I was reading a blog topic at Player vs. Developer and I was remembering all the grinding I did to raise certain resistances to elemental damage. This is a norm in almost all MMO’s I have ever played; each monster or boss NPC does a certain type of damage. Most of this is direct damage but most commonly in AoE (area of effect form), that effects a wide scope of players in the fight.
In recent developments within Lord of the Rings online, the community is in an uproar about the dependence of radiance based armor. So I contacted a friend who was a die hard Lotro player and see what she had to say. She has a top level healer on the gladden server, she is currently at 4 radiance. According to her kinship it was too low to do a certain endgame boss, “The Watcher”. So recently she has left her kin and moved on from Lotro due to this radiance predicament.
Teh Balrog say, "No radiance for joo!"
When asked the relevance of radiance she stated that in order to be able to survive the watchers dread (lowers max hp and causes you to cower in fear) you need about 7 pieces of radiance gear to give you enough hope to counteract the dread.
Where are these pieces of radiance gear to be found? Through high level instances requiring a group of 6 – 12 In hard mode with other endgame geared players. This now makes grouping inevitable (not a bad thing imo) and can only be accomplished by focused kinships.
This has sparked hot debates and even a very long petition to abolish radiance based gear dependency. This is Turbine’s Inc stance on the matter: “Radiance will continue to be an important game play mechanic going forward for Raids. In other words, given the amount of time and energy gone into making the Radiance system it’s safe to assume Radiance gear will be required for future Raids.”
This takes me back to the days of the Pre-BC World of Warcraft mini-expansion Ahn ‘Qiraj 40 man instance, where you needed a minimum of 150+ nature resist to survive. We didn’t complain or write petitions, we just either A) started grinding the necessary rep to be able to get the materials to craft or buy, and B) grind AQ 20 to receive a lot of the loot dropped for nature resist. I was a pro hunter with amazing levels of leather crafting and skinning, I could skin anything and craft almost everything leather in the game. So I parked in Silithus, a contested area, killed bugs and grinded rep until I had the requirements to advance in Ahn ‘Qiraj. This was tedious, but as a good wow addict my desire to progress prevailed.
Second boss of AQ 20, those were the days...
This wasn’t the first or last time as an endgame player I was forced to grind to advance. In FFXI I played until the Chains of Promathia expansion was released as a Galka Paladin. In order to be competitive I needed certain gears that gave me the important stats that a good tank would need. Vitality, Defense and Strength were most important along with high levels of resistances to the magic that higher level mobs were using. These items were either dropped by notorious monsters that were highly camped, or fighting through dungeons and opening coffers with keys that were dropped by even harder mobs. It was a mess and took a long time to accomplish, I was just glad I had a good group of people in my Linkshell (guild) that helped. Without them it was not happening.
Thanks Chaostheory!
Software developers need a mechanic to keep player retention up even when trying to keep up with players hungry for content. Endgame content isn’t all about raiding or camping rare high level monsters. It’s about keeping players involved in the game long after they made it to the highest levels, this was made popular in the beginning by Everquest and perfected by World of Warcraft. This endgame mechanic breaks players out of the elite soloists mode, if they want the cool endgame gear; they need to find their way to an endgame guild. This is the primary focus for MMORPG’s, to promote socializing and cooperation amongst players. But also from a business side of it, they want you to continue to pay for your subscription and buy future expansions. There is always a catch.
I believe the grind is inevitable in any MMORPG you will play, being for stats, skills, resistances and experience points. Game companies need to do have players log into their virtual world and spend specific amounts of time in it. The way they keep you busy is by both the desire to achieve and explore new content, and to feel rewarded by your efforts by fellow players. Having that new piece of (insert dream item here) drop and finally being able to put one goal to rest just to create a new one. Well at least for me it does, according to Bartles test at GamerDNA I am an achiever and a socializer, that’s why I have had no problem with this type of endgame shenanigans.
I do agree with PVD, there is a high burnout rate in this type of gaming activity. Many times I would find myself alone somewhere grinding something for something I need for something, chatting on vent or in guild and exclaim, “I am bored of this.” When I am finally at the endgame phase and find myself just grinding to grind to a higher level of grind I eventually pull the plug. And many players are following suit, even WoW players are starting to get fidgety and are looking for different games. This might have sounded repetitive but it is the same aspect of being an endgame player, it’s all about doing the same thing to keep you locked and loaded into this game.
Now the Lord of the Rings Online community is starting to feel the familiar burn of the downside of endgame content. They have created “The Resistance to a Resistance”, it would be easy for me to say, “Stop crying and kill the bosses, get the drops and move forward.” It’s not always that easy, as I said earlier a certain amount of group dependency comes into play. Kinships and guilds know this and start to garner a feeling of superiority and elitism starts taking hold. Eventually my Lotro friend left her kinship and soon after stopped playing Lotro for greener pastures. “Radiance became mandatory and I couldn’t get groups to get the radiance gear, I was stuck in a viscous cycle and it stopped being fun”, she told me when I asked her why.
I’ve heard players say to me, “why did you quit after all that work.” I respond that I did work, but I also experienced a lot and I feel that I have gotten what I wanted out of the game. If it gets to a point that I am just working to replace my shiny new thing with another shinier new, new thing I know it’s time to close the book on that game and open up a new one. That’s why the words end and game are put together, isn’t it?
All good games come to an end.
Until then…
Play safe,
Ink
I have recently gone back to old reliable, 
