Some people may be under the impression that the pinnacle of an MMO should be its raid. That defeating the raid means you finished the MMO. That all of the progress you make concludes with the raid.
I think this is wrong. I think vanilla WoW proved it was wrong. I think EQ before it also proved it wrong. Back then very few people raided. Very few measured their progression in WoW to completing the raids. As a band-aid measure Blizzard added LFR to get more people into raiding. This wasn’t a fix to the problem. It just continued the problem going forward and now threatens the entire MMO design.
People mistakenly believed that raiding was just too difficult for most people. This was also wrong. Let’s talk about what makes raiding difficult. Raiding requires a scheduled obligation from 10–20 people to complete. This means people have to set aside time. Large chunks of time in fact. Depending on the maturity of the guild it could be anywhere from 10 to 20 hours a week. You also have to work, communicate, strategize with 19 other people. When we boil down the requirements there are very few gamers out there who can do this.
When we look at other games like Fortnite or Call of Duty or PubG we see people competing in 30 minute matchups at their discretion with smaller group commitments. We know already that WAY more people prefer this mode of gaming as those games collectively share a larger share of the gamer market than all the MMOs out there.
So coming back to what makes raids so complicated it’s not the difficulty of the encounters. It’s the difficulty of finding people to make those absurd commitments. Were the commitments wrong from the start? I believe so. Back in EverQuest an end game raid required 72 participants and 2-3 days to complete. They were brutal in this regard and as people should assume by now it was all operating on a very small community of gamers.
The problem for WoW is this. As the smaller party engagements are cut or trivialized to funnel people into raiding fewer and fewer people are playing the game. The parts of the game someone may care about that doesn’t raid are particularly less engaging in BFA for a few good reasons but mostly because the content is trivial on the first pass.
I think raiding has become the epicenter for challenge in WoW. I don’t think this was a good direction. As the challenge evaporated from everywhere else in the world it accumulated inside of the raids which further challenged a small subset of the gaming community but left the rest wondering where their beef was. Where did the modern Blackrock Depths go? Where did challenge modes go? Where did Mage Tower go? Where was all the content that 3 man, 5 man and solo players go that could keep them subscribed for an entire expansion?
As we focus on itemization and class design it’s important to recognize that the vast majority of gamers are not interested in raiding while at the same time they desire to have something to work towards in WoW. An MMO should be more than its raids and I think WoW currently is a great example of that.
Raiding was always the endgame of World of Warcraft, and likely the main focus for the original development team, due to their connections with Everquest.
The only difference now is that any sort of content between Character Creation and killing the “End Boss”, has been neutered to cut development time and costs.
I don’t think it was budget constraints. I do believe they believe they can groom the majority for raiding hardcore and it simply doesn’t work.
I mean what’s the cost of making warfronts more difficult than they are? They already spent money on assets, paid artists for models and zones, ui elements and coders to glue it all together. Making it less trivial would be a drop in the bucket to all of that.
Rather I think someone said warfronts should be a gear vehicle to get people into our raids.
M+ is a bit stranger. M+ is a step in the right direction but mechanically encounters combined with class design were poorly done. I haven’t returned to M+ this expansion as a result of that. I think I just chose a bad crew to do them on.
I’m not talking about leveling forever. I think the answer is a stiffer challenge in a smaller time constraint.
Excluding Mage Tower … what content has there ever been at end-game for solo oriented players?
You’re talking like there used to be more of this content and you even said it’s been “cut” in favor of funneling people into raiding but from where I’m standing the opposite is true.
There’s NEVER been MORE casual/solo gearing options that make raiding completely unnecessary so I guess I missed the golden age of WoW as a solo player game and I’m confused about how this is somehow worse for them.
Personally I feel like all the gear related and difficulty design choices aren’t being made to bring in more raiders, because it’s honestly having the exact opposite effect.
Why raid Mythic for the challenge, when the same gear can drop from anything else? The game is being build towards the younger audience that enjoys the feeling of that special “gamble win”, when your dice roll immensely well. But to other players like myself, if it doesn’t Titanforge, roll a socket, roll leech, it gives a feeling of losing.
I understand the feeling of needing to raid once you’re decked out in full Heroics, looking for other ways to improve, but to be honest most players don’t want to raid anyways.
And the problems like within time constraints, they can’t balance professions or classes like they want to. To be honest they shouldn’t try to, let players pick the ones that are meaningful to them, let them pick ones that are unique. Who cares if the top 100 players out perform everyone, that’s what being the most optimised should entail.
Your point isn’t very clear and you’re talking about things like “cut” solo content and I’m trying to figure out what you’re talking about or what about the current game is funneling players into raiding.
You can get geared up to Normal/Heroic raid gear levels EASILY without ever setting foot in a raid so that seems to completely contradict your “raid or die” argument.
It does have the opposite effect because as we’ve both stated it won’t work. It can’t work because the majority of players are not interested in the obligations.
The gear to get people prepared for raiding is so good that it’s actually driven away people who normally raid and to me that makes sense. People see their reward balloon deflated so they don’t bother.
I don’t know if balancing classes really belongs here. I mean you can reshape every part of WoW to be a smaller group and time commitment and class issues will still be around. Will it bring more people to the game? Yes. Undoubtedly so given the success of other games out there.
The entire post is about challenge, not gear.
Do warfronts challenge you? Do island expos challenge you? Did questing challenge you at all?
Again I’ll ask … outside of Mage Tower … what challenging solo content has EVER existed in end-game? What content was cut?
Sure, raids have traditionally been the hardest designed content for endgame and I’d support other challenging content for smaller groups but I’m not following at all what you’re trying to say about how people are only being funneled into raiding or that raiding is only challenging because you have to find 20 people.
Class balance definitely has a position here, classes used to be individually important and brought very meaningful tools to a raid setting. Whether or not it was a CD or a Buff, it’s discouraging having a major tool taken away from your long-time class, that always made you feel more important to your group.
I said as the smaller party engagements are cut or trivialized to funnel people into raiding. You know Mage Tower (not continued), island expeditions (trivialized), warfronts (trivialized), leveling (extremely trivialized).
It would be nice to have Mage Tower be something done all the time or something in that vein. Also nice to have challenging scenarios. Also nice to have challenging dungeons.
Raiding is an activity for a point in time. Most people have raided for a time period, maybe a few expansions, and eventually you grow out of it.
The reasons are various, but eventually people stop raiding. The question then is, do they stop playing WoW? Up to now people don’t quit the game when they stop raiding, as a rule.
But as you gut leveling, past expansions, and do things like increase time to level and scaling mobs with you as you level. You are taking away the incentive for people to keep playing.
They don’t make more money by making content arduous. They shouldn’t give a damn if a person wants to spend their entire sub time in old content. Farming old things, or joining a twink guild (if those even still exist). A sub is a sub.
Blizzard has fallen into the form over function argument, where they’d rather look good and lose, than have happy players and win.
Op is being just as close minded as he claims “raid-minded” people are. Don’t lump every one into the same opinion. For some people, raiding is “it”, and that’s okay. For others, it’s pvp, and that’s okay…and so on.