General Discussion

Now I dont have any personal hate against WOW, nor is raiding and faction grinding genuine to WOW. But what WOW did, is making it part of a monetary succesful strategy, which unfortunately has now been copy-pasted into almost every MMO. Personally, I find these two things the most devious inventions since diet coke. Please let me elaborate.

First, and in short, faction grinding and raids are two things almost none would be interested to do by themselves, much unlike other MMO activities, like exploring a dungeon or playing a storyline. Raid and factions are a way of companies to get a maximum of playtime out of customers with the most minimal effort of investment. So for them its like the goose that lays golden eggs.

The idea is the same in both: you create very rare and very desirable items, be it uber gear, flying mounts or what, and make the way to reach them long. Now it has often been said that great gear SHOULD be difficult to get, and I fully agree with that idea. However, the unfortunate reality is, that neither faction grind nor endless raiding are challanging. The only thing that IS challanged is your tolerance towards repetitive gameplay. For a company like Blizzard or any other, its a miracle solution. They add something very cool, say a dragon mount you can fly, but limit it to 500k faction points. Then they distribute 2 types of mobs, copy paste them 200 times over a zone and make each kill 5 faction drop. Viola, now you can keep players for months and years, and the effort of the company is minimal. The only one who really benefits from this are the companies, because with the least effort they get the max of length people play their game. For the gamer it is a catastrophe. He has to kill thousands of the same mobs over and over and over. Its zero immersity, zero fun. Its like working at a conveyor belt pushing the same button over and over. And while such things are regarded as inhuman work conditions in RL, in MMOs they are widely used, and the most bizarre thing is, that gamers are now conditioned like Pavlovs dog to EXPECT such a mindless faction grind. One of the critic I often heard when AoC was new, that WOW-gamers bemoaned the LACK of faction grind.

It was the same once with the Jedi unlock in SWG. It wasnt a difficult series of quests, which told an elaborate story of trials and moral choices. No, it was a simple grind. Kill 10000 of this and 10000 of that. I vividly recall how deeply dissapointed I was back then, when Jedi unlock was revealed. It had ZERO to do with being a Jedi, and it was merely about being an uber butcher, a big fauna decimator. But even more convoluting than the fact those grinds exist is the fact that some people defend it and and claim it would be joyful! Or challanging.

The other, evenly devious idea WOW spread like a virus, is raiding. Now let me say it clearly, I have a violent, passionate hate towards raids. For me it is the anathema of everything a MMO should be. A MMO is the further development of pen and paper games like D&D. Its about people meeting friends and going to an adventure-story. Instead of only reading a SciFi or Fantasy book, you take part in an adventure. Now having been in a raid guild, I know 90% of all people doing raids hate them, or at best see them as necessary evil.

What is a raid? A raid is the idea, that some rare items drop from bosses who need a MASS of players to kill. Now of course there is only one drop, or few, so the vast majority of people partaking the raid usually get nothing at the end. Thats where the deviousness gets in. its like the addiction of someone using a slot-machine. He puts more and more and more coins into it, always hoping someday he will get the luck to win. Its a sick way to conditioning people. In the end people go through the same raids dozens of times over and over to get "their" shoulder pads or flying mount or whatever. Such types of raid are entirely devoid of any immersion or value, its just prolonging the people's subscription with the minimal effort of the developers.

The bad results are twofold. First, it has started to condition people's perception. Many MMO players in these days regard mindless grind as difficulty, as challange. Instead of interesting story-driven questlines they seek the repetitive behaviour of the proverbial hamster in the wheel. And second, it has created a two class society of gamers, those who join big raid guilds and get the best, and those who prefer small, family style networks and will always be second best. Their PERSONAL achievements have no longer value, but only a certain playstyle, which allows companies to milk customers the longest possible time with the least effort.

Did WOW invent this? No. But they perfected it, they expanded it in such a hidious way, that now every MMO is copying this. Even the once as "anti-WOW" designed Vanguard has added their flying mounts and high end gear to raids only now. From a perspective of commerce this apparently pays off. For a player it means a further development downwards to lack of immersity and lack of complexity. In the bottom line its a witness how little developers these days regard their own customers, and its a joke to see how many people today now are conditioned to actually SEEK suck mindless ways of entertainment. It is, in the long run, the death of immersive and sophisticated MMO gaming. For why should companies invest much into vast, immersive worlds, when a few vast grind-mills of faction grind and raid repetition are sufficient to keep players?

This was done before Warcraft.  Everquest had a lot larger grinds to get items and faction.

In regards to why they don't make getting things through a difficult quest is because they can't create content quickly enough to satisy the people who play all the time.  This is a known fact and why MMOs have always put in large time sinks at the end of games.  It gives the people who want to just mindlessly play the game during most of their lives something to do.

Ah, a new recruit for the rebellion.  Join us Yunbei.  Some of us have been fighting against this design philosophy since the days of EQ 1.  Of course, all you can do is make a little noise once in a while to let developers know that there are people out there who refuse to put up with that crap.  Also, don't buy games that devolve into raid grinds at the end.

But, you know, some sort of grinding is probably unavoidable in a progression game.  The important thing is whether or not the form the grinding takes is entertaining or just mind numbingly boring.  If you have fun doing it it doesn't feel so much like grinding.  But raiding...raiding is just painfully un-fun.

That depends on the raiding.  Warhammer has made it fun to raid IMO.  Mostly because it starts early in the game and doesn't require having to actually join the raid.  You just have to be in the area and participate in the public quest.

Smaller "raidable" dungeons featuring a challenge that is more like a puzzle than that of killing a mob would in my opinion be what raiding should be like. The massive 40-man raids where you go the same place, do the same things with the same people are hard to organize and just trying to make grinding fun by forcing 39 other people to come and help you. The core of the problem, I think, is gear dependency; not only does it force you to grind for certain gear it also causes big differences between players depending on how much they've farmed for their equipment.

Another problem may be that of what to do once you reach the max level; for a PvP focused game the answer is simple - PvP, but for a PvE focused one you have to in some way make players keep playing PvE and that's no easy feat. Grinding is in that aspect an easy way to make players keep on playing without ever really growing bored.

What truly shows how... terribly the WoW community has became when it comes to questioning Blizzard is one thing you didn't really mention: dailies. It's easy and it's clever; provide players with 25 quests that can be done every day and you got them occupied for an eternity! Not only do you now farm the same mobs you also do the same quests, and has thus given up the last thing that wasn't really a big fucking repetition. Quests were usually quite mindless but they were at least different in some ways; not they're not any more. And it saddens me greatly that people do the same thing every day over and over, as if it was your second job only that this one you need to pay for.

Originally posted by Godliest

What truly shows how... terribly the WoW community has became when it comes to questioning Blizzard is one thing you didn't really mention: dailies. It's easy and it's clever; provide players with 25 quests that can be done every day and you got them occupied for an eternity! Not only do you now farm the same mobs you also do the same quests, and has thus given up the last thing that wasn't really a big fucking repetition. Quests were usually quite mindless but they were at least different in some ways; not they're not any more. And it saddens me greatly that people do the same thing every day over and over, as if it was your second job only that this one you need to pay for.

Hmm, yeah, I have to say something about that.  It's probably a good thing I don't play WoW or I'd have a new thing to bitch about.  But I do have a friend who plays WoW and I talk to him about it and sometimes when I'm at his place I watch him playing WoW a little.

So one day he told me about those daily quests and I was like, "Huh?  You mean you run the exact same quest every day?"

He said, "No, not the same one every day.  There are a few different ones."

Me:  "But you just keep doing those same few quests over and over again?  Going through the exact same motions in the same sequence in the same place over and over every day?"

Him:  "Yes."

Me:  "My God, how can you stand to do that?"

Him: "I don't know, I need to do it."

Me:  <<<<backing away slowly while looking at the back of his head to see if I can see the scars from the brain surgery when they implanted the control chip in his head>>>.

Seriously, what the hell is that?  Who in their right mind would do that to themselves?

As an ex WoW player i have to say WoW was one of my favorite games to play. to me it sounds like you just wanted to do raids to get gear and be "uber". to me i love Raiding in games, cause to me its a good way to get together with friends in a guild and go kill bosses and the loot is just a plus. and you say raiding isnt challenging? HAH. is that why it took my guild almost a month and a half just to get past Karazhan and get it on farm status? raiding takes alot of strategy and coordination. And since Burning crusade came out raids are much smaller so your chances of getting loot increases alot.  Also yeah it sucks when someone else in a raid gets something over you. but it depends on how your guild distributes the loot. my guild gave out the loot to the ones who needed it most. so say you have an epic sword and some other guy only has a Rare sword. and a really Nice epic sword drops and both of you want it. the guy with the blue sword has priority. Do you really have a right to complain. To me it was fair so when ever i lost loot to someone else i said Grats to the guy that won and kept on playing the game. But that was just the way my guild did things, and every guild is different. also you dont have to raid to get good gear, you can do PvP in the game, or you can also do arenas and get really good pvp gear. yeah all this takes time but to me thats a good thing. cause i dont wanna walk around and see every single person in really good gear and all looking the same.  and to get faction rep you can just kill mobs, or you can do daily quests and get lots of money from doing so along with the rep. to me it just sounds like your an impatient little kid that wants to get all his gear really quickly with no effort. im not gonna say i had fun all the time while i raided and quested for faction rep, but it in the end it all payed off. i play games to have fun, and i had fun while playing WoW. I no longer play WoW do to Real life issues and if i could i would go back to the game and play right now. So stop your bitchin about grinds cause there isnt a single game out there with absolutly no grind what so ever. and game developers copy WoW cause look at its success, its the most played MMORPG out there. if you dont like the game dont play it. yeah WoW is designed to keep players playing. but isnt that what every game developer wants, to get money in his pocket?

Originally posted by Yunbei

Now I dont have any personal hate against WOW, nor is raiding and faction grinding genuine to WOW. But what WOW did, is making it part of a monetary succesful strategy, which unfortunately has now been copy-pasted into almost every MMO. Personally, I find these two things the most devious inventions since diet coke. Please let me elaborate.

First, and in short, faction grinding and raids are two things almost none would be interested to do by themselves, much unlike other MMO activities, like exploring a dungeon or playing a storyline. Raid and factions are a way of companies to get a maximum of playtime out of customers with the most minimal effort of investment. So for them its like the goose that lays golden eggs.

Well, speak for yourself. I would not explore an MMORPG dungeon b