Raiding and Guild Wars 2

I participated in a heavy discussion earlier today concerning ‘end games’ and ‘raiding’ and theories on how or if ArenaNet would deal with them in Guild Wars 2. Perhaps I’ve been a little tainted by my years in world of warcraft and in having run a raiding guild for a couple years there, but I’d personally come to believe that raiding or something similar is a deciding factor to me about a game.

I really enjoy large group activities in a game. I like getting a group organized and coordinating battle plans to take down large bosses. And I would assume that in GW2, we’re going to at least be fighting one giant, cranky lizard who just woke up.

Friend “B” believes that GW2 will not have any sort of raid content and that the world events are going to be what we look towards for our ‘end game’ activities once we’re 80. He also suggested that personal stories would be a big part of your ‘end game’ activities.

My issues with this is that these settings are either very small groups or solo play. Which perhaps is aimed more for casual players. And the big group feel comes from the random group play that occurs when players all show up to deal with the events in the area.

And I do think the world events are going to be fantastic! It’s the sort of activity that has become something I look for in games now thanks to enjoying it in my Rift play right now. However, if that is part of a majority of what I’ll have to do at 80 then I feel I would quickly grow bored of it. Just as I would grow bored of the dungeons (especially when the gear incentives will not last as long with gear dropping for me every single time I go in) or perhaps get tired of working through my personal storyline (which I don’t know much about yet).

I just know from my Rifting that to me personally, doing those events are going to only be fun when you have a group of folks doing them with you. And at certain times of day or sometimes not at all, you may find yourself with just you or a handful of you. And that event isn’t going to always be that new and interesting and shiny. And you’ll have played through the scenario a few times. Perhaps how the scenario came about may be slightly different, but overall, it will be the same idea behind it.

Perhaps some sort of loot will come from doing them that will give incentive to participating. But then you either have a grind or something so easy to get that it devalues what you got. –[[ A.D.D. moment: They’ve said that each time your group clears a dungeon that everyone would get one piece of loot. I feel this not only devalues the items, but runs the risk of people getting geared so quickly that once the novelty of a dungeon passes on, finding people willing to join up for it will be very difficult. While loot for everyone is a nice idea, I don’t feel it will pay off in the long-run.]]

PvP was another option brought up. For Guild Wars, player vs player is a huge part of the game. However, for folks like myself who kind of knee jerk away from it, it’s not really something we want to do. Though granted I love the entire world vs world vs world idea. And I keep picturing these epic Lord of the Rings movie clashes. However, again, I’m not that big in pvp and while I may do it a few times for the novelty I don’t picture myself really doing it.

I know ArenaNet is trying to break the MMO standards that have been established. However, if they were to not include some sort of ‘raid’ type activity would they provide something else that could be as organized and fun feeling to me? Will I be able to have an enemy to overcome with a team of friends in some sort of epic, end-all, feeling battle?

Too I wonder if perhaps I have simply gotten so used to the ‘end game’ model that I am unable to really enjoy activities I may not perceive to be what I may feel is the ‘end game?’

There is still so much more information to be released yet and it’s an interesting discussion to me. So I guess, what do you guys think about ‘raid content’ and GW2? If it wasn’t really included, how would you feel about it? Would it perhaps leave you feeling less or more likely to play GW2 (and why)? If some sort of raid content was included, what would you hope to get out of it? Do you have other thoughts on this topic that perhaps I didn’t mention?

Thanks for reading!


PS: I will be representing GuildWars2Live at Pax Prime this August. I shall be at the ArenaNet booth with my fancy new video camera attempting to film everything in HD! Be sure to visit their site or follow them on twitter for upcoming news!