Basically, to do any of the major raid instances, you need the right kind of gear. Well, this gear isn't just laying around and there are many ways it can be earned via battle grounds, heroic instances or crafting. None of this is easy. Lots of time and gold has to be spent to acquire the much coveted gear to even start the raiding process.
Now, after the appropriate gear is acquired, a player can start on their first raid, which current is one of the 10 man raid instances, most likely Karazhan. Now we are progressing. But what is to be had through this so called progression. Well, more gear of course. Gear comes through obtaining badges, reputation or normal boss drops.
Once this has been done, and you've acquired the right type of gear, you would progress to the next phase, which would be, the 25 man raid, like Mount Hyjal or Black Temple. But why, well so you can get more improved gear. This is end game progression boiled down to its basics. I would like to believe that people are there to experience the challenge of the hard boss fights or to see the cool instance design. But the truth is, end game is really about gear.
But what if...
What if the goal wasn't to have the purple gear but to achieve something else in the game? Would people play it if you eliminated the materialistic aspect of end game? Would this make people want to raid even more?
People complain about how they hate end game, but they don't offer up any optional solutions. We are, at our very core, materialistic. We just are. We play these games so our characters can acquire things, whether its, PvP honor, great gear or just a crap load of money. And if anything, we live through our characters in these games, right?
And because of this, we know that nothing comes to us without a price. Basically, you have to work to get the great gear. My problem is people saying, I hate this game or that game because of end game raiding and thats just plain crazy. Its all the same, no matter how you slice it. I have not played an mmo yet that didn't require some type of hard, time consuming work to obtain anything. Its the price you pay to play the game.
My suggestion, basically, is to get over it.
I like raiding, I simply no longer appreciate being funneled into a raid-only end-game like WoW anymore.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, people will absolutely go through the content for reasons other than gear. Look at Guild Wars; it has absolute maximums on all weapon and armor types. That doesn't stop the hardcore players from acquiring the elite armors just for the appearance. Or titles. Yes, we're materialistic, but it's for vanity in addition to combat numbers. We want to look sexy, whatever. We want to have some uniqueness to our characters in addition to being badasses.
As long as there is some form of attractive advancement in an RPG, be in the next tier of armor or weapons, or some uber crafting materials so crafters can make the "raid gear" or something as benign as the next title rank to display to the world what we've accomplished, we'll do it if it's fun and entertaining.
It just seems that MMO's are the most materialistic of the bunch. I can't think of any other game, except maybe Diablo, where you strive to get really cool loot above anything else.
ReplyDeleteI jus wish there was more...than just loot.