MMOs - A Raid Bench.

[Sunder]

I'm with ya on that. I hope every time they release a 25-man zone, there's a 10-man zone somewhere released with it. That would make me ecstatic. There really needs to be multiple progression paths in PvE, even if the paths "end" at different gear tiers at a given period of time.

[Wilfan]

Originally Posted by The Ancient

This is a statement I can not get behind. How the fuck did they fail to advertise that their MMO would feature end-game raiding? Did they need a disclaimer during all media that said: *Caution WoW is not a single-player game.*

Single-player or raiding is a false dichotomy.

[Digo]

Again, I'm not suggesting raiding is bad. FFS, I led a hardcore raiding guild for 2+ years. I'm suggesting that raiding can be made less of a logistical pain in the ass while broadening its accessibility without alienating hardcore players. A great example of this is the ZA bear run. A 10-man zone with a very difficult element that appeals to and rewards hardcore players.

[The Ancient]

Yeah the problem is right now you can't maintain a 10-man guild for example because you know that Blizzard isn't gonna toss you many bones.

Maybe WotLK...Maybe.

[James]

Originally Posted by Digo

A great example of this is the ZA bear run. A 10-man zone with a very difficult element that appeals to and rewards hardcore players.

Exactly, and that's just one of many routes you can take to do stuff like that. Another good route to take would be two seperate paths to a boss, with one being either harder or on some sort of timer, but much more rewarding than the admittedly easier path.

Kill-order bosses ala Bug Trio and Twins in Sunwell have also always impressed me, and they've handled it fairly damn well in regards to rewards in every case so far. Sure, stuff like that doesn't work for every boss, but it's cool that you can voluntarily do the Hard Mode at will on stuff like that, and really shows the design capability of the team to pull something like that off.

[The Ancient]

Meh, I think bug trio was a failed experiment. The loot for the more difficult kill orders wasn't much(any) better and even worse different classes favored different kill orders making for arguments when it came time to attempt the bugs. Maybe it was different for your guild, but by the time we hit C'thun we had already stopped doing anything but the easiest route.

[Wodin]

The bug trio was an issue because the tables for the hard way shared half the items with the tables for the easy way, and that the tables for the middle way actually had the most desirable items. So everyone killed them the middle way hoping for the healer loot and that was that.

Sacrolash/Alythess, on the other hand, works great, especially because there's a natural progression of learning that goes into it and doing it the hard way ends up being easier *once you've learned the mechanics of the fight and everyone is really good at executing them*

[The Ancient]

Originally Posted by Wodin

So everyone killed them the middle way hoping for the healer loot and that was that.

Angelista's Charm dropped off the easy route.

[Zehn - Vhex]

Point being that it's a good idea but was done quite poorly early on.

It's how I wish they had handled legendaries honestly. Rather then thunderfuries being completely up to the RNG, I would rather have seen it implemented in such a way that the only way to get it would have been to kill Garr and Gedon within ~10 seconds of eachother or something. Atiesh would have required clearing Naxx in under 5 hours or so.

Change Illidan P2 such that the glaives are targetable and have no AC, less hp while the flames have a 300 point damage shield or something and that by killing the flames instead of the glaives means one will drop (kill the left one first which has 20% less hp gets you the off hand or something).

[Miele]

Originally Posted by Zehn - Vhex

Point being that it's a good idea but was done quite poorly early on.

It's how I wish they had handled legendaries honestly. Rather then thunderfuries being completely up to the RNG, I would rather have seen it implemented in such a way that the only way to get it would have been to kill Garr and Gedon within ~10 seconds of eachother or something. Atiesh would have required clearing Naxx in under 5 hours or so.

Change Illidan P2 such that the glaives are targetable and have no AC, less hp while the flames have a 300 point damage shield or something and that by killing the flames instead of the glaives means one will drop (kill the left one first which has 20% less hp gets you the off hand or something).

You know why it isn't done? Yeah, I'm sure you do as everyone else here does.
If you could gear up all your guild in 5 runs, the retention would be a lot lower, people would unsub earlier and check out every patch what's new for them. It's the same damn carrot in front of the players, since the days of trakanon BPs to the days of thunderfuries and now warglaives, nothing new under the sun.

The majority of the population or how you call them "casuals" cannot raid because: class needs for specific encounters, number of players online often enough to form a solid raid force that can gear up all together and eventually enough skills and knowledge (that many casuals do not care about at all to develop) to beat encounters in a reasonable amount of tries.

I'm casual, I like theorycrafting and finding out strategies as much as the nerdest EJ poster, I just don't have the time to commit to raiding seriously because I lack the time to find 24 other players with my exact schedule, let alone that modicum of skill necessary to get past hard encounters (which I'm not even sure I possess, since I'll never be able to try).

Every time someone mentions the alternatives: grind honor, grind badges, etc.
Good, awesome, but first they are grinds (requiring a lot of time, for a true casual players a S1 set can take months of AV honor farming) and they are not enthralling enough to retain players: many with enough time will jump ships at the first chance, those without time get discouraged or plain bored.

While you bath in SW loot, I struggle at finding enough people for 10 men that will not go away after killing Moroes, that will be dedicated enough to get some badges, honor weapons or whatever could help them a lot in a short amount of time. For me and those like me, everything past T4 is wasted content. I don't and will never complain about it, but really, if I could have some carrots too, I'd be extremely happy (can I go from Kara to Zul'Aman or is it too hard? Time will tell I guess), but Blizzard has proven that the majority of the developing time is spent creating hard 25 men content and 10men is pretty much an afterthought.

Sure there are casuals that can play 30 hours per week, for them honor gear or 300-400 badges are not that big of a deal, but a lot of other players with a dozen hours per week at disposal just have to suck it up. Is this what Blizzard really wants? Apparently yes, no amount of nerfs will make BT available to these people.

I'm one of those suckers that wants to do ZG, MC, BWL and Onyxia with a few players, at least I'll see those places, I don't give a blind fuck about loot, but finding like-minded people is a struggle.

Sorry for the long rant.

[The Ancient]

Originally Posted by Miele

You know why it isn't done? Yeah, I'm sure you do as everyone else here does.
If you could gear up all your guild in 5 runs, the retention would be a lot lower, people would unsub earlier and check out every patch what's new for them. It's the same damn carrot in front of the players, since the days of trakanon BPs to the days of thunderfuries and now warglaives, nothing new under the sun.

No man, the idea is you make difficulty requirement to obtain a legendary, well...legendary. You make very tough requirements so that doing it in "5 runs" really isn't a possibility. Even the best guilds didn't get Bear Mounts their first 5 ZA clears.

And now your legendaries are an even better carrot. People will work harder at it because not only is your goal to beat the boss, you want to beat him and accomplish this goal too. You've extended the life of your instances because now people aren't going to get sick of farming to pay tribute to an RNG, they are going to get their gear thanks to their own blood and sweat and any psychologist will tell you that people are more likely to attempt a difficult task if they think their success hinges on their performance over luck.

[Angerz]

Atiesh was the pinnacle of legendary dispersal.

The RNG was involved, but wasnt crippling.
It involved farming the top instance.
It invloved clearing the final boss of the top instance, and the previous instance.

That's how you should aquire a legendary.

[The Ancient]

I still favor the Bear Mount timer method or the more difficult boss kill method.

[Fayvren]

The thing that blows my mind about this thread is that somehow large-group organization is supposed to evolve without anyone actually doing the organizing. If you look at every other organized recreational activity in the world, from gun clubs to beer league softball to poker nights with coworkers, there's someone doing the grunt work of making sure there's a place to go and beer when you get there and that everyone can park. I really don't understand how the fuck that restriction is just supposed to magically disappear when it comes to a computer game.

I dont think theres a problem with requiring someone to organize things. That is part of the 'fun' of be social game. But theres a difference between the guy calling people up for a weekly poker game or pick up basketball game with 10 of your friends where u can just take almsot any 10 bodies and hav ea good time, and having to have 2 7' centers, 1 point guard , some outside shooters, etc etc to even make it worthwhile. If everyone had to do that to get a pickup game going, there would be alot less pick up basketball.

Wow raiding, even in 10 mans has particular requirements to make it manageable. As you increase the number of players it just gets more difficult. As someone said above, even someone that does wnat to raid, needs to be sure he can find 10 players that can sign on all at the same schedule to have any hope of seeing past the first boss of an instance consistently. It's not that people aren't willing to put in some time, but u need a specific set of people to put in the same time exactly as you or things fall apart. Can better players and guilds get it to wrok?? Yes of course. But it seems like a really annoying part of the game that most people not in the top tier guilds would love to do without (If anyone can figure out how)

[Elsebet]

Originally Posted by Fayvren

I dont think theres a problem with requiring someone to organize things. That is part of the 'fun' of be social game. But theres a difference between the guy calling people up for a weekly poker game or pick up basketball game with 10 of your friends where u can just take almsot any 10 bodies and hav ea good time, and having to have 2 7' centers, 1 point guard , some outside shooters, etc etc to even make it worthwhile. If everyone had to do that to get a pickup game going, there would be alot less pick up basketball.

This happens in real life hobbies too, especially ones where certain skills or gear is required and goals are ambiguous as is often the case in casual guilds. For example, my casual band! Our lead guitarist is frustrated with the lack of practice of the rhythm guitarist and drummer, and seems to want to be more hardcore and possibly replace one of them even though they are his longtime friends. We are inconsistent with songs from week to week and have to call off practices sometimes due to life issues. Having less than a year of experience under my belt, I'm just happy to be playing with other people so I don't care, but every time we call a practice session I think about posting on Craigslist so I can play more.

So many things I see in there that happen in casual guilds too.