Comments on: Would you rather be Frodo or Aragorn?

By: Arthas: My part in his downfall « M.M.O.S.H

Arthas: My part in his downfall « M.M.O.S.H — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 06:38:08 +0000

[...] posted a lovely article here, and whilst I wanted to reply to some of the points she raised, I didn’t want to clog up her [...]

By: Sadrak

Sadrak — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 18:59:01 +0000

No offense, but nothing has felt “epic” to me since the 72-man raids on Nagafen and Vox in EQ1. Yes, it used to take 72 human raiders to bring down these “end game” tyrants. With corpse runs and xp loss making failure sting.

So what if Arthas is fightable in any shape or form with any number. If you want a Frodo experience, play Dragon Age, Oblivion, Fallout3, or the Witcher. Frankly, single player games are the best at delivering the Frodo experience. In an MMO, the bad guys should tear thru you like you’re nothing unless everyone you know and some people you dont come together to conquer large villains.

What made LotR great was that many heroes fought many battles in many places to conquer Sauron and his allies. There’s no reason a 25 man raid couldn’t have 20 raiders directly assaulting Arthas while a 5 man group split off to disable “empowering” devices around his lair to make him killable. Frodo + Aragorn = win.

By: Veneretio

Veneretio — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 21:31:14 +0000

I have to agree that there’s no way you actually kill Arthas in the 5 man. It’s just going to be some really cool pre-storyline for the raid instances. If done well, I’m hoping they’ll put together similar winged 5 mans in the future. I’m a big fan of us living history rather than reading history. 5 mans seem like the ideal place for that.

By: Wiqd

Wiqd — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 13:57:52 +0000

I think it really all depends on how they handle it. I mean you’re going in with a small, 5 man task force to infiltrate the citadel, but I don’t really think they expect you to defeat Arthas with only 5 people.

I saw an achievement on MMO Champions that I believe is for the 5 man which details that you have to escape from Arthas in X amount of time. I can only assume that means he chases you out of / into some other part of ICC at some point / time in the 5 man.

I don’t think you’ll kill Arthas in the 5 man, it’s just a segue to the 10 / 25 man raid.

By: Modran

Modran — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 12:39:56 +0000

I’ve recently begun playing DDO. And one of the first instances (Spoiler warning, just in case) pits you against a dragon. Only… not.

You are to break a mind controlling device while a group of NPCs duke it out with the dragon. Hem, no, distract it. You only get to watch their fight, and flight from afar (or close) during your delving.

Well, it felt epic. There was a sense of urgency, that these 4 were chased by a dragon, and we had to find the crystal before they got eaten. We didn’t even fight the beast !

So there is epicness to be felt in a small group, while not even being against a giant big baddy. Just watching it can be enough. And having a meaningful mission to do.

Even more, i think if we had been against the dragon in the end, it would have felt different, because we would have beaten it. it would’nt have felt so dangerous anymore…

By: Dblade

Dblade — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 08:56:01 +0000

In FFXI a lot of the epic storyline fights were restricted to 6 players, with a max of 18 for some. 25+ is usually storyless endgame raids. Small parties generally are better for missions, because people hate trying to get 20+ people to do a fight, any fight. Especially if its hard, and people have completed it.

You have to balance epic fights with people’s capacity to organize them.

By: Dblade

Dblade — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 08:52:46 +0000

Actually plenty of people would complain, because it’s pointless to make content for 0.1% of the playerbase. Your players are wondering why they waste time on a fight 99% of the players wont bother with, especially if it is the big bad of an entire expansion.

By: Tesh

Tesh — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 17:16:31 +0000

Good point. It’s probably a bit of both, as well as the lower profile of quest baddies. We really do accept a lot of storytelling weirdness with a wink and a nod. (It reminds me of the articles that try to pin down the physical properties of “Azeroth”, and how the physics are all wrong without some really weird explanations… or just some handwaving and “magic” as if that explains everything. Yet, we blithely soldier on, willfully ignoring the weirdness.)

By: spinks

spinks — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 16:57:04 +0000

I find it interesting that one of the issues with playing an MMO is that if you do a quest that places you as some kind of world saving hero, you have to just pretend you don’t know that loads of other players did exactly the same quest.

But why is it so (relatively) easy for people to abstract that for a questline and so hard for them to abstract it for an instance …? I wonder if it is because you don’t tend to repeat quests on the same character, or because having other players in the group makes it less immersive anyway …

By: Tesh

Tesh — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 16:21:10 +0000

The trouble with trying to tell epic stories is that everyone wants to experience them. You can’t build up a character and storyline and then cut it off at the end by saying “no, you can only do this with 24+ of your bestest friends”. Yes, Arthas should be one of those Big Bads who takes half a continent’s worth of martial force to utterly demolish, but then again, this is a *game* that doesn’t bother making a lot of sense in the first place.

At least he’s not just being made into a Dragon munchie. He *could* have gone out in an epic Bambi vs. Godzilla moment:

Arthas: “Rarr, fear me and my deathly powers of Death!”

Deathwing: “L2P, noob. It’s my turn.”

*munch*