Just adding my 2 cents worth.. Many I agree with, many I disagree with..  Since my first raiding days of EQ1 I enjoyed what raiding we did with the guild I was in.. It was social, no one was told to sit out, everyone and anyone that showed up, earned dragon points and all was happy..  

Since the creation of this limited capacity tier grind, I have no use for raiding.. This applies to WoW, Rift and SWTOR.. Having lockouts with limited raid size only adds drama to the guild and game..  Even puging is damaged because of raid ID lockouts.. Raiding in EQ1 when I played had none of this.. If you wanted to farm TOV, knock yourself out..  Sure EQ1 could tweak things to make it even better, however in my opinion "raiding" had become more Esport ego, then social gaming..  I'm here to have fun playing a game, my epeen is JUST FINE and doesn't need any help from a raid drop.. LOL

IF I was emperor of the MMO universe, I would abolish all raid ID's and lockouts.. make sure that max raid size is atleast 60+.. and have a variety of mobs (not necessarly bosses) designed for the 10,20,30, 40 and 50 people..  Not everyone can be an elite button masher.. I have no problems letting others ride on my coattails in raiding.. especially friends and guildmates..

Originally posted by Rydeson

IF I was emperor of the MMO universe, I would abolish all raid ID's and lockouts.. make sure that max raid size is atleast 60+.. and have a variety of mobs (not necessarly bosses) designed for the 10,20,30, 40 and 50 people..  Not everyone can be an elite button masher.. I have no problems letting others ride on my coattails in raiding.. especially friends and guildmates..

You know how many free riders are going to show up?

Originally posted by Rydeson

Just adding my 2 cents worth.. Many I agree with, many I disagree with..  Since my first raiding days of EQ1 I enjoyed what raiding we did with the guild I was in.. It was social, no one was told to sit out, everyone and anyone that showed up, earned dragon points and all was happy..  

Since the creation of this limited capacity tier grind, I have no use for raiding.. This applies to WoW, Rift and SWTOR.. Having lockouts with limited raid size only adds drama to the guild and game..  Even puging is damaged because of raid ID lockouts.. Raiding in EQ1 when I played had none of this.. If you wanted to farm TOV, knock yourself out..  Sure EQ1 could tweak things to make it even better, however in my opinion "raiding" had become more Esport ego, then social gaming..  I'm here to have fun playing a game, my epeen is JUST FINE and doesn't need any help from a raid drop.. LOL

IF I was emperor of the MMO universe, I would abolish all raid ID's and lockouts.. make sure that max raid size is atleast 60+.. and have a variety of mobs (not necessarly bosses) designed for the 10,20,30, 40 and 50 people..  Not everyone can be an elite button masher.. I have no problems letting others ride on my coattails in raiding.. especially friends and guildmates..

Some of my favorite raiding experiences in any MMO was just hanging out farming Hate/Fear/Kael/ToV with my guild.  People came and went as they pleased, no set roster, no lockouts to worry about, start time was when there was enough people to start killing, end time was when there wasn't enough people to keep going.

Originally posted by sirphobos

Originally posted by Rydeson

Just adding my 2 cents worth.. Many I agree with, many I disagree with..  Since my first raiding days of EQ1 I enjoyed what raiding we did with the guild I was in.. It was social, no one was told to sit out, everyone and anyone that showed up, earned dragon points and all was happy..  

Since the creation of this limited capacity tier grind, I have no use for raiding.. This applies to WoW, Rift and SWTOR.. Having lockouts with limited raid size only adds drama to the guild and game..  Even puging is damaged because of raid ID lockouts.. Raiding in EQ1 when I played had none of this.. If you wanted to farm TOV, knock yourself out..  Sure EQ1 could tweak things to make it even better, however in my opinion "raiding" had become more Esport ego, then social gaming..  I'm here to have fun playing a game, my epeen is JUST FINE and doesn't need any help from a raid drop.. LOL

IF I was emperor of the MMO universe, I would abolish all raid ID's and lockouts.. make sure that max raid size is atleast 60+.. and have a variety of mobs (not necessarly bosses) designed for the 10,20,30, 40 and 50 people..  Not everyone can be an elite button masher.. I have no problems letting others ride on my coattails in raiding.. especially friends and guildmates..

Some of my favorite raiding experiences in any MMO was just hanging out farming Hate/Fear/Kael/ToV with my guild.  People came and went as they pleased, no set roster, no lockouts to worry about, start time was when there was enough people to start killing, end time was when there wasn't enough people to keep going.

exactly.. In my guild in EQ1.. Those of us on the east coast would form up about 6 or 7pm.. Everyone was invited and as long as we had tanks and healers, we were good to go.. I played a druid, so you know my job..  TAXI... TAXI... TAXI.. oh and I also did heals for my group which was normally casters..  I would earn dragon points for maybe 3 hours of raiding, and often logged off.. As the west coast people logged on, they filled our slots..  NO raid was dependant on the "main" tank or healers like today's raiding..  A raid night didnt' stop because of few people left..  Guildies came and left as they desired and it had virtually NO effect on the guild...  

Originally posted by DJJazzy

plenty of raid games out there, hardly dead

Read better the OP post..................

Originally posted by Rydeson

Just adding my 2 cents worth.. Many I agree with, many I disagree with..  Since my first raiding days of EQ1 I enjoyed what raiding we did with the guild I was in.. It was social, no one was told to sit out, everyone and anyone that showed up, earned dragon points and all was happy..  

Since the creation of this limited capacity tier grind, I have no use for raiding.. This applies to WoW, Rift and SWTOR.. Having lockouts with limited raid size only adds drama to the guild and game..  Even puging is damaged because of raid ID lockouts.. Raiding in EQ1 when I played had none of this.. If you wanted to farm TOV, knock yourself out..  Sure EQ1 could tweak things to make it even better, however in my opinion "raiding" had become more Esport ego, then social gaming..  I'm here to have fun playing a game, my epeen is JUST FINE and doesn't need any help from a raid drop.. LOL

IF I was emperor of the MMO universe, I would abolish all raid ID's and lockouts.. make sure that max raid size is atleast 60+.. and have a variety of mobs (not necessarly bosses) designed for the 10,20,30, 40 and 50 people..  Not everyone can be an elite button masher.. I have no problems letting others ride on my coattails in raiding.. especially friends and guildmates..

QFW

When I was playing Everquest, I remember starting to raid at lvl 40 when my guild mates were all 60.

I didn't bring much to the raid but they brought me along anyway, so I learned the tactics just by watching them.

Those days MMOs and Raiding were very social, today is all about Gear checks and DPS Meter............as you said a cheap Esport I am not interested in.

The problem with raids are they're getting smaller, and more gimmicky, and the tier system is so broken and exclusionary, that it ruins any social dynamic big raids used to have.

Raids designed like EQ are bad. Linear progression, elitism, bleck.

Raids designed like DAoC's system, of dynamic AI, and allowing anyone to hop into the raid (because the raids got their difficulty from AI, not from gear and stats) and have a chance to have fun. They also weren't the only thing the game had going for it, so there was never any camping issues, because the game had plenty of other stuff to do, and things to strive for.

Give me the 100 man raids against the Dragon, or the 6 hour long raids in Caer Sidi that took several groups doing things in different places at the same time, working together to progress. None of it instanced.

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.

The issue is the MMORPG industry has changed and the gamer genre has also changed.

Companies are not interested in the *gamer* anymore they are only interested in the return they can get in a very fast and accelerated pace now due to the sheer number of people who they know will buy a title that is over hyped in todays market.

It is safe to say that most AAA titles will sell easily, 4+ million titles on release? At 50 bux a pop, most AAA titles today seem to avergage a total cost from 100 - 150 million dollars to make, less if they are simply doing a westernized localization of a KR game that is already made.

I have been going over this with my guildies for the past few years now, and as we sit back and watch the MMORPG spiral down into this cess pool under the notion of casual gaming, it is simply doomed. Do you really think that a potential 100 million players are simply going to quit gaming tomorrow, to make a stance on the current state the MMORPG industry is in? No, so while there is always that potential to make bulk $$$ from a cookie cutter sand box style MMORPG, it is not going to change.

EQ was designed by gamers for gamers. Games today are designed by developers who have little to no understanding of the current player, they simply go of stats. Perfect example is this, the trend on MMORPG's today is they stay very populated and healthy for roughly 6 - 8 months, at which point the trend has proven that this is the point where the populace has hit max level and has little left to do. Some turn to raiding, some turn to running dailies, some turn to crafting, all of which are only half heartly done today. It leaves little to no desire for people to consistantly log in and play anymore. So more often then not, they quit and move on to the next game that has that new shiny feel with ample content again.

The thing I will never understand is, gamers in general who play these games no matter how casual or hardcore they might be, are always playing something. If they aren't playing this game, they are playing that game, if they aren't playing that game, they are playing the other game and so on and so on. No one in today's genre is simply playing nothing, with so many ways to access so many different styles of gaming online through god knows how many different portals, no one is simply playing nothing. So why the sheer lack of content? I also believe this gives companies an excuse to be lazy, uninventive, unimaginative and just simply down right abusive to us as paying customers. Another thing I will never understand is all the people who were scared to even go near a MMORPG back in the old days are now playing several casual based games today and most likely spending as much time invested per week across several titles as we used to in one game.........mind boogling and they used to use the arguments, life card, I work card, I don't live in my mums basement card etc etc.

At the end of the day, the MMORPG industry is simply becoming Action based Small Mulitplayer/CO-OP RPG and people need to ethier just learn to adapt and accept it, SMCOOPRPG? The only things we can do as long term old school players is, talk about how good the old times were.

Sadly, there is nothing we can do about it but adapt. Are guilds really guilds anymore when raids only house 10 people? Is there any need to have 50+ people in a guild anymore if the game is only designed for 10man raids? It simply makes me sad that people are trying to justify that raids are not dying because 10 man content is *raiding*.

On a final note, I truely believe that one day, a company will grow some balls and go, "Hey, there is millions upon millions of potential players out there now who are simply sick and tired of this casual game hopping experience, lets give them something great and reap the benefits!!!!!". Until that day, games will simply be nothing more then what we see today, I mean look at how bad it is honestly getting, games are now going to the lengths of removing the holy trinity to make it even easier......again, what is the point of even being in a guild when you can solo to max level?

I will leave you with a final question, what is the point in playing an MMORPG if all you do is solo or use dungeon finder tools to instantly joing PUG groups with no social aspect required at all?

as much as people like to pooh-pooh raiding these days, no mmo since wow has had substantial raid content. i'm not a big fan of wow; i don't think it's a well-rounded mmo and i certainly don't think raiding should be the be-all and end-all, but raiding is what has kept wow afloat. newer mmos can't even get that part right.

and although i loved the entire everquest journey, nothing beat amassing a force of 70 people to take down raid mobs.

I think raiding has been dying for a while, and there are several reasons/symptoms of this:

- The reduction of raid sizes: this is the first sign that people aren't interested in raiding with 40 people, and not even with 25 people. If 10 people is the raid size played by 90% of raid guilds, is that really raiding at all?

- The social aspect: tied in to raid sizes, I remember 40 man and 25 man as raiding with a large number of strangers. With 10-man raiding however, you are only raiding with people you actually know with perhaps just 1 or 2 people you don't know well, and socially this is more satisfying. But again, how different is this from doing a 5-man dungeon with only close friends? A 10-man raid bringing together 2 groups of close friends is probably a good medium, but again, this isn't raiding really.

- The change in MMO priorities: old MMOs had to have a gear treadmill and stat progression to hook players. After all, if the game isn't fun in itself, why would people play? The answer: to complete a gear-set. To get that last piece they need to feel "complete". To drop their pants, so to speak. New MMOs don't rely on gear progression as much, if at all.

- Farming and grinding for raids: this was for a long time a major requirement and a lot of players hated it. They would bear it for the sake of getting their drops, but as gaming evolves these sorts of boring, pointless time-sinks are disappearing. Thank god.

- The change in gaming patterns: people used to play one game, and one game only. Now people play multiple games. F2P games like LoL, DOTA etc mean that people spend their "downtime" between raids playing other games instead of just farming for the next raid. 

- MMOs themselves are changing. Whereas gameplay used to be static, grinding and UI-based, MMOs are becoming closer to action games with timing, speed and precision being more important determinants of success. Basically, newer MMOs are about skill and knowledge rather than gear or UI. MMOs are becoming more like MOBAs, they're quicker and more skill-based.

I play two heavy raid oriented games, Rift and WoW.  They're both extremely hard (yes, I said WoW was hard! If you say otherwise, you haven't tried Pandaria Heroic Raids...Empress on Heroic is insanely OP!!!).  Rift is more of your typical Raid set up, which anyone who's play older WoW or EQ or EQ2 would seem familiar with.  WoW has done something that I actually like more.  You can do 25 man raids using the LFR tool.  Some might say that this is not raiding, but I actually have a good time doing LFR.  It's always a good laugh to see how bad some people can be (Some even mess up on purpose...see THIS IS ELEGON! lol).  It's also a nice break from doing Heroic raids.

I raid in both games weekly in the core raid groups.  They both are fun and something new to do all the time. I do miss the old 40man raids though.  Almost everyone does 10 man raids now, but occasionally my guild in WoW will do 25 man, since the drop rate is increased by alot.

If someone mentioned this, sorry for bringing it up again.  I didn't see it.

The biggest thing about Everquest raiding when I played was the sheer volume of horizontal content.  The idea that 2% of the population makes it to see given content is absolutely ridiculous.  It was never like that in EQ with probably the exception of Vex Thal due to a ridiculous key quest.  I was the top guild on my server during PoP, and I routinely went back to help guilds my friends were in in Vex Thal (prior expansion) and multiple raids in Scars of Velious because people were still doing those raids because the group content had yet to invalidate itemization from raid content from two expansions prior.

Burning Crusade started the assault on raiding.  My Naxx gear was rendered meaningless by trivially achievable sub-70 blues.  Every WoW expansion has provided vertical expansion of content.  All prior group content has been essentially eliminated except to provide a breather during leveling.  All raid content is meaningless except for transmog.  Guilds were torn apart in the drop from 40 man to 25 man.  If you look at most games, there has been a continued assault on guilds or clans.  These thrive on larger group content and MMOs just aren't putting out large group content.  I doubt there are many people who remember DKP anymore.

There has also been a huge de-emphasis on gear progression.  You can hit level cap and gear yourself out almost instantly.  You don't have to go through prior content to get geared.  You can pretty much just pick up where ever.

I think the loss of raiding is pretty terrible.  It's killed guilds and guilds were one of the biggest draws in an MMO.

Originally posted by Greyhooff

I think raiding has been dying for a while, and there are several reasons/symptoms of this:

 

- The reduction of raid sizes: this is the first sign that people aren't interested in raiding with 40 people, and not even with 25 people. If 10 people is the raid size played by 90% of raid guilds, is that really raiding at all?

 

- The social aspect: tied in to raid sizes, I remember 40 man and 25 man as raiding with a large number of strangers. With 10-man raiding however, you are only raiding with people you actually know with perhaps just 1 or 2 people you don't know well, and socially this is more satisfying. But again, how different is this from doing a 5-man dungeon with only close friends? A 10-man raid bringing together 2 groups of close friends is probably a good medium, but again, this isn't raiding really.

 

- The change in MMO priorities: old MMOs had to have a gear treadmill and stat progression to hook players. After all, if the game isn't fun in itself, why would people play? The answer: to complete a gear-set. To get that last piece they need to feel "complete". To drop their pants, so to speak. New MMOs don't rely on gear progression as much, if at all.

 

- Farming and grinding for raids: this was for a long time a major requirement and a lot of players hated it. They would bear it for the sake of getting their drops, but as gaming evolves these sorts of boring, pointless time-sinks are disappearing. Thank god.

 

- The change in gaming patterns: people used to play one game, and one game only. Now people play multiple games. F2P games like LoL, DOTA etc mean that people spend their "downtime" between raids playing other games instead of just farming for the next raid. 

 

- MMOs themselves are changing. Whereas gameplay used to be static, grinding and UI-based, MMOs are becoming closer to action games with timing, speed and precision being more important determinants of success. Basically, newer MMOs are about skill and knowledge rather than gear or UI. MMOs are becoming more like MOBAs, they're quicker and more skill-based.

There was no real reason for blizzard to move raids down to 25 members, my best guess based on analysis of what went on during that time period was that blizzard gambled and won: by moving raids from 40 to 25 they tore apart a number of guilds - whose members then formed new guilds and invited friends from other games to come join them in an attempt to balance out their numbers. Then again, maybe they just tarded out and got lucky - in either case the move made raids worse over-all because corporate executives producing so-called AAA titles in the mmo industry are still creaming in their pants to copy WoW, never mind the fact that this has been shown to create games which flop or fizzle out.

(aside: if you have 40, or 54, or 72 man raids and you're short even a whole group you can still get some stuff done. You cant go trounce naxx25 with 20 people when naxx25 is current content for you, you COULD clear a few of the easier bosses with 30 when naxx40 was current content for you. and 35 could clear naxx40(albeit with a considerable portion of the raid at least partially naxx geared already) -  Ergo larger raids allow for more flexibility of design and give guilds the ability to progress without having exact numbers and class balance. smaller raids force guilds into restrictive roles where they must have a certain mix of classes and an exact number of players in order to accomplish anything)

Raiding in an action based interface requires LESS skill. I'm not saying that rotations aren't god aweful boring, but it doesnt require much skill to click LMB repeatedly(or just hold it, depending on the game) while holding down your strafe key to kite the boss around while keeping him in your reticule - which pretty much defines "raiding" and even "grouping" in all the "action-interface-type" MMOs out to date.

There's no evidence that people are "uninterested" in raiding with 40+ people. This "fact" is an assumption based on the fact that nobody has the option for anything but 10 or 25 man raids in pretty much every game that isnt a decade or more old. I remember raids like Inktu'ta in EQ1's GoD expansion. Where rogues had to fan out through the zone and disarm traps that spawned bajillions of bugs that would swarm and overcome your raid. Where a ranger had to use track to determine which of the split mirror images of noqufiel was real so you could burn it. Or uqua where everybody got an emote, which was different for each person, and had to obey it for your raid to progress through the elevator trap. And these were 54man raids, if we were short on people for a day it wasnt a big deal, we could get a partial zone clear done and come back to finish in force the next raid day. You don't have that level of sophistication in "modern" mmo raiding because WoW showed greedy corporate asshats that if they made games easy enough for morons to win at they could make tons of money. There's the reason that tank n spank(with possibly 1 or 2 mechanics) raids of 10 or 25 people are all the rage in MMOs today - it made blizzard billions and everybody else is trying to clone the cow so they can get some milk too.