Competing for Bosses in MMORPGs

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This question was on the Pantheon MMO Twitter account the other day:

Two guilds arrive at an overland raid mob, what are the unspoken rules in place as to who gets to go first? What would your guild do?

This reminds me of the days when I was relevant enough in the "top tier player" scene to even bother thinking about this kind of stuff. I was the guild leader of the top raiding guild on our server in vanilla days. We competed for Kazzak and the Dragons of Nightmare that would spawn.

There was only one other guild that could down them, and it was always a race to see who could get there first and pull. We respected the pull when it happened, but would often pray they pulled before the rest of their team was there or got sloppy so that we could have a turn.

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Kazzak was always less fun because of people screwing with your pull. This boss had a mechanic that if not properly dealt with basically wiped your raid. It was annoying.

What do I think of competing for overland raid mobs? I don't like it one bit -- not anymore. In fact I never liked the stress, the pressure, or the competition of it all.

This goes hand in hand with my Ideal MMORPG Loot System. Personal loot. Everyone can participate. World bosses should be an "everyone can participate" event. I loved back in teh day in DAoC when we would take out bosses as a big server group. Anyone could show up. I don't like that loot system, but if you replaced that loot system with the same community feel we had on our server, I'd be game.

As much as it's a nice mechanic for those who are privileged to be a in a guild that takes on such mobs, the 95% + will never be there. Modern MMO content design needs to be more inclusive.

  • Don’t agree with this at all. Content like this should be reserved for the elite.

    Look at EQ and ff11, the plebs level the real players raid.

    Pantheon is Everquest 3, and I hope they make it hardcore and challenging.

    • You don’t really believe that, do you? I’m curious what games you’ve ever played where you were part of the elite. I know you didn’t play EQ, DAoC, or any game that was ever considered “hardcore.” Maybe FF11? Did that have world bosses only one group could race to and kill first?

      Calling someone a pleb for leveling, especially back in a game like EQ where leveling was most of the game, doesn’t make sense.

      • To piggy back, Bartillo, you said the same thing about Wild Star. A game designed for the “Hardcore”. Out of the group of us I believe I was one of the few to hit max level very quickly. There was nothing to do in the game as the “High Level” dungeons and gear systems were broken.

        The game had promise, but It was a misshapen beast of tone. Sometimes set to be light-hearted and funny, and within the next quest an epic tear-jerker. I honestly can’t remember if you got to max level, but I don’t remember doing dungeons with you.

        Making a game with the intent of limiting your player base is just a dumb idea on so many levels. I’m going to make this EPIC game where all the story comes together, but it will only be available to people that have IPs in Wyoming. If my players are truly “Hardcore” they will move to Wyoming. You see how dumb that sounds?

        What ever happened to that epic called Wildstar? I know they went F2P after touting their subscription service and being the next wow killer.

  • Oh God, the griefing on those world dragons… and yes, kazzak was such a pain! Good times, but such you really learned which guilds were the assholes really fast. 😛 If there were an instanced system in which the guild leader could activate once a week or something, that would be nice. like a special area you have to log into. 🙂

  • It’s all still risk reward. Or possibly just “work” reward in this case. Who wants to really stand around for 3 hours with 30-40 people (back in the day…but probably 12 now) waiting for a mob to spawn? Why would they do that? They wouldn’t unless there was a big loot advantage.

    They beat your casual (ie no “work”) guild to the spawn. They should have it.

    Now if you get there first and they screw with your raid I have a way different opinion. God I hate people who do that.

  • One could design all raids to be instanced, regardless of location.

    I think that is far less immersion breaking than having people screw with your pull.

    I am all for the idea of seamless integration between zones, but not at the expense of degrading my enjoyment in game.