I was reading a blog topic at Player vs. Developer and I was remembering all the grinding I did to raise certain resistances to elemental damage. This is a norm in almost all MMO’s I have ever played; each monster or boss NPC does a certain type of damage. Most of this is direct damage but most commonly in AoE (area of effect form), that effects a wide scope of players in the fight.
In recent developments within Lord of the Rings online, the community is in an uproar about the dependence of radiance based armor. So I contacted a friend who was a die hard Lotro player and see what she had to say. She has a top level healer on the gladden server, she is currently at 4 radiance. According to her kinship it was too low to do a certain endgame boss, “The Watcher”. So recently she has left her kin and moved on from Lotro due to this radiance predicament.
When asked the relevance of radiance she stated that in order to be able to survive the watchers dread (lowers max hp and causes you to cower in fear) you need about 7 pieces of radiance gear to give you enough hope to counteract the dread.
Where are these pieces of radiance gear to be found? Through high level instances requiring a group of 6 – 12 In hard mode with other endgame geared players. This now makes grouping inevitable (not a bad thing imo) and can only be accomplished by focused kinships.
This has sparked hot debates and even a very long petition to abolish radiance based gear dependency. This is Turbine’s Inc stance on the matter: “Radiance will continue to be an important game play mechanic going forward for Raids. In other words, given the amount of time and energy gone into making the Radiance system it’s safe to assume Radiance gear will be required for future Raids.”
This takes me back to the days of the Pre-BC World of Warcraft mini-expansion Ahn ‘Qiraj 40 man instance, where you needed a minimum of 150+ nature resist to survive. We didn’t complain or write petitions, we just either A) started grinding the necessary rep to be able to get the materials to craft or buy, and B) grind AQ 20 to receive a lot of the loot dropped for nature resist. I was a pro hunter with amazing levels of leather crafting and skinning, I could skin anything and craft almost everything leather in the game. So I parked in Silithus, a contested area, killed bugs and grinded rep until I had the requirements to advance in Ahn ‘Qiraj. This was tedious, but as a good wow addict my desire to progress prevailed.
This wasn’t the first or last time as an endgame player I was forced to grind to advance. In FFXI I played until the Chains of Promathia expansion was released as a Galka Paladin. In order to be competitive I needed certain gears that gave me the important stats that a good tank would need. Vitality, Defense and Strength were most important along with high levels of resistances to the magic that higher level mobs were using. These items were either dropped by notorious monsters that were highly camped, or fighting through dungeons and opening coffers with keys that were dropped by even harder mobs. It was a mess and took a long time to accomplish, I was just glad I had a good group of people in my Linkshell (guild) that helped. Without them it was not happening.
Software developers need a mechanic to keep player retention up even when trying to keep up with players hungry for content. Endgame content isn’t all about raiding or camping rare high level monsters. It’s about keeping players involved in the game long after they made it to the highest levels, this was made popular in the beginning by Everquest and perfected by World of Warcraft. This endgame mechanic breaks players out of the elite soloists mode, if they want the cool endgame gear; they need to find their way to an endgame guild. This is the primary focus for MMORPG’s, to promote socializing and cooperation amongst players. But also from a business side of it, they want you to continue to pay for your subscription and buy future expansions. There is always a catch.
I believe the grind is inevitable in any MMORPG you will play, being for stats, skills, resistances and experience points. Game companies need to do have players log into their virtual world and spend specific amounts of time in it. The way they keep you busy is by both the desire to achieve and explore new content, and to feel rewarded by your efforts by fellow players. Having that new piece of (insert dream item here) drop and finally being able to put one goal to rest just to create a new one. Well at least for me it does, according to Bartles test at GamerDNA I am an achiever and a socializer, that’s why I have had no problem with this type of endgame shenanigans.
I do agree with PVD, there is a high burnout rate in this type of gaming activity. Many times I would find myself alone somewhere grinding something for something I need for something, chatting on vent or in guild and exclaim, “I am bored of this.” When I am finally at the endgame phase and find myself just grinding to grind to a higher level of grind I eventually pull the plug. And many players are following suit, even WoW players are starting to get fidgety and are looking for different games. This might have sounded repetitive but it is the same aspect of being an endgame player, it’s all about doing the same thing to keep you locked and loaded into this game.
Now the Lord of the Rings Online community is starting to feel the familiar burn of the downside of endgame content. They have created “The Resistance to a Resistance”, it would be easy for me to say, “Stop crying and kill the bosses, get the drops and move forward.” It’s not always that easy, as I said earlier a certain amount of group dependency comes into play. Kinships and guilds know this and start to garner a feeling of superiority and elitism starts taking hold. Eventually my Lotro friend left her kinship and soon after stopped playing Lotro for greener pastures. “Radiance became mandatory and I couldn’t get groups to get the radiance gear, I was stuck in a viscous cycle and it stopped being fun”, she told me when I asked her why.
I’ve heard players say to me, “why did you quit after all that work.” I respond that I did work, but I also experienced a lot and I feel that I have gotten what I wanted out of the game. If it gets to a point that I am just working to replace my shiny new thing with another shinier new, new thing I know it’s time to close the book on that game and open up a new one. That’s why the words end and game are put together, isn’t it?
Until then…
Play safe,
Ink
You have to think about what people went into LOTRO to accomplish, if they went into play through a known lore and to do that they read all the pre-release information then you have to stand back and say… They did say this would be different to other MMO’s.
I personal despise this approach to making people stay playing a game, the “Grind”. More fool those of you who bow down to it, you example of AQ second boss, I remember the nature resist issues going on, you know my answer to it? I never bothered to go. I have better things to do in WoW at the time, than worry about a raid encounter I’d do a handful of times.
And that’s where the problem lies, the Resistance to the Resistance sounds like a fair point, but with players (or should I say ex-players) of other MMO’s like yourself making commentary like the one above, then developers are going to listen to your opinion over others who want to see a change. Not because either argument is more or less valid than the other, but simply because leaving things as they are is easier.
WoW had, and has, some huge odd problems, not least a very poor key grip throughout the BC expansion. But developers don’t address them, and didn’t address many in the original vanilla game for so long that they became the norm. Some of them to the game’s detriment.
So, I say more power to the people asking for change, but I also ask that developers out there do approach the MMO play mechanics with a more open mind than has been shown in recent MMO titles.
Something innovative, something new, something for all the people is a challenge yet to be cracked in my opinion.
Xelous,
I wholeheartedly agree with your point, sometimes I felt as if I was succumbing to the wear and tear of endgame progression. I didn’t feel as if I bowed down the the mechanics, was more apt bogged down by the work. But I had made a conscious choice that I wanted to experience the AQ content. It was my choice, not the devs or the fellow guildmates. It was my own.
But you missed the underlying meaning, you have a choice, and with 3 new A-rated titles releasing this september-players will have more. Now companies will ride the slipperey slope of customer retention. Because in business the customer is always the bottom line and devs answer to someone who has to pay the bills.
I realize they worked hard, I have well as a veteran of many games. And when I felt in my heart I had enough, I had enough. That was my choice as a consumer and gameplayer. Just the same choices that the LOTRO community has.
The bottom line here is “listen to me: if I get fed up with your game, I will move on.” That is the final line in he sand for both the community, devs and software moguls. They are not the only game in town now.
I really hope that my commentary has the power to convey that message. To make a change, you must make a stand. One fist in the air can start a movement.
Thank you for your comments.
I’m in the same boat as your friend. I can’t bring myself to log into Lord of the Raid Online anymore. I have grown so tired of gear farming. I’d much prefer that they slow down the level progression and actually give some power back to the characters. Greed is killing the mmo genre.
I have friends who ask why I barely play my Paladin in WoW anymore. Because, as far as I am concerned, all thats left to do in game is Ulduar hard modes. I can only go to Ulduar 10/25 once each. So I play other classes. They are more fun than grinding gold/acheivments on a charachter that I have all but ‘finished the game’ with.
Thank god WoW stopped doing all the resistance gear crap. Grinding all those sets was incredibly annoying when it was used for only a single boss, perhaps two.
Great article Inktomi, It’s quite sad what LOTRO has done to itself. The grinding for gear has become so mundane that people get to 60 and quickly find another game to play. I enjoyed the lore and half-expected that when I reached endgame that it wouldn’t be like the other MMo’s I’ve seen and have nothing to offer. Well, it had things to offer. Just required a substantial amount of people to do it with. Sadly, so many people are widely scattered between Turbine’s many servers, and getting a group is hard/impossible to do. Especially, since most people have done these raids at least once and refuse to do them again to help a player out. The sad, sad cycle of what goes on in a somewhat wonderful game otherwise. Take care, Kataline