I recently read a post over at the Undead Labs blog and it got me thinking about what I really enjoy when playing MMO’s.  I love the possibilities and opportunities that can spur from nothing, the unpredictability (in some cases) of the genre.  This stems mainly from the community factor.  Guilds, random strangers (aka pugs), friends, and family all have the potential to contribute to this factor and how we play the game.

To go a bit into my MMO history, it won’t be too long I promise, I got my feet wet with Ragnarok Online (that wacky Korean MMO based loosely on Norse mythology).  I was pretty young when I picked up RO, around middle school, so it was difficult to pony up the cash in order to maintain a somewhat lively subscription.  I entertained myself with other genres and gaming avenues until high school… then WoW was released.  Now, I was pretty skeptical about the game.  I enjoyed the Warcraft RTS, as well as Starcraft, but I didn’t have an interest in MMO’s at this point.  I enjoyed console gaming and used the PC primarily for FPS games.  The only reason I gave WoW a try was because of my friends at the time.  When all of the people you regularly game with online head off to a new game it’s a tad difficult not to see what all the fuss is about.  Short story to a finish, I actually enjoyed the game and spent the next four years riding the WoW hype.  Since then I’ve tried and enjoyed many other MMO’s.

Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way I can discuss the title of my post and honestly say that I am not raid material.  I’ve been in many raids in WoW, LOTRO, and WAR (PvE to a limited extent).  I’ve watched many a raid videos/tutorials for other games as well as the ones I’ve played.  It’s not that I don’t enjoy big battles, great teamwork, epic loot, and that sense of success.  It’s that I have a hard time really seeing the relevance of it all, aside from the gear and sometimes required progression.  I want more of a reason for doing those really awesome raids and it not requiring me to mark my calendar for raid nights.  I love raids, hate raiding.

How about some actual guild goals? Not, “We’re doing this raid to get our healer caught up on gear,” but instead, “We’re going to raid the power plant because if we clear it out we can get power to our community and get our communications network online.”

This is a quote from Richard Foge’s post over at Undead Labs.  This is the main bit that got me thinking about raids.  I am excited to see more cause and effect being the backbone for future developer’s content.  Even if the goals of these developers are purely speculation of something they hope to achieve, I’m glad to see them pursuing it.

- Thrangis