When I wrote about being "Alone Together" in WoW a while back, many TN readers responded with insightful comments about how the game's mechanics do not facilitate grouping. One repeating theme was that it is far more effective to "solo" the game (it is), in great part because assembling a good group can be prohibitively time consuming - especially in the late stages of the game, where high-end raids can require up to 40 people and up to 6 hours of continuous play time.
Out of curiosity, we tried to assess how many players actually spend time in these high-end raids (the full analysis is available at the PlayOn blog). Overall, we found that 30% of all level 60 characters in our sample spent time in high-level raid content (BWL, MC, or ZG) over the month of January 2006. On average, these characters spent 310 minutes (about 5 hours) in raid content over the same month - that is, just enough time for one run.
So it looks as if only a minority of players get to experience high-end raids and, when they do, it is probably only once a month. Is WoW's endgame reserved to a select few? If so, are there alternative and more inclusive designs for a MMO's endgame?
In my opinion, it's not that casual players are restricted from endgame content, it's that casual *guilds* are restricted from endgame content.
Most players, if they joined a raiding guild, would find that it is a lot easier to raid than they think it is. Raiding does not require a great amount of skill or time. In fact, having set raid times actually makes scheduling much easier for people with who are busy with other stuff. If you know that Thursday nights is Molten Core, you can clear your schedule on that night.
But a lot of casual players don't want to join raiding guilds for a variety of reasons. Some don't want to leave their friends behind, some are intimidated by the application process, some don't like the excess work like mods, or DKP, or being forced to respec.
I think the best way to get more people raiding is to provide more tools at the guild level to allow a casual guild to transition to a raiding guild. I have some ideas for WoW.
Posted by: GSH | Apr 19, 2006 at 21:17
Sadly, no "casual guild transition tool" would be appreciated by most casual players. I'd much rather prefer playing a character I designed than running a raid template mandated to me.
Heck, I'd much rather raid by testing my skills with a less-than-optimized build than take a cookiecutter solution that dilutes the challenge.
But most of all, I see no thrill in raids. I've tried em. I sometimes feel I *need to* do them to stay current, but they're obsessive lag-fests where most of the adrenaline rush seems to come from the panic of dropping to 4fps- and even then barely making out anything on the screen with all the visual effects.
It's not what I play for.
And I'd bet that if we looked at the people within raids, we'd find a large portion of them don't do it for the fun, but it's something to endure for the loot.
I'd wager that if the loot at raids was available in instances for smaller groups, raids would see remarkably less activity than they see now- even if the smaller-group instances were more challenging for the same reward.
Posted by: Chas | Apr 19, 2006 at 22:49
Just to throw out a counter point. I'm in a "casual guild" that raids MC/ZG. There are a core number of relatively hardcore players that sypmathize with the casuals, they let them come along and roll on epics (no dkp system, although a casual friendly version is in the making). So there is such a thing as a casual raiding guild. You just have to get someone to set one up.
But in general i would say that the hardcore player base restricts casual players from joining raiding guilds by imposing criteria. Most hardcore guilds have joining criteria such as 'x fire resistance' and 'must have x epics' etc etc.... The kind of thing which the casual player will look at and say "screw that, i'm gonna go do something real". You have to invest serious time in your character if they are to invest their collective time on you by epic'ing you out.
Either way you look at it, blizzard AND the player base make sure raiding is for the few. I kind of like it that way anyway.
Posted by: Jhonus | Apr 20, 2006 at 00:51
One interesting statistic you might want to consider is what percentage of accounts, rather than simply level 60 players (I wouldn't use players, since mules and alts would give you a flawed count) actually participate in raids. I believe Blizzard published this statistic at Blizzcon, and it was somewhere around 8%.
Another thing I've noticed on my servers, and I have no numbers or evidence to back this up, is that the community only seems to support a certain number of raid guilds at any time. For instance, my low population server has only 4 active MC/BWL guilds, and rather than forming another guild, players apply to each of these 4 guilds by the hundreds.
Thus, I think one of the very limiting factors of WoW's (and FFXI's, now that I think about it) endgame is that it basically mandates a commitment at the guild level. I think until something is changed so that players can experience endgame without being forced to change allegiances, you'll have this small number of raiders we're seeing currently.
Posted by: Lavery | Apr 20, 2006 at 01:14
I've been thinking for a while that WoW would benefit from letting characters belong to two guilds: one for social and/or roleplaying reasons, and one for PVP or raid focus. You can work around the barriers to some degree by wise use of player-made channels, but guild rosters ands uch are handy.
Posted by: Passer-by | Apr 20, 2006 at 05:43
The fundamental problem with WoW is that it's essentially a "bait and switch" scheme. Players are lured into a lush world of adventure where advancement every day is almost guaranteed to casual players. The gameplay is very quest-centric from levels 1 to 60. (Note: remember all the pre-release interviews with Blizzard spokespersons where the emphasis was on bringing an EQ style casual friendly MMO to the world without all the endless grinding and raiding?)
Enter the "switch". Suddenly you arrive at level 60. You can achieve this easily without ever having grouped, been in a guild or even raided. Now in order to progress with your character you have only one option: join a raiding guild. Raid or die. It's that simple.
From a design perspective WoW is a failure because if the *true* game is in fact raiding with 39 other players then Blizzard has utterly failed to teach their players from level 1 to 60 how to raid. There are no beginner to mid-level raiding instances or outdoor encounters. There are no tutorials or combat experiences that would reasonably prepare a player for the complexity and military-style regimentation that is required to be part of a 40 person raid.
When a MMO company like Blizzard has to rely on creating more raids in lieu of creating more level based content then it's sign that the game design from levels 1 to 60 was flawed to begin with. MMO designers have not figured out a way to create worlds where the content is truly dynamic, ever-changing and self-sustaining. Instead they put out more expansions and their virtual world becomes bigger but paradoxically the world becomes smaller as fewer and fewer people are spread out over more geographical zones.
The whole raid phenomenom was a fluke that first started in MMORPG's like EverQuest. You can bet Brad McQuaid and the designers of EQ could never have predicted how the raiding culture would end up dominating the genre. Most casual players figured out very soon that games like EQ would require a collosal investment in time and they could never hope to succeed so most of them quit. Raiding became a way to lengthen the lifespan of your game but came at a tremendous cost to casual gamers.
Sadly, every day WoW is becoming more and more like EverQuest as the taint and influence of hardcore ex-guildleaders and now chief designers like Tigole and Furor finds it's way into the game. You can't go on forever alienating your core audience just to make your hardcore raiding buddies happy. I just hope that the millions of subscribers will someday have the courage to wake up and realize they are being swindled and shortchanged by a misguided design team that cavalierly turns their nose at playstyles of the majority of their paying customers.
--Wolfshead
Posted by: Wolfshead | Apr 20, 2006 at 05:58
This is the fundamental issue. There exists some epic content. In order for it to remain 'epic' it has to only be available to the select few that are preapred to chase it. The lack of availability to common/casual/solo players is the very thing that makes it epic in the first place.
Blizzard have made time investment the thing that separates the "haves" from the "I've got better things to dos". They could restrict it to a fixed number of items per server, (which they've done to a degree with the battlegrounds system) but, this also requires a time investment to maintain your status. (Far more of one than simple raiding does, apparently. I've not tried it.) The only other option is to charge a ton of real money for it (Legend accounts, anyone?). The combat mechanics certainly don't leave enough room for skill to make them available through difficult solo quests. (and if they did, they would have been hacked to pieces by now).
If a player doesn't want to make that jump from soloing to the 5-man instances or from those to the raids, then that _is_ their endgame. They'll start another character and do it all over again or simply stop playing.
Here's an idea: Give the raid instances a configurable difficulty level and tailor the loot accordingly. People who make the time commitment still get something to show off, and people who don't get to see the environments and the bosses that would otherwise be out of reach. I still don't think this would work, however, as I find the most rewarding thing about raiding is the teamwork.
I'm now in a guild that can take out Ragnaros (usually) once a week. 6 months ago it took us 5 hours to work our way to the first MC boss (Lucifron). The joy of raiding is in learning to play as a team of 40, an entirely different experience to what I was used to. Random groups for raids don't fail because of the lack of good equipment, they fail because everyone tries to play a solo game (picture old football games at school with everyone up front trying to score) and they rarely get past the first mob, let alone the first boss.
We now have a fairly well trodden route through MC and we're making our first forays into BWL, which is a wholly different experience and why I still enjoy the high-end content.
Posted by: Terry | Apr 20, 2006 at 07:26
Well, from my point of view the fact that just organized, committed users be allowed the most valuable loot is good for the building of the simulated world, which is what I look for in a game like WoW.
As long as the fun is guaranteed to the casual user too, of course.
Just my 2c
Posted by: Bru | Apr 20, 2006 at 09:09
In the single-player RPG genre you get to do epic world-changing events. In the multiplayer RPG genre, you need to find 40 other people to kill one bad guy over and over and over in hopes of getting an item off him.
WoW had a perfect chance to eliminate the "over and over" part through their questing system. Unfortunately, to keep players lingering around between expansions it is necessary, I guess, to make lame raid content. It's a business model that EQ perfected and everyone else copied.
I'd be surprised if any MMORPG ever surpasses WoW's subscription numbers without dumping the boring repetitive raids from their game.
Posted by: jeff | Apr 20, 2006 at 09:11
I do not entirely agree with you last point, Jeff. The reason why WOW has such a long subscription is by far not the raiding system. The reasons are more casual, e.g. good graphics and the Warcraft trademark, famous for the quality of the gaming experience.
- MoG
Posted by: Maxis of Grinenshire | Apr 20, 2006 at 09:44
Sadly, I don't think any game would get close to those subscriber numbers without them.
This mechanic clearly works for Blizzard and for the millions who've subscribed. It took 3 months for me to reach level 60; most of that through quests and solo or paired play. There's still a good few quest threads I haven't finished, though I dip into them when I can. If there were twice as many and it took twice as long to reach 60, I'd still be raiding by now.
Boil any single player game down and you may find 5-6 hours of unique and engaging content, at best. Some games only last that long as a result and are all the better for it, some game pad it out to 20 or 30 hours but can still be fairly playable. How is any developer going to create 600 hours of anything and keep it permanently varied and exciting?
I agree with Wolfshead to a point; there should be more in the way of high-numbers, low level content. I'd imagine some sort of PVE variation on Battlegrounds might work quite well, with upper level restrictions and special encounters and kit to be gained.
There will always come a point, in the end, where a player has done with all of the solo content a game has to offer and only sees raiding content ahead. My question is: how much of that content do you want to see before this is an acceptable situation?
Posted by: Terry | Apr 20, 2006 at 10:01
One thing that shouldn't be dismissed is the promise that the raiding game dangles in front of lower level casual players.
While the majority may not actually enjoy the raiding game should they arrive at it (and few will ever reach it), the "real game" at the end is a constant carrot dangling to keep people playing.
Posted by: Kathygnome | Apr 20, 2006 at 10:05
TERRY: ... In order for it to remain 'epic' it has to only be available to the select few that are preapred to chase it.
- If the "select few" is such a small market that the cost to produce their content exceeds the revenue generated from catering to those few, it's a losing model. If that market could be catered to in such a way that includes more of the market, there's more "bang" for the buck.
Some of this will come from defining what it takes to be "prepared" to go. As others have mentioned, with decent preparation, even epics can become rather easy... even routine. Perhaps what we need are different measures of success, or different variations that challenge the preparer- make it less "routine" and more "must adapt to the new situation."
BRU:Well, from my point of view the fact that just organized, committed users be allowed the most valuable loot is good for the building of the simulated world, which is what I look for in a game like WoW.
However, the organization and committment needed for raids may often run against the kind of organization and committment that's ideal for the world.
-People speak of "raid builds" that rigidly define roles and expectations for a specific task. Much like "pvp build vs pve build" debates, raid builds force you to specialize for one specific encounter. Oftentimes, you could do with "less" of one thing a raid seeks for "more" of another in non-raid encounters.
-Purely "Raid" organization and regimentation often includes an expectation of involvement that come at the cost of a diversity that enriches communities.
-Raids often occur in instances, or in faraway points, isolating the raiders from the rest of the player community for the bulk of their activity.
-Raids can be seen as a divisive issue. When a raid takes longer than the casual players "block of time" online, it appears they reward "time" and not "skill." The highly-skilled, low-time player will feel excluded, unrewarded, and the highly competetive ones will feel increasingly marginalized as the raiders they encounter have access to assets they can't get. It becomes a point of contention that divides, rather than unifies, the community.
-Nick Yee's interview with a "high end" guild leader Talon showed how players' relationship to their avatars were meaningless- player account-sharing (?EULA violation? ...wonder how they feel about RMT....) was "the norm" so optimal builds and team combinations were always available. Such a dissociation doesn't contribute to a strong virtual community.
Posted by: Chas York | Apr 20, 2006 at 10:13
I don't think that content is ever kept from casual players. As several have noted, there are many casual players who raid and even casual guilds that raid. However, I do think that those are a minority. One thing I have discovered with people I have met in games over the years is the prominent attitude of true "casual" players is a desire to retain control over their own actions. True casuals love solo and small group content because their decisions, their actions, become critical. In large scale raids, the raid leader and select individuals make most of the decisions, and the majority of players in the raid do what they are told, and in fact are often told that if they don't do as instructed then the blame of failure will fall on them. True casual players just don't like the surrendering of control like that, and so tend to avoid large raid situations.
Posted by: Jason | Apr 20, 2006 at 10:15
I blame it all on guilds like FoH... fucking catasses.
Posted by: Heartless | Apr 20, 2006 at 10:24
I think there is a lot of variability in raid groups and in server types. I've been going to raids for half a year now on an RP server. The raid group is composed of members from a group of guilds who have gotten together and formed a group. We all have known each other since the early days and most of these guilds are focused on RP or friendship and having fun. We were not the first to venture into MC, probably because the first ones were raiding guilds, but, though it takes more time, people who are dedicated to having fun more than loot DO form raids. And the demeanor of these raids (I'm going by what I've seen when I went with a raiding guild vs. this new group and from some anecdotes I've heard over the year) are very different from each other. It manifests itself in how raid leaders and members talk to each other, how loot is divided, etc. (Nick Yee's interview of a raid leader might be indicative of hardcore raiding guilds, but it sure isn't the picture I see every week.)
I've mostly been looking at coordination and cooperation in WoW, and I would argue very strongly that a lot of learning is going on in high-end raids about how to play effectively as a team. I find raiding very rewarding in that sense from a learning perspective. What I find annoying is faction grinding. Now THAT has I think has very little social value.
Posted by: Mark Chen | Apr 20, 2006 at 10:35
I think this is another topic that is beaten to death in WoW. Yes the end game comes down to 3 things, Raiding, Farming, and PvP. All 3 of which are required for a guild to be effective.
I think if you look at wow as a catch and switch system then your gravely mistaken in my opinion. 1-59 is not another game or about reeling in the player base, but it's the time where the player base makes its connections in the community while learning the basics of their class. WoW is much more diverse and difficult to master then many players believe, and the 1-59 'grind' is hardly enough to teach players the very basics of how to play. During this time though, friendships are formed by the smaller (2-5 man) grouping scenarios provided/encouraged to the player.
Another point that should be made is that the experience of entering the community is very different depending on when and how you enter it. Should you be a first Generation player on a server where you and your online buddies leveled and experienced the game together for the first time you would notice the experience a lot differently then one who levels into the 'Old Boys Club' that the servers often turn into when a fair portion of the server is already Level 60.
It was also mentioned that the communities can not handle many large guilds. I don't feel this to be the case, what usually lacks is the leadership to start a guild and the patience to see it through. Personally I've had the pleasure of being a guild master of a high end raiding guild for the last year and a half (Since I took over leadership just after release) with anywhere from 20 -> 120 active members as we became more successful. Often when interviewing a lot of the potential members, the response to the question "Why are you leaving X guild for my guild?" was usually something along the lines of 'My guild is too small and I don't want to wait to do molten core'. My response at this point was rather canned "I would suggest you work with your guild to get it to the same point as mine, stick with it have patience and help build your community and you will get what you want out of it". There are many ways to get into the endgame that do not involve joining a raiding guild. Before my guild became a raiding guild, we joined with 3 other guilds and started working on Onyxia. Progress was slow, scheduling was a nightmare and leadership was always in question, but it was very enjoyable, and worked very well when my guild could only provide 12 or so people to the raid at the time. A number of those guilds then broke up and we gladly brought in the members who had spent so much time with us, further developing the community.
I've also seen very casual players be very successful in the end game. I have quite a few members that spend only 1 night a week and 1 night a weekend online and are yet very active in the raiding scene. If you as a guild leader recognize the need for a 'casual' player then you can easily schedule in advance and poll your player base on their needs, then schedule around those needs. Success in the end game is not a question of having 45 Hard Core Players but a question of commitment, and commitment can come in a few hours a week or a hundred, its just a question of perspective and patience.
Lastly, I would like to point to those that feel that 40 man raiding is the only end game in WoW. I think this is a very grave misconception that many people have. Before I started raiding MC I spent months raiding Stratholme/Scholomance and other level 60 instances. That said, majority of time spent in a raiding guild should not be inside of Molten Core/Blackwing Lair/Ahn'Qiraj but farming/pvping/building the community. Mixing this keeps people very interested and raises their motivation and moral, and high moral means faster clears and less downtime which means more loot per minute which means even less time in the instances. Its all a question of keeping the people happy, and making sure that you have a community, without that your doomed to failure.
Posted by: Jesse | Apr 20, 2006 at 10:59
Terry> This mechanic clearly works for Blizzard and for the millions who've subscribed. It took 3 months for me to reach level 60; most of that through quests and solo or paired play. <
My understanding is that the typical days played on a first level 60 is about 15 to 20 days. At a “casual” 30 hours a month, that’s 12 to 16 months of play. If Blizzard targeted the under 30 hours a month crowd, they would only have to add 30 new hours a month of content to keep the game fresh. It seems something of a circular argument to say you have to have raiding because people reach 60 in a few months and need something to do. Blizzard have almost total control over how quickly people reach 60. It simply depends on what expectations they set about hours played per month.
In Beta, they proposed a “rest” system that would have slowed that leveling progress a lot. But Betas attract the hardcore, who are just the wrong audience for such an approach. I think a game of WoW’s quality that targeted a casual audience would have even bigger numbers. But I doubt it will happen as long as the games are designed by hardcore players.
Posted by: Hellinar | Apr 20, 2006 at 11:02
Sorry for a double post but..
Chas - I highly disagree with Talon's views as a guild leader, I think its very important to play with in the rules. Which is why I highly discourage RMT's and account sharing in my guild is an offence punishable by guild removal. Community and association with your avatar make you a far better player then PvE builds will ever. To shine a light on that, currently I do not have a single Restoration Druid in my guild.
-Jess
Posted by: Jesse | Apr 20, 2006 at 11:08
Lastly, I would like to point to those that feel that 40 man raiding is the only end game in WoW. I think this is a very grave misconception that many people have. Before I started raiding MC I spent months raiding Stratholme/Scholomance and other level 60 instances.
I'd like to second this. There are only 3 or 4 zones that require more than 10 people (ZG, BWL, MC and the new bug one, whatever it's called). Everything else is a 5 or 10 person affair. Scholo, Strat, & the Blackrock Zones provide a "raid lite" experience that is accessible to pretty much anyone, except people who only want to play for a half hour.
The game has to end at some point. "End Game" is really for people who either want the extra challenge, or people who want to just go forever. No developer can make a game that you can quest through forever, because there just isn't enough time.
So it looks as if only a minority of players get to experience high-end raids and, when they do, it is probably only once a month. Is WoW's endgame reserved to a select few? If so, are there alternative and more inclusive designs for a MMO's endgame?
The high end players are there to prod 60s to do something else. A lot of people quit because they've "finished" the game-- I feel that way sometimes. Others get involved in the PVP scene, although the hardcore raiders will always have an edge--but hardcore players always have an advantage on casuals in PVP.
Also you should give some credit for Blizzard introducing the Tier .05 quests for upgrading the "Tier 0" armor sets (the stuff that drops in Scholo/Strat/BR zones). At least they're trying to give an alternate path to casual players, EQ certainly never had the time to do stuff like that.
Posted by: illovich | Apr 20, 2006 at 11:49
People have looked at the raid accessibility to casual player issue extensively. What they haven't examined is the content attractiveness issue... most casuals don't WANT that style of play.
I've got access to all the raid content I can stomach through a guild alliance. I have more fun farming and pvping than snoozing through another run of Molten Bore.
It would be great if the raiders could have their game and the casuals could have theirs, but where these two philosophies collide is in the PvP game. Top end raid gear so badly unbalances the pvp game that casuals get discouraged from playing there and leave the game sooner than they might otherwise. That is the most important game design issue that Blizzard has to address. Tiered pvp battlegrounds ("no epic" zones, no pvp ranks under/over 5, under/over 10, for example) are one idea for addressing this.
Posted by: Axecleaver | Apr 20, 2006 at 11:53
One other point: I would like to see Blizzard introduce more 5-person level 60 content. It can be made as challenging as a 40 person raid, and it's just easier for people to organize. I think the idea that all of the most epic actions have to be done by a mob. A lot of fantasy literature seems to support the idea of the world being changed by a small group of people.
Posted by: illovich | Apr 20, 2006 at 11:54
Nicolas Ducheneaut> are there alternative and more inclusive designs for a MMO's endgame?
I'd like to see more attention given to this part of the original post. Why are we just talking about raiding as though it's the only conceivable endgame feature?
I have the impression that raiding is an emergent behavior that got turned into a feature. Players started doing it, and it seemed to support the "massively multiplayer" aspect of MMOGs, so developers institutionalized it.
But what if you changed the rules that caused raiding behavior to emerge?
It's probably not a perfect theory, but it seems to me that raiding emerged as a response to two developer beliefs:
* the primary (possibly the only) explicit high-end reward should be "epic" loot
* obtaining epic loot ought to require a lot of effort
Once you set up those rules, various behaviors -- big groups, regimentation, templating, antagonisms between time-rich and casual players -- emerge naturally. If those aren't the only behaviors you want to evoke, then it's necessary to rethink the rules that generate them.
Does epic loot really have to be the primary explicit high-level reward a MMOG offers?
--Bart
Posted by: Bart Stewart | Apr 20, 2006 at 12:07
Hellinar:My understanding is that the typical days played on a first level 60 is about 15 to 20 days. At a “casual” 30 hours a month, that’s 12 to 16 months of play.
I recall that early game 'reviewers' praised the rapid-fire leveling of WoW, like it was some great feature... and players accepted it as well- many of the early fan posts comparing EQ2 vs WoW compared the rate of levelling...
At the time, it reminded me of something I read (one of Richard Bartle's, IIRC) that games are designed by newbies. ...so many games struggle with player satisfaction in the "endgame," why would we rush players there FASTER?
Many preceding games had rapid leveling at the start, to define the character, then slowly paced-out leveling (some suggest the goal is to acclimate one to focus on adventuring more than leveling to prepare you for the cap, some suggest that the goal should be that the cap is rarely reached).
But many preceding games also used leveling as an obstacle, encouraging players to focus on the "destination" rather than the "journey."
Jesse: I highly disagree with Talon's views as a guild leader, I think its very important to play with in the rules.
Good to hear! I've run into a few with Talon's mindset, and not enough with yours lately, it seems.
Posted by: Chas | Apr 20, 2006 at 12:10
I'm sorry, but this discussion is so... last month.
WoW patch 1.10 was all about solo and small-group content. More "casual" gamers can now upgrade their armor sets through a series of quests. Level 60s have an incentive to finish quests as well - the useless XP rewards were replaced by in-game gold.
Dungeons like Zul'Gurub and Ruins of Ahn'Quiraj (AQ20) were developed specifically for "casual" raiders, folks who cannot get a group of 40 for Molten Core, Onyxia or BWL.
In order to be fair, a game has to offer equality of opportunity, not of outcome. To get access to "epic loot," one has to defeat epic content. And that requires a commitment of time, skill and energy. Bear in mind, though, that not all raiders are equal. There are "uber" raiding guilds who mandate specs, share accounts, and treat their members like peons in an effort to accomplish "server firsts" and such. And there are more casual raiding alliances, like the one I'm in, that offer a chance to smaller guilds to pool their resources and accomplish something they could not do on their own.
Posted by: Fearless | Apr 20, 2006 at 12:17
Chas: - 'If the "select few" is such a small market that the cost to produce their content exceeds the revenue generated from catering to those few, it's a losing model. If that market could be catered to in such a way that includes more of the market, there's more "bang" for the buck.'
I see what you're saying, but you're denying the aspirational aspect to playing at lower levels. I had my first character at 30-something when a friend showed me a video of an Onyxia fight. I was gobsmacked and I really looked forward to the point where I'd be able to take part in that. This tantalising visibility of the bigger stuff will keep a lot of people on board through some of the early 40s grind. You are right, however, in saying that my "select few" is probably a fairly large percentage of the population in WoW's case. Once I started raiding, my ideas of what was rare were changing on a weekly basis.
The recent patch has opened up some options for time-poor/skill-rich players, however, with harder time-limited bosses and quests appearing in the smaller instances. (The 45 minute baron run being the prime example.)
@Hellinar: 30 hours a month of content? I wouldn't presume to prefix that with the word 'only'. That's 6 or 7 new instances or two new quest-laden zones.
Sure, you could seriously slow down the levelling rate but part of what makes WoW fun is the piecemeal addition of new spells and abilities as you progress. It's one of the things I think they got right: Not so slow as to get too tedious, but not so fast that you haven't had a chance to assimilate the new options into your playing style. Also, you'd have to have _all_ of the lower level content in place when you launch or your early adopters are going to be word-of-mouthing off about how tedious the game is.
If I'm allowed to play devils' advocate for a moment: if a game contains both casual and hardcore content and a casual player can experience most of that casual content in 12-16 months, isn't that enough? If not, how much? It seems like your idea of a game that targets a casual audience is one that simply removes all of the raiding content to avoid making casual players feel short-changed. Why can't they coexist?
Posted by: Terry | Apr 20, 2006 at 12:55
Our research team (which includes Nic, Nick and Eric of PARC) has just finished a project interviewing a representative sample of guild members in WOW. It'll be out, oh, in many months from now.
Some findings that might shed light here, though:
1) Large, raid-based guilds nearly always style themselves as "social," whether they are casual or relatively hard-core.
2) Smaller guilds find the large ones to be snobbish and too focused on raid goals at the expense of sociability.
So 1 + 2 = some envy and the "outside looking in" notions mentioned in this thread, but the smaller guilds are usaully incorrect about the level of sociability in the big guilds.
The thing that struck me the most in reading through all of the interviews was the importance of the leader. Some were pretty military and impersonal, but most were conscientious of their members: perhaps 1/3 were as considered as Jesse, another 1/3 were pretty good and the last 1/3 were either too weak to lead and/or are asshats. Strong and consistent leaders made for happy guilds, regardless of their uberness at downing Nefarian, etc.
One non-research note as a player in a high-end guild: there are guilds that do runs once a week and those that go every day. The former are still raids, but the guild is more likely to be casual and social. Even so, a guild that goes every day is rarely asocial or truly Spartan. They might be in more danger of burnout, though.
Posted by: Dmitri Williams | Apr 20, 2006 at 13:47
Chas: "Such a dissociation doesn't contribute to a strong virtual community." Only insofar as you define community as 'community of avatars', not 'community of people'; I'd think a group of people I'm willing to share my account info with is tighter than one I'm not. (And as 'Rufa Hendeiger' points out, the masquerade is still there, just shifted around a little.)
It still feels weird having this conversation without somebody telling somebody else to cry more or lern to play.
In my case, raiding is the reason to play these games. Almost everything else MMOs offer--small-group dungeon crawling, solo dungeon crawling with online leaderboard, team-based competitive play, a community of storytelling--can be found elsewhere, and better. (One could imagine doing raids Quake-style--someone puts up a server, loads it with a raid boss or dungeon, up to 64 people log on, and they go--but nobody has, so far as I've noticed.)
Posted by: mjh | Apr 20, 2006 at 14:16
Chas - Thank you.
Axecleaver - "I've got access to all the raid content I can stomach through a guild alliance. I have more fun farming and pvping than snoozing through another run of Molten Bore."
Most obviously your guild no longer strives itself at a goal. Being bored at Molten Core is not a must. We've been running MC once a week for more then 12 months, now a days, we set goals for ourselves to liven it up. Now its tripple pulls of Fire lords and Baron and Shaz at the same time. Keeps the instance interesting. If your bored give stuff like this a try. Also, giving yourself personal goals makes this easier. It's like anything in life, you need to strive in order to keep yourself entertained.
Dmitri - Glad to see you use me as the top 33% =) And I would hope that I ran a not so spartan guild. However, I do know that we are very introverted and don't often ask for new members, not due to elitism, but to maintain that community
I would also like to point out on a side topic, that end game dungeons have been around since launch. Blackrock Spires, Strat, Scholo and very early patch added DireMaul (4 months after launch I believe?) These give the average Joe casual player much opertunaty to itemize themselves.
-Jess
Posted by: Jesse | Apr 20, 2006 at 14:24
"Enter the "switch". Suddenly you arrive at level 60. You can achieve this easily without ever having grouped, been in a guild or even raided. Now in order to progress with your character you have only one option: join a raiding guild. Raid or die. It's that simple."
thats completely incorrect. there are a miriad of ways to advance your character post 60 without raiding. it won't be as powerful as a raiding character, but there are still many ways through craftable items, enchants, BOE items, pvp rewards, faction rewards plus a plethora of items from 5man instances which are attainable without raiding... all of which would improve your character post 60.
Posted by: | Apr 20, 2006 at 17:12
My solution to the endgame issue - dont have an 'endgame'.
At the outset, developers should decide what sort of game they are making and what type of player they are targetting. If you are making a solo/small group game, dont aim all your initial content at this market then start churning out 40-man 6 hour raids after launch (reverse the argument for a raid based game). If its a mass PvP game focus development on that. Trying to cater to everyone is a mugs game.
As others have already stated, all games/worlds must come to an end. We might get some better mmogs if both developers and players accepted this.
Posted by: Spur | Apr 20, 2006 at 18:42
Spur - The goal however of the developer is not to have a game that finishes, that defeats the business model of MMOs as we know it. So the longer and more engrossing endgame (As Players will ALWAYS level cap if you put in an XP system or other quantifiable based method of playing [read money/xp/time played/etc]) that a dev makes the longer its customers are hooked, and the more money they pay for the service. One can not make the assumption that the dev team will pigeon hole thier target market by only providing content to 1 group of people (Read: Hardcore/Casual/Raider/Non-Raider/PVP/PVE/RP/ETC) You MUST as a developer open your target audience as wide as possible without sacrificing the core game. If you want 6 million subscribers you, sure as s**t, need to make sure every person who buys your game will find some type of enjoyment out of it.
You go on to suggest that we may get better MMOs if this happened, but the fact is, that if your target audience is say 100,000 customers, then you will get the funding for a game that will only cost 50,000 titles (Standard Video Game Required ROI is about 2:1). Thus your quality will substantially drop. You make a game that will sell 10x the previous example, you will see 10x more money(/time) being given to the production team, thus allowing for more content, better gameplay, better graphics, better bug squashing, etc... See the difference between say Shadowbane (PVP Oriented and Marketed as such) versus World of Warcraft (Huge Target Audience and Mass Appeal Marketed). Now if we concider quality of game, I think the numbers of concurrents after year 1 speak for themselves. And 4 years after release I can say with a good amount of confidance that WoW will still be going strong (where SB is now Free to a good home)
-Jess
Posted by: Jesse | Apr 20, 2006 at 18:59
I'd like to focus on the key word in the subject here: "Accessible".
I'd like to suggest that accessibility is why WoW is both vastly successful, and doomed to fall hard.
Until you reach level 60, the game is highly accessible. It's so accessible, in fact, that I see many types of players I would never have expected to see in an MMO, including my own partner. From the moment you connect, it's a pretty painless experience: creating a character is easy. When you first enter the game world, it's STILL a painless experience. At level 1, you can easily kill the stuff you need to kill.
I'm going to repeat that.
At level 1, you can easily kill the stuff you need to kill.
That's very important, in my mind, to opening MMOs up to a wider audience. I would expect most people here were paying enough attention to Star Wars Galaxies pre-release to remember the phrase "weaker than a womp rat". I also would expect most people here to remember how badly SWG failed on that promise: womp rats are vicious creatures that will eat a newbie player for breakfast.
And once again, right from the start, WoW delivers bite-sized achievement. Quests give you a better goal than "if I kill another thousand of these, I will be half way to my next level!"
Right the way up to level 60, WoW remains accessible. You can log in, achieve something, get somewhere, do something meaningful or interesting. Past the first few levels, not much of it is fundamentally new anymore, but that doesn't seem to matter. Each Sudoku puzzle I play isn't fundamentally new, but I play on, because the small, bite-sized achievement gives me a reward.
Even the levelling instances are accessible. You could go in as soon as you have your quests, and face down a tough challenge, if that's what you like, but equally well you could go in later, when your quests are a couple of levels below you, and have a less demanding encounter.
Then you hit level 60, and all your options narrow down to one: join a group. Immediately, there's a problem, in my mind. You MUST group. The rewards for any further solo activities are pitiful, both in gameplay terms and in cognitive terms. It's back to "kill a thousand mobs" -- but instead of gaining half a level, you gain half a reputation bar; and filling a reputation bar gets you maybe one or two tokenistic rewards.
Accessibility takes a kick in the crotch. You can't log in and do something for 15 minutes anymore, because it will take you that long just to find a group, even if you have a large pool of guild mates online to select from. You MUST now play for a minimum of two hours, or engage in some unrewarding solo activity -- or go back to the accessible game, and start another character.
Groups themselves are punishing. From five people, you need one tank, one healer, and preferably one crowd controller. This usually translates into Warrior, Priest, and Mage. If you're playing one of the other five classes (six, but five per faction) you're competing with many people for a few spots.
As if all that wasn't a hard enough blow to the casual gamer, there's then raids. Now not only do you need a group, but you need a large group, and you need to schedule your playing time. Even if you do have four hours free, if it's not your guild's raid time, you've got nothing to do. The role problem doesn't go away, either. You still need eight or so healers, and at least five tanks. Instead of crowd control, you usually now need dispellers: mages again, or paladins if you're Alliance.
So, basically, WoW turns from a highly accessible game into a highly inaccessible game. Blizzard has no plan or even apparent intention to fix this, and WoW is going to suffer a population implosion because of it, back down to the audience size that is able and willing to overcome the inaccessibility barrier: EverQuest sized population figures.
I predict WoW will be having server merges by the end of the year as the audience who appreciated the accessibility of the game drifts away.
Posted by: Byron Ellacott | Apr 20, 2006 at 20:28
Byron - I ask you one simple question, in a Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game, would you rather the developers make a game that is Soloable alone, or geared towards multiplayer? I mean, we could rename WoW to Massively Single Player Offline Game, and just play Oblivion, which is very accessable at all levels solo.
-Jess
Posted by: Jesse | Apr 20, 2006 at 21:23
Terry> It seems like your idea of a game that targets a casual audience is one that simply removes all of the raiding content to avoid making casual players feel short-changed. Why can't they coexist? <
My argument is that the casual audience is being short-changed, or alternatively that Blizzard is not making as much money as it could. If you are selling 30 hours of entertainment a month for $15, then you have an overall budget of 50 cents an hour to provide that entertainment. On the other hand, if you are trying to provide 150 hours of entertainment for the hardcore, you have only 10 cents an hour to devote to content. A crude argument I know, but it does seem a casual only game would be able to give the casual player better production values for their money.
The counter argument seems to be that the “end game” provides benefit to the casual player by existing, even if they never reach it. I’m not denying that effect. But I am wondering if someone should try doing without it.
Posted by: Hellinar | Apr 20, 2006 at 21:31
"Byron - I ask you one simple question, in a Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game, would you rather the developers make a game that is Soloable alone, or geared towards multiplayer? I mean, we could rename WoW to Massively Single Player Offline Game, and just play Oblivion, which is very accessable at all levels solo."
How about a game design that supports the casual player? In DAoC if you don't have a lot of time to play you could easily head to the battlegrounds. As soon as you zoned in the first question you'd ask would be "Who's got the chat channel?" From there you were instantly connected to everyone else in the zone and plugged in immediately to the conflict.
Why not something similar for raid instances? Allow people to zone into an existing raid instance and instantly get plugged in for however much time they have.
Posted by: lewy | Apr 20, 2006 at 23:26
Just want to add something to the "first generation" players.
We were in the beta. We hit level 60 between 15-20 days of WoW going live.
Prior to level cap at 60, if an instance was too hard, all you had to do is wait a few more levels. SM was hard at 35~40, but when you are 50 you can solo it easy...
There were plenty of 'new' content that we have never yet experienced. 5-man BRD, no way, that's impossible! (we took a guild raid of 15 guildies who are over level 54 as a requirement to BRD, and we wiped).
Scholomance - getting a key was an epic undertaking that required a raid group. What's this? After you finish the 5-man quest chain you can get access to see invisible ghosts and purchase extremely rare recipes that allows you to transmute water to air? (air does not drop in the game). That is some epic quest line.
Stratholm - walk in, oops the gates is locked behind me, and there's waves and waves of skeletons as far as the eye could see... We got so scared we forgot we had a hearth stone - we stripped naked and suicided.
LBRS and the race to get the key to UBRS before the Horde's group did.
UBRS and the completion of your class set (now referred to as the tier 0 set). (There were no other blue gear available. The set was the hottest thing there is). Everyone else was wearing level 50 green gear, but you are decked out in 6/8 class set.
Onyxia opened and you had to get 40 people to do LBRS and then UBRS to get everyone attuned...
What people said were right. We all leveled solo. Nobody knew what raiding is, or how to do it. Figuring out what I can actually "do" with my character started when I was level 60.
For 59 levels, all I had to do was to get one more level and then I'll come back and beat this boss with shear brute force. Level cap changed everything.
---
I pity people who were spoon fed these instances. There's a lot of experiences they missed out.
Everytime there's a new server, or a new instance, or a new quest line, I feel happy for people who can experience what I've always thought was the most fun thing in this game.
jliu
Posted by: John Liu | Apr 21, 2006 at 02:55
@Hellinar: I take your point, but for what you're suggesting to work, you'd be forcibly restricting people's playing hours.
If you allow people to play as often as they like, some people will be playing for 90% of their waking life. It's impossible to give these people something new to do all of the time, so they get one thing to do 100 times. Much as a casual-oriented game may offer a richer and more varied experience, if you can play it as much as you like, the hardcore will be done in 2 months and cancel their subscriptions if there isn't something to move on to. Not a particularly desirable situation for Blizzard.
I'm trying to picture a game with limited (if any) levelling structure and equipment but still with a solid combat-based environment. Something a little more reality-based where your skills improve, but where you start with as much health as a 60-year old wizard will ever have. Progression would be through plotline. It would involve well scripted and believable NPCs and have intelligent dialogue and, hell, maybe even expose people to a few genuinely new ideas. Playing time would be restricted to 1-2 hours a day, but we should be satisfied with this as each 1-2 hours would bring something new and interesting to the table. There'd be a greater potential for world-changing events, certainly, as there would be the time and budget to script them. Everyone would be happy.
If this is pretty much what you envisage, how do you preserve the MM part of this MMOG, given restricted playing hours, withouth realtime scheduling of events? Arguably the one thing the targetted casual gamer hates most about MMOGs in general: being told when they have to play.
If you separate hardcore and casual players by how much of a social commitment they're prepared to make, then a game targetted at casual players will simply be a single(or small mutli)-player game with other people getting under your feet. You could instantiate just about everything, but I'd much prefer something along the lines of an episodic System Shock 2 in that respect. No bad thing, but it takes the 'massive' aspect out of the equation altogether.
Posted by: Terry | Apr 21, 2006 at 06:44
(apologies for double post)
@John Liu
I have to agree. Perhaps this is why I enjoy the raiding so much. It's because I'm with a guild that has as much experience as I do.
Just last night, we took down Razorgore for the first time (after 30 or 40 attempts over the last few months). A fantastic moment for everyone involved. More so than anything I've achieved in the smaller instances. This is partly because of the work that's gone in to it, but mostly because of the shared experience. I came into WoW during the 2nd european release. By the time I reached 60 and started into strat/scholo etc. It mostly felt like I was being dragged through on rails by 3 or 4 other guys who knew the route and the encounters by heart, which is nowhere near as much fun.
That said, going into strat as a 5-man guild group is also great fun as you can push through faster, take more risks and survive larger pulls than you would with a mixed-experience group.
Posted by: Terry | Apr 21, 2006 at 07:00
Why not something similar for raid instances? Allow people to zone into an existing raid instance and instantly get plugged in for however much time they have.
I don't think something that simple would work without changing the design of current raid content. WoW does have battlegrounds, and in them I have participated in some with very unconventional teams (playing Arathi Basin with no warriors or paladins on our side, playing with no healers). The same doesn't hold true with most designed raid content. You can't beat Molten Core if you have no healers. You might also find it hard to win if more than half your raid in priests.
Posted by: Jason | Apr 21, 2006 at 10:06
If the raiding question was just about playstyle preference between solo, small and large group content, the answer would be easy. Pick a set of playstyles to support and try to give each as much content as you can. This is Blizzard's repeated spin on the tired "hardcore vs. casual" debate.
That's a painfully naive stance, of course. The more interesting issue is the philosophy of exclusivity in MMORPGs. To have a dynamic economy, everyone can't have the same stuff. Current generation MMORPGs, typified now by WoW, take that a step further to an elite philosophy - the best stuff should only be possessed by a small number of people. That way everyone has a sense of something to strive for, whether they'll ever reach it or not. This is a well proven method for motivating people, and the argument applies to content as well as gear.
WoW implements this philosophy in three ways. First, totally random drops, very like the lottery. Not terribly motivating since you can't practically strive for it. Second, grinding (faction and honor). This self-selects those players who have a lot of time and are willing to spend it doing something not terribly enjoyable because the reward (or just something to do) is worth it. Third, raiding. Raiding uses an interesting mix of time and logistic barriers to create an elite. Only the guilds who are best organized over significant periods of time and have players with lots of time and willingness to schedule around the game can access the latest and greatest content and gear. However, those barriers diminish over time through published strategies, deliberate nerfs, gear inflation and maturing of other guilds. This guarentees that yesterday's uber-sword becomes accessible to an increasingly wider audience as time goes by.
Raiding is the most effective way, to date, to implement an elite/exclusive philosophy. Does that make it good? Of course not, but the flaws aren't with raiding specifically. Some examples:
Would people still raid if it wasn't tied to elite/exclusion? Most probably wouldn't, but I don't see that as a specifically large scale group issue. Static encounters will always become boring, whether with 1, 5 or 40 people. Improved AI and dynamic design would help thing.
The philosophy of elite gear is completely at odds with competitive PvP. Raiding isn't the core problem here, it's a basic incompatibility that no one has solved.
If you're sold on elite/exclusion, can you come up with something other than commitment (raiding or grinding) as a barrier, something people might find more palatable? Skill is often suggested, but pretty unrealistic given the stats/gear/knowledge emphasis of MMORPG combat to date.
Exclusion pisses people off. Is this primarily a content problem because there aren't enough other options? Or is it that we feel entitled to everything based on our single-player experiences? If the latter, to what extent is that a bad thing in a video game?
Posted by: | Apr 21, 2006 at 10:10
Oops, forgot to fill in the personal info. That was me in the long winded post above.
Posted by: etomai | Apr 21, 2006 at 10:12
Terry: If you separate hardcore and casual players by how much of a social commitment they're prepared to make, then a game targetted at casual players will simply be a single(or small mutli)-player game with other people getting under your feet.
I think you're putting more into Hellinar's argument. It's not about limiting a player's actions, but deciding which market to attend to.
Since both the hardcore and the casual player pay the same fee, but the hardcore player (these are assumptions, not proven facts:) consumes more content, consumes more bandwidth, and may, (due to the first 2) consume more CSR time, then it makes sense to cater to the casual (less expensive) player.
Now, that doesn't mean eliminating all hardcore content. As others have mentioned, there is some value- often significant value in having something to "aspire to" some holy grail that would take a little extra committment, some extra involvement... one night of just sending the kids to bed early maybe, but something to strive for.
Posted by: Chas York | Apr 21, 2006 at 10:20
Jesse - The goal however of the developer is not to have a game that finishes, that defeats the business model of MMOs as we know it.
Well in addition to these subscribers who never leave I would also like World Peace and an end to poverty in the very near future... :)
Subscribers quit. They get bored, fancy a change, run out of content, play newer games etc. - Isnt the industry average subscription length 8/9 months? The game 'ends' whether the developers like it or not, they just need to give the customers the best possible experience while they are around. :)
You MUST as a developer open your target audience as wide as possible without sacrificing the core game.
Re. WOW and the data presented here (and from Blizzard themselves) it seems they are sacrificing their core game as raiding is a minority pursuit. Raiding isnt the core game of WOW, solo/small group questing is. Surely Blizzard should focus its considerable resources on this area?
Posted by: Spur | Apr 21, 2006 at 10:46
I think the issue isn't so much raiding per se, but WoW's broader issue with the length of a play session. To me, efficiency in WoW requires a play session of a minimum of two hours in length, even if you're solo questing (to minimize run time, doing a geographically-grouped sequence of quests is best), and doing a five-man instance tends to require a minimum of two to four hours. The lowering of instance caps in 1.10 removed, at 60, the option of running Dead Strat in an hour, for instance.
I do think that the highest-end raid content is very accessible to casual players and to casual guilds. It's a matter of looking beyond one's immediate social circle -- forming alliances or getting hooked up individually with a guild that allows outsiders to sign up for their raids. 40-man raiding does, of course, require the ability to set aside a significant chunk of time on a scheduled basis. Not everyone will want to do that.
Endgames are all about repeatable content, for the obvious reasons. Blizzard has arguably made reasonable efforts to add a spectrum of it -- the recent addition of repeatable Silithus quests is a good example. But I suspect that most players who reach 60, whether hardcore or casual. At the very least, swapping sides (Alliance/Horde) opens up a sizeable amount of totally different content.
Posted by: Amberyl | Apr 21, 2006 at 11:21
This really feels like reading WoW forums a couple months back, when "casual" gamers were railing against "hardcore" gamers over the Ahn'Quiraj "war effort" event. That, by the way, was a well-scripted storyline that offered both types of gamers a chance to accomplish something - those with time and organization would pursue the sceptre for opening the gate (and get a reward mount), and those without could turn in materials for faction bonuses and/or items. Everyone got something, except those who stood on the sidelines and whined.
Once a player reaches level 60, a whole different game opens up. So it has no visible progress indicator - big deal! There are dungeons to explore, epic questlines to complete, and yes, raiding content. The beauty of WoW is that there is something for everyone. There is so much content, in fact, that I can't find time for all that I want to do - and I'm not in an "uber-guild," only a raiding alliance. Honestly, whoever complains of being bored in WoW isn't trying. That's all there is to it.
Posted by: Fearless | Apr 21, 2006 at 11:46
Fearless: Honestly, whoever complains of being bored in WoW isn't trying. That's all there is to it.
I have to admit, I'm not much of a wow'er, but I don't see the boredom complaint as much as a feeling of being alienated.
For the first part of the level-grind, WoW is much the same for the casual and the hardcore gamer. Heck, much has been said on how the "casual" player was felt enabled, not forced, in WoW. It was part of Blizzard's appeal. The hardcore just get to the top faster. Now, though, after 1 1/2 years, many of the casual gamers are also sitting at the top- at the endgame.
It's at this endgame where the disparity between the "hardcore" and the "casuals" starts to become really apparent, and as more casuals get there, there will be more of a revolt- either in increased churn or increased hostility between the varying playstyles.
The "casual" player can't manage to compete with the better-equipped hardcore- the reward for the hardcore-styled is much better.
On a PvE server, you shouldn't have to care much about this... well, until the devs start offering content balanced for the ultra-raid-equipped player, rather than the casual-gear-equipped player... then you scream bloody murder. People still do complain, because even though they're not PvP'ing, they "compete" in other ways.
On a PvP server, the difference in reward can be much more noticable, and much more frustrating to the casual player, so it's something Blizzard would do well to remain VERY aware of.
Posted by: Chas York | Apr 21, 2006 at 12:04
Fearless: I think casual players might've had a completely different experience than what you say regarding the gates opening event. I know a bunch of players who had no clue what was even going on and who had never even been to Silithus. In my experience, world events like the dragonflight returning are totally exclusionary. YMMV, I guess...
Amberyl: The dungeon 2 set requires 5-man UD Strat runs in under 45 minutes.... and it is a lot of fun.
But anyway, making it so that less people can raid some of the high end instances (BRD, Strat, Schol, BRS) actually hurts the casual player, imo... At least for my guild, we used to have guild parties in those instances. We are a smallish guild and used to not have enough for ZG but way too many for a 5-man. A lot of us had to join other MC groups, so we're spread out a bit... When we want to recenter ourselves and hang out with our buddies who we grew up with... we don't have many choices anymore.
And finally, a lot of people seem to be under the misconception that you HAVE to be in a guild to go to MC. This is not true but I can see the confusion. I think people have to be able to socialize, to make the right connections, know the right people. This most often happens by joining a guild, but joining the right guild or even joining any guild is not necessary.
Posted by: Mark Chen | Apr 21, 2006 at 14:05
Spur - Re. WOW and the data presented here (and from Blizzard themselves) it seems they are sacrificing their core game as raiding is a minority pursuit. Raiding isnt the core game of WOW, solo/small group questing is. Surely Blizzard should focus its considerable resources on this area?
After checking : The 1.10 (current) patch notes http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/patchnotes.html
I counted 14 changes to high end instances, out of hundreds of other changes (I lost count after 40 and I was less then a quarter through the list)
I would say Blizzard is putting a lot of effort into non-raid instances, including making most dungeons no longer Raid-able.
Posted by: Jesse | Apr 21, 2006 at 14:39
It will always have disparity between casual and hardcore gamers. In my opinion one solution to reduce these problems, would be to create "elite servers" or "casual servers".
For example, on "elite servers" all MOB's would have 25% more health and 10% more damage. On the other hand "casual servers" would limit to time being played by account to 15-20 hours/week.
I know that this kind of separation would probably require some tweaking. But, the idea would be to regroup players with similar interest together. For now, the "separation" is based on how you want to play the game instead of your playing habits. This would probably help every player finds their best virtual environment.
And "elite servers" might only be accessible through special achievements on normal/casual servers (High PvP ranking, achievements through instances, gold amount, etc...).
This would not eliminate disparity, but this would surely help accomodate more people.
Posted by: LEKO | Apr 21, 2006 at 15:35
Blizzard is putting more effort into non-raid instances, but let's be careful to distinguish what they're doing in that regard from their development of raid instances.
The changes in 1.10 are to instances that are new in no way. The major change was lowering the cap allowable in one instance - from 15 to 10, or from 10 to 5. Other changes include some reduction of mobs in UBRS (in the room with Drakk), a couple of new scripted events (BRD and UBRS), and some reitemizing of drops. Oh yes, and the new armor quests. Many on the "casual" side (I do hate that term) consider these changes minor relative to the raid instances added since WoW began (Zul'Gurub, Black Wing Lair, AQ 20 and 40, and the instance slated for 1.11, Naxxramas). Contrast all the raid instances with the only new 5-man instance added since launch, Dire Maul (true, it has 3 wings). It may well be that the NEW solo/small group material is slated for the expansion, which many think will come out in the last quarter of 2006. That should enrich content considerably. But it's hard to argue that end-game development hasn't been raid-centric. And as Mark noted above, the cap reduction makes it more difficult for guild groups, etc., to get together.
My own experience after hitting 60 is that unless you're willing to form groups constantly (a very time consuming process, ESPECIALLY noticeable when the game to that point hasn't required it), you have many fewer opportunities for rewarding gameplay. For someone like me, who enjoys story and quest-driven play, who doesn't have hours on end to 1. try to form groups 2. get groups to the instance 3. do the instance, and who also would like greater variety in play, the degree of enjoyment has really dropped. I have joined some raids, and didn't particularly enjoy them. I also can't fit the chunks of time needed into my schedule.
Sure, Blizzard can do whatever it wants with WoW. My main point is that the experience at high end is far different from what players get while levelling up. While there are many options available after one hits 60, many require a fundamental shift in playstyle. We're all familiar with "levelling" and "endgame/raiding" talent builds, and that the latter make soloing more difficult and less enjoyable. Many players are frustrated with that change. Some quit, some reroll, and some adapt. I'm in the first group.
Posted by: Rosemary | Apr 21, 2006 at 16:23
I notice a tendency here to equate "casual" gamers with people who don't want challenging content. This seems totally wrong.
I have about 6 hours a month to play -- and I want that time packed with challenging content. I like to do yellow and orange quests even though they don't provide optimum XP returns for time spent. I like to do silly things like go into skull areas to gather herbs.
What I don't like is to spend hours waiting for a group to go through an instance. I really don't like a high level character escorting me through an instance.
Maybe the best solution is for servers to have different time caps per account. I would happily play on a 10 hour a month server. This server could support a very high population, but the players would level at about my rate. It would be much easier to find and keep friends.
Posted by: Ken Fox | Apr 21, 2006 at 18:23
"Honestly, whoever complains of being bored in WoW isn't trying. That's all there is to it."
I cancelled over a year ago, so my experience certainly isn't current, but I was horrifically bored with WoW. Part of the problem I think was that I played both EQ and DAoC and WoW just felt like a horrible retread.
Since cancelling I've played in the open beta for a few games like Auto Assault but I won't pay money for an MMOG until something new and fun comes out.
Posted by: lewy | Apr 21, 2006 at 20:32
You log into the world and you kill a level 1 rat. The rats get bigger and so you eventually need a group to kill them. When you've amassed enough dings and phat lewt, the rats require 39 other people to kill.
Raiding is the endgame that many MMOGs default to because the developers could not, or did not wish to, create more sophisticated and interesting gameplay.
Some players complain about the fact that PvE raiding is trivial, unoriginal, and mighty boring. However, there are still many who have not actually uttered the phrase "raiding is dumb" because they have not stopped to ask themselves why they feel so bored during a raid, and so empty afterwards. Many people simply do not recognize that an MMOG can have a high-level activity that does not involve PvE raiding. I don't blame these folks [i]much[/], because it must be admitted that alternatives to PvE raiding have, in practice, had many problems. These problems are not unresolvable, though -- it's simply the case that creating a dynamic DAOC-type realm vs realm siege system (for example) is going to be more difficult than creating lots of dungeons with huge rats that are meant to be killed by 40 players.
Posted by: Grax | Apr 23, 2006 at 23:21
"You log into the world and you kill a level 1 rat. The rats get bigger and so you eventually need a group to kill them. When you've amassed enough dings and phat lewt, the rats require 39 other people to kill."
Once upon a time single player games just went on, and on, and on. Now even venerable genres like side scrolling shooters or platformers have an end boss. But in MMOG land it's still the 1970's--the game goes on, and on, and on. Current MMOG's are living proof of the hoary old science fiction cliche that immortality would be incredibly boring.
Compare WoW to a great single player game like Half-Life 2. In WoW you kill monsters in order to level up in order to kill tougher monsters in order to level up. For me at least despair set in pretty quickly once I started to wonder what the point of it all was.
In Half-Life 2 on the other you get from chapter to chapter and the gameplay itself changes in surprising and gratifying ways. The game mechanics are not static. And then finally the game itself wraps up.
MMOG's are interesting because their study inevitably leads into questions of virtual worlds and communities. But from an artistic standpoint I think it's clear that the cutting edge is in the single player realm. One quick example: computers still can't handle lots of NPC's. The cities in games like WoW (or the latest Elder Scrolls game for that matter) don't resemble cities as people understand them. They're curiously empty.
I recently played Shadow of the Colossus, and I was struck because that game actually takes that limitation and turns it into a strength. There the fact that there are no other people actually contributes to the sense of mystery in the game. It makes a real virtue of minimalism--the reviewer in Gamespot commented on how uneasy he felt as the game progressed about killing the Colossi, many of whom are inoffensive until they're ambushed. Surely the stage is set for that because the game refuses to provide any details or back story. That dislocation jars the player into viewing the proceedings from a new perspective.
Posted by: lewy | Apr 25, 2006 at 08:38
> there are a miriad of ways to advance your character
> post 60 without raiding. it won't be as powerful as
> a raiding character,
Spoke like a true raid guilder.
Sorry, but doling out consolation prizes for people who do not enjoy pressing the "1" button for 6 hours at a time when told to do so by the raid leader is not an alternate gameplay path. It is an insult.
Posted by: Michael Hartman | Apr 25, 2006 at 13:04
> Jess wrote:
>
> Byron - I ask you one simple question, in a
> Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game,
> would you rather the developers make a game
> that is Soloable alone, or geared towards
> multiplayer? I mean, we could rename WoW to
> Massively Single Player Offline Game, and just
> play Oblivion, which is very accessable at all levels solo.
Ah yes, this tired old, bogus argument. There is a lot more to the multiplayer aspect of an MMO than being forced to press "1" for 6 hours with 39 other people.
There is the economy. There is chatting. There is grouping at the times you WANT TO, rather than all the time if you want to make any real progress.
Just because some people like to "play alone, together with other people" does not mean they are not enjoying the multiplayer aspect of the game.
Before my wife and I had kids, we could group up in games like DAoC as much as we wanted. But now, with kids, we almost always duo in games because we don't want to ruin someone else's gameplay if we have to go afk or logoff because a kid woke up or something of that nature. We still group for some things, but that shouldn't mean we have to group ALL THE TIME if we want the good loot.
> I would say Blizzard is putting a lot of effort
> into non-raid instances, including making most
> dungeons no longer Raid-able.
So what? So over a year after the game is released, they are making it so non-hardcore people can putter around weakened versions of the "old dungeons" for the now-crappy items that drop there?
Gee, so fun.
Anyone else notice that the only people defending this raid-centric endgame are people who actually raid? Funny that, eh?
When my wife and I played WoW, we had were in a small guild of great people. We could put together 1 or 2 groups consistently. We did every single thing the game had to offer for 1 group or less. We did the 10 man dungeons with a single group. That took skill. That took incredible coordination.
40 man borefests are just 1 or 2 people directing traffic and everyone else pressing the 1 button when they are told. For 38-39 members of the raid, there is basically no thought going on at all for 6 hours. You just do your one job and that's it.
And don't even bother saying there are alternatives, because there really aren't. Telling people "oh, there's lots for you to do... for crappier loot than me" is not a choice.
Here is the inherent logic that no raid guilder can ever counter:
If 5 hours in a 40 man raid yields 20 epic items, that is 200 hours / 20 items, or 1 epic item per 10 man hours.
If that is an acceptable ratio (1 epic item / 12 man hours), then why can't a 5 man dungeon that takes 2 hours yield 1 epic item of EQUAL power/utility/uberness?
People who hate the huge raid style gameplay aren't asking for access to the same loot for free. They just want a means of obtaining it that does not involve a 40 man borefest.
Furthermore, single group stuff tends to be MUCH harder because each person is so much more crucial to the outcome.
Honestly, most of the raid type folks out there don't want single group dungeons to have the same quality loot because they know they don't have the balls to take on anything more challenging than pressing "1" for 6 hours.
Posted by: Michael Hartman | Apr 25, 2006 at 13:28
Michael-
I tend to agree with you that smaller groups (or even solo players, ala Cenarion Circle faction) should be able to get comparable loot, but would like to make some minor corrections:
For a raid to get to a 5-hour clear with 20 epic drops takes a few months of play. Actually, the drop rate gets higher near the end, say clearing MC in 2.5 hours for about 30 drops. But at the start of that learning curve, the drop rate is probably about 1/10th of what you mention and there are many 8-hour 40-person sessions with 2 or 3 drops. The guild slowly builds up its skill and then farms and then moves on to the next instance. Thus the average drop rate per hour per person over a raid instance's use is probably about half what you suggest. Let's say 1 epic per 20 man hours over time.
Also, playing a part in a raid can be boring, or can be fun. It's certainly not as one-dimensional as you suggest. Other key variables include the leadership style and the ability for non-leaders to help solve the myriad problems and obstacles that spring up. Group-based problem solving turns out to be a pretty good time if you have the right people. Otherwise, sure it can be a borefest. Perhaps some guild shopping is in order?
Lastly, I'd suggest that small-group vs. large group rewards should be totally equivalent except for one thing: it's really hard to organize and run a large group. There has to be some incentive to pull it off. The organizational difference between 5 and 40 is non-trivial. It's substantial and needs some incentive. And since some people want that 40-person group, it's going to happen.
Posted by: Dmitri Williams | Apr 25, 2006 at 13:42
Typo above. Change:
> If that is an acceptable ratio (1 epic item / 12 man hours)
to:
If that is an acceptable ratio (1 epic item / 10 man hours)
Posted by: Michael Hartman | Apr 25, 2006 at 14:01
> But at the start of that learning curve,
> the drop rate is probably about 1/10th
> of what you mention
That is no different than for 1 group dungeons. The first few times you wipe, you learn things, etc. The learning curve issue is the same, and thus it is a non issue when comparing 40 man raid dungeons and 5 man dungeons.
The point is, you figure out the ratio of average man hours per epic item, and then make both types of dungeons drop the same QUALITY and POTENCY of loot.
The current situation in WoW is people can spend just as much time and effort learning and running 5 man dungeons, but they get dramatically inferior loot.
> Also, playing a part in a raid can be boring, or
> can be fun. It's certainly not as one-dimensional
> as you suggest.
Yes it is indeed just that one-dimensional. I did my share of MC, Onyxia, and BWL before quitting. It is totally one dimensional. Depending on your class, you have one job, and generally only one power to use the entire raid. So it is indeed true that for 4-6+ hours, you press the 1 button.
You don't think.
You don't plan.
You don't react.
You don't adjust to the circumstances.
You wait until the pull, and then you press the 1 button.
That's it.
> Lastly, I'd suggest that small-group vs. large
> group rewards should be totally equivalent except
> for one thing: it's really hard to organize and run
> a large group. There has to be some incentive to
> pull it off.
And on the flip side, the 40 man stuff is easier since nobody has to adjust to random circumstances since you're just overpowering the encounter and have every person doing one very specific, non-changing job.
When everyone in the raid just presses one button, there is less likelihood of something going wrong than in a 5 man dungeon where people have to be flexible and adjust much more rapidly to changing situations. A single add in a 5 man dungeon can be a wipe. A single add in a raid is basically irrelevant.
Furthermore, why does there need to be an artificial incentive to make people do 40 man dungeons? If they aren't doing it for the fun, then that right there proves that designing 40 man raid content is idiotic.
If people would prefer spending the same amount of time per item in 5 man dungeons, then clearly that is the better type of content that should be getting developed.
If the only thing people like about 40 man raids is the epeen waving they get from the superior loot, than clearly it has no business existing in the first place.
Posted by: Michael Hartman | Apr 25, 2006 at 14:07
Michael,
While I respect your opinion, I find your method's and experiences to be both overtly biased and erronious. The first statement of WoW being released and focused as a raid game is wrong, Onyxia was not even released with the game, where Strat, Scholo, BRD and (U/L)BRS were. Onyxia was then added in 1.4 with Diremaul and Maraudon. Then came in 1.6 Molten Core and in 1.7 (Over a year after release) Blackwing Lair. Further, ZG and AQ20 could very well be concieved to be non-raid-like instances, as they are much more approachable from a pickup standpoint, yield MANY high quality (Better then MC often) epics and can be accomplished in just a few hours by a group of skilled players. AQ20 is in my opinion the most challenging instance in the game for its size.
Further you then speak about having BWL experience where you only push 1 button and requires no reaction. I will refrain from commenting further then saying that success must not have been a part of that experience, as all the instances in the game with the exception of MC require highly flexable and maneuverable tactics as well as a lot of movement and reaction to events around you. I will move away from this topic to lessen the chance of this turning into a rehash of the Blizzard Flaming Forums.
If you believe that 5 man content (You'll remember that there has never been any 10 man instances Strat and Scholo which you are commenting on are 5 man instances that were allowed to be raided but not intended and thus that aspect removed in the most recent patch) should yield epics (FYI They do as of patch 1.10). Fair enough, but then you should only be able to run said instance once every 7 days in the same manor, as you need control the amount of epics in the system or they loose thier value.
Not to mention you can get epics from questing in the world, from PVP, from random drops and from crafting. Raiding is but only 1 way of getting epics. I personally have crafted more then half a dozen epic items and sold them to players for gold, as well as wearing at one time or another many crafted and world dropped epics.
Lastly, I'm not abjucating that Blizzard is some game dev god, I am simply saying that you provide very little example of what they could do to Improve thier current system. Rather you say that it sux0rs. Yet they still have 6 million customers who would say differently. And 6 million MMO customers are more then anything we have ever seen in the past.
-Jess
Posted by: Jesse | Apr 25, 2006 at 14:37
I've done the big instances in raids and don't find them to be 1-button experiences at all. I react to multiple possibilities in different ways, and depending in part on how my team mates react. I probably use about 6 buttons for actions other than movement on a pull, and that's as a rogue, which is arguably a less complicated class than most.
Ironically I agree with your contention that the fights get easy and that that can be boring. Inevitably any encounter gets easier and easier to react to, whether it's pushing one button or 6 while reacting to changes. Both get automated after a while, which tells the player it's time to move on to the next thing. What PvE-set game is any different?
Also, I do disagree that learning in 5-man groups and 40-man groups is equivalent. The latter requires a lot more coordination and a lot more potential for errors. One person can sink 39 people rather than only 4 (e.g. Uh guys, I just pulled a Warder on Onyxia and we're about to wipe).
Simply put, raiding isn't for everyone. The PARC data show that a fairly small % of WoW players actually raid, and yet the rest still enjoy playing. If they didn't, they'd vote with their feet. If that's how you vote, more power to you. There are a ton of great games out there with different takes on large-group encounters.
Posted by: Dmitri Williams | Apr 25, 2006 at 15:17
> Not to mention you can get epics from
> questing in the world, from PVP, from
> random drops and from crafting. Raiding is
> but only 1 way of getting epics.
Again, those are consolation prizes. They pale in comparison to the 40 man raid stuff.
That's the point. Giving out consolation prizes for equal (or even greater) effort and skill makes no sense.
Challenging 1 and 2 group dungeons are far harder than 40 man yawnfests with 1 or 2 leaders herding cats and everyone else just doing what they are told in an enormously repetitive fashion.
People don't play MMO's to be the mindless drone fodder ala the CGI orcs in a Lord of the Rings movie. They want to be an important part of the encounter where their specific actions on a moment by moment basis.
The very fact that the ONLY WAY to get people to do those 40 man dungeons of hellacious bordeom is to give them the UBEREST PHATEST LEWT in the game should prove something. It proves that besides the reward, almost nobody would do it. That's a design flaw. If the act itself is not also fun, then you should not be forcing players to engage in that very unfun activity.
Yes, there is a very, very, very small minority who actually enjoy those spamfest, frame rate killing raids, but why is it only these people who are allowed to go after the best gear?
Shouldn't there be another path that does not require that people suffer this ONE FORM OF HORRIBLY PAINFUL gameplay?
Again, look at the ratio. If 1 epic per 10 man hours is deemed acceptable by the developers, then make 5 man, 2 hour dungeons give 1 epic item, or 10 man 2 hour dungeons give 2 epic items, etc. And yes, put similar time limits on the dungeons if need be.
Although that is another matter - how stupid is it that people can go spend 4-6 hours on a dungeon and come away with nothing.... that's utter garbage.... and you wonder why people buy stuff from the IGE's of the world?
Posted by: Michael Hartman | Apr 25, 2006 at 17:05
You fail to address a number of key factors Michael -
1> As Dmitri pointed out. Only a small portion of WoW players actually raid, and yet the numbers also show a growth pattern of client base. If wow is all about raiding why does this happen?
2> You fail to address the organizational concerns that Dmitri points out about Raiding. Successful leadership and speed are factors more then just Time:Loot ratios.
3> Lastly you fail to look at quality of itemization. If CenCircle Rep Rewards > Zul'Gurub > Molten Core Loot (Which is widely accepted as the case) then how exactly is Raiding the best way to get loot when Cen Circle can be solo'd from Neutral -> Exhaulted?
I would ask, with the utmost respect towards you and your opinion, that you become informed of the reality of the game as it is today, and it's publicly accepted situation rather then that of your biased views toward raiding. Then comment on the above factors.
Best Regards - And Thank You.
-Jess
Posted by: Jesse | Apr 25, 2006 at 18:16
So it looks as if only a minority of players get to experience high-end raids and, when they do, it is probably only once a month. Is WoW's endgame reserved to a select few? If so, are there alternative and more inclusive designs for a MMO's endgame?
Why don't they offer servers with different settings? Long term hardcore players can play in a normal server and casual players can play in server with higher experience and drop rates. I don't see why they wouldn't want to offer a wider menu than PvE and PvP servers.
Posted by: MVPY | Apr 25, 2006 at 19:53
"Why don't they offer servers with different settings? Long term hardcore players can play in a normal server and casual players can play in server with higher experience and drop rates. I don't see why they wouldn't want to offer a wider menu than PvE and PvP servers." - MVPY
Alternatives are available in the form of other MMOGs, not other WoW servers. Every WoW server has the same raid-focused gameplay because that is what World of Warcraft is.
There are MMOGs out there that have (in concept if not in fact) slightly more interesting gameplay than WoW -- Eve Online, Second Life, etc. However, these alternatives often lack some of the good features that WoW possesses (e.g. "crisp" combat), whether it's DAOC's /sticky-based combat that effectively turns the player into an auto-following NPC, or EVE Online's click-to-move, interface-heavy combat that makes the game feel like a bit of a browser-based MMOG, etc.
Better WoW-alternatives are coming. The indies can produce a game relatively cheaply that has exceptional gameplay, and they can create a a sizeable fanbase doing so. MMOG-specific engines ready for licensing are here and are going to multiply.
Posted by: Grax | Apr 26, 2006 at 03:41
I should only have quoted the first sentence from MVPY ("Why don't they offer servers with different settings?"). My post is really quite the tangent, considering he's talkin about how hardcore/casual servers can be implemented. My tangent stands, although I apologize for the abuse of your text, MVPY o.O
Posted by: Grax | Apr 26, 2006 at 03:45
Grax: "Alternatives are available in the form of other MMOGs, not other WoW servers. Every WoW server has the same raid-focused gameplay because that is what World of Warcraft is."
Considering that the cost of developing a new game will always be higher than the cost changing some parameters in a .txt file which is marginal, it is to be expected from a perfect competitive market to offer different options within the same game (like PvE and PvP server). Also it is expected from a monopoly, of course they would most likely have to charge different rates for the different servers. Imagine you can play a regular WoW server or pay a higher subscription and have access to a server with higer experience/drop rates that allows you to play the game in a time frame of months and not years. Even playing a few hours a day only. My guess is that as the market expands, casual players will become a larger share of it, either because of competition across games for them or price discrimination, we will start to see a wither menu of options within games.
Posted by: | Apr 26, 2006 at 09:52
Last post was mine :D
Posted by: MVPY | Apr 26, 2006 at 09:53
Mark, the 45-minute Dead Strat Baron run is actually interestingly illustrative of something that might not be quite as casual-accessible as Blizzard assumed. You don't make that run casually, and doing it successfully is very expensive (stocking the potions and such to help you along) -- unless, of course, your gear is already at the point where the gear upgrade you're trying to get isn't actually a big deal for you. It in no way can compare to the old ability to clear the instance in an hour with a ten-man group (some of whom can be under-60 or have poor gear).
Lowering instance caps forces lengthening one's play sessions, and I for one find this far more frustrating than anything else. My MC raiding group tends to spend around four hours in MC in an evening -- no longer than it would take me to run many 5 or 10-man instances with a pick-up group. The real difference is the organization required to do large-scale raids; if you're a casual player and you can hook up with the right organization, it's just as easy for you to do MC as it is for you to go run other instances. (In fact, it may even be easier, since your individual skill may be to some extent subsumed by the raid's overall success. Lum has a recent amusing post about this.)
(Mark and I may actually agree, so I'm just adding commentary, really.)
Posted by: Lydia Leong (Amberyl) | Apr 27, 2006 at 04:18
It is possible that Blizzard's end-game was never intended to be particularly casual-friendly. The expansion is late, and it's quite possible that they assumed that by the time the casuals (specifically, people without much time to play) were at 60, there'd be an expansion full of new solo and small-group content that would keep those folks happy.
It is also certainly true that mudflation is in massive effect at the moment. Part of what slows people down is learning the content. Now, any number of websites will tell you where to go, what to do, what strategies are likely to be successful, and so forth. Plus, any new players are subject to tons of helpful advice from more experienced players. Moreover, the guilds that have been doing high-end raids for months have gotten them down to a science. (The less experienced a guild is with an instance, the more interesting it is, since unexpected stuff happens and things go wrong, leaving everyone to react as best as they can.)
Blizzard's idea of having Rest XP is actually quite effective. Characters who are played only when rested (which will be true for most truly casual players) gain XP at nearly double the rate (factoring in the fact they do fewer quests and therefore get less quest XP). I don't think time-limited realms would serve this purpose as well as the rest mechanic does. Among other things, time-limited realms results in social fragmentation, as groups of friends splinter across realms (already a frustrating problem, given the current number of realms).
The real transformative effect at 60, I think, is the shift from guaranteed rewards to pull-the-slot-machine-handle rewards. Pre-60, you put in the time, you gain XP, you get cash, you get drops if you're lucky or use your cash to buy them off the auction house if you're not. At 60, though, other than faction grinding, you're pretty much stuck putting in the time and hoping you'll see a drop that you can use and that you win. The end game is itemization -- a classic design decision.
What WoW lacks is a useful elder game -- not an end-game per se, but stuff to do once one has "outgrown" the core game. There's no real way for most people to metamorphosize into other roles. The exception may be PvP, which offers rewards for time spent, as well as opportunities to evolve into leadership roles that are separate from guild leadership. Crafting and auction activities may also provide a path, but they're supplemental activities throughout the whole game, and not really an elder role.
Posted by: Lydia Leong (Amberyl) | Apr 27, 2006 at 04:38
How many hours per week do developers expect players to play? I assume different games have different expectations. How do they compare?
I know many WoW players spend 10+ hours per week playing. A few members of my guild are probably over 30+ hours per week. Daedalus pegs MMORPG players at 21 hours per week on average. (http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/000891.php)
That looks like OCD to me. ;)
WoW may be "casual player friendly", but I don't think this means all players can participate in all content. That doesn't even seem like a design goal for Blizzard. Why do people expect the same epic drop rates for different play styles? Is that the definition of fun?!
Two things would make WoW a lot more fun for me. I would like to play NPCs and I would like to roll up different level characters (instead of always starting with level 1). Obviously loot rewards would be dramatically different (non-existant perhaps) for these activities, but "fun" for me has nothing to do with loot rewards. Is this a common attitude for casual players? (It'd be an interesting survey question: What is fun?)
Posted by: Ken Fox | Apr 27, 2006 at 08:28
Ken Fox: "I know many WoW players spend 10+ hours per week playing. A few members of my guild are probably over 30+ hours per week. Daedalus pegs MMORPG players at 21 hours per week on average. (http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/000891.php)
That looks like OCD to me. ;)"
False. Most Americans watch roughly 26 hours of TV a week, close to the online gamer average number of hours spent playing online games. It's a zero sum game: 26 hours, TV or gaming, mix and match.
OCD? No. People generally have a fixed amount of free time. Some spend it passively enjoying media. Some spend it actively enjoying media.
Posted by: hikaru | Apr 27, 2006 at 13:40
I was joking about the OCD (although I think 26 hours spent watching TV is unhealthy, so it seems weird to defend games by comparing them to TV), but your comparison to TV supports my point. Americans are NOT casual TV watchers. They are hardcore experts -- the best of the best of the couch potatoes.
20 hours a week is not casual. Nearly all of a person's free time would be spent on a single activity. I do not think a random drop reward system is fun for casual players.
Posted by: Ken Fox | Apr 28, 2006 at 08:18
Allow me to first say that I am a dedicated raider. Anywhere from 3-6 nights a week generally. You could call me hardcore, I suppose. But why do we have to adhere to thse definitions so closely? Why can't casual players participate in end game content? My guild has plenty of players who may or may not raid. Perhaps they make one raid instance a week or month. While they do not receive as many rewards as I do...they have equal chance when they do play.
Endgame content is accessible to the casual player. It only requires that they form some sort of group. How did this suddenly become a bad thing?! If I wanted to play by myself, there are a multitude of options available to me. In an MMOG, I have always actively sought out groups from the earliest levels. I enjoy familiar faces and getting invites from people I've grouped with before. Frequently, my groups have been broken up when someone has to go do something in real life. So be it. No hard feelings. I go find another group and begin anew.
You do not have to commit to being in a guild to have a crack at some great instances. But you do have to develop relationships on your server. How can that not be good?
If you believe raiding to be accomplished by cookie cutter spec'd characters smashing one button over and over again..then you've obviously never been on a raid. Knowing how to manage your characters abilities within the framework of the raid is a crucial skill that only comes with time. Ask the rogue who pulls agro off the main tank because he didn't vanish at the right time or the healer who didn't time his heals properly and wiped the raid. They'll have a different take on the subject.
Posted by: Michael | May 01, 2006 at 11:59
I enjoyed wow for his freedom. Freedom to explore an open and amazing world. Freedom to ignore a duel or to blow a kiss to another player. Fridom to play minutes or hours. And suddenly i got level 60 and everything changed:
Now I HAVE to join parties. I HAVE to run instances. I HAVE to belong to a guild. I HAVE to play for hours…. If not you are out of the game. If not you feel like a “second level” player….. excluded…..
No more chalenging solo quests, no more gear improvements (epics soloing?), no more….. Blizzard
Soloing, Parties, Guild, Raids are ok. Choose what you want. Freedom to choose. But what I hate is the world MUST, is the wolrd HAVE TO…. We live in a global world but each one is important, each one is an unique person, you shouldn’t have to belong to a club, party or organization to keep enjoying your life….. as you have to do in wow.
Pity Blizzard, pity…..
Posted by: Xavier | May 23, 2006 at 07:11
"Endgame content is accessible to the casual player."
Michael, to label people as black hats and white hats (casual or hardcore) is to overshoot the mark and miss the real issue. I have experienced all of BWL, MC, ZG, and AQ-20. My main character is nearly finished with tier two gear. My two level 60 alts have lots of tier one gear. You can label me whatever definition you may think this is but I don't see how it’s relevant.
The problem with WoW as I see it is that 0-59 and 60 are two completely different games. From 0-59 this game is very much a massive online non-linear role-playing and questing game. You can group or not group. You can run dungeons and instances with friends or explore alone. Virtually everything you do progresses your character and therefore you never feel like you’re wasting time. You can log on for ten minutes and finish part of a quest and log on later to finish it, or you can spend ten consecutive hours playing. From 0-59 you have choices. Lots of choices. There are a million different things you can do and you can do it whenever and however you feel like doing it. The world is alive and random world PvP is exciting. From 0-59 this game is the most unique MMO ever created. Anyone can enjoy it. Casual players, hardcore players and everything in between have something to sink their teeth into.
At 60 everything changes. Instead of having virtually everything you do progress your character virtually nothing you do progresses your character. Almost everything you do is a waste of time. At this point you must group. You must run a dungeon. You cannot choose where to go. You have only a few choices of end-game dungeons to pick from to go to and you know that you’re going to run them over and over and over to get anything. The world is dead at this point because almost nothing you do in it is worth your time and you’re unlikely to encounter anyone in random world PvP for the self-same reason. You cannot log in for ten minutes and get anything done. You must commit chunk blocks of time. You must join a large raiding organization (notice I didn’t say guild). In some form or another you must organize into a consistent, repetitive, 40-man raid group. If you don’t do this your progress is done. The game is over.
Battleground PvP is not a true alternative to this because it is very literally “graded on a curve” for who has the most kills. Inevitably someone is going to either higher-out their account to farmers, or share a single account among many friends. The only people who reach the highest ranks are those who somehow managed to be online for 24 consecutive hours a day seven days a week for three months straight. If you can’t put in the same kind of time one way or another you can’t compete. Your progress is done. The game is over.
The truth of the matter is simply this: End-game content in WoW is restrictive, repetitive and has frustratingly few choices. The game that you used to make you feel like you had control of your destiny now dictates it. You can’t choose to do what you want to do. You MUST do it one specific way and you WILL like it, and if you don’t like it too bad because there is no other option.
End-game WoW isn’t bigger and better. It’s smaller and more restrictive. It doesn’t have more options, it has fewer. It doesn’t empower players, it encumbers them. It isn’t a better game. It’s a much worse one.
I’m not saying 40-man raid content is a bad thing. I merely saying it shouldn’t be the only option.
Posted by: Matt | May 25, 2006 at 05:21
As much as I hate to say WoW should consider "borrowing" anything new from Everquest, I think Blizzard should look seriously at EQ's alternative advancement model for level 60 characters. Let characters continue to gain alternative XP when they hit the level cap and every "level" they can choose a single enhancement, whether it be higher innate resists, a bonus to a statistic (STR, INT, AGI), a run-speed boost, a talent point (for example, they could allow people to choose up to 10 additional talent points, allowing dual spec'd characters), etc., etc.
That the fourteen URBS runs you do in hope that you might get some loot aren't a total waste when you don't. It would probably also help guilds with the problem of "who is playing what alt for the raid tonight" problem, because there would be less return on having multiple 60s as characters.
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