Originally posted by Jimmydean

This isn't how EQ works though. In EQ, there were always multiple raid targets.  Didn't want to do Plane of Water that night? Go do Plane of Fire, Plane of Earth, Plane of Air, you get the point. There was always plenty of variety in the raids in EQ. 

To say raiding is dead because people are sick of World of Warcrafts raiding isn't saying much.  Even Rift appears to have fallen into the "1 end tier raid at a time" rut.  I have faith that EQ Next or TESO will get it right, as EQ 1 did. I have a lot of hope for FFXIV 2.0 as well, because FFXI raiding was varied like EQs was.

I played EQ for 6 years. My guild was rather small and needed alliances with other guilds for the bigger bosses. So we usually raided just 1-2 days a week. There are still some bosses i never saw. just 1 instanced raid? thats unacceptable!

But i understand the devs. If the figures show, that just 2% of the players are able or willing to play that content. I am sure in EQ it was way more than 2%. 

I hope the open world bosses in GW2 and TSW are zerg-immune and wipe them all. I love to listen to the criebabies on the forums ;)

Originally posted by grogstorm

Under the current game mechanics, raiding is going in the direction to the trinity.  As the letter goes out of style, the former will follow.  

you guess the trinity is dead?

Sorry dude, this is just a wet dream of some GW2-fanbois. ;)

and why big raids without a trinity should not work? they even become more tactical and versatile.

As long as there are players who delight in riding the Hamster Wheel Of Monotony day after day after day after day... raiding will remain the laziest way for game designers to provide what passes for game content at level cap.  Sadly.

I don't think that raiding is "dead" per say but it is over done. That horse has been beaten into a coma over the last ten to twenty years.  In simplier terms there is just a community that is sick and tired of it. If they weren't they would probably be playing one of the MMO's on the market right now that provide this activity as their only real end game content available. 

I remember the time when the word "raiding" was actually used in pvp. Raiding the other faction for example i.e. city or bases.

Originally posted by Dibdabs

As long as there are players who delight in riding the Hamster Wheel Of Monotony day after day after day after day... raiding will remain the laziest way for game designers to provide what passes for game content at level cap.  Sadly.

raiding and hamster-wheel aka item based progression/treadmill are 2 different things. raiding just means content, which needs more than a group (i say much more!). of course you could implement raid dungeons in a game without the typical endgame item-progression like GW2. you just get the same cosmetic type of rewards like in the group-dungeons. i also read, that they have very tough open world bosses, which need more than a few guys to kill. we have to check, how versatile these bosses in the high-end DEs are and if they are zerg immune or not.

i guess, most people argueing against raids, are just against the item treadmill but not against multi-group content.

and btw, if raid content would be the laziest way for the devs, they would offer tons of raids. but as shown above, most modern theme-parks nowadays have just a few or even just 1.

Too many raiding end games out there as far as I'm concerned. If you want a second job  that doesn't pay, join a raiding guild and go for it.

How about: WoW, Rift, SWTOR, Aion, etc. ad infinitum.

I don't get how OP can complain that there are not enough raiding games. Do you mean you want the 40-person or more raids? If so, good luck. I don't see how you can find that many people to be that organized and on schedule. Like I said, it seems like a second job that doesn't pay except in a small chance to get epic lootz.

I've already played that game and I don't need to keep playing it.

Raiding is still the mainstream endgame, the only difference is that people seems to be more and more tired of it.

But being in a slight decline is not the same thing as being dead, right now there is not a single large alternative. RvR is probably the largest of the smaller endgames at the moment but it is still nowhere near raiding in popularity.

Of course a lot of players doesn´t participate in any kind of endgame right now and if something can bring in them it might change the powerstructure but raiding wont die for many years even if it probably just will become one of several different endgames to choose from in the future.

Originally posted by spizz

I remember the time when the word "raiding" was actually used in pvp. Raiding the other faction for example i.e. city or bases.

That's what I think it should be. 

After 6 years of raiding on and off its dead to me.

Originally posted by Vrdict

Knowing all the major MMO's and what they offer, I was searching for a possibly unknown, perhaps Korean, MMO that offered end game raiding. I couldn't find much of anything, in fact most searches turned up posts by MMO players shouting their distaste for raiding in general. EQ Next seems to be my only hope on the horizon.

Having been introduced to MMO's through the raid-centric Everquest, I'm completely saddened by the core of what I loved most about MMO's being phased out in favor of barbie doll housing crap and dumbed down PvP. To me, if I wanted to build a house I'd play the Sims where it expands on that aspect in much more detail. Likewise, if I wanted to PvP I'd play one of any number of FPS, rather than being completely focused on the PvP aspect of MMO's - I've been there, done that, but the majority of pure PvP'ers I've been around in MMO's are mainly fueled by this ego trip that they can wipe the floor with other players due to advantages in gear progression. So to reiterate, 2 functions of MMO's that have been rising in popularity are both available, and in better form, in other genres.

For raiding this isn't true, there is nothing even remotely similar to it in any other game genre. Yet it's been a downward trend since EQ, which is still the king of raiding. EQ2 would fall right behind it in 2nd, where the vast majority of active players are only there for raiding. WoW and RIFT both have raids, but neither offer the same atmosphere, intensity, require the same level of skill, and because of these reasons don't have the same sense of accomplishment that you'll find in EQ. Vanguard it's an afterthought, I actually formed a hardcore raiding guild for Vanguard on it's release only to be completely disappointed by the lack of raiding, and lack of loot on existing raid mobs, so much so that the entire guild moved on to WoW.

So here we are, 14 years after Everquests release, and EQ is still on top of the food chain for hardcore raiding? Majority of MMORPG's coming out either don't offer raiding or offer it as a compensation prize in the form of 10 mans and other junk? The only possible savior being EQ Next which won't be out for years and I'm simply assuming it will have proper raids based on it's pedigree and nothing more?

It's a sad time to be a hardcore raider and seeing the genre you loved for so long is nearly extinguished.

Raiding dying or dead? Well depends on which kind of raiding really as you have true raiding or hardcore raiding (prior to wow like eq and eq2), and then you have casual raiding (basically post wow.). Saddly the difficult mass group raiding like eq 1/2 up to early wow (raids up tll bc even some bc raids to some raiders were difficult to do) are pretty well dying or dead, since not only was it very time consuming to do, it was also very restrictive with a large portion of the pop of games not seeing the entirity of the content. Where as with casual raiding like in wow it allows for more players (vast majorty of the playerbase) to get into the content, form grooups in short order (compared to the hours or days it took to originize prior raid groups.)to get to actually doing the raids. I am both happy that raiding content in games is not as restrictive of how many can see it, but yet also saddened by the fact that hard an large scale raiding is not even really supported in most games, yet i am hoping that some devs will see that making a hardcore raiding version of raid content would be worthwhile to catter somewhat to the playerbase that desire that style of play.

Raiding is dying out, here is 2 reasons Raiding is unpopular in most MMO's.

1) Developers of most AAA titles make little to no effort to introduce players to the concept of partying up and working together early, let alone co-operating to overcome anything more complicated than tank & spank which decent raid instances require. Soloing is the order of the day & while developers may think its what players want and a good way to go about designing the game they fail to see they repeatedly shoot themselves in the foot with this flawed design.

2) People who do Raid often carry themselves as elitist, driving away potential new raiders who they should be helping and encouraging to get onboard instead of telling them they are no good, noobs etc. because eventually Those same raiders see population decline & suddenly dont have enough players to make up a raid. So helping noobs stop being noobs and encouraging them to enjoy raiding is the order of the day.

Personally I like Raiding, however I think its too inaccessible or unpalatable to most players in newer titles for the reasons above & It wouldnt hurt developers to also include other endgame content with longevity for those players who really do hate Raiding &/or grouping up, as well as casual players. This also gives social MMO'ers something to do at endgame when their friends/guild arent online.

Here's how I define raiding:

• Large group dungeon run, typical numbers might be 4 to 8 groups of 5.
• Extremely large slow dungeon, typical completion time of 6 hours... maybe more or less?
• Heavily scripted boss fights requiring group coordination to avoid heavy burst damage.
• Boss fights tend to be long to wear down character resources lowering damage/healing output toward the end.
• Dungeon progress can be saved allowing for multiple sessions in the same dungeon without reset over the period of a week or so.

That's just from observing in the forums and reading game mechanics... I'm not a raider.  Been in a few, didn't like it.

Originally posted by 7star

Originally posted by spizz

I remember the time when the word "raiding" was actually used in pvp. Raiding the other faction for example i.e. city or bases.

That's what I think it should be. 

I remember this also.  First time I heard about rading a dungeon I had no clue what was going on.  Where there enemy faction players in there and we were going to go kill them?

Originally posted by XAPGames

Originally posted by 7star

Originally posted by spizz

I remember the time when the word "raiding" was actually used in pvp. Raiding the other faction for example i.e. city or bases.

That's what I think it should be. 

 

I remember this also.  First time I heard about rading a dungeon I had no clue what was going on.  Where there enemy faction players in there and we were going to go kill them?

THAT's what I'm talking about.

Let's go sack Stormwind, loot 'em dry and take all their women.*

*I know this part's controversial, but historically speaking, it is what it is.

I miss raiding with 100+ ppl. Did it in Anarchy Online a lot. Most fun I ever had.

Nowdays, Raid = 8-16 ppl. IF

raiding would not be dead so much in future if its not so much about the gear, real issue there is if you are not part in any guild and still want to raid you dont have gear for it , you never gona have change to raid until some nice guild lets you leech.

now looking for raid options increase this but mainly the same reason when people are new to raids and so on its quite often chaotic.

so what we need in future is find away to create a raids that sametime are fun and not so much dependale from gear

and experience and so on and so on in other words its impossible and waste of time creation.

my opinion is there is raid games out there you can get into and yet in future keep it balanced , you wanna raid? get into guild what raids and so on, you wanna solo? do solo stuff but rewars for that should be at same par with raiding maybe more time consuming to get and wanna pvp sure why not do it that way and again rewards same with all other aspects of the game.

freedom of choise for players to do what they enjoy and chose to do and get same results as rewards.

peace.

Originally posted by Asuran24

Well depends on which kind of raiding really as you have true raiding or hardcore raiding (prior to wow like eq and eq2), and then you have casual raiding (basically post wow.). 

I agree that we have to distinguish between hardcore raiding and casual raiding post WoW (or call it semi-casual). And it all comes down to the fact, that they cater the casual masses, which makes a lot of sense from a business perspective. I would also like to add ultra-casual raiding, like we will see it most propably with GW2s and other games open world bosses. You even dont need a group to participate and we will see how much organization will be needed at all. 

I wonder, if you could cater them all if just your architecture and design is prepared properly. You could have hardcore, casual and ultra-casual multi-group content in one dungeon. The question is, what are the additional costs and revenue for such a more flexible approach compared to cater just the biggest customer group. We already have group-dungeons in casual and hardmode today.

Of course you cannot support 2 philosophies in one game, e.g. endgame with item treadmill and slow vertical progression AND endgame without item treadmill and just lateral progression and cosmetics. Again i say, that raids aka multi-group content are not the subject of dispute. It is the way of endgame progression!

Ask yourself! Would a game work, where the most shiny cosmetic equipment comes from hardcore raiding and the casual, who never has the time or power, in order to participate, can buy it in the cash-shop alternatively? i hear the $hitstorm on the forums already.

And would pure cosmetic progression work for hardcore raiders at all? Are there enough users, that the effort is worth for the devs?

Sorry to say, but the majority of the population doesn't really have time to raid between, work, life, and or kids, so ya, it''s dying.  't Most people don't want to commit 2-4 hours of solid game time, or can't, to a raid because of life.  5 man instances are much more doable for the general population.

Originally posted by Loke666

But being in a slight decline is not the same thing as being dead, right now there is not a single large alternative. 

I fully agree to that statement. I wonder what the alternative should be, if we focus on PVE-only. what we see today as "pve-endgame" is:

1. repating some group dungeons

2. repeating daylies

3.  levelling alts

4.  repeating older content with mains (just possible in games with downscaling)

5.  non-combat (more sandboxish) gameplay like crafting, RP and more.

6.  metagaming

Option 5 and 6 mostly do not work very well in theme-parks due to limited versatility and missing features and tools. However they can work very well in player driven sandboxes. We do not know, how option 4 will work. Perhaps Arenanet can feed us with new and modified DEs fast enough. I see, how this could be easier than with effort-intensive high-quality-quests. However, in story-centric games, it never worked so far.

So there is just option 1-3 which becomes boring fast. I dont say, that raiding is less boring, but what the hell would be a true innovation for pve-endgame in theme-parks for an endless, challenging and fun endgame? I dont see it. All i can imagine is a sandboxish pve-endgame. But this would impact the theme-park design in the levelling phase heavily.

PS: and dont tell me: make games with no endgame. It is pretty clear, what GW2s endgame is about. Every game has an endgame, even sandboxes. Some games have no levelling phase or you can skip it and jump directly to endgame. But just levelling without endgame is called offline game and not MMO.