The ordinary dungeons in WOW were usually fun... if you managed to find a group, if people didn't quit group the first time they got hurt, if people didn't quit when some fucking magic dagger of twinkeness failed to drop for them on a boss...
The raids though are more like synchronized swimming, tactics/movement/placement written in stone, no room for error... and everyone is expected to take them MUCH more seriously... and come prepared... which usually involves hours of prepatory grinding for ingredients for potions/meals... or for the gold to purchase them with... with the right group they can still be fun but otherwise they end up being more like a part-time job.

Quote from: Peregrin;389685Don't misunderstand Daed-- I never said you.  I was talking purely in terms of the amount of buy-in time required, not the quality of the time spent.

In otherwords, I can come home from work, and play one or two full matches of Team Fortress 2 in a half-hour, then go do other things.  MMOs require a significantly greater portion of time -- it's harder to just log in for a half hour and get anything accomplished.  I don't see tabletop as somehow requiring more time than MMO games in terms of payout you get per "session."

Just to be clear, I am currently gaming and have a weekly group, so I am not a bitter ex-gamer, I am just not getting as much from gaming as I used to (Maybe due to burn out) and I am wondering if its time to quit gaming and move on).

As for MMORPGS I can play them for 1/2 and hour or an hour or more and it makes no difference to me, I enjoy it either way

The problem stems from the fact that, well into the development period of the original release, the company added the head of Everquest's hardest-of-the-hardcore raiding guilds (Fires of Heaven) and his best buddy to head up WOW's development team.

That's right, the "Raid Or Die" thing was not originally intended.  It came in late because the partisans from EQ who successfully rioted over raid-related issues took control of the new asylum.  Now, despite those folks being gone, it's so deeply entrenched that it will likely remain an issue until WOW finally goes offline for good.

The problem is that the raiding scene dominates the entire server economy.  All of the best items--looted or crafted--stem from raiding.  Most of the economic activity of a server drives the raiding scene; without, sweet fuck-all happens so everything stagnates and dies of suffocation.  Population and prestige stem directly from the vibrancy and potency of a server's raiding guilds- the more there are, and the better they do, the larger the population and the more active everything becomes.  The raiders rule the roost, they know, and they've successfully undermined every last move at dislodging them by the developers since the first expansion cut the big raid size from 40 to 25.  The new changes will likely result in the trappings changing, but nothing else in practice.

Watching and observing what players into WOW, individually and (especially) collectively say and do (and the difference between them) is very instructive on how to create a RPG that folks with those preferences will actually buy and play regularly.  (And thus allow folks to figure out how to create RPGs that other folks, with different preferences, want to buy and use in turn.)

There is no better illustration of this than the concept of "soulbound items".

For those that don't play, almost any magical gear comes in one of two forms: bind on equip, and bind on pickup.  And the absolute best gear is ALWAYS bind on pickup.  What this means is that the second you either pick up the gear, or put the gear on, it is "soulbound" to your character permanently. It can never be given to another player or auctioned, it can only be sold for a pittance to an NPC vendor.

It is a function that basically solely exists to satisfy the same "hardcore" attitude that has people up and arms when they reduce the raid difficulties or player requirements.  It is using the system to enforce their own ego stroking desire to make sure that no one in the game possesses something without going through the same shit they had to, so they can stroke their e-dicks over being better than anyone else.

It's also a sterling example of how they went even FARTHER than the very EQ that Tigole and Furor (the Fall From Heaven guys Brad mentioned) came from, because even that fucking game apparently wasn't "hardcore" enough for them.  In EQ almost every weapon or item in the game was tradeable, it was common practice for friends to kit out a new player in whatever old gear they had.  Most of it didn't even have level requirements.  UO was the same way, so was pretty much every MMO until WoW came along and introduced the whole asinine "soulbound" concept, and now almost fucking everyone does it.

THAT is how a "hardcore" group can fuck up a game.

Quote from: J Arcane;389817It's ridiculous.  Solo content is what made the game standaout and assert it's dominance in the first place, and yet solo content is the only kind of new content you actually have to pay extra for just to get more of in the form of expansions.  New raids are almost always free.

You see the reason solo content was so predominant in WoW wasn't because of non-raiders, it was because of raiders.  You can solo all the way to max level in WoW if you want and that is by design.  That way someone can make up a new character and powerlevel them to raiding status in a few days/couple weeks.  Non-raiders are the vast majority of their customers, however, raiders are the demographic that drives the design, probably because a bean-counter tells them the raiders are hooked, the casuals will fly to the next new thing, when in reality, it's the reverse.

The deathblow was struck to LotRO when it started the 25-man raids, how long before it dies, I don't know.

Raiding died in LOTRO before the expansions even came out.  They've tossed a few 12-mans in there, but they're completely unnecessary and no one does them.  "Raid or die" doesn't exist in LOTRO, regular dungeons, crafting, and reputation work are the main goal here, and the gear you get out of them is plenty up to snuff.

Helegrod was 24th, not 25, sorry.  There are lots of raids that people still do, two 12-mans in Moria, two 12-mans in Dol Guldur.  At least they added a way to quest yourself radiance gear instead of being stuck in a raid chain.

Quote from: FrankTrollman;389248He's trying to tell us that NWoD was the right way to go, because alienating the Camarilla Society was the best way forward. And that's... totally insane. The data does not support that hypothesis.

What do you think would have been the correct (or just better) way to save (or reenvigor) the WoD? After three editions of basically the same material?

And: isn't that a problem that Shadowrun will face/is facing as well? How many differently worded versions of Player's Guide to Vampire / Matrix can a publisher sell?

(Maybe in a new thread?)

Quote from: Peregrin;389664What I wonder is if it's even possible to control the size of the hobby, or maybe it's just had its heyday and that's it -- culture everywhere is changing and there may be nothing we can do.

It's not that these people wouldn't play given the right group -- most of them seem more than willing to sit down at a table and play (the culture certainly didn't scare them away, since most of them played with high-school or college friends), but will they given the choice between tabletop or some other medium.  Wizards is currently attempting to address this issue with Encounters, but I'm not sure that style of play necessarily caters to enough tastes to draw back in more than a fraction of the lapsed casual players.

Another thought to consider: This encounter style of play could change the rules of the whole hobby - or maybe is proof of an already changed hobby as it is just the symptom/latest incarnation of the balanced, delve style play that 3e invented.

This reminds me of the first paradigm shift in RPGs, the story-fication that lead to Dragonlance (and 2e, Raven's Bluff, and WoD).

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;390036What do you think would have been the correct (or just better) way to save (or reenvigor) the WoD? After three editions of basically the same material?

The World of Darkness people wanted three things:

• A better mechanical system (for heck's sake, their own live action hack was a better tabletop RPG than their main game).
  
• A rectification of the background into something that made any kind of sense at all.
• Sufficient mechanical alterations and balance shifting to allow people to play Superfriends/Monster Squad games without having the team vampire cry actual tears of blood while the mage sings anything you can do

That's really all they wanted. Now, let's be honest: there were things that they didn't want that should have been done too them. The Werewolf people were apparently totally happy with their extensive dog rape justifications, but that seriously turns off... almost everyone... so Forsaken was right to go to an "only hump humans" paradigm. Similarly, Mage players were pretty much OK with the ability to transform the floor into solid nitrogen or cause solid objects to lose relative inertial velocity with the Earth being level 2 sphere effects. But the thing is: that shit is crazy and severely interferes with mages being able to fit into a mixed group of supernaturals without constantly teabagging their allies on accident.

But yeah: people wanted a reasonably complete overhaul of the World of Darkness. But they wanted to be able to bring their characters and their backstories into the new rules.

QuoteAnd: isn't that a problem that Shadowrun will face/is facing as well? How many differently worded versions of Player's Guide to Vampire / Matrix can a publisher sell?

Shadowrun is facing an entirely different problem right now where the people are raging about not having content. Shadowrun lives in a future timeline, where each year in the hear and now causes a year to pass in the future setting. As such, Shadowrun softcover books are like magazines or something. And when things get tweaked enough accumulated events and tehnological progress and game design insight and player feedback and shit - it gets compiled into a new edition. Roughly every five or six years or so (meaning that yes, it's "time" for 5th edition).

The problem is that the current license quasi-holders are running SR into the ground, and Shadowrun's release schedule is three years behind schedule. Meaning that the next edition will feel both overdue (because it will have been a long literal time since 4th edition got published) and too soon (because a lot of books, like the cutting edge developments book, won't have actually been finished).

So Shadowrun could actually be dead at this point. But making a new edition would be entirely plausible. I even did some rumination as to what I would do with it if SR 5th edition was in my hands - which of course it won't be even if it happens.

-Frank

@WoW: I think those in this thread who claim to be in the know haven't played in quite some time. There is no need to raid right now as you get nearly as good equipment from dungeon emblems these days and while that equipment is a tad worse than that of raids it is plenty enough to either start raiding or do the non raiding endgame like pvp or heroic dungeons.
Raiding is easier than ever these days, even the endgame raid icecrown citadel can be done by a pick up group.

Quote from: Saphim;390071@WoW: I think those in this thread who claim to be in the know haven't played in quite some time. There is no need to raid right now as you get nearly as good equipment from dungeon emblems these days and while that equipment is a tad worse than that of raids it is plenty enough to either start raiding or do the non raiding endgame like pvp or heroic dungeons.
Raiding is easier than ever these days, even the endgame raid icecrown citadel can be done by a pick up group.

As a current player of WoW I find your implication that I don't know anything about the game to be fucking insulting.

Yes, you can get decent gear from grinding Heroics every day, running the same fucking dungeon over and over again every day for weeks on end.  

But it's still not as good as the raiding gear, which is why any guild of enough size inevitably still starts pushing everyone at cap to raid.

Quote from: Saphim;390071@WoW: I think those in this thread who claim to be in the know haven't played in quite some time. There is no need to raid right now as you get nearly as good equipment from dungeon emblems these days and while that equipment is a tad worse than that of raids it is plenty enough to either start raiding or do the non raiding endgame like pvp or heroic dungeons.
Raiding is easier than ever these days, even the endgame raid icecrown citadel can be done by a pick up group.

Fuck you, asshole. This is my main. See that Shadow's Edge?  That means that I'm working towards Shadowmourne, a Legendary weapon.  You can't get Legendaries if you don't raid.  You can't get top-shelf crafting patterns if you don't raid.  You can good enough to get into Icecrown, but you're going to be carried until you get up to speed gear-wise.

I play. I raid. I know damn fucking well what the score is with WOW.  Don't you dare fucking tell me otherwise.

Quote from: Saphim;390071@WoW: I think those in this thread who claim to be in the know haven't played in quite some time. There is no need to raid right now as you get nearly as good equipment from dungeon emblems these days and while that equipment is a tad worse than that of raids it is plenty enough to either start raiding or do the non raiding endgame like pvp or heroic dungeons.
Raiding is easier than ever these days, even the endgame raid icecrown citadel can be done by a pick up group.

Fuck you, asshole. This is my main. See that Shadow's Edge?  That means that I'm working towards Shadowmourne, a Legendary weapon.  You can't get Legendaries if you don't raid.  You can't get top-shelf crafting patterns if you don't raid.  You can good enough to get into Icecrown, but you're going to be carried until you get up to speed gear-wise.

I play. I raid. I know damn fucking well what the score is with WOW.  Don't you dare fucking tell me otherwise.

Quote from: J Arcane;390073As a current player of WoW I find your implication that I don't know anything about the game to be fucking insulting.

I'm not insulted, but I am aware of those changes also... and they don't make much difference towards the reasons I stopped playing.
It was much more to do with the 'elite player' attitudes toward the 'casual players' (despite 'casual play' easily equaling a part-time job) and the general rush-to-the-endgame attitude that made exploring older content frustratingly difficult. Recent changes to the LFG system did nothing but exacerbate all of those issues for me.
In the mind of most guilds it's still all about the raiding... whereas most of my enjoyment came from exploration and discovery on the way up.

Like with TTRPGs the vocal minority can quickly turn a game to shit if the designers listen to them... but with an MMO you don't have the option of just staying with the original edition or house-ruling out the crappy bits.