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[WoW] Soloing vs guildplay
Panickd
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I like soloing in WoW and let's face it, even if you play with groups 75% of your time is spent in solo play anyway.
My problem with most guilds is that they are overly (some would say insanely) dedicated to the game. It seems most of are only interested in either getting your character to the max level as quick as they can or they won't look at you unless your already there. I have no interest in going from 1-70 in the shortest possible time (I do play 5 different characters on the same server to maximize each characters time in a rested state though). The thing is that I think eventually I'd like to get into BG and maybe the occasional raid. I have no interest at all (less than zero) in rerunning the same raid instance over and over to get maxed out equipment.
And since the chances of getting to play raids as part of a PUG is nearly non-existent, that means joining a guild eventually. Compounding the problem seems to be the fact that I play at odd hours. I work at night and log on in the early morning (when a census usually only picks up about 300 players, at least on the horde side). I occasionally play on the weekends but rarely for more than a few hours at a time.
What I'd like to know is how many good guilds are there out there interested in BG and raid play that are into playing the game like it's a game and not an alternate lifestyle?
My problem with most guilds is that they are overly (some would say insanely) dedicated to the game. It seems most of are only interested in either getting your character to the max level as quick as they can or they won't look at you unless your already there. I have no interest in going from 1-70 in the shortest possible time (I do play 5 different characters on the same server to maximize each characters time in a rested state though). The thing is that I think eventually I'd like to get into BG and maybe the occasional raid. I have no interest at all (less than zero) in rerunning the same raid instance over and over to get maxed out equipment.
And since the chances of getting to play raids as part of a PUG is nearly non-existent, that means joining a guild eventually. Compounding the problem seems to be the fact that I play at odd hours. I work at night and log on in the early morning (when a census usually only picks up about 300 players, at least on the horde side). I occasionally play on the weekends but rarely for more than a few hours at a time.
What I'd like to know is how many good guilds are there out there interested in BG and raid play that are into playing the game like it's a game and not an alternate lifestyle?
Truth is beautiful, without a doubt; but so are lies.
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Wait .... so you don't want to raid after all?
This post confuses me.
I don't see whats confusing about it. I want to run a raid to experience the raid content at least once. I have no desire to do it ad infinitum just for gear and bragging rights.
It's the same way you can't take a level 1 character and take on a high level dungeon. Loot does factor in to your character's strengths, not as much as level, but at max level that's the main difference.
Not sure about PVP as that's never been my thing.
Also, a guild is just a group of people. There are guilds out there that are mainly social things and don't focus on raiding. Usually these guilds don't go that far through the raids, maybe clearing half of Karazhan and Grull if they're lucky. The hard part about raids is the organization and everyone knowing what they're supposed to be doing when.
It looks like you're probably looking for a Casual/PVP guild more than a raiding guild.
For most guilds, raiders are an investment. They don't really have any good reasons to bring you along if you'll go to a raid once and then never appear again.
How about BGs? Or do I need to go on a raid before I can get the armor to be competitive in a BG too?
Also, 25 participants.
OK, clearly raiding isn't going to be my thing then, since I have yet to play for more than 2 1/2 hours in a single sitting.
You should check out wowmovies.com or whatever it's called and just watch all the endgame boss fights. That's what I did after I finally cut the cord.
And just to toot my own horn, this is my guild killing Void Reaver last week.
With a tightly knit and well geared crew, Karazhan can be done in less than 3 hours, but you basically have to take it at a run; everyone has to know the fights, no afk's (or at least, afk during trash while following someone), no breaks, if you ever go more than 2 minutes without fighting or killing something, it's not gonna happen.
Zul'aman has a timed encounter that requires 10 well geared and experienced players to rip up 4 bosses in about 45 minutes, and it's incredibly challenging even with a crew in nearly full Tier 6 (current top raid gear). The last two bosses (assuming they're not jerks) can add another 45 minutes or so, including trash, but again, this is with a very well geared and experienced crew. With a good crew, it can be done in under 3 hours.
Gruul and Magtheridon can be a quick 30-45 minute run apiece, but again, good people, geared people, no wiping.
Serpent Shrine Cavern and Tempest Keep: The Eye ("Tier 5" content) are a good 3-4 hours apiece, and that's 'at a run' with a crew that pretty much outgears the instance and has farmed the shit out of it.
Black Temple and Mount Hyjal ("Tier 6" content); MH can be a 2.5-3 hour clear, and BT is (in my experience) best done over two nights, about 4 hours the first night and around 2 the next. My crew is currently working on speeding both up so that we can do them both combined over the course of 2 nights (BT the first, the last 3 bosses in BT and all of Hyjal the second).
The thing about raiding is that Blizzard eliminated the "spectators" from the mix with TBC. They wanted to tighten the encounters and require everyone to be on the ball. As a group builds cohesion, experience and gear, you slowly earn the ability to knock off raid content in short bursts of time, however, getting to that point can take days, weeks, or even months per boss to get there. As noted above, dedicated raiders are an investment, especially when you get into things like shadow resistance gear (required for an encounter in BT) that inolves literally 5,000+ gold worth in rare dropped materials per person.
As such, if you want to see raid content, I do wish you luck, and hopefully you at least get to tear up Karazhan sometime, as I find it a very enjoyable zone.
Also, I highly recommend "BWL The Movie" by Curse Guild (of Curse Gaming fame), it's an outstanding showcase of one of my favourite instances to date.
Some people have a lot of time on their hands to be producing the stuff on the warcraftmovies site.
Not saying it's not tough, or that you guys don't deserve credit or anything to that effect, but holy fuck is that boring to watch.
Granted, the Void Reaver fight is especially boring. But I've watched my old roommate's guild take down Illidan, and that's not terribly interesting, either.
WoW Rading: HAY GUYZ DO THE SAME THING OVER AND OVER AGAIN 4 HALF AN HOUR K?
*snore*
As opposed to violating or being violated by the same cookie cutter arena teams? "Oh look, another Rogue/Mage/Priest team, business as usual"
People have long held that pve is boring and unimaginative because it's against scripted A.I.'s that behave and respond in predictable patterns.
I submit that, given enough time and experience, people really aren't that much more spontaneous. "Okay, rogue blew AR and BF, sheep him, stun him, blind him, now focus the paladin, and here comes the bubble, dispel..... now, and kill, finish the rogue, collect arena rating, rinse, repeat."
Though I feel exactly the same way about smaller scale PVE (pre-raid stuff).
I don't disagree with you in theory, but if you honestly think there's a greater diversity of action in raiding than there is in PvP, you're... you know what? You don't. You can't. It's not even a comparison. The level of cognitive dissonance required to actually believe that would be absolutely staggering.
The pacing, the action itself, the strategies you'll be facing... they vary greatly in PvP. Especially in the battlegrounds. Where as fights like the Void Reaver are, literally, standing in one place for 10 minutes, firing off the same couple of abilities over and over and over again. And once in a while, you have to move so you don't get fried by some guy with the orb on him. Then you move, and repeat again. I've seen video of that fight, now, from a MT, Echo's paladin, my friend's shaman (resto), and a hunter, and no matter what perspective you're looking at, it's sleep-inducing.
If nothing else, at least killing someone in PvP doesn't take 30 minutes.
I'm not shitting on PVP, but I disagree with shitting on PVE. VR is never a 10 minute "ho hum" kill. Either you can do it and probably violate him in 5ish minutes or less with an overgeared crew, or you don't really have it (or something goes wrong) and you squeak a kill out by the skin of your teeth, like my "alts and people who are bored" crew did last night.
Raiding (especially ZA/T5 and beyond) isn't for everyone, and Arena's / BG Farming isn't for everyone, but to say "_____ is dumb and boring" is a fine perspective to have, as long as you appreciate that others might have a contrary opinion.
There is simply an astounding number of things to do in this game as a solo player, but it's an MMO, so I don't think it's unreasonable for Blizzard to expect you to play with some of the other people in their Massively Multiplayer Game. 2-5 people seems to be where things shine, and if someone has exceptionally limited playtime, I doubt even chewing through the 5 man's (one a day, perhaps) could even seem all that tedious.
Or perhaps we're merely grooming people to have higher and higher thresholds for repetitive tasks. I dunno, I missed the EQ days where, despite the gloss of nostalgia some people have, I'm told that repetitiveness was the order of the day.
I completely agree that PvP requires a more diverse game plan, for the simple reason that every class is different. A 2v2 encounter alone would require 81 distinct strategies based on class alone and not the considerable influence of specification and play style. I would submit, however, that PvE has an interest not apparent through video, and that is mostly social. Getting so many people together on the same page is a feat to be admired, and not all of the encounters are strictly rinse and repeat, especially if you're keeping yourself busy by trying to make up for the less experienced players. If raiding really only required every class to repeat one or two abilities in every encounter you'd have seen a lot more guilds finished with BT three months ago. I think this is especially improved in TBC over the original WoW.
That being said, I don't think the OP should be worried about missing out on fun by not having the time to raid. PvP can be a lot more fun if you happen to like the excitement of competing against other people directly.
Don't knock raiding till you tried it. Yes, a lot of repetitive stuff happens. But many effects are also semi-randomized, making you respond. In fact, all bosses in t6 instances have a major random effect associated with them, except Akama and Najentus. Yes, each individuals role is usually not terribly hard. But the margin for error is terribly low at points, and that's why it's exciting. It's also interesting to check yourself vs. a known benchmark, and see yourself improve. There is a great feeling of power of killing in 2 nights what took 4 nights 2 months ago, and what only 1% of raiders can actually kill. Raiding may be simple, but it's not easy.
On void reaver, you have to dodge orbs. You can teach an 8 year old to do that pretty reliably. But the penalty for not responding is 6k damage+5s silence... 2 of these will kill you. 1 orb is fired every 2 seconds or so, constantly scattering your healers, having random people take damage. There's a threat issue with the tanks, and the melee take a lot of periodic damage. And Void Reaver is considered the easiest fight in t5 instances, together with Lurker (where dodging is easier, but the penalty is pretty much death).
At Illidan, there's a lot of ways to kill yourself, and take a few companions with you. For about 2 minutes of the fight, any 1 wrong move by either of two tanks instantly wipes your whole raid, pretty much. If he's tank wrong, he can heal up a million hitpoints in a second. If you don't stand correctly, you can very easily kill each other for the whole 15-20 minutes of the fight.
PvP is great for those who enjoy it, but it suffers immensely from "Flavor of the Month". If you looked at the list of 100 top arena teams, as surveyed just before christmas, about 90% had at least 4 of the 5 same classes. Those classes, were almost always specced the same way too.
I mean, look at that fight. Look at Illidan. I don't care whose perspective you're watching the fight from, it's almost entitely boring, same-same bullshit, and every so often it's punctuated by some form change that momentarily approaches challenging. Then it's back to the bullshit.
Raiding is about time spent farming for gear, time spent farming previous raids, time spent farming for flask materials, time spent, time spent, time spent.
Where as with PvP, you can just jump in. The players with lots of skill get their S3. The players with lots of time get their S1/S2/S3. And people that don't have a lot of either still have the pleasure of killing those that do, circumstances permitting.
To me, it's not a PvP vs. PvE argument. It's a Raiding vs. Everything Else argument, and I come down very firmly on the raiding-is-fucking-horseshit side of the scale.
Make it inaccessible to me because I'm not good enough. Make it inaccessible to me because I don't know enough. Don't make it inaccessible to me because I can't schedule hours and hours of play time every damned night, or because I'm so far behind the equipment curve that I can't catch up before the next patch introduces more content that renders the stuff I need obsolete.
This has more to do with the limits of the game itself than people being unimaginative. People have a tendency to gravitate towards the easiest ways to get the desired outcome and if you've fought the "Rogue/Mage/Priest" team for the umpteenth time you're probably going to perform the exact patterns of actions that have helped you take down those folks in the past. It's the same with PvE, same spells in the same order ad infinitum. And I imagine that once you reach the top levels with top gear it gets even more repetitive since (until a new expansion with a higher cap comes down the pipe) things will never change for you. At least at the lower levels things change as the mobs get higher in level and the things that once worked don't any longer. But that's the nature of any MMO. Once you reach the highest pantheons there is no where to go and nothing is "new" anymore.
I disagree. For all the simplicity you imply in PVE, the number of shitty tank, shitty healers and shitty dps (with gear or without) is astounding. Keyboard turning tanks, healers that can't even understand the concept of "keep the tank up at all costs" and let people die while they have 90% mana, dps that can't perform 400 dps on attumen; we've likely all seen or heard of them all. I know I've heard of all three on these very forums. For all the "OMG THIS GAME IS HARD!" sarcasm that floats out there, I find it funny how many people continue to fail at the simplest of things.
Pound for pound, my poorly geared mage alt should not be outdps'ing another mage in a 5 man in full epics, but, well, here we are. I shouldn't see paladin tanks have trouble with holding aggro off a healer, but here we are. I shouldn't have healers fail to dispel the shit I asked them to dispel a dozen times and that ticks for 15 seconds, but here we are.
Is a rogue more likely to jink irratically than the smooth and mechanical ways a mob will? Sure. Does that make him more dangerous? Depends on whether he's actively avoiding my attacks, or just jumping like a retard for the flipfliplol.
In my experience, there are far too many flipflippers out there.
And as for gear, sure you can get your feet wet in PVP easily enough, but unless you are gods gift to _______'s, there will come a point where your resilience isn't high enough, your dps/healing isn't high enough, and you get smoked by people in S3. That's just how it is, and given the propensity for high level/skilled/geared players to roll new teams to help friends, sell points or just because violating people in the 1500's amuses them, it's not super rare either. Seriously, fuck Gladiator teams in the 1600 bracket.
Also: I raid for about 8-9 hours per week (BT/MH), and I probably farm for about 2 hours per WEEK (a daily or two per day and a little herbing / mining on my druid) to pay the bills. Yes, this is with heavy farmed content, but I'm not raiding 40+ hours a week, nor am I farming 3 hours a day.
I missed this post with my last reply. You're right, of course. Raiding does alienate people based on time available and that does suck. It's not just any time, either, it's whether or not you have a lot of time. You're going to fall behind in any game if you can only devote 30 minutes a week to it, but you'll fall behind the raiding guilds if you can't devote many hours to the game.
Although I agree completely with your point, I'm still attracted to raiding for some reason. I guess the fraternal aspect is enough of a draw to overcome the downside, or maybe it's just a strong desire to complete the game or see all the content that makes me look past the shortcomings of raiding. I just know I'm not the only one.
I'm not sure if you've done Illidan, but your experience is diametricly opposed from mine. Illidan does a special ability.... every 10-15 seconds on average. For 15 minutes. And for each of them, people can't fuck up badly. It may not be obvious from watching videos, because normally you only release videos of smooth kills, but on Illidan you need to be very aware of your surroundings. Movement is key (In PvE you can ultimately only have movement, fast response, DPS and healer checks), and i've seen many people kill themself learning it. Aggro is a constant worry as well.
Does PvP require less time? Yes. But not that much.
Well, I'm a healer. I'm getting bored out of my skull staring at Grid (that table with colored boxes in it) all day long. Healing is kinda boring. At least Void Reaver is a pretty movement-intensive fight.
This boredom is now leading me to spec retribution instead.
The disconnect is, the challenge of raiding comes in the meta-game. It's in organizing the group, managing egos and keeping moral up. Distributing loot in an equitable way. Studying/learning fights and adapting your personnel to them. It's about people understanding their class and learning how to do their job as well as possible.
PvP has none of this, but the time commitment is just as bad. If you want to 'jump in' to arena pvp at a competitive level at this point in the game, you'd better spend hour upon hours in repetitive, boring battlegrounds getting your honor pieces. Because otherwise you're going to spend your time getting rolled by people who've been farming arena points for months, but suck (or teamhop) and are still in the 1500s bracket.
I mean, you can say that this makes PvP a 'better' or simpler or more accessible part of the game if you want. But don't run some 'aaaaammmggg I don't have time to raid' thing, because pvp takes just as much time.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
I actually just watched a movie with a group hammering on one boss for about 5 minutes straight. I got bored and moved the video forward about 20 minutes and they were still in the same place on the same boss! Same spells in same order over and over. Raiding is definitely not my thing. And these people were obviously a good group that had run that instance multiple times. If I had to sit through the same 25 minute fight multiple times I think I'd have to shoot myself. And there really isn't any guarantee that you'll get anything out of it except the right to take that same group through it all again.
I can't wait until the next expansion when if you can't drop at least 10,000 damage in a single hit you'll be worthless to a raid group.
Edit: "Aggressive cat is aggressive. Defensive cat is defensive. Which cat should you be?" Some of these movies rock!
I watch the videos of my guild killing bosses and I think "wow i must have been SO bored then" but then i think back and i wasn't.
Watching it is very boring.
Doing it is not.
Reliquary of Souls videos are insanely boring since it appears to be just stand and nuke, but it is a VERY subtle and involving fight to actually participate in.
Watching a boss kill video where they already have the fight down is probably boring if you're looking to entertain yourself. The flawless (boring) videos are probably there just to show how to do the fight. If you want to be entertained, go find and watch some random guild's first messy Vashj P2/Kael/Illidan kill with vent enabled.
Also, don't watch a video from a Paladin/Destro Lock's prespective. Or some random DPS who has no special role in the fight. One-two button spam :S
You can't see the perfect rotation of seals and judgements they have going, or the perfect Shield Block rotation they have set up. And even if you CAN see that being done, you're still not actually doing it yourself, so its boring.
But the actual fight consisted of staying alive for ten minutes and then managing to kill him with 30 seconds left to his enrage, all the while dodging big goddamn exploding orbs throughout the fight.
The PvP videos are definitely more interesting to watch for sure but I think that's mainly because the peeps in the video actually move.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
As said above, it looks a lot worse than it actually is. Boss fights executed well generally look boring, because everything is simplified as much as possible. Part of the fun is the knowledge that while you're standing there mashing regrowth or arcane missiles or whatever, a moments hesitation on anybodies part could turn the entire thing to shit. It's not really as easy as it looks, and that's what makes it fun.
That being said you'll have a lot easier time getting up and running in PvP, and it sounds like you've already decided anyway. Either is a lot of fun depending on how you like to get your kicks.
As I said, I'm sure this was a crew that had done this particular instance many, many times before. It didn't look like anyone was unsure about what was going on and I'm sure it's more fun than it looks when you're a part of it. It does make me wonder why people bother making videos of raids though. Aside from you watching it yourselves to see what mistakes might have been made I don't see much point to it.
At least the PvP videos try to make things entertaining with text or voice commentary. My favorite are a whole series of "I suck at..." videos where the guy isn't an uber player but shows you what average arena and BG play looks like and what strategies work for him (as a mage). And the cat cutaway videos are kind of funny too.
It just seems like the only reason to raid is so you can raid some more and as I said, I don't have the time or inclination to do that. Most of the PvP stuff seems to go by pretty quick (at least in the arena matches) and since time is an issue that seems like it's more my speed.
As I don't know dick about what bosses are in what raids, I couldn't tell you. The group I saw was all horde about 8 peeps (which I'm sure makes it that much more impressive).