Ralph CarothersCasual Raiding in WoW? Part 2
May 6th 2008 18:35
In WoW, the interface was designed from the start to be, not only easily customizable, but ready for raids of ten people or more. There are numerous websites out there dedicated to the modification of the user interface [UI] as well. These sites feature entire packages dedicated to getting the best performance out of everyone, even the most casual player, with minimal efforts. Some modifications include warnings if you’re standing in the wrong place, warnings if you are going to make the monster mad, indicators to show specific things are hurt or need attention as a healer, etc. The list could go on for pages. With all of this in the hands of players, Blizzard has taken end game MMOing from just a “hardcore” individual and made it “casual” friendly. As such, many more “casual” raiding guilds have been popping up.
So, having helped greatly in creating one such guild, (Horked, Dalaran-US) I figured I would post what seems to have worked for us so far, what potential pitfalls there are, and what tends to be some of the challenges we have overcome, and what we look forward to.
As a raid leader, you can’t count on the same people showing up every night, or even once a week. You can’t count on people doing the same role each night, nor can you count on people to even pay attention. There have been many nights where people just go away from keyboard [afk] and never come back or one of our tanks or healers has decided they want to do damage instead, so we now need to find a new version of what they were to fill in.
It sounds like a huge hassle, and sometimes it can be. The payoff, though, is that you now have a large group of people together, taken on some challenge and, hopefully, overcome it. If you haven’t overcome it, at least you’ve spent 2-3 hours trying to progress further towards the goal and, with any luck, you have been successful. The socialization aspect combined with the challenge and exploration really makes a lot of people happy. Combine this with people using various programs to talk directly over the internet while in these large groups, and you get the satisfaction of hearing the people you are becoming friends with enjoy themselves.
So, having helped greatly in creating one such guild, (Horked, Dalaran-US) I figured I would post what seems to have worked for us so far, what potential pitfalls there are, and what tends to be some of the challenges we have overcome, and what we look forward to.
As a raid leader, you can’t count on the same people showing up every night, or even once a week. You can’t count on people doing the same role each night, nor can you count on people to even pay attention. There have been many nights where people just go away from keyboard [afk] and never come back or one of our tanks or healers has decided they want to do damage instead, so we now need to find a new version of what they were to fill in.
It sounds like a huge hassle, and sometimes it can be. The payoff, though, is that you now have a large group of people together, taken on some challenge and, hopefully, overcome it. If you haven’t overcome it, at least you’ve spent 2-3 hours trying to progress further towards the goal and, with any luck, you have been successful. The socialization aspect combined with the challenge and exploration really makes a lot of people happy. Combine this with people using various programs to talk directly over the internet while in these large groups, and you get the satisfaction of hearing the people you are becoming friends with enjoy themselves.
| 81 |
| Vote |
Subscribe to this blog
