Raiding vs. tabletopping

[Kzach]

My friend Sean, who used to post in here as Khynal, told me about this. He agreed it made a massive difference to how much he enjoyed the game and that it had really reignited the fun of playing WoW for him.

I've never actually played it, but I'm tempted all the time.

Yeah, the Cataclysm expansion might just tempt me back into the fold. Then again, if they continue on the trend of making content so easy to get through as they have with every other expansion, then Cataclysm will see you level up to 100 in three days and have full T12 gear two days after that.

 

[Blackbrrd]

Oh, there is an legendary axe ingame now that requires you to get 25 of x which makes 1 y. You need 23 y to make the axe, and you can get max 2 x per day. Shouldn't take more than 287 days of griding, or 40 days if you do it on 7 characters every single day.

Balancing MMO's to be interesting over time is really hard.

Age of Conan had a good idea with Battlekeeps. Your guild had to get a certain amount of PvP points to challenge another guilds battlekeep. If another guild wanted to attack it instead, they had to have more PvP points. The problem is that the battlekeep fights keep crashing. Might get fixed some day...

Personally I only find hard raids interesting where you are searching for a viable strategy. When you have a success rate of 75%+ it gets really boring. PvP, guild PvP, etc is interesting because you can't use the same tactic the whole time.

Raiding is a bit like playing with a DM that won't let you do something because it doesn't say so explicitly in the book.

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

Yeah, the Cataclysm expansion might just tempt me back into the fold. Then again, if they continue on the trend of making content so easy to get through as they have with every other expansion, then Cataclysm will see you level up to 100 in three days and have full T12 gear two days after that.

Eh. It's really just a semantic shift.

What was once "raiding" is now "hard modes." People who aren't doing hard modes aren't actually "raiding" in the traditional sense. They're punching their time card and collecting enough in-game time to earn 2nd class rewards. That's more or less how MMOs are supposed to work. You are rewarded for sinking time. They just extended the model. Instead of running out of gas a couple months after an expansion comes out, it continually progresses one step behind the actual endgame.

People who want to raid seriously (I was one of them) still need to put in effort if they want to do hard modes, but now the entire endgame isn't a stone wall for 95% of the players. That's a very good thing for the long term health of the game.

The way it used to work was sort of like if you hit level 5 in 3e D&D and they took away your books until you organized a larger group and played a separate group dynamics and politics game in order to unlock levels 6-20. Now if you don't want to play the group dynamics game you are simply always one level behind the people who do. It also has the side benefit of allowing you to catch up if you had to stop playing for real life reasons. If I wanted to start raiding again, I wouldn't need more than a couple weeks to get competitive gear. This is HUGE. Back in the day, if we lost a tank or healer we'd have to spend a month gearing up a new one by re-running old content. That's a crappy time tax levied by the group dynamics game on the actual game people want to play.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Yeah, the Cataclysm expansion might just tempt me back into the fold. Then again, if they continue on the trend of making content so easy to get through as they have with every other expansion, then Cataclysm will see you level up to 100 in three days and have full T12 gear two days after that.

Actually the new level cap will only be 85. The whole leveling scale will shift. The difference between an 80 and an 81 will be much more telling than say a 70 to 71.

It also has the side benefit of allowing you to catch up if you had to stop playing for real life reasons. If I wanted to start raiding again, I wouldn't need more than a couple weeks to get competitive gear. This is HUGE. Back in the day, if we lost a tank or healer we'd have to spend a month gearing up a new one by re-running old content. That's a crappy time tax levied by the group dynamics game on the actual game people want to play.

Oh yes. The cross sever grouping is awesome. My mage just hit 80 a little over a week ago. Now I have a little pug puppy and will be hitting ICC this week.

 

[Traveon Wyvernspur]

I've been playing D&D on and off for over 10 years and WoW for about 5 years. The major difference to me is the choice you make. D&D is much more about your imagination and fun face-to-face with your friends (if you are doing a tabletop game). WoW is all about the loot, it's very very very repetitive. All everyone wants to do is get to max level and then raid a few days a week doing the same raids over and over and over again for the chance to get that loot. It's a video game and takes no brains especially now that they've really started catering to the casual gamers (who are 90% of the WoW population now). It used to take much more skill and having the top-end gear used to be something to be proud of, nowadays anyone with enough time can get the same gear with much less skill. That's part of the reason I'm going back to D&D and have retired from WoW. I like using my imagination more than having a grinding experience for leveling or loot.

 

[ExploderWizard]

I've been playing D&D on and off for over 10 years and WoW for about 5 years. The major difference to me is the choice you make. D&D is much more about your imagination and fun face-to-face with your friends (if you are doing a tabletop game). WoW is all about the loot, it's very very very repetitive. All everyone wants to do is get to max level and then raid a few days a week doing the same raids over and over and over again for the chance to get that loot. It's a video game and takes no brains especially now that they've really started catering to the casual gamers (who are 90% of the WoW population now). It used to take much more skill and having the top-end gear used to be something to be proud of, nowadays anyone with enough time can get the same gear with much less skill. That's part of the reason I'm going back to D&D and have retired from WoW. I like using my imagination more than having a grinding experience for leveling or loot.

For me its not an either/or type of decision. I play tabletop RPG's for one kind of experience and WOW for another.

WOW is fun for what it does but it will never be a substitute for tabletop, at least for me.

 

[Teemu]

A minority of WoW players also roleplay in the game. It's a very freeform type of roleplaying that uses player created text to add elements to the interaction with other characters and the world. It can be a lot of fun if you have creative people to play with.

 

[ExploderWizard]

A minority of WoW players also roleplay in the game. It's a very freeform type of roleplaying that uses player created text to add elements to the interaction with other characters and the world. It can be a lot of fun if you have creative people to play with.

You mean, apart from cybering in the train tunnels?

 

[Dannager]

Oh, there is an legendary axe ingame now that requires you to get 25 of x which makes 1 y. You need 23 y to make the axe, and you can get max 2 x per day. Shouldn't take more than 287 days of griding, or 40 days if you do it on 7 characters every single day.

This is simply incorrect. I'm assuming you're talking about the Primordial Saronite requirement - you need 25 of it to advance the quest chain, and they can be purchased for 23 Emblems of Frost each. I'm guessing your "max 2 x per day" line comes from the limitation on 2 Emblems of Frost from the daily random heroic dungeon reward. It's true, you can only get 2 Emblems of Frost per day that way.

But if you're assembling Shadowmourne, you're doing more than running random heroics. You're also raiding, in Icecrown Citadel. And raiding in Icecrown Citadel nets you plenty of Emblems of Frost (as does completing the weekly random raid quest), not to mention the fact that Primordial Saronite is a drop inside ICC. Oh, and you can always purchase it from other players. If you're regularly raiding, consistently running your heroics, and not blowing all your Emblems on gear, it shouldn't take you more than a couple months to get all that Primordial Saronite, and much less if you're willing to buy it. And besides, Shadowmourne is intended for the hardcorest of the hardcore. It's not expected that your average WoW player will even be pursuing it.

 

[Blackbrrd]

This is simply incorrect. I'm assuming you're talking about the Primordial Saronite requirement - you need 25 of it to advance the quest chain, and they can be purchased for 23 Emblems of Frost each. I'm guessing your "max 2 x per day" line comes from the limitation on 2 Emblems of Frost from the daily random heroic dungeon reward. It's true, you can only get 2 Emblems of Frost per day that way.

But if you're assembling Shadowmourne, you're doing more than running random heroics. You're also raiding, in Icecrown Citadel. And raiding in Icecrown Citadel nets you plenty of Emblems of Frost (as does completing the weekly random raid quest), not to mention the fact that Primordial Saronite is a drop inside ICC. Oh, and you can always purchase it from other players. If you're regularly raiding, consistently running your heroics, and not blowing all your Emblems on gear, it shouldn't take you more than a couple months to get all that Primordial Saronite, and much less if you're willing to buy it. And besides, Shadowmourne is intended for the hardcorest of the hardcore. It's not expected that your average WoW player will even be pursuing it.

Thanks for elaborating on my point - you need a couple of months of grinding 24/7 to get the item.

WoW is about grinding, DnD is about having fun.

Ok, that last sentence sounded really stupid and superficial, but as two really hardcore friends of mine said - the moment 3-4 of their guild mates had the top tier items they quit within 1-4 weeks due to burnout and lack of reason to play the game. (This happened before they changed raiding to the current where you can see 95% of the raid game even if you are casual. Both of them raided 4-5 times every week for 5-6 hours).