Endgames and Raiding

I rather liked this thread on the World of Warcraft forums, “Is Raiding always the endgame to MMOs?“. Several players recount the endgames of various MMOGs (bonus: in an intelligent, articulate and non-confrontational manner!) and give their opinions on what was fun and what was definitely not fun.

The original poster, Fappa, level 13 posting alt of the Argent Dawn realm, wrote:

WoW is the first MMO that I’ve ever really played extensively and gotten into, and it’s clear to me after playing the game since 2005 that raiding is and will always be the endgame to WoW. Yes, there’s arena (which occupies like one hour a week), and there’s daily quests, heroics, professions, etc. to do at 70, but really, if you want the best gear and the hardest challenges this game has to offer you have to raid.

Since I haven’t played any other MMOs extensively, I don’t know what their endgames are like. Is the endgame to MMO always raiding (10+ highly coordinated players)?

Reply #8 described DAoC’s endgame:

The endgame of DAOC was entirely PvP based, and still is if you want to play it… Game goes like this:

-3 factions
-Level to 50
-Do some raids and get some gear crafted
-Enter the frontier, an area as big as the leveling areas for the 3 factions, had like 24 captureable keeps, siege weapons, like ballista, catapults, and boiling oil you could dump on people trying to break into a keep you were defending… each faction had a relic that if captured, gave your entire faction a boost to damage, as much as a 20% bonus if you held both relics. Also, there was a whole system of PvP experience points that opened up a whole new progression of abilities that you could get only by PvPing.

I really wish WoW would steal this concept.

Reply #17 recounted old skool Star Wars Galaxies (pre-that mess where they turned everything upside down):

Sadly with the success of world of warcraft, many companies will keep thinking this is the way to go. Before SWG got forked up “endgame” was what you made of it, some of us were content with running our businesses, trying to create items that were better than our competition. Or organizing player cities and keeping them running, things that didn’t always involve scurrying in the same dungeons week after week. However I can’t speak for what everyone else considers fun, just more or less it would be nice if a game offered more options for gameplay than simply tossing instances at us that not everyone wants to do.

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A Mean Idea to Call My Own

Traveling today, back in my adopted town tomorrow.

In the meantime … I’ve done some work on back info you might find amusing. As you’ve probably noticed, I revamped the look around AFK Gamer. (And if you’re reading blogs via feed reader only, you’re wrong.) More importantly, I fixed some of the static pages and expanded the historical record. If you’re the type who enjoys second-guessing others’ poor decisions (e.g. mine) — and we’re talking YEARS OLD decisions here — you might enjoy this.

Within the limits of blurred memories, I documented my game characters and guilds over the past ten years. Here’s an example of why this is mildly amusing: EQ – Original Main: Druid (soloing juggernaut), Next Main: Bard (post-Luclin soloing juggernaut), Constant Alt: Cleric (equip my Mains, kthxbye).

Takes me a while to figure out the system, but once I do, immersion and community be damed, I’m working it.

While it took me weeks to remember all that and piece together the dates, I realized that most of the memories had become fond ones. That’s one of the advantages of losing your mind.

You Will Not Evade Me!

Some days I can’t help but miss some of the little things in past games I’ve played. Truly, the little things are what you remember in the end, not the phat loot piece #305830 you received.

Long ago, in a galaxy far far..err wrong content. Back when DAoC (Dark Age of Camelot) was new, I hailed it as my final escape from Everquest (how wrong I was). The game itself wasn’t that bad, and it followed the general EQ way of things (which in the end was its Achille’s Heel, imo). PvP was very well done, however, I didn’t maintain interest in the overall game long enough to fully explore it.

The best part of DAoC were the zone-wide death messages. When anyone died in the same area you were in, you were greeted with “Soandso was slain by …..!”. I found it particularly amusing when the same boss killed the same group over and over and over again. Or when Noob_152 was killed by the same level 3 wolf and you wondered how they would ever survive and make it in the game (They’d just remake as a healer, since almost everything is forgiven when you’re the least-played, most-needed class). Whenever I noticed some douche I hated being repeatedly killed, I’d be compelled to just watch for more death spam. Often times my group would notice I stopped paying attention for prolonged periods of time. They would then decide to train me for making their lives difficult, and, my death spam was then broadcast much to the joy of others. Bastards.

Everquest had a similar feature, (it was later removed) zone-wide summon messages. Select higher level mobs had the ability to summon anyone on their hate list who was out of melee range. The shrooms in Sebilis (King especially) were some of the best bringers of hilarity. Once the spam ended, (You could easily get over 30 messages before a wipe) /yells of King camp now open! or /yell Good luck getting your corpses back without gear, douche bags! would follow. It was like Warcraft’s Barrens chat, but, instead of wanting to spoon your eyes out with a fork, you’d laugh your ass off.

Blizzard, you’ve followed the Everquest mold so closely in many regards. Why not take another step forward and add in the zone wide death messages? Think of all the fun times!