The Protar Approach

Here we are on yet another Friday. What does this Friday bring? Well it is a Reader Post and it was written by Protar and his reasoning about why he think s causal players feel entitled to raid content in WoW and what his solution to the problem could be. So that introduction I leave you with it.

So the whole casual entitlement issue is I've gathered is one of the biggest debates in WoW. I don't really want to start on argument on casuals vs. elites so I'll just cut straight to my argument:

I think a lot of casuals feel entitled to hardcore raiding because the story intrinsically links hardcore and casual content. Now I have no data to back this up and this isn't necessarily the case for everyone. Some people may just be entitled, or conversely won't be at all. But the fact remains that as a casual you level through zones and expansions, you face-off against the current Big Bad, you fight his minions and hear all the bad stuff he's doing...and then to defeat him you have to raid which a lot of us don't have the time or skill to do. And for those that do have the time and skill I absolutely think they should be rewarded for this. They deserve it. But does it has to come at the cost of teasing us casuals? It's like reading a book and finding out you have to pass an English exam to read the final chapter. 

So in lieu of this I have a suggestion: Let's separate the stories a bit more. Make raids centre around side stories (but still epic stories) which aren't covered very much (if at all) in the main questing zones. Raids could be accompanied by Campaigns: Challenging Quest chains and scenarios, designed to be tackled by organised guilds. Some would be set in their own dedicated zones some would not; for example a ToT campaign would be set in Thunder Isle, whereas SoO would have a campaign set in Durotar. This would provide story build up and train people up for Raids.

Meanwhile the poster-boy villains will be available to raiders and casuals alike, and tackled through an idea called World Dungeons - and this idea might suck because I just thought it up on the fly so better suggestions welcome. But basically they would be dungeons that utilize scaling technology and could admit large numbers of people at once. You could jump in on an active World Dungeon at any time. They'd be non-linear and essentially act like huge world events only instanced (so you can activate one at any time rather than the game world being disrupted every time someone wants to play one.). They would provide challenging content, but not to the level of raids. Mostly they would be for fun and for story experience.

I realize there may be some complaints about removing the epicness of Raids. However the big storylines would be available to everyone - raiders are free to experience them too. Secondly the Raids would also be designed to be epic. For example the Sha of Pride could have been defeated in a Raid (as he's not mentioned until 5.4) and Garrosh could have been defeated in a World Dungeon. Both are formidable villains in their own right and provide their own sort of closure to the expansion.

There you go this week's Reader Post. As always if you want to contribute send in anything you have to say gaming wise to gaussafication@gmail.com and maybe you will be next week's choice.