Guild Wars 2

Hey all!

So GW is the only MMO I have ever played, and I’m extremely casual about it (7 years of playing GW1, and I only beat Nightfall and Factions).

So can anyone tell me what a raid is? It’s suddenly all over the suggestions forums.

The only experience I have with raids was my time in WoW, if there are other interpretations I don’t know them.

A raid in wow is extreme endgame content. They were dungeons made to be played with very large parties or ’raid groups’. Consisting of 10 or 25 players.

These dungeons were very highly tuned, you had to have the best gear available up to that point to be able to enter them, let alone complete them, they also typically took multiple hours to complete on a good run where nobody died.

They were more difficult than other dungeons as well, downright requiring a group to research every aspect of the dungeon in order to have a realistic chance of finishing. If one person did not know the fight inside and out it was very easy for that one person to prevent the group from killing a boss.

They were the only way to get the very best gear available in the game, but they pretty much required a guild to complete. As well as tons of organization and planning.

They were enjoyable for a time, but eventually turned into just another tedious gear grind, and if you had a guild it was almost like a second job having to show up at a certain time on certain days to do a raid with your guild that you’ve done every week for 3 months.

is a type of mission in a video game in which a very large number of people (larger than the normal team size set by the game) attempt to defeat a boss monster, which can give unique rewards or great loots depending in game design.

ill give you an example of raid but in another game, lineage 2, raid Antharas

is a big dragon, for be able to raid him you needed LOT of people, the boss wasnt instanced, he had spawn time, so whenever he was killed, any other people wouldnt be able to take him down until he become alive once again, when he was alive people used to fight outside the room (different clan/guild/alliances) for be able to enter and kill him, and once you were inside the room an internal awaken clock started to run, usually 20 mins more and less, by that time even your enemis were able to port inside so you had still to hold the line, once the dragon awakened nobody was able to interrupt you, if you wipped he would be running around his room, then he goes to sleep and you can try again but from start from pvp to pve.

the boss was very valuable because used to drop a powerful single unique earring in the game, as well a lot of valuable high end items (which couldve been crafted or drop from world bosses, but in those bosses you coudlve been gank)

so thats it, a lot of people vs a strong npc, which depending in the game would be instance, open world, etc

A raid is a rather old concept from the time you had the trinity (tanks, casters, healers). It where big organised party’s. mostly 25 people or more with a structure in the organisation, where they where doing something more difficult then average. Most of the time the raid would be in an instance, but not always. In GW2, a traditional raid wouldn’t work imo cause there is no need. But I do think that there should be activity’s thats allowing for bigger party size and scales up to the size of the party. 5 is rather limited.

Originally, a raid means a large group of players working together to do a specific type of content. In earlier MMOs this was often very large boss monsters like dragons etc.

When people are talking of raids today, the often mean a very specific type of raid, the one popularized by World of Warcraft and the MMOs that copied it. In WoW, raiding made up the majority of your gameplay once you reached max level, it was essentially the ultimate goal of why you played, to such a degree that some players who’ve played WoW for a long time, or haven’t played another MMO before WoW, have trouble imagining an MMO that doesn’t do that.

There’s a lot of raiding in WvW. Would be even more were the ingame mechanics for it actualy working. As for what the concept means Mercury has it spot on.

In some games they classify raids based on how many parties you need to typically be able to complete the raid. For example in EQ2 you can have a x2 raid or x4, etc. made up of 2 parties or 4 parties. Typically they are laggy due to the larger numbers of people and the particle effects of the spells/skills. They can take hours to complete. Often they have loot in them that has stats on it needed to do well in the raid. Sadly, by the time you get the loot that makes the raid easier to do, you no longer have a reason to do the raid because you were repeating it to get the loot.

I’m not sure if ArenaNet ever stated it explicitly, but my impression is that they will not introduce raids in Guild Wars 2, because it basically is game content that is inaccessible to significant groups of players.

Traditionally, raid content was always aimed at players who:
- are a member of a large guild that specializes in organizing raids (because finding/organizing a 20-man group by recruiting in map chat requires an unfeasibly long wait time)
- possess the most prestigious equipment and most finely tuned builds in the game
- have long stretches of time available

Additionally, raid-specialized guilds have historically had a strong tendency to implement rigourous recruitment policies, meaning that if a player has not already completed Content X or Dungeon Y, or is not willing to join a raiding instance at set times for several hours every week, that player does not get in. Furthermore, members who do not log in to join a raid tend to be penalized or kicked from the guild. This is very much like holding down a job, and can often feel like a chore.

Both the game mechanic itself and the ways players deal with it leads to exclusion and elitism, where only the extremely dedicated players ever get to ever raid content. Furthermore, it is even questionable whether some of the players in raid groups are even enjoying themselves because of the social pressure put on them and the hoops they have to jump through to even participate.

So far, Guild Wars 2 has shown that all content is potentially available for all players. The only restrictions implemented by ArenaNet are:
- some content requires a higher character level to play, but everyone can make level 80.
- some content requires groups of 5 players, but finding 4 other people is not all that hard.
- the higher levels of Fractals of the Mists requires infused ascended items (which is what the recent uproar is about).

Contrary to many opposing MMOs, it is possible to be reasonably successful in all aspects of the game even without maximum gear (again, with the exception of high levels of Fractals of the Mists). The gear is not a hard requirement, it just helps.

At their most basic, Raids are a large group of players repeatedly clearing out the same zone over and over for the chance of very good gear drops.

People don’t call it “raiding” much in GW2, but attacking Ascalons over and over is little different than attacking any raid zone in WoW or other MMOs. These can be fun for folks motivated to grind whatever special currency is attached to the place and having a small % chance of getting gear upgrades.

The biggest difference between GW2 and other MMOs is that you can Raid without needing to be in a dedicated group. For example, Orr temples, for gear and to unlike the Karma merchants. Sure you can join a Squad if there’s a Commander on scene. But it’s not required. You can just show up Rift and Secret World have similar concepts.

Google is your friend … look up Leeroy Jenkins. All will become clear! this post was made in good humor

Here you go http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raid_ couldn’t resist being the only player not to answer this question