Raiding vs. tabletopping

[interwyrm]

When I was playing WoW, 5-mans would take from 15 minutes to 1hr, depending on the dungeon and my group.

Naxxramas started out as a 4 hour ordeal, and just before Ulduar was released, we had gotten it down to 2 hours (both for 10 man and 25 man). My raiding group was pretty tight though. Before I started raid leading, I'd been in groups that took 6 hours and still couldn't finish.

When Ulduar was released, we easily spent 20 hours in a week, and didn't finish it. The increased time commitment was a contributing factor to me quitting. (The major factor was me getting a job).

For me, the major draw of the MMO is organizing a group, and getting respect for the ability to lead. (It escapes me why I can't do this in real life). Planning out your item set and getting that loot is also a big part.

The major draw of pen and paper is the development of a story with consequences for player choices. I would suggest, if you are trying to avoid overlap, giving your players as much freedom as possible to help define the game world through their own actions. This is partly avoiding "railroading', but mostly it is about creating in game consequences for the things players do.

 

[interwyrm]

The attraction of raiding in WoW used to be both the challenge and the loot. Nowadays there isn't much of a challenge so it's all about the loot. The prestige of having the best gear on your character that you can get.

To get that gear, you have to either raid or do arena. Arena is pretty quick. Team matchups, usually only lasting a few minutes. Raids are so easy these days that they can all be PUG'd (Pick Up Group, ie. a random selection of noobs from the Looking For Group channel).

The rest of the post was decent, but this is bollocks. Ulduar was difficult when it first came out. I'd be surprised if many people successfully PUG it even now.

Even Emalon, the "easy" boss of that patchset, destroyed so many failpugs.

 

[Destil]

The rest of the post was decent, but this is bollocks. Ulduar was difficult when it first came out. I'd be surprised if many people successfully PUG it even now.

Even Emalon, the "easy" boss of that patchset, destroyed so many failpugs.

I'd agree, but for different reasons. You can get gear on par with the normal (non hard-mode) stuff from Uldar 25 these days very easily. It's not that it can't be pugged (thanks to gear inflation), but just that it's not generally worth it two content cycles behind the curve if you're not doing hard-modes. They've also nerfed Uldar to hell since it was released, where many experienced well geared and good raid groups were know to wipe trash (and I'm taking groups that had Sarth +3 down before Uldar).

For the hard modes I'd agree. Too hard to PUG in general.

To Wicket's original question: depends greatly on the raid. I'd say for most of the more 'casual' raid groups you're looking at 1-2 nights a week with a 3-5 hour raid per night (and maybe 20 min to half an hour of pre-raid stuff you generally need to do beforehand). Pretty comparable to a D&D campaign, IMHO.

 

[Kzach]

The rest of the post was decent, but this is bollocks. Ulduar was difficult when it first came out. I'd be surprised if many people successfully PUG it even now.

Even Emalon, the "easy" boss of that patchset, destroyed so many failpugs.

You must be on a failserver. Alliance too, right?

 

[Umbran]

I'm going to make two requests:

1) Watch the lingo! The guy who asked the question, and presumably many others who are looking at the thread looking for similar information are not WoW players. If you use jargon ("puged", for example), you'll quickly lose the very people you're trying to inform.

2) Let's not get into trash talking, please. This thread does not exist for you to pick on each other for how long it took to do something in a MMORPG.

 

[Blackbrrd]

MMO raiding doesn't have an active DM so you really can't come up with creative solutions outside the rules. MMO's are more like board games than table top rpg's.

 

[wedgeski]

WoW actually underwent a quite dramatic change in its most recent patch with the introduction of the "Dungeon Finder", an extension of a previously flaky and little-used feature by which you queue for an instance (i.e. 5-man dungeon, or 10 or 25 man raid) from anywhere in the world, and the server automatically assembles the group and teleports you to the right spot.

The system now works exceptionally well to get fast dungeons underway and you can be in and out of some of the smaller ones in literally 10 minutes. If you're one of the under-represented tanking classes, your wait time is measured in seconds. This means you can run dungeon after dungeon with little or no downtime, and the server handles all of that pesky finding of other players that you previously had to do yourself with the limited tools available.

So, despite a per-server population of thousands of players, all linked with global chat channels, Blizzard still had to implement tools to ease the pain of forming gaming groups, including massively expanding the pool from which the system could draw by allowing it to look on up to 20 or-so other servers as well as your own.

It makes an interesting analogue to the pain of raising and maintaining a D&D group.

 

[RangerWickett]

Actually, Umbran, on point 1 I'm actually loving the lingo. I can suss out most of what it means, and it's a delight seeing a slightly different facet of the gamer community. Also, the fact that blargney jumped in to mention D&D Online, and used different lingo. It's kinda awesome.

Thanks for the info, everyone. Do MMOs have any sort of narrative aspect? I mean, is WoW just raiding in dungeons, or do they have adventures where there's a villain actively doing something you need to thwart? How much plot is there?

 

[blargney the second]

Do MMOs have any sort of narrative aspect? I mean, is WoW just raiding in dungeons, or do they have adventures where there's a villain actively doing something you need to thwart? How much plot is there?

Yes, absolutely. I'll use DDO as an example again.

The Vault of Night raid is a 6-part series that culminates in a 2-part raid. You're contracted by a Kundarak dwarf to help him reclaim his extraplanar bank that someone has hijacked. The first four parts have you trying to convince a party of thieves to help you retake the vault. You basically help each of that party's four members achieve a goal and they agree to help you in return:

Part 1) You fight your way through an arena to retrieve a nice axe for the fighter.
Part 2) The poisoner's mind has been shut-in by quori - you have to enter her mind to free her.
Part 3) The assassin is a vampire being pursued by a marut, and you have to save her.
Part 4) The trapsmith's warforged foundry is infected with parasites that control the constructs. You have to self-destruct the place and flee in time.

Once you've helped them, you can do the raid itself:
Part 5) You go into the Vault of Night with your assembled gang of thieves. You have to reset the power supply to gain access to the central vault, where the architect/hijacker is hiding. Once you kill his pet iron golem you find out that the real mastermind is hidden in the extraplanar part of the vault.
Part 6) The extraplanar vault is up in the ring of siberys way up in the sky. (Seriously amazing view.) The mastermind is a red dragon who wanted access to Kundarak's stash of dragonshards so she could find out something about the draconic prophecy. You kill her, and all is right with the world.

 

[RangerWickett]

Okay, why does that stuff not get talked about more? That sounds really frikkin' cool.