Guild Wars 2

I’ve seen a lot of people talking about raids in threads. Please don’t get your hopes up for what a “raid” is. Raids in Guild Wars 2 are likely to be immensely different than raids in other games. Just the idea that there’s no trinity in Guild Wars 2 makes raiding a whole differerent kettle of fish.

More to the point, I think the raids will be like guild missions. Directly associated with guilds. If you don’t have a big enough guild, you might not be able to raid at all. If you have a casual guild that isn’t interested in raiding, you might have to join a bigger raiding guild or at least a bigger guild that raids.

The thing is, a lot of people are totally hyping themselves up for this, and for a surety, they’re going to blame Anet when those raids don’t meet those expectations.

We only know one thing about raids so far.

They’re going to be discussed in a CDI as part of the Guild CDI initiative. That’s ALL we know.

Don’t hype yourself up and if you do, don’t blame Anet when you don’t get what you think you’re going to.

Thank you for this!

Also let it be known that while ANet (I have never seen it) has never come out and said things like Teq and Wurm are Raids. Large guilds that farm them on the regular CALL them Raids already. I know we in TTS call them raids and another farming guild Attuned does as well at least in unofficial capacity.

So, while ANet may or may not consider those to be Raids, they most certainly are the closest we have to them at this stage, so try not to get hung up on terminology! Anet will almost 100% do Raiding in ANet Style.

Well we can’t tell if Anet is going to do a 100% Teq/Worm raid style or something similar, or something entirely new (not yet at least).

As Vayne said, all we know so far is that we’re going to have a CDI for it and it will be included in the Guilds CDI. That said, I think people shouldn’t get overhyped about the idea of GW2 Raids but neither get disappointed before time.

I think Devs should take this CDI with extra extra care, be (more) realistic (if possible) about the limitations and/or the possibilities of the game engine, the goals of the company and the flow of the raid content itself, the very mention of it have catched the attention of many players already.

Players should remain calm and respectful about each others ideas too, the other thread mentioning raids have brought a lot of personal arguments and hate already, if the CDI end up just like that thread, it will fail hard. As I said, devs should take this CDI with surgical accuracy.

I was making comments about reading people in the other Raiding threads about whether Teq or Wurm are considered Raids. IN the community I am part of they are considered Raids (Massively Multiplayer Encounters). I consider them Raids because instead of the Trinity of Healers, TAnks and DPS… we have Wurm for instance where we have Condi Team, Reflect Team, Zerg Team. They all do different things in harmony with one another. To further that there is x3 each of those teams to tackle the wurm head on and get it down within the fail conditions. All Wurms gotta be decapitated at generally the same time what with the different tactics it takes to make the each head Vulnerable enough fora “Burn” phase. And after that happens within two minutes all teams have to kill the moving head of their respective Wurm before it fails. Teq is similar in that it has Zerg Team, Turret Team, Defense Teams. It also has Phases. ANet Underestimated the power of their playerbase when making Teq though and it is relatively easy. But so are BC Raids in WoW. These seem like Raids to me.

But, ANet has not come out and actually stated whether they to think these are Their Type of Raids. So it is a wait and see sort of thing.

My comment went on further to state that people shouldn’t get hung up on terminology of words like “Raid” because ANet will do ANet style whatever that may be and it almost certainly won’t be what people are thinking at this point.

It’s still worth talking and expressing opinions about it. The people who are going to take things out of context and get mad when their vision doesn’t come true are going to get mad about something regardless. It’s just the nature of that type of forum goer.

I agree that, if raiding is implemented, it will most likely be associated with guilds or guild missions (which I would be very much in favor of), but I also think open world bosses, dedicated zones (like Dry Top) and other things would work as “raids” as well and are worth discussing.

My biggest worry is that developers are so scared of people getting upset following speculative discussions that they simply don’t have those discussions to avoid the trouble. I say, let’s have the discussions and not worry about that. Again, those people will just find something else to be upset about anyway.

Anet needs to stop trying to be different and just make GW2 into a 100% identical WoW clone, that should make everyone happy. (sarcasm)

Vayne.8563:

The thing is, a lot of people are totally hyping themselves up for this, and for a surety, they’re going to blame Anet when those raids don’t meet those expectations.

Yes, isn’t it wonderful?

::Evil Laughter::

But to be serious, I think they’ve already stumbled onto what they need in place of “normal” raids. The battle for LA was very raid-like in many respects, but also had things that even solo players were able to jump in and do to help out. I’d say it was the single most successful event they’ve made so far, and they know it. Dry Top looks to me like an attempt to recreate it, only they’ve realized that they’ve missed the mark on it.

With any luck, they’re going to try again, and get it right this time. Plenty of things for both the hardcore raiders and the casual solo players to do, working separately but together. That’ll give them enough people enjoying the content to make it worth the development costs.

Well all I can say is that “IF” raids as many of us know it come into GW2 then I hope they wont become exclusive to just larger raiding guilds like a lot of the guild content already is.
I have no desire to be part of a larger guild and enjoy running with my own small band of friends around Tyria, but if that is the route they decide to design it to become an exclusive closed shop content then that’s when I hit Uninstall and head back to other MMO’s for my fun fix.
Small or casual guilds already get shafted with guild content as it is currently, so I would like to think content like this can be scaled accordingly so that all sizes of guilds or pugs have access to it.. but let’s be honest it’s not proven to be a strong point of GW2 as it is now.. 3HW is a waste of time outside a hardcapped organised map run meaning many never get to be involved let alone succeed.
I have nothing but the utmost respect for those that take the time and effort to organising these types of content but no one should have to plan their lives around such things, turning up an hour before kick off just to ensure you can get a seat in the main event only to find your DC’ed out with no way of getting back into the map again.
This kind of Openworld raiding (for those that deem them to be raids) doesn’t sit well with me, I like the content, I like the event difficulty but it has so many other factors beyond ones own skill and tactics that can affect the success or failure for all involved.
I have lead my guild of friends for many years and have lead raids across various MMO’s (no, not WoW!) so I am well versed in the need to organise your group appropriately, learn the raids, get the builds right etc etc but if we are restricted to running within a larger guild because they can’t be bothered to have it instanced and scaled appropriately then it’s time for me to head for the —>EXIT.

But all this is nothing but pure speculation at the moment so best to wait it out ans see what they come up with.

From the traditional MMO player’s mindset, GW2 is dead because of the lack of endgame, where endgame is only seen as raiding. Whenever I see someone bring up GW2 in a traditional MMO, someone always brings up the lack of raiding. They simply don’t know what to do when what every other MMO has taught them to do isn’t there.

For that reason, I wouldn’t be surprised if they actually implemented a traditional raid-like instance. However, ArenaNet wouldn’t be able to keep these people happy for long so there’s really no point, unless they’re also planning on adding constant vertical progression that actually matters.

More than likely, what ArenaNet will probably do is simply make another Tequatl-like encounter but put it in a box this time. I doubt they would devote a lot of resources to it considering only a small percentage will probably try it, so I wouldn’t expect anything big.

Healix.5819:

From the traditional MMO player’s mindset, GW2 is dead because of the lack of endgame, where endgame is only seen as raiding. Whenever I see someone bring up GW2 in a traditional MMO, someone always brings up the lack of raiding. They simply don’t know what to do when what every other MMO has taught them to do isn’t there.

For that reason, I wouldn’t be surprised if they actually implemented a traditional raid-like instance. However, ArenaNet wouldn’t be able to keep these people happy for long so there’s really no point, unless they’re also planning on adding constant vertical progression that actually matters.

More than likely, what ArenaNet will probably do is simply make another Tequatl-like encounter but put it in a box this time. I doubt they would devote a lot of resources to it considering only a small percentage will probably try it, so I wouldn’t expect anything big.

According to every source we have access too that measures the popularity of MMOs, Guild Wars 2 is just behind WoW and pretty close to Final Fantasy. None of the other MMOs even come close.

It doesn’t matter what people say in other MMOs. They obviously play them because they like them. I don’t play them because I don’t like them. That’s the point.

Anet isn’t looking at those other MMOs and thinking we’re going to get those people. I don’t think they can. I’m pretty sure they don’t think they can.

They can get the whole lot of people who might like to play an MMO but not a traditional one.

I’m guessing that out of all the gamers that exist on this planet, the players who might like Guild Wars 2 are greater than the number of players who might like traditional MMOs.

Vayne.8563:

Healix.5819:

From the traditional MMO player’s mindset, GW2 is dead because of the lack of endgame, where endgame is only seen as raiding. Whenever I see someone bring up GW2 in a traditional MMO, someone always brings up the lack of raiding. They simply don’t know what to do when what every other MMO has taught them to do isn’t there.

For that reason, I wouldn’t be surprised if they actually implemented a traditional raid-like instance. However, ArenaNet wouldn’t be able to keep these people happy for long so there’s really no point, unless they’re also planning on adding constant vertical progression that actually matters.

More than likely, what ArenaNet will probably do is simply make another Tequatl-like encounter but put it in a box this time. I doubt they would devote a lot of resources to it considering only a small percentage will probably try it, so I wouldn’t expect anything big.

According to every source we have access too that measures the popularity of MMOs, Guild Wars 2 is just behind WoW and pretty close to Final Fantasy. None of the other MMOs even come close.

It doesn’t matter what people say in other MMOs. They obviously play them because they like them. I don’t play them because I don’t like them. That’s the point.

Anet isn’t looking at those other MMOs and thinking we’re going to get those people. I don’t think they can. I’m pretty sure they don’t think they can.

They can get the whole lot of people who might like to play an MMO but not a traditional one.

I’m guessing that out of all the gamers that exist on this planet, the players who might like Guild Wars 2 are greater than the number of players who might like traditional MMOs.

I’m pretty sick of all those other MMOs too. Actually I was just looking last night, the one right behind wow is runescape, which is old as kitten. I didn’t know it was older than wow :P But I think the majority of those players are Ftp anyway.

But yeah, if people want those other styles of mmos, there are plenty out there. GW is better because it does things in a more unique way.

Vayne.8563:

I’ve seen a lot of people talking about raids in threads. Please don’t get your hopes up for what a “raid” is. Raids in Guild Wars 2 are likely to be immensely different than raids in other games. Just the idea that there’s no trinity in Guild Wars 2 makes raiding a whole differerent kettle of fish.

More to the point, I think the raids will be like guild missions. Directly associated with guilds. If you don’t have a big enough guild, you might not be able to raid at all. If you have a casual guild that isn’t interested in raiding, you might have to join a bigger raiding guild or at least a bigger guild that raids.

The thing is, a lot of people are totally hyping themselves up for this, and for a surety, they’re going to blame Anet when those raids don’t meet those expectations.

We only know one thing about raids so far.

They’re going to be discussed in a CDI as part of the Guild CDI initiative. That’s ALL we know.

Don’t hype yourself up and if you do, don’t blame Anet when you don’t get what you think you’re going to.

I don’t think you need the trinity to capture the feel of a traditional raid. If Destiny did that beautifully with Vault of Glass in a FPS, and any MMO could do it without the trinity really.

ex wow player: Not having trinity is nice. Feels much more like teamwork.

I don’t know what you expect. They hired a raid developer and then came into the raid thread and said they are doing raids and will have a CDI on it soon. I fail to see how that is not Anet hyping up raids. They want us to tell them what we want, so raids should be exactly what the players decide they should be.

Of course if it isn’t an instanced raid with a fixed number of players I can guarantee you it will fail miserably.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

I don’t know what you expect. They hired a raid developer and then came into the raid thread and said they are doing raids and will have a CDI on it soon. I fail to see how that is not Anet hyping up raids. They want us to tell them what we want, so raids should be exactly what the players decide they should be.

Of course if it isn’t an instanced raid with a fixed number of players I can guarantee you it will fail miserably.

Thats’ not quite what they said. They said they’d be discussing guild raids, which might not be just raids. Again, mentioning something is not hyping something.

There’s a CDI coming. There’s no evidence work on this has even been started. If you confuse mentioning something with hyping it, no wonder these forums are in the shape they are.

Forum: Anet communicate with us! We demand more communication.
Anet: Okay we’ll be starting a CDI on Raids after the current CDI.
Forum: Anet is hyping raids.

Anet can’t even say a single sentence without someone getting hyped or hyping it. Not one sentence. And people wonder why they don’t want to talk about stuff.

I could not see your standard mmo style raid working on gw2 due to lack of an actual healer,tank and such. So for those who will be raiding, expect it to be quite different.

I hope they make clear what their vision of “raids” are, as a foundation for player to build their feedback on. Otherwise you’ll see a copy of these raid discussions, with everyone having a completely different idea of what a raid is, which will likely result in no strong consensus and an unproductive CDI.

To give everyone an idea of what they think a “raid” is, just look at Tequalt and the three headed worm which they called their version of raids.

My guess is that they are going to make these part of guild missions, probably set in the open world, as either a simple world boss or a dungeon type setup similar to puzzles, only more combat focused. In my opinion something like this is the most likely scenario based on the content they have produced so far.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

I don’t know what you expect. They hired a raid developer and then came into the raid thread and said they are doing raids and will have a CDI on it soon. I fail to see how that is not Anet hyping up raids.

Just remember, last time they hyped up raids, we ended up with Tequatl. And while the Devs are not calling it “a Raid”. they did say that it is their idea of GW2 equivalent of raiding content.

They hired a Raid Dev? When did they announce that? I’ve only seen a listing in Job Opportunities, and the only new Dev I’ve seen them actually announce was a new writer.

Please post the link to this announcement. Thanks.

I am open to what kind of content they would offer when it comes to Raids. Though I’d imagine them to be like dungeons but really huge to accomodate a mass of players in a single guild.

Please stop spreading fake data about how GW2 is just behind WoW.

WoW is measured in active subscriptions and GW2 is measured in sales. Games likes GW2 and League of Legends are hard to measure with a subscription based game.

Both LoL and GW2 post data about “active” players that should really taken with a grain of salt, because the definition of an active player is vague.

It’s blatantly obvious that WoW is miles ahead of all MMOs still, which shows in many small things.. ie. more twitch viewers, EU WoW forum being more active than NA/EU GW 2 forum etc.

Anyway, both games are totally different MMOs. I have quit WoW long ago as I don’t have the time and disagree with its direction, but GW2 is nowhere near WoW level right now.

Gervaise.4163:

Please stop spreading fake data about how GW2 is just behind WoW.

WoW is measured in active subscriptions and GW2 is measured in sales. Games likes GW2 and League of Legends are hard to measure with a subscription based game.

Both LoL and GW2 post data about “active” players that should really taken with a grain of salt, because the definition of an active player is vague.

It’s blatantly obvious that WoW is miles ahead of all MMOs still, which shows in many small things.. ie. more twitch viewers, EU WoW forum being more active than NA/EU GW 2 forum etc.

Anyway, both games are totally different MMOs. I have quit WoW long ago as I don’t have the time and disagree with its direction, but GW2 is nowhere near WoW level right now.

There are only a few sites that can measure MMO popularity. Raptr, Overwolf, Xfire and even Google Trends (which measures searches) all put Guild Wars 2 as either the game behind WoW, or the game behind Final Fantasy, and very close to it even then.

I’m not counting active subscriptions. I’m counting hours played, or in the case of Xfire unique log ins during a month period.

Guild Wars 2 is the #10 game right now on Xfire. The only MMORPG that’s higher is WoW. It’s the #7 game on Overwolf. The only MMORPG higher is WoW.

Did you have some actual evidence that this data is fake?

Hell even Google Trends shows Guild Wars 2 as the #2 searched for game. Where’s your data?

Edit: Just checked, Guild Wars 2 is #11 on Xfire. SWToR is just above it and only WoW is above that (as far as MMORPGs go).

It’s always second or third on all these lists.

I think by now the majority of vet players have learned, to not get over hyped about anything Anet says/does. At least I know after 2 years to take everything with a grain of salt. I know in my posts I always come off negative, but believe me it’s of total frustration not trolling. I do love the game. It’s beautiful and full of potential , but that’s the best I can say about it after 2 years in.
We all know about its problems since launch. How they have added other “fixes” before fixing what was already broke. With each new fix something else that worked gets broke.
The not listening to the player base and complete silence. All the new gem store items for cash. The bite size done in 30 minutes Living Story episodes(never has lived up to every 2 weeks btw), and so much more.
Where they had so much right in GW1 and equal amount wrong in Gw2. Yes they wanted to make a new game but did they have to go so far left? I guess being a GW1 player Gw1 Anet fan I’m disappointed and quite confused with the direction. So much so I don’t even have any urge to log in. For what I have done everything the games has to offer. With the exception of getting a legendary as I find them not so legendary. I would rather have my Voltaic Spear back ,I know it’s legend. That’s what I thought the HoM was going to be about. I believe it is said somewhere that you’d could use things from your past . Need to look that one up. I dunno just my 2 cents…Simply put I just want to be a fan again. ..
As far as popularity measuring goes. I wonder if it has anything to do with it being lighter on the wallet rather then being popular for the actual games play/content. For example: brand name product $5.00 similar off brand $2.50. Does it make the off brand more popular or cost effective?

Vayne.8563:

The thing is, a lot of people are totally hyping themselves up for this, and for a surety, they’re going to blame Anet when those raids don’t meet those expectations.

Duh no. Anet has already started hyping it just by posting the position. Its a new hype marketing strategy to trick us gamers into falling for it. I mean its so devious and sneaky!

Players are never at fault for over hyping something! Never never never!

Vayne.8563:

Gervaise.4163:

Please stop spreading fake data about how GW2 is just behind WoW.

WoW is measured in active subscriptions and GW2 is measured in sales. Games likes GW2 and League of Legends are hard to measure with a subscription based game.

Both LoL and GW2 post data about “active” players that should really taken with a grain of salt, because the definition of an active player is vague.

It’s blatantly obvious that WoW is miles ahead of all MMOs still, which shows in many small things.. ie. more twitch viewers, EU WoW forum being more active than NA/EU GW 2 forum etc.

Anyway, both games are totally different MMOs. I have quit WoW long ago as I don’t have the time and disagree with its direction, but GW2 is nowhere near WoW level right now.

There are only a few sites that can measure MMO popularity. Raptr, Overwolf, Xfire and even Google Trends (which measures searches) all put Guild Wars 2 as either the game behind WoW, or the game behind Final Fantasy, and very close to it even then.

I’m not counting active subscriptions. I’m counting hours played, or in the case of Xfire unique log ins during a month period.

Guild Wars 2 is the #10 game right now on Xfire. The only MMORPG that’s higher is WoW. It’s the #7 game on Overwolf. The only MMORPG higher is WoW.

Did you have some actual evidence that this data is fake?

Hell even Google Trends shows Guild Wars 2 as the #2 searched for game. Where’s your data?

Edit: Just checked, Guild Wars 2 is #11 on Xfire. SWToR is just above it and only WoW is above that (as far as MMORPGs go).

It’s always second or third on all these lists.

I’m actually getting gw2 as #5 for the last 1-2 months on google trends. Thats because of archeage being in there too. Not surprising considering it just came out.
For the entire year before that I’m showing gw2 as #4, with ff14, WoW and runescape ahead of it on the google trends.

Not necessarily disagreeing with the popularity of gw2, I just wasn’t able to get gw2 to show as #2. I tried switching from trends around the world and trends just in the usa.

It does appear that Swtor and GW2 are closer in popularity(gw2 being a tiny bit more popular) than GW2 and FF14 are.

I should probably put my results in.

http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%2Fm%2F02q25c_%2C%20%2Fm%2F021dvx%2C%20%2Fm%2F064ln09%2C%20%2Fm%2F0v4gvn3%2C%20%2Fm%2F01l8t_&date=today%2012-m&cmpt=q

Yeah, when you consider that FF14 is also on consoles (and is cross-platform), meaning there will be a lot of players not counted under PC measuring tools like Raptr, saying GW2 is close to it is misleading.

But more on topic, Vayne is right regarding raiding. Look at how Anet did commander tags and traits, and you will understand how they will possibly botch the job (eg. by attempting to make a money sink out of it).

BlueZone.4236:

Yeah, when you consider that FF14 is also on consoles (and is cross-platform), meaning there will be a lot of players not counted under PC measuring tools like Raptr, saying GW2 is close to it is misleading.

But more on topic, Vayne is right regarding raiding. Look at how Anet did commander tags and traits, and you will understand how they will possibly botch the job (eg. by attempting to make a money sink out of it).

I like to think ff14 played on consoles should count when comparing it to PC only mmos. Especially considering they all get to play together on the same servers.

I have to agree with you again Vayne. They do things very differently here even when they name them certain things it’s something other than what people expect. I can totally see the 1% suddenly start several bashing threads because the raids they implement finally aren’t exactly like the vanilla WoW days pre BC.

Vayne.8563:

I’ve seen a lot of people talking about raids in threads. Please don’t get your hopes up for what a “raid” is. Raids in Guild Wars 2 are likely to be immensely different than raids in other games. Just the idea that there’s no trinity in Guild Wars 2 makes raiding a whole differerent kettle of fish.

More to the point, I think the raids will be like guild missions. Directly associated with guilds. If you don’t have a big enough guild, you might not be able to raid at all. If you have a casual guild that isn’t interested in raiding, you might have to join a bigger raiding guild or at least a bigger guild that raids.

The thing is, a lot of people are totally hyping themselves up for this, and for a surety, they’re going to blame Anet when those raids don’t meet those expectations.

We only know one thing about raids so far.

They’re going to be discussed in a CDI as part of the Guild CDI initiative. That’s ALL we know.

Don’t hype yourself up and if you do, don’t blame Anet when you don’t get what you think you’re going to.

Anet would only be blamed for conducting CDI’s on raids, summarizing exactly what we – the players – would like to experience, and develop something completely out of left field. Otherwise, I see no problem in people getting excited about the possibility of raids. There’s very little in GW2 to be excited about right now.

If they actually add something like raids (and I do mean IF), it will most likely be a more elaborate instanced version of the guild challenge. I don’t think they’ll actually ever release something in that field that will require hardcore players to complete. So no, not getting my hopes up. :P

Raids are going to be a “private world boss”: you and your zerg spamming every skill until the monster die

Vayne.8563:

I’ve seen a lot of people talking about raids in threads. Please don’t get your hopes up for what a “raid” is. Raids in Guild Wars 2 are likely to be immensely different than raids in other games. Just the idea that there’s no trinity in Guild Wars 2 makes raiding a whole differerent kettle of fish.

More to the point, I think the raids will be like guild missions. Directly associated with guilds. If you don’t have a big enough guild, you might not be able to raid at all. If you have a casual guild that isn’t interested in raiding, you might have to join a bigger raiding guild or at least a bigger guild that raids.

The thing is, a lot of people are totally hyping themselves up for this, and for a surety, they’re going to blame Anet when those raids don’t meet those expectations.

We only know one thing about raids so far.

They’re going to be discussed in a CDI as part of the Guild CDI initiative. That’s ALL we know.

Don’t hype yourself up and if you do, don’t blame Anet when you don’t get what you think you’re going to.

If they are anything like the vault of glass in Destiny, I’ll love it (no trinity there too). Heavy cooperation, learning the mechanics as you go and wipe after wipe when first exploring. 1 guy not doing his job causing a wipe. Yup, fun times, fun times!

^^^^^^^^^^ If devs need a reference to what kind of things work with a non-trinity game to make it very challenging.

cranos.5913:

If they actually add something like raids (and I do mean IF), it will most likely be a more elaborate instanced version of the guild challenge. I don’t think they’ll actually ever release something in that field that will require hardcore players to complete. So no, not getting my hopes up. :P

Well, like i said, I’m hoping for GW2 version of Destiny’s VoG type of gameplay. Super challenging, but as people learn it, it becomes easier since everyone know’s their role, but communication is still extremely important.

cranos.5913:

If they actually add something like raids (and I do mean IF), it will most likely be a more elaborate instanced version of the guild challenge. I don’t think they’ll actually ever release something in that field that will require hardcore players to complete. So no, not getting my hopes up. :P

There’s no guarantee at all that it will be instanced.

Vayne.8563:

cranos.5913:

If they actually add something like raids (and I do mean IF), it will most likely be a more elaborate instanced version of the guild challenge. I don’t think they’ll actually ever release something in that field that will require hardcore players to complete. So no, not getting my hopes up. :P

There’s no guarantee at all that it will be instanced.

By definition it is, because its supposed to be a challenge tailored for a group of a specific size to attempt. Raid implies more coordination and larger groups than the average dungeon.

Larger group could be 10 or 40 (or anything larger than the standard 5 or smaller than world events), it really depends on the approach they want to take and how they design the content.

LostBalloon.6423:

Vayne.8563:

cranos.5913:

If they actually add something like raids (and I do mean IF), it will most likely be a more elaborate instanced version of the guild challenge. I don’t think they’ll actually ever release something in that field that will require hardcore players to complete. So no, not getting my hopes up. :P

There’s no guarantee at all that it will be instanced.

By definition it is, because its supposed to be a challenge tailored for a group of a specific size to attempt. Raid implies more coordination and larger groups than the average dungeon.

Raid implies nothing. That’s it. Nothing at all. That’s my point.

Raids in different games mean different things. There are raids in games that are mostly PvP games that have a completely different meaning than raids in a PvE game. People call Teq and the Wurm raids even in this game.

Triple thread requires massive coordination to beat, and people performing specific roles. There’s usually a condition team, a reflect team….it’s a complex undertaking.

There is nothing that says a raid has to be tailored for a group of a specific size that I’ve ever read even if that’s how it is in most MMOs prior to this.

A raid usually refers to a raid group, so you can see more people in your party at one time than you’d normally see. There were ways to set up raid parties in the open world in Rift, for example.

If they do make raids – people will hype them – because there’s so little meaningful information about what’s going on the player base is basically starved of any news.

Any statement, any post, anything – will be hyped because right now most of the player base is foaming at the mouth for something new.

That expansion that never came, those new areas that were too few, those new skills that we never got, those new weapons that didn’t exist – all those things have left the players starving for new things.

And if you even mention new things – they’ll go wild with imagination and anticipation.