World Of Warcraft's Raids Get More Flexible

[viranimus]

Sort of amusing. The MMO that redefined instant gratification, The MMO that always stood as "MMO Kindergarten" that acted to ease newcomers into MMO existence, found that their content designed to keep players playing at the endgame, to grant some measure of challenge to players so to hinder flash burning through content... was deemed too unforgiving, in need of greater accessibility and thus the bar has been lowered to a low beyond imagining.

Like WOW or not, this is NOT a good idea for any MMO. If you need proof, simply look at The Old Republic and how well being "too" easy benefitted that game as players ran through the content in a month or less and then ran out the door like rats evacuating a sinking ship. In TORs case it was a tragedy to have such a massive production befall such a fate out the gate. For WoW at least it is little more than another nail in the coffin that is the natural progressive rise and fall of major MMOs.

 

[shrekfan246]

It's the kind of thing 10man normals in Wrath encouraged and Raids had never been more popular and run by all.

And the funny part is that all of the 'purists' from Vanilla or Burning Crusade raged about how "dumbed down" everything was...

Yeah, I had a group of friends who were part of a guild that raided on Friday nights. Friday nights being the time a lot of people, y'know, hang out? Have parties? Their constant refusal to go to events because of fucking raids formed my intense loathing of WoW.

Your friends had a stupid guild then. All of my raid nights are Monday, Wednesday, Thursday. Weekends are totally out of the question. You can play a bit during the day if you're bored obviously and ACTUALLY have nothing to do, but no schedules.

Hang on, what's wrong with raiding on weekends? You people do know that raiding is still another way of socializing, right? Especially if it's a full group of people who know each other. It's no different than going down to the pub, or out to the cinema.

Hell, I don't even like parties. I can't speak for anyone else, obviously, but I'd rather play a video game than go to a party. Don't blame the game for it, it's just how I am because I think that getting stupid at a party is a waste of time. Maybe try taking an interest in their hobbies instead of expecting them to conform to yours.

 

[Charli]

It's the kind of thing 10man normals in Wrath encouraged and Raids had never been more popular and run by all.

And the funny part is that all of the 'purists' from Vanilla or Burning Crusade raged about how "dumbed down" everything was...

Yeah, I had a group of friends who were part of a guild that raided on Friday nights. Friday nights being the time a lot of people, y'know, hang out? Have parties? Their constant refusal to go to events because of fucking raids formed my intense loathing of WoW.

Your friends had a stupid guild then. All of my raid nights are Monday, Wednesday, Thursday. Weekends are totally out of the question. You can play a bit during the day if you're bored obviously and ACTUALLY have nothing to do, but no schedules.

Hang on, what's wrong with raiding on weekends? You people do know that raiding is still another way of socializing, right? Especially if it's a full group of people who know each other. It's no different than going down to the pub, or out to the cinema.

Hell, I don't even like parties. I can't speak for anyone else, obviously, but I'd rather play a video game than go to a party. Don't blame the game for it, it's just how I am because I think that getting stupid at a party is a waste of time. Maybe try taking an interest in their hobbies instead of expecting them to conform to yours.

Oh don't get me wrong I am one of those weekenders myself (currently LFRing my druid to prepare for flex alt raiding), however being accommodating to people who ARE weekend party/in person socialites, I believe is healthy for allowing many different types of people the ability to thrive in a guild. And during hard progression we will raid Sundays as well, but as with anything we can pre-plan those for said weekend-party folk weeks in advance and it doesn't mess up their fun too badly.

And yes you are correct, many of us enjoy just chatting to our fellow gamers over vent/mumble/TS, and get just as much out of it as one would a night out on the town. However many do not and will never understand or accept that as a reasonable alternative.

 

[Colt47]

The biggest problem with raiding is they still have a difference in loot quality between the normal and the flexible modes. There shouldn't be three to four tiers of raid loot and it makes me scratch my head why they aren't just using the upgrade system and have pre-upgraded versions drop in the higher difficulties. If they want the game to feel accessible, everyone should be able to eventually reach the highest level of raid loot whether they do heroic raiding or not.

4 tiers? Hah, there's like... eleven. I'll admit it's been a few years and I never raided a whole lot so I may have added more tiers than there are in raid finder but if memory serves there'll now be:

Dungeon
Dungeon Heroic
10-Man Raid Finder
10-Man Heroic Raid Finder
25-Man Raid Finder
25-Man Heroic Raid Finder
Flexible Raid
10-Man Normal
10-Man Normal Heroic
25-Man Normal
25-Man Normal Heroic

I put dungeons in there as it is technically part of endgame, but even without those that's still 9 tiers...

Wrong concept. I'm talking about concurrent item level of end game raid gear. The same tier now is going to have Raid Finder level, Flexi-finder level, Normal Level, and heroic level. Why they need this many I don't know. My complaint is that they got item upgrades and are ignoring the possibility of just scrapping this entire forced raid item level. Just have a higher difficulty award pre-upgraded gear. That way even if someone can only find the time to do raid finder they can still have a hope of getting to the heroic level gear set.

 

[MrMixelPixel]

I doubt that Blizzard is going to do that any time soon if at all what with all the moolah it still rakes in from just subs and not even taking into account the money they make on their own online store's sales, paid character services and their other games.

Oh I know. They'll likely never have a good reason to. Even if the keep dropping subscribers like flies. Even they drop a million subscribers every year for the next three years, they'll still likely be making more than enough money to justify their subscription fee.

I'm just a man with a dream is all.

 

[kortin]

Well, hopefully that means there will be fewer people I have to laugh at when they say they cant do something because their guild has a raid and needs them.

"Sorry man I cant make the wedding, it falls on my guilds raid night." -A real life quote from a pathetic excuse for a human being.

Having friends that rely on you, how dare they. God, I'm glad some people have real reasons for not being able to make it, like lying, playing football, tennis, you know, usual normal person stuff.

Well, hopefully that means there will be fewer people I have to laugh at when they say they cant do something because their guild has a raid and needs them.

"Sorry man I cant make the wedding, it falls on my guilds raid night." -A real life quote from a pathetic excuse for a human being.

Its strange how much WoW gets defended. Just about every ex player I know hates the game and still wants to go back to it, just a little bit. Hell, the only player I know who STILL plays it... Is not level capped because he just uses the game as a glorified chat room.

I hate WoW. The amount of time and money that game has stolen from me is phenomenal. If I had spent that time playing the Piano... Jeesus.

The things I skipped. Nothing like a wedding. But when I was 18, split between my ex-fiance and World of Warcraft, I had almost no time for actual life.

OT: Dunno what I think about the above. I was a raider back in the day, its not that hard to find a sensible raiding guild. I did like the LFG system when it was first released but imo, WoW died with Cataclysm.

I like how you blame the game for your inability to manage your time.

 

[Bernzz]

Hang on, what's wrong with raiding on weekends? You people do know that raiding is still another way of socializing, right? Especially if it's a full group of people who know each other. It's no different than going down to the pub, or out to the cinema.

Hell, I don't even like parties. I can't speak for anyone else, obviously, but I'd rather play a video game than go to a party. Don't blame the game for it, it's just how I am because I think that getting stupid at a party is a waste of time. Maybe try taking an interest in their hobbies instead of expecting them to conform to yours.

This was like, every weekend. Like, literally every weekend for a huge gap of time. And they loved parties. They get more stupid at them than I do, so it's not like they hate them. Also, WoW never remotely interested me. When it happens every weekend, you tend to get a little sick of it.

 

[shrekfan246]

Hang on, what's wrong with raiding on weekends? You people do know that raiding is still another way of socializing, right? Especially if it's a full group of people who know each other. It's no different than going down to the pub, or out to the cinema.

Hell, I don't even like parties. I can't speak for anyone else, obviously, but I'd rather play a video game than go to a party. Don't blame the game for it, it's just how I am because I think that getting stupid at a party is a waste of time. Maybe try taking an interest in their hobbies instead of expecting them to conform to yours.

This was like, every weekend. Like, literally every weekend for a huge gap of time. And they loved parties. They get more stupid at them than I do, so it's not like they hate them. Also, WoW never remotely interested me. When it happens every weekend, you tend to get a little sick of it.

That'd be because, you know, raids reset every week.

Loath as I am to make comparisons between a game and anything actually serious, let's take a hypothetical here: You're single, and you've got a friend who isn't single. Every Friday night, you ask this friend to go hang out and do stuff, and every Friday night he turns you down because it's date night. Who are you angry at? The girlfriend, for keeping him busy on "party night"; the friend, for having committed himself to doing something aside from going out on "party night"; or just nothing and everything in general because things aren't going your way?

World of Warcraft may just be a game, but raiding is generally a pretty significant commitment. One night a week is almost the bare minimum of what a guild could do to actually keep up with the stream of content being released, unless they're all just really excellent players. You may not be interested in it, you may not find it a proper source of socialization, you may think anybody who plays the game on a regular basis is an idiot, but everyone doesn't feel the same way as you do. In fact, crazy as it may sound, some people might actually like raiding every week! I know, it's insane. Who the hell would want to get together with 9+ other people every week to hang out and joke around while beating up neat bosses? God, those people should just stop playing that game entirely.

 

[Colt47]

Hang on, what's wrong with raiding on weekends? You people do know that raiding is still another way of socializing, right? Especially if it's a full group of people who know each other. It's no different than going down to the pub, or out to the cinema.

Hell, I don't even like parties. I can't speak for anyone else, obviously, but I'd rather play a video game than go to a party. Don't blame the game for it, it's just how I am because I think that getting stupid at a party is a waste of time. Maybe try taking an interest in their hobbies instead of expecting them to conform to yours.

This was like, every weekend. Like, literally every weekend for a huge gap of time. And they loved parties. They get more stupid at them than I do, so it's not like they hate them. Also, WoW never remotely interested me. When it happens every weekend, you tend to get a little sick of it.

That'd be because, you know, raids reset every week.

Loath as I am to make comparisons between a game and anything actually serious, let's take a hypothetical here: You're single, and you've got a friend who isn't single. Every Friday night, you ask this friend to go hang out and do stuff, and every Friday night he turns you down because it's date night. Who are you angry at? The girlfriend, for keeping him busy on "party night"; the friend, for having committed himself to doing something aside from going out on "party night"; or just nothing and everything in general because things aren't going your way?

World of Warcraft may just be a game, but raiding is generally a pretty significant commitment. One night a week is almost the bare minimum of what a guild could do to actually keep up with the stream of content being released, unless they're all just really excellent players. You may not be interested in it, you may not find it a proper source of socialization, you may think anybody who plays the game on a regular basis is an idiot, but everyone doesn't feel the same way as you do. In fact, crazy as it may sound, some people might actually like raiding every week! I know, it's insane. Who the hell would want to get together with 9+ other people every week to hang out and joke around while beating up neat bosses? God, those people should just stop playing that game entirely.

From experience, it rarely is a bunch of people getting together to joke around as much as listening to one guy give instructions for a boss and then watch as the group dies repeatedly to said boss, invoking the ire of the instructional leader until finally there is a break through and it dies. The thrill of raiding comes from the sense of accomplishment more than anything else.

 

[shrekfan246]

From experience, it rarely is a bunch of people getting together to joke around as much as listening to one guy give instructions for a boss and then watch as the group dies repeatedly to said boss, invoking the ire of the instructional leader until finally there is a break through and it dies. The thrill of raiding comes from the sense of accomplishment more than anything else.

Then you haven't been grouping with fun enough guilds. Unless you're talking solely about "progression" raiding, which admittedly is often far more serious. Still, a friendly enough guild won't just be sullen and quiet during a raid, at least not in my experiences. I've never been in a guild that didn't joke around between boss fights, and when I was in more relaxed guilds they'd often go at whatever pace they wanted, saying hell to the progression curve and just having fun instead of burning out on smashing against a brick wall for three hours a night.

I still love to run old raids just for the fun of it. It's unfortunate that it seems less and less people are interested in going back to content of past expansions as time goes on, because there are still a fair few bosses from back in Burning Crusade and on whose mechanics mean that you can't solo them, even though gear far outstrips the actual difficulty of them now.

 

[LetalisK]

Are they still losing people to GW2 in significant enough numbers that WoW feels it has to appeal to that crowd now? That's....a little surprising.

I think you answered your own question.

This isn't an attempt to turn WoW into TOR, it's actually a lot closer to GW2's system of scalable content. Which is a GOOD model.

If it's a good model, use it. Doesn't matter if they're continuing to lose players or those players are coming back.

side note: fucking The Sub ads, get the FUCK OUT OF MY TEXT BOX! >.<

 

[Lunar Templar]

LOTRO has been doing this for ages.

Hasn't every MMO been doing this since launch? The whole thing smacks less of 'great new feature in WoW' and more 'WoW is finally doing something every one else has been doing for years now.'

 

[ClassicJokester]

From experience, it rarely is a bunch of people getting together to joke around as much as listening to one guy give instructions for a boss and then watch as the group dies repeatedly to said boss, invoking the ire of the instructional leader until finally there is a break through and it dies. The thrill of raiding comes from the sense of accomplishment more than anything else.

Then you haven't been grouping with fun enough guilds. Unless you're talking solely about "progression" raiding, which admittedly is often far more serious. Still, a friendly enough guild won't just be sullen and quiet during a raid, at least not in my experiences. I've never been in a guild that didn't joke around between boss fights, and when I was in more relaxed guilds they'd often go at whatever pace they wanted, saying hell to the progression curve and just having fun instead of burning out on smashing against a brick wall for three hours a night.

I still love to run old raids just for the fun of it. It's unfortunate that it seems less and less people are interested in going back to content of past expansions as time goes on, because there are still a fair few bosses from back in Burning Crusade and on whose mechanics mean that you can't solo them, even though gear far outstrips the actual difficulty of them now.

I currently raid with a decently progressed guild, and honestly our raid nights could be seen as three hour bullshit sessions. Playing on an RP server does wonders for finding interesting, fun people to raid with, even though the pool of raiders is far smaller than on any PvE/PvP server. Three different guilds I've raided consistently with (due to poor leadership causing each to collapse outside the raid groups), and I've yet to experience the dreary, monotonous, "listening to one guy give instructions for a boss and then watch as the group dies repeatedly to said boss" style of raiding. It's always been a quick, concise "Here's the mechanics, and here's how I think we should deal with them," at the start, with group suggestions and ideas afterwards. Whenever we could fit suggestions in between all the jokes, that is.

It's certainly not for everyone, but you'll be hard-pressed to deny the appeal of the many different aspects of raiding to people that do find it interesting. (yes, not everyone is being tricked by the game into thinking they're enjoying themselves).

 

[Scarim Coral]

Why do I get a feeling that this will rage some hardcore Wow fanboy since it pretty much made the raid casual. In saying so they had been losing alot of players so they can't exactly complain about it (I can assume it can take ages to form up a raid).

 

[MetalMagpie]

Well, hopefully that means there will be fewer people I have to laugh at when they say they cant do something because their guild has a raid and needs them.

"Sorry man I cant make the wedding, it falls on my guilds raid night." -A real life quote from a pathetic excuse for a human being.

My granddad did not attend his son's/my dad's wedding because he was busy scuba-diving.
I don't even.

Let's be fair: Weddings are boring and scuba-diving is awesome.

 

[eberhart]

LOTRO has been doing this for ages.

Hasn't every MMO been doing this since launch?

Well, LOTRO hasn't

There's only a fraction of group instances that, unlike WoW feature described above, do not scale to anything except 2/3/6/12 version. Take 7 people to 12-man and face the same number of mobs and the same mechanics 12 people would. You will also get the same personal rewards, no bonus for undermanning either - aside from, gradually phased out by now, /roll type of spoils you divide among smaller group of people. They were also introduced loooooooong after launch.

So, if you are correct with your "every", then it's "every MMO except LOTRO, now that WoW gets there".

 

[Colt47]

From experience, it rarely is a bunch of people getting together to joke around as much as listening to one guy give instructions for a boss and then watch as the group dies repeatedly to said boss, invoking the ire of the instructional leader until finally there is a break through and it dies. The thrill of raiding comes from the sense of accomplishment more than anything else.

Then you haven't been grouping with fun enough guilds. Unless you're talking solely about "progression" raiding, which admittedly is often far more serious. Still, a friendly enough guild won't just be sullen and quiet during a raid, at least not in my experiences. I've never been in a guild that didn't joke around between boss fights, and when I was in more relaxed guilds they'd often go at whatever pace they wanted, saying hell to the progression curve and just having fun instead of burning out on smashing against a brick wall for three hours a night.

I still love to run old raids just for the fun of it. It's unfortunate that it seems less and less people are interested in going back to content of past expansions as time goes on, because there are still a fair few bosses from back in Burning Crusade and on whose mechanics mean that you can't solo them, even though gear far outstrips the actual difficulty of them now.

I currently raid with a decently progressed guild, and honestly our raid nights could be seen as three hour bullshit sessions. Playing on an RP server does wonders for finding interesting, fun people to raid with, even though the pool of raiders is far smaller than on any PvE/PvP server. Three different guilds I've raided consistently with (due to poor leadership causing each to collapse outside the raid groups), and I've yet to experience the dreary, monotonous, "listening to one guy give instructions for a boss and then watch as the group dies repeatedly to said boss" style of raiding. It's always been a quick, concise "Here's the mechanics, and here's how I think we should deal with them," at the start, with group suggestions and ideas afterwards. Whenever we could fit suggestions in between all the jokes, that is.

It's certainly not for everyone, but you'll be hard-pressed to deny the appeal of the many different aspects of raiding to people that do find it interesting. (yes, not everyone is being tricked by the game into thinking they're enjoying themselves).

Well it's all fun when the bosses are dieing, just not when there is a new boss that the guild hasn't downed yet and everyone is learning. That's where the gnashing of teeth usually comes in. Honestly, the environment in progression guilds has steadily been degrading ever since they introduced Raid Finder, since a lot of people who were doing normals to begin with really wanted to see the content more than pick up loot or claim a progression mantle. Most of those folks were fairly light hearted and made the runs enjoyable.

 

[bLAZay00]

So glad I gave up WoW last year. I guess this is what former alcoholics feel like when they see folks knee deep in the struggle.

 

[Sansha]

This is a cool idea. I wonder if it'll apply to old world content.

I'd actually like to see old world content like Wrath and BC scale to player level too, with gear being scaled equal to its difficulty, but no better than current content raiding.

 

[Bernzz]

That'd be because, you know, raids reset every week.

Loath as I am to make comparisons between a game and anything actually serious, let's take a hypothetical here: You're single, and you've got a friend who isn't single. Every Friday night, you ask this friend to go hang out and do stuff, and every Friday night he turns you down because it's date night. Who are you angry at? The girlfriend, for keeping him busy on "party night"; the friend, for having committed himself to doing something aside from going out on "party night"; or just nothing and everything in general because things aren't going your way?

World of Warcraft may just be a game, but raiding is generally a pretty significant commitment. One night a week is almost the bare minimum of what a guild could do to actually keep up with the stream of content being released, unless they're all just really excellent players. You may not be interested in it, you may not find it a proper source of socialization, you may think anybody who plays the game on a regular basis is an idiot, but everyone doesn't feel the same way as you do. In fact, crazy as it may sound, some people might actually like raiding every week! I know, it's insane. Who the hell would want to get together with 9+ other people every week to hang out and joke around while beating up neat bosses? God, those people should just stop playing that game entirely.

Hahahaha okay, because I clearly stated they should never play WoW at all. See, I get the point you're getting at, but then you go and ruin it by saying ridiculous things like that.

What I wanted was a balance. Which is also what you'd expect if a guy has a girlfriend. She shouldn't stop him seeing his friends literally every weekend, that's just stupid and clingy. But surely, surely, someone can forgo raiding every so often to do other things? According to you, apparently not.