GW2 raids?

[tadzio]

So far all ive heard about are large scale dynamic events and dungeons. Do you think they will implement any kind of wow like raids?

"Now we have some bosses at the end of our hardcore raid dungeons that are 5-man raids and those ones require much more group coordination" -Colin Johanson. at 11:32 of totalbiscut's "Guild Wars - Guild Wars 2 - High Level Asura Guardian Gameplay - Part 1" (cant link because new poster sorry)

There will be raids, this is a common misconception, 5-man raids. Now I'm assuming they mean the "explorable" mode of their 5-man dungeons. There are 8 of the 5-man dungeons which have 3 different dungeons in each. If I'm right in my assumption then they are releasing with 24 end game 5-man raids.

[Chickat]

If you are going to play a game just to gain better gear then guild wars 2 is not the game for you. Guild wars 2 is a game to have fun and continue to have fun without some stupid grind to max level to oh wait... another grind for gear.

You are probably right, but its gonna be hard to get out of the "WoW" mindset. In order to do that, guild wars 2 will need to be very good in other aspects of the game.

[Milanor]

Also, just because he said 5-man raid, in one video (you won't find another), doesn't mean its a misconception. He probably said it because he knows of Totalbiscuit, and that was the easiest way to explain it.

I'm certain I've heard the developers (maybe not Colin specifically) use the term "five-man raid" in at least two other videos. Unfortunately, I don't have the time to go digging through to find them, so there's a good chance I could be wrong.

In any case, I don't see why, at this stage in the game, five-man raid is any more accurate or inaccurate than any other term you could slap on the Explorable Dungeons.

[nixcookies]

Personally I'm pretty happy with the look of the game as it stands now, with the dynamic events and different mode available in dungeons should provide with more than enough satisfaction, I think it looks a lot more fun.

I think a lot of people are just having a hard time to get out of the mind-set of WoW, but people need to have more of an open mind and give the game a chance.

[Kaelwryn]

There will be no raids, as you have said yourself, they are "explorer mode" dungeons. They have no intentions of placing any type of raiding into the game as of now.

About gear progression, it will be there, up until level 80, and probably a little bit after, until you hit the plataea. So in a sense, there won't be gear progression, yet gear is still more important than GW1. We have seen marks that you attach to your gear, which they could expand upon with new expansion. How these work, is like tier sets in WoW. The more or the same marks you put on gear, the more bonuses you get from them.

Also, just because he said 5-man raid, in one video (you won't find another), doesn't mean its a misconception. He probably said it because he knows of Totalbiscuit, and that was the easiest way to explain it.

Imo, I don't think it is wrong to call the explorable dungeons "raids" seeing as the devs. have stated that the 5-mans will be harder and require far more coordination than DEs. So essentially the 5-mans are GW2 "raids". I don't remember which video it was, but I think it was TB's video with Colin, where it was said.

Edit: Figured out which video it was! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfY0KIWH-oU - It is towards the end of the video iirc.

[fishious]

You are probably right, but its gonna be hard to get out of the "WoW" mindset. In order to do that, guild wars 2 will need to be very good in other aspects of the game.

The WoW mindset is going to be what ends up making people (who haven't done their research about how GW2 will work, mind you) try and flame this game I think. "No end game raiding?!!? Where will I get all my derps from!? What do I do when I get Herp to lvl 80 and have nothing else to do!?" The best advice I can think of is.. if you HAVE to have full, set raid content, GW2 is not the game for you. Just go back to playing the same generic stuff that Blizzard is pumping out. We'll be here enjoying the large scale PvE events and dynamic PvP.

[tadzio]

He never calls them "raids" is that video, he says they are there for the more hardcore raiders. I'm just trying to do damage control, one guy says its a misinterpretation, it spreads like wildfire, and then everyone and their mother thinks GW2 has raids. It will not have raids and explorer mode dungeons shouldn't be called such. I'd just hate to see people without knowledge of the game, make their decision to buy GW2 because they heard it has raids, only to be let down.

Now having said that, explorer mode dungeons might be GW2's "raid" content, from a difficulty standpoint, but slapping the title "Raid" on it, will only cause confusion and mislead todays gamers.

I don't see why we can't call them raids. A raid is a group of people working together to defeat an encounter. While yes typically it means more people than the standard "team" size I don't really see the issue if you look at how raids have evolved. Raids have been getting smaller and smaller ever since EQ1 days. 72-man raids quickly became 54-man raids in EQ1 then 42-man raids(It might have gotten lower since 2008 but I haven't been keeping up on EQ1 stuff). Then WoW introduced the 40-man which became 25-man which became the optional 25-man and the 10-man forefront raid. Is 5 less people doing arguably the same thing(enter dungeon, kill bosses) so much different that we can't call it the same thing? I'd say not, and with the fact that Colin himself called them raids I'd say the "Raid" title on them is appropriate and good to use to draw in the random WoW raider who might instantly see "no raids" and think "omgwtfbbq no raids? this game has no endgame content it sucks" when actually there will be a lot of coordinated, scripted pve events inside an instance at endgame.

[Chickat]

The WoW mindset is going to be what ends up making people (who haven't done their research about how GW2 will work, mind you) try and flame this game I think. "No end game raiding?!!? Where will I get all my derps from!? What do I do when I get Herp to lvl 80 and have nothing else to do!?" The best advice I can think of is.. if you HAVE to have full, set raid content, GW2 is not the game for you. Just go back to playing the same generic stuff that Blizzard is pumping out. We'll be here enjoying the large scale PvE events and dynamic PvP.

Well, I'm not going to cast any judgment on the game until i get at least 1 max level character. That said, I just feel right now that gw2 would be a better game with gear progression and "wow style" raids. Hopefuly i change my mind when i play it, but we will see.

[Eorayn]

God I hope not. I do't want raids. I just want the world bosses, they are more fun and cooler anyway

[Deleted]

I'm really glad there won't be raids. I never liked that aspect in WoW. To taste the story I need to gather other 9 people at least and together hope none of us will fail on bosses. Besides the fact that for the raid leader this is enough to bring white hairs, it's not fun until you actually down a boss, which, if your team compozition or gear sucks, might never happen.

However in 5-people dungeons/raids, it's much easier to coordinate people, and even if each person means more, you need less people and as such you can chose better. Plus, you already have a story mode you can experience in "easier mode" if you're just there for story, which is even more awesome.

Last, I want to say that gear progression is annoying when done wrong. When you have everyone running in same two tiers it's bland and boring, and if a boss doesn't drop that one thing you need or when that other person of same class that just joined the raid this try gets your piece you get annoyed ... well my fellow WoW companions know what I mean. I'm glad GW2 won't have this problem, looking more and more forward to this one.

Speaking of which, some people say there's no need for guilds, well here I disagree, guilds are good for social reasons. I have to ask though since I see some saying there won't be any and some saying you'll be able to join more, which one is true?

If you miss it you might get to the zone because you want to. Let us say it's your fishing habbitat! So, you want to fish. Yet when you come to your fishing place you notice that a motherf***ing DRAGON is resting next to your lake.
That would eat you if you tried to catch a fish. Suddenly you need to kill it for your fishing place to be safe again!

I'm peaceful. I'll just fish some fish and throw one to the dragon and keep one for me and everyone will be happy. Plus, I bet he's only in my lake for a bath, maybe throw him/her a towel. Actually no wonder he/she is so annoyed, poor dragon is taking a bath naked and you come to fish in his/her bathroom? I'd be pissed as well!

[Skyve]

I could imagine that there will be highlevel zones that you will only be able to "take over" if you have a group/guild going there, and getting control over that yields X boni.

[Merendel]

That said, I just feel right now that gw2 would be a better game with gear progression and "wow style" raids. Hopefuly i change my mind when i play it, but we will see.

GW2 is trying to break the notion that "WoW style" raids are needed, among other things. Sadly the MMO market is a victim of WoW's success. Most of WoW's concepts are not new, just very well done. That success has made almost every other big name out there think that the only way for a game to be as good as WoW is to follow the exact same formula, just with their own branding. WoW's formula is not necessarily bad but its not the only way to do things. If they can pull it off it will be better for the MMO comunity as a whole if GW2 stays as far away as possible from the tried and true formula WoW laid out. If it does maybe other companies will follow suit and try new formula's so we can have games that suite the wow playstyle, the GW playstyle and hopefuly new playstyles that all work and are enjoyable. Sadly I can only give that thought a maybe because most MMO designers are not innovative, if GW2's style proves better than WoW they likely wont break the mold, they'll just copy GW2's formula and not come up with their own.

[fishious]

I like the idea of open world raids because it will simply make it more accessible to other people. I raided in WoW from release, but my rl friends who joined in after WotLK was released weren't able to ever really catch up to my guild progress so I never got to play with them. This way, especially with the sidekick system, I will always be able to go around and help them out on quests/big mobs. Then we can go and fight huge mobs together.

There are also a lot of ways to sell the idea of a 5-man raid. Just because there are 5 PCs in there doesn't mean they can't send you with more NPCs to help out. What if one of the 'raids' is to go and kill some sort of monster, and it's your 5 plus 10 other NPCs. The 10 NPCs ward off mobs while you 5 have to fight a boss, but also make sure that the NPCs stay alive between waves or the mobs will break through. This could involve splitting up the group, going back and forth between supporting the group and the NPCs.. That's just off the top of my head, and there are about a million ways to make that better. The point is that even though there may only be 5 players, doesn't mean that the developers can't make the event feel really epic... and even raid like.

[Kaelwryn]

He never calls them "raids" is that video, he says they are there for the more hardcore raiders. I'm just trying to do damage control, one guy says its a misinterpretation, it spreads like wildfire, and then everyone and their mother thinks GW2 has raids. It will not have raids and explorer mode dungeons shouldn't be called such. I'd just hate to see people without knowledge of the game, make their decision to buy GW2 because they heard it has raids, only to be let down.

Now having said that, explorer mode dungeons might be GW2's "raid" content, from a difficulty standpoint, but slapping the title "Raid" on it, will only cause confusion and mislead todays gamers.

I still don't see how it is wrong to call the 5-man dungeons "raids" as last I looked, a raid is an instance that requires a group of people to coordinate together to take down several bosses. Imo the thing that gets people is that it is 5 man. WoW has pretty much drilled into everyone that 5-mans are easy and you can do it with anyone. GW2 sort of follows that tread by having the story mode, which is intended to be easy and for the average player. However they do step into the realm of raids by having the explorable dungeon which is harder and requires far more coordination than either story mode or dynamic events.

[Wrathonia]

I have always interpreted a "raid" as being a group consisting of multiple party groups. So a 5 man, being a single party group, is impossible to be considered a raid. It can still be end game content, but a raid to me clearly means more than one group.

[Chickat]

I wonder if wow will implement "dynamic content" if gw2 is extremely successful. That's the one thing making me excited about gw2. I'm so tired of traditional quests.

[Anthoren]

I wonder if wow will implement "dynamic content" if gw2 is extremely successful. That's the one thing making me excited about gw2. I'm so tired of traditional quests.

Never underestimate the ability of WoW to...become inspired by other games. But really I doubt it would work very well in the WoW engine and well it would only make me lol and keep playing GW2.

[Chickat]

Never underestimate the ability of WoW to...become inspired by other games. But really I doubt it would work very well in the WoW engine and well it would only make me lol and keep playing GW2.

yea.. i never thought about the engine.. I hope titan turns out to be wow2 with the best of wow and ideas from like gw2 etc. I know that titan isn't wow2 but i can dream.

[Milanor]

I have always interpreted a "raid" as being a group consisting of multiple party groups. So a 5 man, being a single party group, is impossible to be considered a raid. It can still be end game content, but a raid to me clearly means more than one group.

I guess the raid-naming argument seems to be just differences in definition of what a raid is, then.

Well, Guild Wars 2 will have hardcore PvE content and I guess we can leave it at that.

[Rowen]

The only problem with that is, when new dungeons come out with gear that has identical stats. If i dont like the way the new gear looks then i have almost no reason to run the new dungeons more then once or twice.

Why is that a problem? You're not paying for a subscription, so if you don't spend a month repeating the same dungeon again and again and again and again you're not "losing" money.