Yes, and it was a terrible idea that pretty much everybody who wasn't a jerk hated.
I thought Vael didn't have a time limit really, but he had a really long (hourish) respawn timer. Ragnaros, I think, was the one that despawned permanently after a few hours of not beating him.
Yes, and it was a terrible idea that pretty much everybody who wasn't a jerk hated.
To be fair, isn't this largely because Vael was an early gateway boss, and when he despawned it was for good back then? It basically meant that you cleared MC, killed Onyxia, killed Razorgore, wiped to Vael for an hour, and were done with raiding for the week. The concept isn't entirely without merit -- just that particular implementation of it.
I thought Vael didn't have a time limit really, but he had a really long (hourish) respawn timer. Ragnaros, I think, was the one that despawned permanently after a few hours of not beating him.
No, the original Vael had a script that executed one hour after you talked to him to start the fight for the first time, where he apologized to Alexstraza for failing here, and despawned permanently. (Well, until next week.)
I think that was the case for a phase 1 wipe, but if you made it to where you actually spawned and wiped Nef in dragonform, it was a perma despawn for the week.
There was also the original Nef that was once a day, if I am remembering correctly.
He actually would respawn whenever the zone was reset (from 30+ minutes of no one being in the zone). Blizzard just said he would respawn in twelve hours - I know one person on my server stayed in the zone to see if that would actually happen. He didn't actually respawn. I think there was a blue post giving the 12-hour respawn timer, but I can't find it now.
I actually don't remember a time period when Vael was once/week instead of the one hour/day (which was the case in 1.6.1, 3 weeks after BWL was released). Then again, my memories of BWL opening up included 20+ minute Razorgore fights due to the excessive lag. I think we called raids in the middle of that fight because it was taking too long...
I also believe Ragnaros would respawn after a soft reset. There were two timers there actually - the timer on Majordomo waiting for Ragnaros to pop up and the two hour timer on Ragnaros. There might also have been one for Domo before he despawned (for fighting him), but I don't remember it.
A much more reasonable idea would be to have bosses limited to 4 hours/night with 12 hour despawn time or something along those lines. It sorta takes away the spirit of competition when <uber guild> takes two weeks off work and plays the game 16 hrs/day.
All that a timed despawn accomplishes is force people to stop playing the game (because, realistically, many raiders mainly log in to raid). Why would a game designer want to do that?
A much more reasonable idea would be to have bosses limited to 4 hours/night with 12 hour despawn time or something along those lines. It sorta takes away the spirit of competition when <uber guild> takes two weeks off work and plays the game 16 hrs/day.
The spirit of what competition exactly? If you could actually compete with those guilds your guild would have done the same thing. The competition is all relative. Most raiders are looking for something that will challenge them personally. I know I don't sit around during Illidan and imagine that this is worthless because someone else killed him already, you think about how it is benefiting you at that moment. If your kill is diminished that much by someone else's accomplishments you are playing the game for a really twisted reason. If that is really that important to you, apply to those guilds.
Why does it have to be said that the amount of investment you are willing to put in is the maximum amount of investment anyone is allowed to put in? Seems selfish to me.
All that a timed despawn accomplishes is force people to stop playing the game (because, realistically, many raiders mainly log in to raid). Why would a game designer want to do that?
Because blizzard gets money by the month, not by the hour. It doesn't matter to them if you play 1 hour a day, 5 days a week, 5 hours a day, 1 day a week, or 5 hours a day, 5 days a week. They get payed the same amount.
So Blizzard is willing to have you play less, as long as you pay for each month. Hell, from their eyes, the IDEAL customer is one who pays every month, but never logs in.
All that a timed despawn accomplishes is force people to stop playing the game (because, realistically, many raiders mainly log in to raid). Why would a game designer want to do that?
To prevent burnout? Blizz doesn't gain anything from you playing 8 hours/day for 1 month. They gain more if you spread those hours over several months. To be honest, burnout and turnover at the high end seems like a pretty significant issue. The pressure to "do more" is very high, and its ultimate manifestation is SK Gaming's "Take 2 weeks off work for a boss".
As well, the high end players burning out hurts the lower end guilds, as the high end guilds start poaching the best players from the lower tier to make up their losses.
Secondly, a time limit would differentiate guild skill at the very high end. A guild that learns a boss in 12 hours is more skilled than one that takes 40 hours (assuming no video/strategy showing). But if the guild that takes 40 hours can compress the time into one week, they get the first kill.
Blizzard doesn't make more money because you play 40 hours a week instead of 15, if anything they lose a bit from bandwith etc. They do lose money when you're full t6 and have all the accessories a week after Sunwell comes out so you're bored because there's no more character progression left for you and take a few months off before WOTLK.
Because blizzard gets money by the month, not by the hour. It doesn't matter to them if you play 1 hour a day, 5 days a week, 5 hours a day, 1 day a week, or 5 hours a day, 5 days a week. They get payed the same amount.
So Blizzard is willing to have you play less, as long as you pay for each month. Hell, from their eyes, the IDEAL customer is one who pays every month, but never logs in.
They get that money to provide a service, being the game. Part of that game is the raiding meta-game. If they can come up with some legitimate lore driven reason why you can only fight a boss for 1 hour a week, great. A contrived "its passed your bedtime, goodbye" mechanic put onto every boss would just lead a lot of people to try other games, no matter how fun WoW might be. A big part of the greatness of (current-post honor system fixed) WoW is that even in this grand-scale MMO you can really progress at your own snail or breakneck pace, whatever you and your guild desire.
All that a timed despawn accomplishes is force people to stop playing the game (because, realistically, many raiders mainly log in to raid). Why would a game designer want to do that?
Because it extends the life of content and makes people keep paying monthly subs instead of canceling until the next major patch/expansion.
Basically it's just another level of "why don't they let us reset our raidIDs whenever we want?" Some guilds would reclear the same zones every night of the week to gain a competitive advantage; others would feel pressured to do so as well if they wanted to compete, and those who refused to, or could not, would be at a huge competitive disadvantage.
Secondly, a time limit would differentiate guild skill at the very high end. A guild that learns a boss in 12 hours is more skilled than one that takes 40 hours (assuming no video/strategy showing). But if the guild that takes 40 hours can compress the time into one week, they get the first kill.
Is that second guild really 70% better then the first guild in question or did they benefit from that first guild's 40 hour session where they broke down each and every single boss ability, timed them, and updated the boss mods to support it?
Just like you add party members dps to a hybrid's raid dps contribution, you can't discount the effort put in by the guild who kills it first and then lays down a set of guidelines for you that eliminated 20+ hours of trial and error so you could go into the encounter with almost every piece of knowledge necessary to down the boss.
This is a good reason why it would be beneficial for sites and other kill recognition services (if that makes sense) to wait until tuesday and then declare each of the guilds to down the boss in that reset in a tie for this exact reason, for everyone who puts so much weight into this even though it is really so meaningless to 99% of the playerbase.
As opposed to a lore-driven reason why you can attempt a boss over and over again without it getting wise to your plans?
Pretty much every single boss in the game are standing, or sitting, there waiting for you to come to them. It makes a lot more sense that they would continue to wait then that they would just close up shop and go out to the mall or something. This is why I said lore driven reason, for example a boss that is spawned by some event (like Domo) that would make sense in the game. The reason you can attempt a boss over and over again without it getting wise is the same reason why you can kill murlocs in the same location today as you could on the first day of release, it's a game.
The lore isn't hard. "I tire of these games, mortals. You have failed to stop me and now I shall go and enact my evil plot. Your world will be ending in 3 days, 14 hours. Have a nice day."
I'm not sure the model is a good idea though. I think it's just generally pointless to try to tune for the Nihilums and SK Gamings of the world. Let the most hardcore of the hardcore plow through the content and design it for the larger audience. (Don't make it easy, just don't get hung up on trying to "slow down" the best of the best.)
I like the idea of bosses despawning a lot. I take a lot of interest in the progression from high-end guilds because it is part of my studies at the university. At the moment many players simply burn out. There is only space for very few guilds in the spotlight and as far as I know only very few raiders get any financial benefit from their success. But they fight for these "world firsts" with an extremly professional attitude.
I think especially on top tier bosses they could add very strict despawn timers so that the race remains interesting. At the moment it is a lot about time spent, about being able to sacrifice more of your RL. With tight enough timers an instance could remain a lot longer period of time interesting and they could increase the time for before the respawn as time goes by.
I think it is very important for any mmo to create quality time instead of causing a time sink. At least there should always be a way to prevent time sinks by using quality time. An example I would love is riding skill 300. Make it a quest you can accomplish in two ways. Variant A would be a tough and not easily exploitable solo player quest, similar to the heroic quests on level 60. Variant B would be bribing the NPC with 5000 gold to give away their secret.
Over time I believe that close to everyone can beat any encounter, as long as certain parameters are set right, like class composition and gear and buffs, talent builds etc. But to work out strategies really fast and to perform flawlesly under time pressure is something different and a much more worthwhile approach to endgame raiding.
Last edited by Hildegard : 05/28/08 at 7:27 PM.
Reason: Grammar
Hildegard Sprigglespruxx - Wissenschaftlerin am Institut für Pfuschkunde
I wouldn't object to bosses having a four hour despawn timer per day as this would put us much more likely to be a top 10 guild, but I hardly think it's necessary. I don't see a real downside to letting people spend 50 hours a week on a boss if they really want to get a first.
The lore isn't hard. "I tire of these games, mortals. You have failed to stop me and now I shall go and enact my evil plot. Your world will be ending in 3 days, 14 hours. Have a nice day."
I'm not sure the model is a good idea though. I think it's just generally pointless to try to tune for the Nihilums and SK Gamings of the world. Let the most hardcore of the hardcore plow through the content and design it for the larger audience. (Don't make it easy, just don't get hung up on trying to "slow down" the best of the best.)
Good points, but it wouldn’t really affect the larger audience as they already only raid 4-5 hours a night. Also I think it would actually intensify competition between the top guilds. It would come down to which guild has the most productive/efficient raids versus which guild can ignore the real world and hunker down for marathon gaming sessions the longest.
It’s sort of like why a sports team plays every few days over the course of several months, instead of playing back to back to back games for a week.
It could make PvE more exciting from a spectator perspective:
“Oh man SK got Arthas to 54% last night!”
“Well Deus Vox got him to 46%!”
Sort of bringing back the competition of BWL/AQ/Naxx compared to the steamrolling of BT by Nihilum and SWP by SK.
If there was a more meaningful sense of competition instead of 90% of killing a boss first meaning your guild could spend more time doing it, then guilds wouldn't want to tell people everything about the bosses they're fighting, and thus there would be more meaningful competition. This would help to give the top guilds something to actually be playing for other than getting their gear a week earlier and still have no impact on the guilds doing the content months later.
05/28/08, 5:43 PM
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