The Zerg Raid Dungeon

I have a new idea, a design proposal for Blizzard for content to be added in patch 1.12 or 1.13: The Zerg Raid Dungeon. World of Warcraft has a well known problem that players can reach level 60 on a casual play schedule, with lots of soloing, a bit of grouping, and just a small guild. Then at level 60 most of the content is raid dungeons in which casual players haven't got a snowball's chance in Molten Core to succeed. Thus 96.4% of players don't raid, get increasingly frustrated with the lack of content at 60 for them, and quit the game. The fact that every content patch brings back a huge number of resubscriptions makes it obvious that these people quit because of a lack of content in the first place.

So what Blizzard should do is to bridge the gap between the casual level 60 player and the raider by adding a new raid dungeon which is *easier* than Molten Core or Zul'Gurub. I call it the Zerg Raid Dungeon, because it should be designed in a way that a random pickup raid group can zerg in with 40 casual players and still have a good chance to at least kill the first boss of that place. Every subsequent boss would then be a bit harder, and require more and more refined game play, until the final boss, who should be about as tough as Lucifron, the first boss in Molten Core.

Of course the loot should be adequate for the difficulty level, thus less good than Molten Core loot, but better than tier 0 loot. This is not about getting casual player easy loot, it is about getting them training in raiding, which will ultimately allow them to proceed to Molten Core and beyond. And it is about offering them new content, keeping them playing and paying. Unlike Molten Core the Zerg Raid Dungeon would allow a bad raid to achieve some success, while at the same time showing them the advantages of playing better. This encourages people to come back and try again. Molten Core or Zul'Gurib aren't good training grounds, because they are already too hard for the casual player. And now that Scholomance and Stratholme have been removed as possible training grounds for small scale raiding, the Zerg Raid Dungeon is badly needed to bridge the gap from casual playing to the existing end-game content of WoW.

Is this just a dream? The chances of Blizzard actually adding a raid dungeon easier than Molten Core are slim. They are busy adding a raid dungeon more difficult than any existing place in patch 1.11, in spite of the fact that less than 0.1% of the players will be able to visit this. Blackwing Lair and AQ40 aren't exactly overcrowded these days, the number of players able to kill even the first boss in Naxxramas is tiny.

But that doesn't mean the Zerg Raid Dungeon concept won't happen. The only thing it needs is inertia on the part of the developers, which is generally something that you have a reasonable chance to see. The only thing Blizzard needs to do is to *not* change anything in Molten Core when the Burning Crusade comes out. Molten Core is hard for a level 60 pickup raid, but it would be nearly the perfect Zerg Raid Dungeon training ground for a level 70 pickup raid. It would fit all the requirements: A group of 40 players of level 70 that haven't raided before have a decent chance of killing Lucifron on the first try, but subsequent encounters are getting harder for them, and will teach them to play better. The current MC loot will be decent for level 70, but not as good as the one in the new level 70 raid dungeons. And participating in a level 70 zerg raid through Molten Core would teach a casual players a lot of the do's and don'ts for raiding in a 40-man group.

I still have hope that we will see this solution. Not only would it be good game design, and pleasing a large group of players. But it would also be a lot easier to implement than all alternatives, because the devs just need to do nothing. The alternatives, like lowering the cap for Molten Core from 40 players to 20 players would be a lot more problematic. It would mean that level 60 players couldn't access Molten Core any more, just to prevent level 70 players from zerging it. A "sliding" raid number cap based on levels would be hard to implement and complicated. And if you make Molten Core harder by lowering the raid cap, while keeping the loot the same, no level 70 would want to go there, and the place would turn into a museum. You could keep Molten Core as a level 70 raid dungeons by making all mobs harder and making the loot better, but that would be a lot of work, and the raiders who have been to MC a hundred times won't be too keen to go to the renovated version again. So I think turning Molten Core into a Zerg Raid Dungeon training ground would be the best and most probably solution. Hey, maybe Blizzard could place a meeting stone in front of it!
- posted by Tobold @ 7:50 AM Permanent Link