Raids will no longer have 10-man versions

[Ysman]

Immersion and progression have nothing to do with raid size. I'm not the one sounding brainwashed here. Funny your mind runs to Blizzard as a defense, you people are so predictable.

Most of us are coming from WoW, even though we have had experiences with other games. It isn't so much WoW that is the problem, it is the evolution it took, gradually catering to its increasing fan base of "My First MMO" gamers.

[Ysman]

and how is this different than 20 man raids? Those will be large even more exclusive guilds. Organizing is harder so the pickyness factor will be higher if anything.

Neither 10 or 20 man hardcore raids promote good community building.

With a 20 man hardcore raid only about 3-5% of the subscribers will see end game raiding while with 10 man and 20man it goes up to about 10-15% of the subscribers seeing end game raid content during the release cycle.

Thats not so if the raids were made accessible. In Vanilla WoW, there were add timers, no tools in place to make guild forming easier, no raid calendars, nothing...it was a brand new game, brand new frontier. As it evolved, cool features came out of it, but also an increasing slant towards gamers who didn't want to put forth the effort to be a part of the community. On the forums, all you would hear was how people wanted more soloable content and a easier go of things, well sorry folks, this is MMOs for you. You can either climb over the precipice or break upon it. In Blizzards case, so many whiney console and single player gamers broke upon it enmasse to shape the face of MMORPGs and not for the better.

[Aurlon]

Yea because only friends want to play with friends. They don't want to contribute to the community, they just want to circle jerk each other for shiny epics.

Correct, though I'm not sure what circle jerk means. I'll assume it's a crass attempt to insult.

I'm not quite sure how "contributing to the community" has anything to do with this, however.

[Eisberg]

Thats not so if the raids were made accessible. In Vanilla WoW, there were add timers, no tools in place to make guild forming easier, no raid calendars, nothing...it was a brand new game, brand new frontier. As it evolved, cool features came out of it, but also an increasing slant towards gamers who didn't want to put forth the effort to be a part of the community. On the forums, all you would hear was how people wanted more soloable content and a easier go of things, well sorry folks, this is MMOs for you. You can either climb over the precipice or break upon it. In Blizzards case, so many whiney console and single player gamers broke upon it enmasse to shape the face of MMORPGs and not for the better.

Brad Mcquaid said that the MMO gamer has grown up, has more responsibilities, and doesn't have the time like they used to during the EQ hay day. That is what he said about the shift of the MMO industry, and partly why Vanguard failed because he was making a game for an audience that doesn't exist anymore and he was to blind to see it, and he also claimed other things that was his fault for the failure of Vangaurd and his development company.

[Ysman]

Correct, though I'm not sure what circle jerk means. I'll assume it's a crass attempt to insult.

I'm not quite sure how "contributing to the community" has anything to do with this, however.

What I meant is, lets say you start up a guild. And to you say skill matters soooo much like all these 10 man proponents are saying. Lets say your best friend rolls a Cleric. He is a good player. He gears up fine. You recruit another Cleric. You find out this Cleric is an even better player. He heals better, doesn't fail at all, never DCs, etc. Would you give up your friends 10 man slot for this new raider? He is more skilled right, doesn't he deserve a chance just as much as your besties? This Cleric refuses to be on the bench, he doesn't want to run with the "B-Team", he wants to run with the progression team and he thinks he deserves to be treated equally.

[Aprilfools]

Thats not so if the raids were made accessible. In Vanilla WoW, there were add timers, no tools in place to make guild forming easier, no raid calendars, nothing...it was a brand new game, brand new frontier. As it evolved, cool features came out of it, but also an increasing slant towards gamers who didn't want to put forth the effort to be a part of the community. On the forums, all you would hear was how people wanted more soloable content and a easier go of things, well sorry folks, this is MMOs for you. You can either climb over the precipice or break upon it. In Blizzards case, so many whiney console and single player gamers broke upon it enmasse to shape the face of MMORPGs and not for the better.

I classify Vanilla Wow as well as EQ as old school raids really more like rifts, which is why I was excited about the rift game. I like epic large dare I say zergs, although more variety and a little more challenge would be welcome. Still they would need to be things that could be spontaneous and didn't feel like a second job to organize, unlike todays hard core raids.

No I'm afraid the 20 mans they are designing are obviously being balanced more in the fashion of todays 25 man hardcore raids and as such will just promote elitism and lack of community and be seen by far fewer people than if they also had 10 mans.

[Ysman]

Brad Mcquaid said that the MMO gamer has grown up, has more responsibilities, and doesn't have the time like they used to during the EQ hay day. That is what he said about the shift of the MMO industry, and partly why Vanguard failed because he was making a game for an audience that doesn't exist anymore and he was to blind to see it, and he also claimed other things that was his fault for the failure of Vangaurd and his development company.

Grown up BS. The buddies who got me into EQ worked at Comp USA, 40+ hours, had kids and all played TOGETHER. It isn't the grown up mentality that changed MMOs, its the single player, I'm entitled to something, I want instant gratification player that changed MMOs for the worse.

[Valtayr]

I classify Vanilla Wow as well as EQ as old school raids really more like rifts, which is why I was excited about the rift game. I like epic large dare I say zergs, although more variety and a little more challenge would be welcome. Still they would need to be things that could be spontaneous and didn't feel like a second job to organize, unlike todays hard core raids.

No I'm afraid the 20 mans they are designing are obviously being balanced more in the fashion of todays 25 man hardcore raids and as such will just promote elitism and lack of community and be seen by far fewer people than if they also had 10 mans.

This. I think Trion has something great in their Rifts and zone-wide events, and these are the perfect tool to provide large-scale, "epic" content to large numbers of players without alienating people who lack the time, patience, or desire to coordinate with larger groups. I'd rather not even see instanced raids at all, the nature of them being instanced is a part of what promotes exclusionary attitudes.

What I really miss are the faction-wide raids of Anarchy Online.

[Eisberg]

What I meant is, lets say you start up a guild. And to you say skill matters soooo much like all these 10 man proponents are saying. Lets say your best friend rolls a Cleric. He is a good player. He gears up fine. You recruit another Cleric. You find out this Cleric is an even better player. He heals better, doesn't fail at all, never DCs, etc. Would you give up your friends 10 man slot for this new raider? He is more skilled right, doesn't he deserve a chance just as much as your besties? This Cleric refuses to be on the bench, he doesn't want to run with the "B-Team", he wants to run with the progression team and he thinks he deserves to be treated equally.

In 10 mans there would be at least 2 slots for healers, so why would he need to give up a spot? The 20 man proponents are saying that 20 mans take so much more skill and effort as well compared to 10 mans. Sooo, for a 20 man and with your scenario, what would you do?

[Eisberg]

Grown up BS. The buddies who got me into EQ worked at Comp USA, 40+ hours, had kids and all played TOGETHER. It isn't the grown up mentality that changed MMOs, its the single player, I'm entitled to something, I want instant gratification player that changed MMOs for the worse.

Yeah, just your opinion. I would trust what someone who works in the industry would say. In my experience Brad Mcquaid is spot on, the gamers have grown up and the MMO industry evolved with the player base.

[Ysman]

In 10 mans there would be at least 2 slots for healers, so why would he need to give up a spot? The 20 man proponents are saying that 20 mans take so much more skill and effort as well compared to 10 mans. Sooo, for a 20 man and with your scenario, what would you do?

Your missing my point...say you had two friends who were Clerics then...

In a 20 man you have much more wiggle room. If say you had 2 friends with Clerics, well what do you know, you have 2 more slots for healers. Say a friend is a Cleric and he brings his Rogue and Warrior buddies, he'd have a better chance of being able to raid with THEM and the rest of the guild without having to compromise.

[D_B]

Neither 10 or 20 man hardcore raids promote good community building.

With a 20 man hardcore raid only about 3-5% of the subscribers will see end game raiding while with 10 man and 20man it goes up to about 10-15% of the subscribers seeing end game raid content during the release cycle.

These numbers are made up by you, or based on some crap a WoW dev made up on the spot and you quoted.
There is no possible way to calculate those numbers, and if you tried, you would get non-meaningful numbers useful only in a vague statistical manner (meaning the numbers could be twisted and/or cherry-picked to prove/disprove anything you liked).

40 man raiding is harder to organize, but easier to run. More spots mean more GOOD players to compensate for bad players.
20 man raids are easier to organize than 40 man raids, and still offer a few "free" spots to carry bad players.
10 man raids offer 1 or 2 spots for bad players (at most) and are the easiest to organize of the 3.

The only real factor to be examined in which is "better" or "worse" is the question of how many bad players you need to carry. In 40 man you might get away with as many as 5 or 6 before it's a real problem (and not even NOTICE two or three), while in 10 man you will feel the dead weight of even one bad player.

Trying to say that the size of the raid matters for anything else is just rubbish.
Stop getting the forums worked up over rubbish.

[Ysman]

Yeah, just your opinion. I would trust what someone who works in the industry would say. In my experience Brad Mcquaid is spot on, the gamers have grown up and the MMO industry evolved with the player base.

I doubt it. I mean look at all the commercialization of WoW. Look how popular it got. Do you know how many kiddies actually play that game? So many guilds that are made up of High School friends who don't want to take the time to organize or take part in the community. I've seen it first hand.

[Airien]

Brad Mcquaid said that the MMO gamer has grown up, has more responsibilities, and doesn't have the time like they used to during the EQ hay day. That is what he said about the shift of the MMO industry, and partly why Vanguard failed because he was making a game for an audience that doesn't exist anymore and he was to blind to see it, and he also claimed other things that was his fault for the failure of Vangaurd and his development company.

DING! DING! DING!

We have a winner here folks.

Nice to see someone step up and admit it (and a developer at that) rather than just remain naive and live in the past.

[Manakar]

Brad Mcquaid said that the MMO gamer has grown up, has more responsibilities, and doesn't have the time like they used to during the EQ hay day. That is what he said about the shift of the MMO industry, and partly why Vanguard failed because he was making a game for an audience that doesn't exist anymore and he was to blind to see it, and he also claimed other things that was his fault for the failure of Vangaurd and his development company.

Thats BS.. vanguard failed because it was a buggy unfinished mess.. Adults played EQ just fine back in the day.. Who do you think went to the EQ fanfare events? It wasnt mostly kids I can tell you that.. The "audience" grows up and the new generation comes in.. Some people keep playing and some people move on.. How do you think Nintendo is so successful? The reason devs dumb down games is because they want to get casual/mainstream gamers to play.. Now the whole industry does it and it spoils everyone (including hardcore gamers).. It ruins the industry and waters it down.. How far will devs/publishers go to try and get the average joe to play their games? Will we get to the point where no one even wants to group at all? Where everything is completely soloable and can be done in 5mins and Epics rain down out of the sky? Sorry I dont have time to group...