Uhhh, there's zero risk in WoW.

There's only a "reward proportional to time invested" correlation.  That's it.  Zero risk.

Sorry, but terribly titled article.  Remove the word "risk" from it and it's just an article about gear.  Meh.

Originally posted by Stradden

In his first submission to MMORPG.com in this role, our new World of Warcraft Correspondent Darren Bridle files this article discussion risk vs. Reward in the most populated MMORPG ever created, Blizzard's World of Warcraft.

Risk Versus Reward Analysis

It’s Friday night, you’re sitting down after a long hard day at work/school, you decide to fire up World of Warcraft and try your hand at one of the heroics. Whether you do it out of a love for challenging instances with friends or you’re still progressing through the game and looking for gear upgrades, the overwhelming objective is to be rewarded for your hard work. This is risk versus reward (RIvRE). For the risk you undertake, what reward do you get at the end of it? RIvRE is everywhere, not just instances, solo play and raiding, but crafting, questing and even the auction house! Follow me now as we explore where the game does RIvRE well and … where it doesn’t.

Read the whole article here.

i'm sorry.  is this an April 1st prank article? 

risk vs reward... in wow...

BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHHAAHAH

risk.  what risk is there in wow?  you lose, and i quote, "precious time running back to your body, that's 5 or 6 minutes i could've been killing things".

maybe you could just do those daily quest things and get lots of gold stockpiled, so when you die that 6th or 7th time (probably because the other heroes weren't up to snuff and didn't know their choreographed routine very well for THIS dungeon), you can pay the little repair robot (from engineering), in the middle of the dungeon, to repair all your gear.

risk.

in wow.

that is bloody classic.

This article is a load of poppycock and most likely Blizzard propaganda. There is no risk vs reward in WOW, as you are rewarded even for failure.

As for the section on crafting, nice job picking the one exception of a useful crafted item. Most other classes in WOW dont get the benefit of the spellstrike set. Yet consolation rewards (badge loot) offer far superior items to most crafted gear.

Pure marketing is all this article is.

Originally posted by freston

Regardless of wether were talking about time loss or a death penalty truth is that no mmorpg in the actual times is hardcore enough to cater to a self respecting mmorpg lover. When your character dies, not only should he stay permanently dead and permacancel your account; your pc should explode, jagging pieces of monitor into your brain and setting your house on fire. Anything below that level is carebear for me.

dude, wow is your game.  that is EXACTLY what happens if you die.  haven't you been watching the news for the past year?  all those house fires aren't the result of raging forest fires out west.  it's the result of little kids not doing so good in wow.

Originally posted by Ozmodan

Can any of you people read?

Evidently not, as the article was NOT about how hard a death penalty a game has but about time commitment.

Nothing like completely sidetracking a discussion because you did not read the article.

news discussion >> world of warcraft: correspondent article: risk vs reward

i can sure as heck read that.

does it say time commitment in there ANYWHERE?

nope, it says r i s k.

it then starts off with:  Risk Versus Reward Analysis

time commitment.. nope, r i s k.

let's read the first paragraph, shall we?

It’s Friday night, you’re sitting down after a long hard day at work/school, you decide to fire up World of Warcraft and try your hand at one of the heroics. Whether you do it out of a love for challenging instances with friends or you’re still progressing through the game and looking for gear upgrades, the overwhelming objective is to be rewarded for your hard work. This is risk versus reward (RIvRE). For the risk you undertake, what reward do you get at the end of it? RIvRE is everywhere, not just instances, solo play and raiding, but crafting, questing and even the auction house! Follow me now as we explore where the game does RIvRE well and … where it doesn’t.

risk risk risk vs reward.  dude even put RIvRE.       for the risk you undertake... what reward do you get at the end of it?   rivre is everywhere...  i'm re-reading that paragraph as i type this.

reading comprehension is a lost skill.

Games are meant to be fun. If you are having fun whilst aiming for a particular reward then the "risk" is much lower, because you won't mind doing it again if you lose that reward. The problem is that with all MMO's the activities required to get the reward may start fun but get repetitive and boring after a while. So the thought of having to go through it all again is not very appealing, hence why most gamers don't want harsh death penalties.

Let me start by saying I have played: EQ2 for 1.5 years, LOTRO, FFXI for 3 years, Eve, AOC, TSO, Tabula Rasa, SWG for 1 year, and WoW for 3.5 years and many more, so I do have some mmorpg experince. I know alot of ppl my disagree with this as I used to myself before I got to truly end game in Wow T5+. However the reason WoW has over 12 million players, and the next cloest one only has 1 million is WoW at this point is still the best mmorpg on the market, as it is by far the most complete. As far as I see WoW only has one major flaw the community is kinda weak, but if you play on a RP server it is better even if your like me and do not like to RP for some reason the ppl are nicer. In any case this is just imo, and everone should play what they find fun, as for me: WoW#1 FFXI#2 followed cloesly by EQ2#3. PS: I hope warhammer online gives us all another great mmorpg, but you never know as I was not near as impressed with AOC as I thought I would be  

Originally posted by DBridle

When I wrote this article, I knew it was quite a stretch, however, regardless of my opinions on Risk Vs Reward, its such a huge part of MMO's in general, I felt it needed to be looked at in WoW, no matter how little risk is there.  Time investment, can be easily slotted into the category of risk.  Since the death system in WoW is fairly bland and there is no real substance to failing or wiping in a raid environment, the time invested is a big part of it.  The reason I didn't use time vs reward is to keep it in standard with other MMO articles based on Risk Vs Reward (I wrote one for Everquest about 5-6 years ago). 

Use this article and consider it a few years from now after a few expansions, I may come back and revisit it as a comparison :)

- Darren Bridle

the Everquest one is good.  this one was well written its just your choice of game could have been better, or your choice of words (time vs rewards).

wow have risk the risk of knowing your gear going be the worst after lvl cap raise in few months

There is great risk.

The risk is wasting your precious time which you could use to become a "better" human beign.

The risk is, considering what I said above, you not beign able to lead the life you want to. Or maybe not beign able to fulfill your dreams (which often require $).

Anyway, very silly calling it Risk vs Reward. Should be "time wasted vs. reward". Anyway, the article is kinda right.

I agree there isn't much risk in WoW... but the people that complain that they want more risk are the same people that quit hunting in Felucca when Trammel came out in UO. The question... why keep playing a game you think has no risk and is boring? You can always go play another game with risk in pvp but guess what happens then? You complain about getting camped,looted and not being able to level so it's all nice when you aren't getting killed but we all know what happens when you do. I suggest looking at the pvp servers on WoW and they are empty because there isn't any risk to pvp  but people don't like being killed and if there were pvp'ers that thought different the pvp servers would be packed... don't use the bg's as a reason because pvp isn't all about loot. Waste of life?? I can say that about most things...drinking,paying bills,sitting in traffic, etc... but life is about what you enjoy and you decided to play, that's like casual players talking about it's not fair that he plays more than me.

Originally posted by Hives

I agree there isn't much risk in WoW... but the people that complain that they want more risk are the same people that quit hunting in Felucca when Trammel came out in UO. The question... why keep playing a game you think has no risk and is boring? You can always go play another game with risk in pvp but guess what happens then? You complain about getting camped,looted and not being able to level so it's all nice when you aren't getting killed but we all know what happens when you do. I suggest looking at the pvp servers on WoW and they are empty because there isn't any risk to pvp  but people don't like being killed and if there were pvp'ers that thought different the pvp servers would be packed... don't use the bg's as a reason because pvp isn't all about loot. Waste of life?? I can say that about most things...drinking,paying bills,sitting in traffic, etc... but life is about what you enjoy and you decided to play, that's like casual players talking about it's not fair that he plays more than me.

Um not everyone who wants a real death penalty is a PVP player. A lot of us are  PVE oriented. I myself love a stiff death penalty. I am having  way more fun playing my one level 10 warrior in FFXI which has experience loss and level loss than any of my high level characters in any of the other games I have played like WOW. After looking for a real gameto play after the dumbing down of EQ, I had forgotten how nice it was to actually have gaining a level mean something. And don't get me started on how much fun I am having in not being led around by a  ring in my nose from quest to quest. .

The lack of a real death penalty. I.E. experience loss at a minimum is why I won't even bother buying WAR  especially after my dismal experience in AOC.

Only "risk" I can think of is that Blizzard needs to take a risk and create dynamic dungeons like they do in Diablo but then for WoW. Each time you enter a instance the map is changed, the mobs have changed their places. The boss is in another spot etc etc...

Playing WoW is no risk. Maybe. You risk losing a lot of friends or family if you play it too much.

Originally posted by Samuraisword

Originally posted by ghettobooste

Games like WoW and it's ilk (eq2 lotro aoc vanguard) have very little risk, and huge rewards.   The genre has been seriously pussified by WoW, and talking about risk vs reward in regards to WoW is just absurd to anyone who played MMOs before 2004.

You want some risk vs reward?  play EQ1 2001 version.  Games with harsh penalties, where if you mess up and die... you have a serious freakin problem. 

EQ1, you are in a dungeon with a group farming at a camp hoping for a rare drop, group wipes because of some retard ranger, everyone logs off in disgust (this wouldn't usually happen as most people will go out of their way to help you recover your corpse, but say its a pug of total jerks).  Your warrior is lying there dead, deep in a dungeon.  You revive and notice you lost a level... a dong as they were called, not only that you are naked.  You have a few options, get another group together that can clear their way through the dungeon or find and pay a necromancer to take an hour of his time to come summon your corpse.  Now you need to find and pay cleric, high enough of a level to give you at least a 90% exp rez so you can get your level back.  If you fail to get your corpse back within 2 weeks, all your gear rots...

Thats a risk!  losing 5 mins running back in ghost form is not a risk!

You clearly know what classic EQ was like when it was a good game. Please tell me you know of a current game that is challenging like EQ was back in the day.
 

I would say EQ1 yeah?  But I don't really know what EQ1 is like anymore.  I think I quit around 2002 when the Planes of Poop came out.  I think they make retro progression servers once in a while, that might be fun to check out.

If not EQ1, someday, somewhere, some studio is going to make a good ol' awesome early EQ style game with graphics like LOTRO :)  Keep the faith! 

The only "risk" that exist in WoW

1) time wasted

2) losing your girlfriend, your friend and your pet dog

3) money spend ( not your WoW gold )

4) all the EPIC armor you wearing now will be meaningless in the next expansion ( think WOTLK )

5) losing your beauty sleep

6) losing your job

"reward"????

- Technical Support staffs are your only friend??

- online girlfriend whose real name is Chuck Noris??

This post was like a beacon to the WoW haters.. like flies on sh*t.

WoW has always been about the risk, and dieing is part of the game, I must of died 10 or more times trying to solo that elite giant in burning steps, but after a few deaths I figured it out and I downed him.. that was my reward.. although his loot was hardly worth it =D

Kinda funny reading their replies.. sadly most wont be happy untill a game comes along that has perma-death and also when you die you have to;

1. uninstall windows
2. partition your hard drive into 4 parts
3. installing windows...
4. call microsoft and beg as you have re-activited windows to many times.
5. Buy a new copy of windows
6. download the game at 1kb/s
7. re-register your account and wait upto a week for it to be approved
8. email the company a month later as you have not recieved your activation key
9. get the key via hacking the companies database
10. spend 5 years in prison
11. get bugged by several prisoners and warders for 5 years
12. download a huge patch at 1kb/s
13. get into the game at start at lvl 1 again with only 1 hit point in a zone where even the grass hits you got 500 hit points.

.... now that is risk.

this article wins the pulitzer for bullshit

Risk?  What's at risk?  Some gold for repairs?  Please.

There is no "risk" in World of Warcraft.  There is only Time Spent.  Because Time is what limits everything I do.  If I had infinite time, I could do everything in the game.  I don't have infinite time, so I have to pick and choose where I spend mine.

The badge system introduced in 2.3 is great.  It gets people running heroics and doing something else other than standing around inside Shatt between raids.  It's a way to augment getting gear.  More gear, less time, and Heroics give me something to do.  Win, win, win.

The thing I hate the most is people who can't do their job in WoW.  240 DPS from a warlock in a heroic - they do not belong there.  They wasted my time for joining the group, they wasted my time for getting us killed because I couldn't heal for 25 mins while we tried to kill one boss... They wasted my time.  I don't care about getting killed, really.  Do some dailies (again just TIME spent) and repair bills are irrelevant.

The only "risk" is wasting time.  The only thing that ever causes me to waste time is people who can't play their characters.  Sadly, this game is filled with them.    So go ahead and try to balance that out... Getting a group together for a really easy 5 man quest with a crappy reward can be the most frustrating thing in the world because the 4 people you got have no @#$^ing clue what they're doing.   Time Spent = HIGH, Reward = Low.  Or maybe there's a really hard quest that has a really great reward... You grab 4 FRIENDS and breeze through it.  Time Spent = Low, Reward = High.  It's all about the other people in your group.

I hear you can lose a Dreadnaught or a Mothership......seriously the only risk is time wasted.

Originally posted by coffee

This post was like a beacon to the WoW haters.. like flies on sh*t.

WoW has always been about the risk, and dieing is part of the game, I must of died 10 or more times trying to solo that elite giant in burning steps, but after a few deaths I figured it out and I downed him.. that was my reward.. although his loot was hardly worth it =D

Kinda funny reading their replies.. sadly most wont be happy untill a game comes along that has perma-death and also when you die you have to;

1. uninstall windows
2. partition your hard drive into 4 parts
3. installing windows...
4. call microsoft and beg as you have re-activited windows to many times.
5. Buy a new copy of windows
6. download the game at 1kb/s
7. re-register your account and wait upto a week for it to be approved
8. email the company a month later as you have not recieved your activation key
9. get the key via hacking the companies database
10. spend 5 years in prison
11. get bugged by several prisoners and warders for 5 years
12. download a huge patch at 1kb/s
13. get into the game at start at lvl 1 again with only 1 hit point in a zone where even the grass hits you got 500 hit points.

.... now that is risk.

every time i read a bitter post like this, i can only think 'the tears of your weakness bring me joy'.

risk vs. reward is a very common concept in gaming. period.  when it's pointed out that some games do not have a risk vs. reward system, you somehow get replies like the quoted.  which, as i said, those tears bring me joy.  people that can't wrap their consciousness around such a simple concept -- they deserve wow.  and i hope they continue to play wow and wow alone.