Hal Hanlin has left

[Lathais]

My impression of raiding was that it was more difficult and thus would at least take similar time commitments. I guess it really is the difference that raiding is more of a 'culture' over yonder, where as a raider you pretty much play constantly in order to keep up with the Jonses.

I don't see Rift having that problem, so perhaps it is filled with people like me who have kinda maxed out their experience outside of raiding and then take it that one step further and actually raid. So I guess I can understand that it's not that much of a commitment, but I also have the view that even 2 nights at 4 hours (mandated, not chosen) is too much at this point in my MMO 'career'.

Most guilds are currently running 3 hours, not 4. Still, I completely understand that for some people it is just the fact that they must be on at that time that makes them unable to do it. However, it is no different than say a bowling league or pool league. The team has to have set times to meet that everyone agrees to. You may say well bowling and pool only play once a week. Well that's true, but they also meet 1-2 other nights a week for practice. Also, it is not really a time commitment once you reach a certain point. The only thing it requires outside of raiding is making sure you either can farm mats for, make your own or buy a few raiding consumables. Some guilds even help with this. Really though, all you need is a few Vials and couple Whetstones, at least for melee, not sure what casters use for weapon buffs. It amounts to 20plat or so a raid night, if that. You also need to make sure you can afford to rune your upgrades, though again, guilds are usually very helpful with that. What a lot of guilds I have been in do is just throw your BoE gear in the bank, or there is a specific person to send it to. If everyone does this, there are tons of mats then they rune stuff for free.

Is it more difficult? Yes.
Does it require more time? Yes. An Expert takes 30-45 minutes in a well oiled group. Clearing TotDQ can take an hour even with a well oiled group. That is more time, about double really. FT takes maybe a little longer but once your raid group is geared and knows what to do not really. It's not so much that raiding takes more time, though it does, it requires more attention and coordination though. One person can wipe the whole group fairly easily on a lot of encounters, and that is what makes it "harder" not the amount of time it takes.

Personally, the difficulty for me lies in the fact that I still have rep grinding and other things to do on top of raiding. I still need to grind GHunts, CQ, Keepers, Caretakers and Qaijiri rep. I raid 3 nights a week, 9 hours. That's near my limit already, so the farming on top of that is what brings me up to 20 hours a week. Though the past couple weeks I have not been doing anything other than maybe dailies.

[Fencers]

I have a hard time believing that most raiders in Rift share that view, as raiding is supposed to be more intense in this game, because even crap guilds in WoW still have high commitment requirements for raiding.

I am fairly certain most dedicated raiders in Rift do share that view. As I am currently in and was in a number of HC progression guilds. I play Rift probably less than 3 hours a week when progression has ended.

HC raiding guilds only raid intensely for relatively small periods of time.

FT/EE are gonna be out for how many months now? Do you actually think guilds that cleared that content already going 4 nights a week/7 hours a day as in launch?

It ends. Progression ends.

There are probably less outside activities required to prepare for raiding, but the raiding itself seems just as demanding if not more.

If by demanding you mean, "requires more than an hour of play time"- okay, fair enough.

If by demanding you mean, "requires multiple nights of 4-6 sessions"- no, not at all.

[Lathais]

because even crap guilds in <any game> still have high commitment requirements for raiding.

Just want to expand on this a bit but any crap guild is going to have higher requirements because they spend more time wiping and it takes them more time for each boss and dungeon. Something like TotDQ which takes my guild 1.5 hours on a bad night they can take 2 nights on because they have to "get lucky" on each boss. Granted, when it first comes out this may be the case for better guilds as well, but once you get the encounters down and people get used to it, it takes a lot less time, just like Experts. When Experts first came out they could take 1-2 hours each. Now that people know the fights and have better gear, they take 30-45 minutes.

[Buu]

Hehe, Zynga. Hehe!

Way to contribute to a thread

OT Good on him, might as well go somewhere you will have more to do and try new things, keeps things feeling fresh, especially with being able to work with friends

Sadly, regarding Zynga it IS a valid point. Even more sad is that Zynga still is bound to win from EA in court.

I only don't see which "great opportunities" people see in zynga. I guess it's a contract clause where by declaring this they get a bonus in payment.

[Kelimbror]

I am fairly certain most dedicated raiders in Rift do share that view. As I am currently in and was in a number of HC progression guilds. I play Rift probably less than 3 hours a week when progression has ended.

HC raiding guilds only raid intensely for relatively small periods of time.

I took it to mean that even during raiding it wasn't demanding in this game, so a slight misunderstanding on my part. Obviously the commitment wanes as the content does in just about anything. Though I would wager some competitive guilds in WoW force players to level and raid on their alts since they have an army of them between even 10 players. In Rift that at least isn't needed because you can change souls as you go and gear is very similar.

Just want to expand on this a bit but any crap guild is going to have higher requirements because they spend more time wiping and it takes them more time for each boss and dungeon.

This is true, which is probably why most raiding in WoW has ceased for the LFR.

As a side note, many casual guilds clear content in less attempts than hardcore progression guilds. Granted they have more readily available information and less stress, but I've always found it interesting that some people hold any of these guilds in such high esteem when reality is that they can simply afford the time it takes to do a thousand attempts in one day instead of doing 100 attempts over a month.

[Lathais]

I took it to mean that even during raiding it wasn't demanding in this game, so a slight misunderstanding on my part. Obviously the commitment wanes as the content does in just about anything. Though I would wager some competitive guilds in WoW force players to level and raid on their alts since they have an army of them between even 10 players. In Rift that at least isn't needed because you can change souls as you go and gear is very similar.

The commitment depends on the guild. Some guild, most Hardcore ones, will play heavier when fresh content comes out, this is not always the case though. The guild I mentioned previously that raided one night a week for example. They will still only raid one night a week, though what they do on that night changes. They still only log in one other night a week, and what they do that noght probably does not change unless something new non-raid came out as well. They still only play 6-8 hours a week, it just takes them months instead of weeks to get through the content, though the number of hours played to clear all content and get all the goodies is similar.

[Fencers]

I took it to mean that even during raiding it wasn't demanding in this game, so a slight misunderstanding on my part. Obviously the commitment wanes as the content does in just about anything. Though I would wager some competitive guilds in WoW force players to level and raid on their alts since they have an army of them between even 10 players. In Rift that at least isn't needed because you can change souls as you go and gear is very similar.

I don't know the specifics of Warcraft raiding in this current era of the game. Though Rift is fairly close to the same pattern of raid guild activity I have partaken of in other MMOs which allowed tiered raiding; EQ2, RA, TSW, et cetera.

Rift's raid scene is much smaller than Warcraft's scene. There is less competition as a result. Naturally, the mechanics are different w/r/t the class singularity of Warcraft.

[Puremallace]

Rift's raid scene is much smaller than Warcraft's scene. There is less competition as a result. Naturally, the mechanics are different w/r/t the class singularity of Warcraft.

I bet competition increases now that it is not as exclusive as before and the raids are now heavily tested before release. Noone can claim X guild had some advantage anymore

[Tarien]

I bet competition increases now that it is not as exclusive as before and the raids are now heavily tested before release. Noone can claim X guild had some advantage anymore

The lack of competition is as much about lack of competitors as it is about who has been able to test encounters. In addition, there's no way to do anything like wowprogress.com (or the old RIFT equivalents) without huge amounts of manual effort because there is no armory to crawl through. No one since Voodoo quit back at the start of ID has stepped up to make a replacement site, and there is no ingame equivalent.

[Lathais]

I bet competition increases now that it is not as exclusive as before and the raids are now heavily tested before release. Noone can claim X guild had some advantage anymore

I do not think she was referring to competition over WF/SF but more competition for raid spot. A lot of raiding guilds you have to fight for your spot because there are more raiders than there are guilds, so each guild has a surplus of raiders. You have to compete against those people for your spot and put yourself above them in some way. Either higher DPS, doesn't die to fire or is just a friendly helpful guy who is capable of calling things out for people in a consistent and friendly manner. In some way you must show that you are better than the next guy and compete with him for your spot. However, this is just not the case in Rift currently. There are more guilds wanting to raid and having issues filling their core ranks. They are having issues with people showing up every night. You don't have to compete as hard for your raid spot because there are a lot of guilds out there just looking for warm bodies.

[Fencers]

I bet competition increases now that it is not as exclusive as before and the raids are now heavily tested before release. Noone can claim X guild had some advantage anymore

Unlikely. Rift just doesn't have that kind of population.

Since Everquest went into "sleeper" mode, no MMO has had robust PVE raiding competitiveness. Except World of Warcraft. Because WOW is huge. Goddamn huge.

[Arbs]

Unlikely. Rift just doesn't have that kind of population.

Since Everquest went into "sleeper" mode, no MMO has had robust PVE raiding competitiveness. Except World of Warcraft. Because WOW is huge. Goddamn huge.

Huge as there is World First Races all over the World US/Canada/Latin America/Oceanic vs EU/Russia Vs TW/KR

http://manaflask.com/en/ &
http://manaflask.com/en/article/2315...on-4-13-in-10m