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The Difficulty Trap
The beautiful thing about twitter is how it can engender conversations you might never get to have otherwise. Last night (thanks to my perpetual insomnia) I was up and scanning when Bashiok made a series of tweets I just had to respond to. It's crazy how much more complex and difficult fights are now, and how much better we are as gamers. - Bashiok (@Bashiok) June 18, 2014 What I really took away from this discussion is, frankly, just how difficult it is to compare the difficulty of WoW's vanilla epoch and today's raiding (and raiding to come). There are at least two kinds of difficulty to discuss, when talking about raiding difficulty - the difficulty of putting together and keeping a raiding group going, and the difficulty of actually executing the content. These are wildly disparate.
Star Wars: The Old Republic launches update 2.8
Do you like to gamble? Do you like video games? Do you like to gamble in video games? If so, you'll be super happy with the latest event coming to Star Wars: The Old Republic today, giving players a chance to spin the wheel and win on Nar Shadda. Yes, that's sort of what you do when downing a boss and hoping for loot anyway, but this time it's with an actual slot machine, complete with themed gambling outfits as a reward. If you don't like gambling, though, there's still plenty of events coming in that will tickle your fancy, ranging from increased Galactic Starfighter awards to the next round of doubled experience. Players can also queue up for story-mode Operations without worry over the minimum item levels, allowing you to jump in and experience the content. It's plenty of events for anyone playing the game, and you can hop in and experience them now.
The nature of unique mechanics and raid difficulty
One of the ideas that I always find interesting is that, as raid difficulty increases, it becomes more reasonable to expect certain abilities to be available. Like in this tweet from Nathaniel Chapman, an encounter designer for WoW, which talks about the Hand of Protection ability. (As an aside, I very much recommend his personal blog.) The basic idea is simple, and can be extrapolated to other abilities - it's reasonable to expect a Mythic raid to have access to abilities such as Hand of Protection or other class specific abilities that can alter a fight's parameters. It's this idea of raid difficulty making specific design choices acceptable that I find interesting, at least in the context of class abilities that might otherwise be seen as unbalancing. One specific mention was how Paladins could cheese tank swap mechanics, something that made them invaluable on fights like Heroic Horridon. Imagine that, in a hypothetical Mythic Horridon, the fight was designed for you to cheese tank swap mechanics, or the boss came with a huge AoE damage spell that was spell reflectable, justifying the inclusion of a warrior tank or a DPS warrior with Mass Spell Reflect. The cast could also be spellstolen, so mages would be a valuable addition. These kinds of mechanics are seen (and rightfully so, in my opinion) as punitive to struggling small raid groups who only have so many combinations of classes and specs. If your raid doesn't have a mage or warrior, for example, then dealing with that hypothetical huge AoE damage attack becomes harder. But for Mythic difficulty, with its iron-clad 20 player limit, you can expect more diversity in raid makeup, and thus can design for it.
Carbine spotlights WildStar's PvE raid design
WildStar's raid team has just completed a Reddit ask-me-anything about -- you guessed it -- raids in the upcoming sci-fantasy themepark. Lead Dungeon and Raid Designer Brett Scheinert (aka CRB_Timetravel) was joined by an array of Carbine Studios developers to answer player questions about the large PvE encounters in the elder game. Here are a few highlights: Which encounter will "cause the most tears"? That'd be Avatus, the last boss of Datascape, Scheinert says, but the elemental pairs in Datascape will be rough too. "Because [they] change every week (and there are 9 possibilities, each of which is almost an entirely new encounter), guilds will spend an entire week reaching then learning a pairing... then the instance will reset and they'll be back to ground zero." At least at launch, raid tools will be "in the hands of the addon developers." "Voice chat definitely helps but is not necessary." Additional post-launch raid content is "in development," so raid tiers will be flexible. The team won't "admit defeat that easily" should 40-man raids prove unpopular. Enrage timers "just feel lame," so the devs are using them sparingly. Casual players won't be able to extend lockout timers at launch. Carbine is still sorting out how latency will affect Oceanic players in raids. There's plenty more to consume over on Reddit!
RIFT opens up new raids and improves ascend-a-friend program
RIFT's Update 2.7 wasn't released in one giant package; Trion Worlds held some of it back to deliver piece-meal to the community. As such, today we've been treated to the second pair of new tier 3 raids with the Binding of Laethys. Trion also announced that it's improved its ascend-a-friend program with even more goodies than before. Players will earn referral coins when their recruit makes a purchase in the game, while recruits can teleport to their mentor, earn a 25% XP bonus when grouped up with their friend, and pick up several freebie items. These items are a 16-slot bag, a weapon-glowing rune, a cloak, and a title.
Leaderboard: Are you raiding in WildStar?
Carbine came clean with its plans for WildStar raiding yesterday. We got a good look at what's in store via a new DevSpeak video and a Q&A with dungeon and raid lead Brett Scheinert. This all lends itself to a poll of some sort, so what say we all click past the cut and vote on whether or not we'll be raiding in WildStar? Ever wish that you could put to rest a long-standing MMO debate once and for all? Then welcome to the battle royal of Massively's Leaderboard, where two sides enter the pit o' judgment -- and only one leaves. Vote to make your opinion known, and see whether your choice tops the Leaderboard!
WildStar raid dev: 'Our raids are the best blend of challenging and fun'
Do you wonder what it takes to make the toughest PvE content in an MMO? Then you'll want to virtually meet WildStar Dungeon and Raid Lead Designer Brett Scheinert, who stars in a new "A Moment in the Life" video talking about his job. "The biggest thing to be excited about with our raids is that they're the best blend I've seen between being challenging and fun," Scheinert claims. He goes on in the video to talk about his past experience in the industry and how he thinks it's really cool to see his ideas become reality. The video is a three-minute interview with several glimpses into WildStar's raids, although we suspect that Scheinert was using GM codes to solo them. You can give it a watch after the jump.
WildStar unveils the details of raids
WildStar wants to have its raids be big. Big in size. Big in rewards. Big in engagement. Big in lots of ways, in short. The team has talked about them in passing elsewhere, most notably at PAX East 2014, but there still hasn't been a nice big info drop about raids that potential players could really sink their teeth into. Like the sort of reveal that accompanies a new DevSpeak video. So guess what's past the cut? Go ahead, guess. Very good, it's the raiding video (something you could have concluded from the headline, yes), but there's more besides. We had a chance to sit down and talk with Brett Scheinert, the dungeon & raid lead developer, regarding these high-end encounters and what will set WildStar apart from other titles offering a raiding endgame. And despite what those opening lines might have made you think, it's not just about size. (It's also Spinal Tap references. You can guess which ones.)
What is the average?
People make assumptions. We all do it - even when we know they might not be warranted, making an assumption is an easy shorthand, a way to skip a few steps. One of the things we as players often do is assume that our peer group - the people we play with, the people we know who play the game - are in some way representative of the game as a whole. We assume our personal experiences are universal. I bring this up because of this recent tweet from Ion "Watcher" Hazzikostas. @DarkCainX Then you're misperceiving what "average" is; I assure you, if you were clearing 4.0 raids steadily, your group was above average. - Watcher (@WatcherDev) May 12, 2014 What Watcher is pointing out here is that for many of us, our group of peers is the game. We only see the game we play. Any assumptions we make about the game (such as, the difficulty of the raids, the quality of our fellow players) can be hampered by the assumption that what our group experiences is what all groups experience. The tweet that Watcher responded to argued that the Cataclysm launch raids weren't overtuned because his peer group, which he considered 'below average', was clearing them. Watcher's response points out that it can be difficult to define what the average is, much less whether or not you're there.
Siege of Orgrimmar changes in patch 6.0
So if you're raiding Siege of Orgrimmar, there's some news to be had - namely, some things are going away, and other things are becoming a lot easier to get. First off, if you haven't gotten the Kor'kron War Wolf for the 'Ahead of the Curve" achievement, it will cease to be attainable once the patch drops. Garrosh Hellscream will no longer have a 100% chance to drop the Kor'kron Annihilator mount on the new Mythic difficulty, once you can level past level 90. If you have not already gotten an heirloom off of Garrosh Hellscream, you will have a 100% chance to get a specialization appropriate heirloom, and your chances to get an additional heirloom will be increased. But once you can level past 90, you will not be able to get heirlooms from Garrosh anymore. Group finder will be available. For all this news and more, check out this post on the official site.
LFR, Warlords of Draenor, and you
I've been thinking about the changes coming to LFR ever since yesterday's big post about raiding in Warlords. One of the things that seems really clear about the changes is that LFR is now seen as part of a progression path for raiding - at least some players are expected to go from LFR to normal raiding in the expansion. With the removal of shared set bonuses and even tier gear from LFR being entirely gone, LFR feels to a degree like it's being downshifted in difficulty and placed in a different position for player use than how it is currently employed. Right now, for many players, LFR is their raiding. They don't run flex or normal, much less heroic. And with dungeons basically only for valor farming, LFR has become an important part of people's endgame. The idea of making LFR a stepping stone to normal raiding via the incoming group finder is interesting to me. Since you won't be able to get tier gear, or scaled down versions of the same loot as in normal/heroic/mythic, LFR feels like it will simultaneously have less and more importance. The effort to elevate dungeons to a much more prominent role in endgame (especially challenge modes, which will actually reward gear) and make it so players have an incentive to try and make the jump from LFR to normal/heroic raids. It's an interesting shift in priorities, but what will it mean for players who currently use LFR as their endgame?
RIFT 2.7: Binding of Blood arrives May 7th
RIFT's 2.6.1 patch may have teased the Binding of Blood raid, but now we finally have a solid date for the full 2.7 patch: May 7th. The 2.7 update will initially incorporate the four new souls unveiled over the last few months (Arbiter, Physician, Oracle, and Liberator), new quests, and an upgraded UI. Trion Worlds will roll out additional changes over the span of the including tier 3 raids, the Greenscale warfront, a hellbug promotional tie-in with Defiance, the annual Summerfest, and a unicorn celebration. We're not judging. Every game needs a unicorn celebration.
Raid design evolution and Warlords of Draenor
Blizzard has posted parts one and two of a series of Dev Watercoolers, discussing raid design over the course of World of Warcraft. Now part three is live, highlighting and explaining where raiding is going in Warlords of Draenor. The post covers new systems like the Group Finder (basically integrating the OQueue style functionality), buffs to LFR, explains the new Mythic difficulty and flexible group system for normal/heroic, and discusses how raid lockouts will work in Warlords, with each raiding difficulty (Raid Finder, Normal, Heroic and Mythic) having its own lockout, and how valor points will be scaled back to prevent players feeling like they have to clear each raid difficulty each week. If you raid, you should probably check it out. The full text is reproduced behind the break.
Could WoW have an expansion without raiding?
I have raided in World of Warcraft since the beginning. Raiding has always been a big part of why I play the game. If not the reason I play, certainly a reason. So when I was sitting up last night and it occurred to me that I've never gone an entire expansion without raiding, I didn't initially think anything of it -- to me, raiding is what you do in WoW. But then I started really thinking about it. Because lots of people don't raid. Before the rise of LFR and flex, a lot of players -- the majority of players, really -- never set foot in a raid at all. They had 5-mans, and that was basically it for group content for them outside of PvP. So I started asking myself if it would be possible to release an expansion with little to no raiding content at all. Would players accept it? It's a cliche (and an overused one among the community) that Blizzard didn't do this or that 'because it would cost us a raid tier' but let's really consider -- what if we could have the expansion next month, but it wouldn't have any raids? Would that be an expansion people would be willing to play? One of the reasons I consider this a more controversial question that it would have been at the end of Wrath is because now, raiding is far, far more accessible than it was even then. With the advent of LFR and the recent development of flexible raiding, it's never been easier to raid than it is. While Warlords of Draenor is changing the raid game, those changes will only make mythic raiding in any way more restrictive -- the rest of raiding will remain very accessible.
World of Warcraft continues its raid retrospective
The launch of Warlords of Draenor is going to shake up the raiding experience in World of Warcraft, and if raiding is what you like to do in the game, that's pretty important. But rather than just explain how raiding will be in the new expansion, Blizzard has opted to look past through the previous expansions and examine how revisions have affected the game over the years. Yesterday's blog covered launch through Wrath of the Lich King, while this entry focuses on Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria. Cataclysm removed the difficulty gap between 10-person and 25-person raids, but the side effect was a pressure to produce smaller raid groups rather than grow to bigger groups. It also introduced the raid finder as a mechanic, encouraging more people to experience the content. Mists of Pandaria, on the other hand, suffered from bottlenecks that prevented non-raiding groups from making any progress, although flex raiding was deemed a better way to get groups in and playing. Take a look at the full article for more details on the ups and downs, with part 3 set to address the future of raiding in Warlords of Draenor.
Blizzard reviews World of Warcraft raiding history
A new raiding game will be coming to World of Warcraft with this fall's Warlords of Draenor, and as part of this transition Blizzard is penning a series of dev blogs looking at the past and future of raiding design. The first one is up on the site, covering everything from launch through Wrath of the Lich King. "In many ways, that was the most challenging aspect of classic WoW raiding: the logistics of assembling and maintaining a sufficient roster with sufficient gear," the studio posted. Blizzard said that reducing the maximum size of raids in The Burning Crusade had two objectives: to improve the gameplay experience for members of raid groups and to make raiding more accessible in terms of requirements. But it was Wrath of the Lich King's many patches that really shaped the raiding scene into what it's become today, the studio said.
PAX East 2014: WildStar's panel is all about the endgame
So what happens when when you reach the end of WildStar? You've got a while to think about it, obviously, the game isn't even out just yet. But it's an obvious concern. People are going to hit the level cap, and what are they going to be doing then? Staring at the walls, singing songs, perhaps clawing desperately at the metaphorical walls in the hopes of getting the next major patch somewhat sooner? According to the WildStar panel at PAX East, the development team is hoping to launch with a fairly robust endgame no matter what you're hoping to do. The panel went through pretty much every part of the game, from items to PvP to solo story questing, all of which is intended to work together to create an environment wherein you don't run out of things to do and don't find yourself forced out of what you find fun. How well it will work remains to be seen, but there's certainly a lot on the table to start with.
The Soapbox: Let me tell you how little I want to raid
Over the past several years, Blizzard has been very attentive when it comes to making it easier for players to raid. Raid sizes have gone down, then they've moved over to a flex structure. The raid finder was added to the game. Mechanics were toned down, while getting drops has been made even easier. With the next expansion, you won't even need to toy around in difficult instances to get ready for raiding; you can just jump in pretty much from the point you hit the level cap. All of this in response to a lot of people saying that they don't want to raid -- all of this so thoroughly missing the point of that statement. This is one of those hurdles a lot of designers can't seem to conceptually get over. World of Warcraft's design team has had years of people saying this, and every response from the team has been missing the point so completely that it's almost absurd. I don't want to raid, at all, ever. End of discussion.
Watcher: Mythic raiding in Siege of Orgrimmar "for a few weeks" before Draenor
So, if you're wondering how raiding is going to look in the future, one thing's for sure - you'll get a preview of the Warlords of Draenor changes when patch 6.0 drops, because when it does, Siege of Orgrimmar will be converting fully to the new flex normal/heroic and 20 player mythic difficulties. @snochick_18 6.0. There will be a few weeks of 20-player Mythic SoO (along with flexible N/H) before Draenor unlocks. - Watcher (@WatcherDev) March 25, 2014 What this means is that we'll get a completely redesigned SoO with the class changes and other new systems in mind, but that older raids won't be changed, since they're considered trivial in comparison thanks to gear. It also means we know the 6.0 patch will be relatively shortly followed by Warlords of Draenor, and not well in advance of it, as some have speculated. So if you're wondering how your guild will fare with the change, patch 6.0 will be your test drive.
Siege of Orgrimmar and the waiting game
I've played World of Warcraft for the entire history of the game, since about a month after launch (my wife actually played in beta, and she's the one who got me into WoW in the first place) and I've raided for pretty much the entire time - I took a few months off after The Burning Crusade dropped, and had to catch up in BC raids. Since that time, though, I've raided - I was in my server's most progressed guild in Wrath, switched servers but ended up in the same situation in Cataclysm, and have settled down to a still well progressed but less aggressive heroic raid in Mists of Pandaria, cruising at 10/14H and working on Thok. We have one pally, so Thok's a bit of a gigantic cinderblock wall, but we're still plugging away. Being that I've been raiding so long, I sometimes see patterns. There's one I saw in BC, and repeated in Wrath and Cataclysm - the end of expansion lull. Once we get into the last tier of content, there's a surge of interest and everyone leaps to get in there and work on it... and that lasts a couple of months. After that, however, interest starts to wane. Players get burned out, stop playing, need to be replaced. Each player who needs to be replaced causes tension as the guild slows down due to the losses. Recruitment means bringing in people with less gear, less experience, and even if you manage to get a player with both the gear and the experience, it doesn't always mean they know how you do things. I was once recruited, after my Horde guild had killed all of Heroic Dragon Soul, by an Alliance guild that was on Spine. I took the jump because I wanted to play Alliance again - and even though I was geared as well or better than they were, I still had to relearn the fights based on their strats, and make suggestions based on my own experience that meant delays as they learned these new ideas. This can lead to a feedback loop - players burn out, leave, this stresses the guild, more players get burned out. It's always present in raiding - churn is inevitable, recruitment must be continuous - but the promise of future content to come creates a counter pressure. You don't just raid to see the current content, you do it to be ready to get into the guts of the new stuff when it drops. But when you get into the last tier of raiding, there is no new content to keep you interested. And so, when that last raid tier takes months and months - sometimes, as in the case of ICC in Wrath, over a year - it becomes very difficult to keep guilds focused on progressing through it. Talking on twitter about all this after reading multiple posts on the issue, I started thinking about how it works out.
