (defined as less than 4 boss kills). At the end of the raid, I take the portal to ironforge, repair, send repair cost reimbursement in-game mail, and then log. My hearthstone goes to cenarion hold in slithius, so I just log in before the raid, normally around 8pm EST, spend 15m in IF buying reagents, selling, AH, then either hearth out to slith or take the flight point to Thorium point. It takes under 5m to get to either AQ or BWL/MC zone-in standing in IF.

Our raid is normally full. If it's not, it's only down by a few people and we clear trash while waiting for more. For a full raid, those who are on and not in the raid itself are in 'waitlist', join a channel, and recieve DKP. They can play an alt or are asked to do specific tasks (currently, if you are in waitlist you are required to get revered with argent dawn in preparation for naxx). If you are online you must be willing to raid and can be called upon to sub at any time, most people log out their mains at the zone-in and play alts, or go PvP and rely on the hearthstone back.

[Malathor]

For those that say people play 10 hours and get exactly 10 hours of instance play are extremely hard to believe.  I won't call you a liar though.  I just have never seen, experienced, or heard of anyone logging in directly outside of an instance, stepping inside and starting their killing.

When you know exactly when the raid is going to happen why is that so hard to believe?  We raid at the exact same times on the exact same days each and every week.  Its not the same situation you describe, since you can only play at a specific time rather than 1.5 hours whenever you wish, but i personally have done exactly that on occassion when i didnt feel like playing much outside of raids. 

"On occasion" I can beleive.  As a playstyle 100% of the time, I can't. 

I'm not sure what's so unbelievable about this to you. In my own case, nearly 90% of my playtime recently has been raiding. Our guild schedules raids for 8:00 pm, meaning that the first pull will be at 8 and you better be there and be ready. Raids last between 3 and 5 hours. I log on 20-25 min before the raid starts and I log off 5-10 min after the raid ends. I no longer want or need anything from MC or BWL so until Naxx testing started I was doing nothing except the 2 AQ40 raids we schedule each week, giving me a total playtime of about 10hrs/week.

[Dren]

You just stated what I said.  You spend 25-35 minutes outside of the instance.  That's already a third of my window.  That is all I was saying.  Those that say 10 hours played is 10 hours spent in the instance are leaving out a lot of information.  25-35 minutes of prep and afterwork is a long time, in my opinion.

That's probably the biggest difference.  25-35 minutes is nothing to a raider.  It is subtantial to a casual.  In my case it is even worse as I can log in many times during the week but for short periods of time.  So, that equates to around 2.5 hours a week of just getting ready or recovering from instances.

I'm not saying that playstyle is wrong.  It is fine.  If you have fun with it, great!  I don't think Blizzard will go out of business catering to the raiders.  I never said that.  I just stated that there are those of us that do not fit that template.  Hell, I still play it though.  I can find enough to satisfy me for the time being.

My wish is that they just recognize the casuals and continue to give us things to do outside of raiding.  My hope has always been in the crafting, but it doesn't look like that is possible.  They've only created higher raiding content for crafters.  It would be nice to be able to support a raiding guild from a casual standpoint, but that isn't really possible.

[Merusk]

You just stated what I said.  You spend 25-35 minutes outside of the instance.  That's already a third of my window.  That is all I was saying.  Those that say 10 hours played is 10 hours spent in the instance are leaving out a lot of information.  25-35 minutes of prep and afterwork is a long time, in my opinion.

Nobody here's said that, though.  We've all said "there's X amount of time before that the raid starts."  It doesn't invalidate our position that we only NEED to be online X # of hours. That said, Anything is bound to be outside of your window, given that it's so small.

[Malathor]

You just stated what I said.  You spend 25-35 minutes outside of the instance.  That's already a third of my window.  That is all I was saying.  Those that say 10 hours played is 10 hours spent in the instance are leaving out a lot of information.  25-35 minutes of prep and afterwork is a long time, in my opinion.

That's probably the biggest difference.  25-35 minutes is nothing to a raider.  It is subtantial to a casual.  In my case it is even worse as I can log in many times during the week but for short periods of time.  So, that equates to around 2.5 hours a week of just getting ready or recovering from instances.

Well, I don't really see 10hrs a week of playtime as being anything but "casual" even if 90% of it is spent in 40 man raiding zones. The issue here is really the ability to clear off a 4-5 hr block of time even if it is only once a week. That certainly is a problem for many, and the 20 man raid zones have really done nothing to alleviate that. The sub one hour raid zone is a great idea, and why we have not seen more Onyxia style raid zones since release is a mystery to me.

[Dren]

You just stated what I said.  You spend 25-35 minutes outside of the instance.  That's already a third of my window.  That is all I was saying.  Those that say 10 hours played is 10 hours spent in the instance are leaving out a lot of information.  25-35 minutes of prep and afterwork is a long time, in my opinion.

Nobody here's said that, though.  We've all said "there's X amount of time before that the raid starts."  It doesn't invalidate our position that we only NEED to be online X # of hours. That said, Anything is bound to be outside of your window, given that it's so small.

We are all agreeing, but this is what my original comment was derived from.

A player in my guild could play 10 hours a week and not miss a single important raid (4 hours bwl X2, 3 hours MC), and plenty of them do.

Other than the funky math, it eluded to me that the time spent in an instance = time spent in game.  Unless the prep time is being included in those estimates, something seemed off.  Perhaps MC can be done in 2.5 hours.  I really do not know.  Maybe I just misunderstood the statement.

I just know that when somebody tells me, "Hey, come on and do XXX, it will only take YYY!" I end up spending YYY + a substantial amount of time realistically.  I normally just add 20% more to any estimate I'm told and end up right more often than not.  What I do know is that people in my guild that are in an MC group will be in MC when I log on and still be there when I log off.

[Merusk]

People who are farming BWL and AQ40 can do MC in 2.5 hours, sure.  My guild gets through it in a 4-hour window, primarily because we've still got a lot of people with blues (and some with greens).  If we had the uber BWL stuff, we'd cut a lot of time out of that because the power curve on the equipment is that great.  Similarly to how the few times we've had to run UBRS and had a full group of 10 MC-equipped people, the run itself took about 1-1.5 hours. (once the freakin' group was assembled)  The biggest delays were the Rend event and not having more than one mage, so we couldn't just AOE the Drak room down.

[Calantus]

The 2nd half of my comment was in green because it was hyperbole, and I was being cheeky about how everybody calls raiders catasses whereas I play less now that I raid so surely everyone else is the real catass. It actually is much easier for me to raid our 40 mans. Smaller instances you don't get that many going around (my realm has ques at primetime, so we aren't talking lack of players), and when you do chances are they already have everything they need other than a class you aren't playing. They were made way less accessable once they cut them down to 5-mans. UBRS is very rarely run, 2-3 on a good night, and maybe one of those will kill Drakk. Maybe. When I got an alt keyed for ony I had to grab 4 guildies to fill up the 5th pug I had tried as it was falling apart at Rend. ZG and AQ20 are run in "off hours" and done when someone says "hey who wants to do ZG/AQ20?" and enough people answer. I very very rarely get into those because the only way you DO make the majority is if you are playing at all hours. The only ones I can make are the ones that are made right after raids and I'm still on.

The fact is, being in a raiding guild enables me to play less because I don't have to be on at all hours to try and catch the groups that are going and wasting time on groups that fuck up. If I want to I can quite literally log on for a raid and be off in 3-5 hours even taking into account delays from people bein late. AND I make money doing it, so I don't have to farm or w/e else on the side if I don't want to. Last week I played for about 6 hours, as I cbf'd going to BWL or MC and only caught our 2 AQs that week. Yeah yeah, block of time and all that. But I can play a block of hours and so can many other people. Between all the raiders, all the pvpers who play even more, and all the people who could raid but don't like it I'd say people with the capacity to devote 3-5 hour blocks would be the majority.

[Tebonas]

All that is true if you do Pick-Up Groups. I always was more of a fixed group player. I had the same advantages you do. We met at a predefined time and had our fun.

[Fabricated]

Uh, I don't know what you're smoking or how much your particular server sucks, but there are more people than ever running Scholo/Strat/LBRS/UBRS now that the caps have been changed. I get invited by random people to runs practically a half dozen times when I log on during peak hours. I've been in way way more UBRS pickup groups since the patch.

I'm not buying this "Raiding takes less time" stuff.

[edlavallee]

Does not make intuitive sense that raiding would take less time. One major reason -- you have many more variables (people) to cause delays. Saying that it takes less time to get in a raid and get going with a guild group vs a PUG is reasonable, however I think that position is ignoring Dren's point. I think his point is that for people who cannot dedicate large blocks of time, raiding is just not feasible as a way of advancing or acquiring items. It also effectively limits his ability to take advantage of the vast majority of post-60 content. I have seen this repeatedly in every game I have been involved in, the higher you go in level, the more time per session you need to dedicate to advancement, not to mention the increased number of people it requires to be involved. In my opinion, that is one of the major flaws of these style games for people like me who want the experience of an MMO without the impact on my personal life.

[AcidCat]

The issue here is really the ability to clear off a 4-5 hr block of time even if it is only once a week.

Yep, as many have stated, this is the main problem. For me it's twofold - I can't be locked at my PC for that long a stretch without totally ignoring my wife and two children, who deserve to have priority over a game. The normal pre 60 game allows me to go AFK when I need to or just log out whenever. And aside from the time I owe my family - even my own personal preference is not to be stuck in one spot until the ride is over. Once I've been sitting at the PC for 3 hours or so I just get antsy, being stuck in a raid for 4, 5 hours is just claustrophobic in a way to me.

So I'll continue to stick with replaying the 1-59 game with alts because I can control my session playtime instead of the game and needs of a group controlling my session playtime.

[Calantus]

Nono, I'm saying I play less now than I raid. I'm sure if you played very casually what I play now might seem like a lot to you, but it's actually quite small for me. The raid timers mean I can't play as much as I would if I was doing an activity that wasn't limited. Raiding != Catass is what I'm saying. Unless your definition of catass is 3-5 hours a night 3-4 nights a week, in which case you are wrong. Right now the only catass requiring activity is hitting the highest PVP ranks.

[Morfiend]

Nono, I'm saying I play less now than I raid. I'm sure if you played very casually what I play now might seem like a lot to you, but it's actually quite small for me. The raid timers mean I can't play as much as I would if I was doing an activity that wasn't limited. Raiding != Catass is what I'm saying. Unless your definition of catass is 3-5 hours a night 3-4 nights a week, in which case you are wrong. Right now the only catass requiring activity is hitting the highest PVP ranks.

Now that I am a raider also, I would say thats about how much I play. Its much less than I used to play before becoming a hard core raider.

[Dren]

Nono, I'm saying I play less now than I raid. I'm sure if you played very casually what I play now might seem like a lot to you, but it's actually quite small for me. The raid timers mean I can't play as much as I would if I was doing an activity that wasn't limited. Raiding != Catass is what I'm saying. Unless your definition of catass is 3-5 hours a night 3-4 nights a week, in which case you are wrong. Right now the only catass requiring activity is hitting the highest PVP ranks.

I define catass as somebody that chooses to play rather than take care of the essential things in life like personal hygiene.  So, no, I do not consider most any of you catasses.

I do define anybody that spends more than 2 hours in one play session as hardcore.  Yes, that includes doing it just once a week.  Outside of T.V. or a movie, I can't think of any activity that people do for that long, so it stands out to me.  Ok, my wife does scrapbooking every once in awhile for hours on end and sometimes overnight.  Yes, I would call her hardcore too!

Hardcore is not a derogatory term in my opinion.  Hell, I'm hardcore at heart.  I certainly could and have spent more than 2 hours playing.  On those rare occasions that I get a weekend to myself without wife and kids or chores, I've been known to put in a good 8 hours session, but normal circumstances don't allow for that.

That is my reasoning for wanting shorter instance times.  Put more instances in that are short and low requirement on group members or make them scale.  They will cetainly pick up a lot more interest from the casual group and if done right shouldn't affect the big raiders significantly.

[Dren]

Once I've been sitting at the PC for 3 hours or so I just get antsy, being stuck in a raid for 4, 5 hours is just claustrophobic in a way to me.

I'm very much like this myself, but only when I do know that I have other responsibilities at the time.  I've noticed that if I do actually get a day on the weekend when my wife and kids go do something for the day and I'm free of any chores, I can put in a 8'er no problem.  Those are rare and becoming more rare as time goes on.  I would assume this is the case for most aging gamers.

[Lum]

My guild has killed Ragnaros and Nefarian (they're currently on Twin Emps in AQ). I personally have killed Ragnaros and Ony and am BWL-keyed but haven't been on a BWL or AQ raid. I'm distinctly a second-tier member (maybe third tier) because of my complete and total lack of time and interest in raiding over and over again to get better pants.

[bhodi]

My guild has killed Ragnaros and Nefarian (they're currently on Twin Emps in AQ). I personally have killed Ragnaros and Ony and am BWL-keyed but haven't been on a BWL or AQ raid. I'm distinctly a second-tier member (maybe third tier) because of my complete and total lack of time and interest in raiding over and over again to get better pants.

But as I recall, your wife LOVES it. Do you stick to the 1-59 game, or play with her on alts when she's not raiding, or just go do something else while she whacks foozles in AQ? I guess the idea is to play together, but if she's doing the hardcore raiding game, and you have no interest in joining her, what is it about the game that lets you both spend time in it together? How do you reconcile that, when she's probably in AQ/BWL a few nights a week?

[tazelbain]

He's a WoW widower.