WoW -> Insider -> Insider Interview

ne of the most compelling features of massively-multiplayer games is the near infinity of things to do in them - content to suit many different playing styles. 'Raids' are assaults by larger groups of players on powerful monsters or dungeons and in World of Warcraft can include everything from a group of lower level characters tackling a quest well above their level to the epic end-game, high-level attacks against god-like foes. We recently talked with designer Jeffrey Kaplan, who has been heading up the world and raid design, to hear his thoughts on where raids are heading in World of Warcraft and how they'll be implemented.

Thanks for agreeing to this interview Jeff. So let's start off by defining a raid.

raid, as I would define it, is when it takes more than a standard group to kill a creature. Technically, people could be raiding the Deadmines for Van Cleef if they tried it with several players who were below the recommended level. So if some characters are level 15 and they want to kill Van Cleef, and they take two groups into the Deadmines, I would actually consider that a raid. Now the raiding that we are talking about today is end-game raiding, and that is designed for players that hit max level - level 60 - and who want to get together and kill dragons, or demons, or other high-end monsters.

How did the design for this high-end raid content begin?

arly on we planned out everything that we felt would make cool raid content. We expect there to be a lot of people at the end of the game, since we aren't putting in a steep leveling curve. So we wanted to have some epic content waiting for them. Chris Metzen, who is our VP of creative development, was my greatest resource when deciding on raid content. With his help, I sort of went through and identified as many monsters as possible that I felt were epic enough to be raid creatures within Chris' story line. After this, I worked with Chris, lead designer Rob Pardo, and Allen Adham (co-founder of Blizzard) to figure out which ones we wanted to include in the game, how they would rank in difficulty, and how people would progress through the raid game.

What were the chief concerns when designing the raid content?

he big task was laying out all the encounters that we wanted, deciding where it would go in the world, determining whether it should be instanced or not, and then determining a progression for it all, because we knew we didn't want every raid to be of equal difficulty.

We went through our progression and we ranked the raids by tiers of difficulty. Then we decided that for some tiers, we wanted to force you to progress through lower-levels to get to higher ones. However, we didn't want to force you into a linear progression through the raid game. We tried to make the progression more natural, such as requiring you to defeat a lower-tier raid boss so you can acquire the power and equipment to fight a higher-tier one.

What's an example of not forcing progression in the raid content?

ell, we will have raid bosses (like Ragnaros - a gigantic Elemental Fire God), who you can reach without having to go through a lower-tier raid boss. But he is much more difficult than Onyxia. So you can access both of them early on, but Ragnaros will be a higher-tier encounter.

So are raids just one encounter with a single boss-type monster? Are there any raids that are an entire dungeons?

hat's something we put a lot of thought into. We realized there's not a set formula for a raid. You really have to give casual players and high-end guilds a variety of different ways to raid. A good example of a shorter raid is Onyxia. Onyxia is pretty much accessible to everyone early on. Her lair is not a massive raid dungeon. When you want to fight Onyxia, there are only a few creatures you need to defeat. At the same time, some of the best raids in other games were these massive dungeon crawls that would take an entire night, if not multiple days, to clear. And we plan to have those as well. Think of them as raiding dungeon crawls, where you'll hit multiple raid-strength monsters along the way and you'll need a full raid force to clear it.

What are you doing to avoid problems with hundreds, if not thousands, of players competing to fight a single raid boss, as is the problematic case in other massively multiplayer online RPGs?

good majority of our raids will be in instances, which is nice for a bunch of reasons. It means that every guild, or every raiding group, on the server will have access to the same creatures, and it means that guild leaders won't have to wake up at 2 o'clock in the morning and call everybody in their guild to organize for a late-night raid to beat other groups who might be looking to raid Onyxia at the same time. Instances will prevent raid monsters from being stolen out from under you. Making a raid an instance gives everybody a chance to have a shot at the encounter. The fun of the encounter is going to be defeating the raid mission, not getting access to it in the first place.

What about the small number of raids you mentioned earlier that are not in instances?

hat we've tried to do with raids in the exterior world is make them give a benefit to everybody on the server, even if the resident uber-guild kills the raid boss in the first few hours that it is up. One example is the raid boss that guards access to a special area. Once that boss is dead, not only does the guild that killed it now gain access to this new zone, but so does the whole server.

These would be actual new zones that people won't be able to get into until the resident uber-guild comes and kills the raid boss guarding the entrance to them. So rather than restricting content to a small group, we are trying to open up content to benefit everybody when there is an exterior raid.

You mentioned that these are raids designed for max level players. Will they be closed off to lower-level players?

he raids will be enabled for anyone. To enter a raid instance you just have to be in a raid group. Now, twenty level-15 players can make a raid group, but how long twenty level-15 players last in Onyxia's lair is another thing. And to be perfectly honest, the challenges that have to be overcome to get to the lair would probably be too much for mid-level characters.

I have it planned out similarly for Ragnaros' lair, which is called the Molten Core; it lies in Blackrock Depths. I decided to put two molten giants right in the front, flanking the entrance to the Molten Core. I look at these two monsters as the "earn your way" enemies. If you can defeat them, then you're ready to get in. But if you can't even beat these two monsters, then you don't have the needed power level to enter the instance. I want them there for the groups that casually bump into a dungeon and say "We can organize into a raid group. Let's go in there and see how we do in that lair." I want them to know right away that this dungeon is meant for raiding and you're not going to get anywhere unless you're a hi-level raiding party.

Does that mean all raids are tuned so that only a maximum raid party of 40 level-60 players can beat them?

e're tuning different raid encounters for different numbers. There are some lieutenant-type monsters in raids that will get absolutely destroyed if they fight 40 people. Forty people will have an easy time against these lieutenants. But it is important to have some of these monsters because depending on the length of the raid, you might not always have 40 people for the entire raid. Let's say your raiding party enters a 2-hour long raid dungeon. There will probably be a lieutenant on the way that takes 20 players to defeat, whereas the raid boss takes 40. This design makes it easier to accommodate people's schedules.

Say I am a guild member. I might want to start the raid at 4 o'clock, but the majority of my guild gets off of work at 5:30 and my friends and I don't want to just sit around. We want to start in on the raid. We know we're going to have our warlocks summoning people in later, and we don't want to have to sit at the zone and wait for 40 people to show up before we can even make a dent in the raid. That's just not fun.

We've talked about designing some raid dungeons to have mini-raid areas, meaning areas for 10 people, so that you have an incentive just to get into a raid with a smaller group. We might have a strong lieutenant wander these areas, which would force you to organize your full raid together to kill him. But if your raid is strong enough to eliminate him, then in the off-hours, the 5- or 10- or 15-man groups that just want to kill monsters and find loot in this mini-raid areas can do that without having to organize a full 40-man raiding party.

If all the raid bosses are going to require 40 players of 60th level, how are you going to ramp up the challenge from lower-tier raid bosses to higher-tier ones?

his is fairly easy to do because of the power of armor, equipment, and other gear. Equipment makes a huge difference in our game. We can also tune the difficulty of creatures. We can make it so that the lower-tier raid boss is difficult, but once you learn the strategy, you can beat it quite easily.

One of the most powerful things a raid group can possess is knowledge. That's why we're trying to keep so much of the raid game confidential. We don't want to put a lot of this type of content in the beta, because the number one advantage you can have going into a raid is the strategy for beating it. We know that the first time people take on a raid encounter, they are going to wipe out and think it is very, very difficult. People will feel we've made it too hard, and that's with 40 people in the encounter. But a couple of weeks, if not a week, later that same group is going to be beating that raid boss with 30 people, and then 20 people by the time they ramp up in gear and discover the correct strategy.

That actually happens in every dungeon - not just the raid areas. I added Blackrock Depths to the current beta a while ago, and the testers went nuts. They said "This is the hardest dungeon ever. I can't believe how hard this is tuned. This is impossible. There is no way it can be done with a group of five."

So I posted on the forums and said, "Let me know how you feel about it in a week." Sure enough, a week later, groups of five were beating it. And now it's attacked regularly and beaten pretty easily. They'll figure it out, and I think knowledge is the best advantage that they can have. Plus, we can make higher-tiers harder just by playing with the numbers, and then players will have to ramp up in gear and resists to beat these higher challenges.


	Onyxia's Lair

hen you enter a regular 'instanced' dungeon in the game, your character or group passes through a blue portal that signifies you are entering the instance. These dungeons allow you and anyone in your group to adventure privately, without any other characters moving through your version of the dungeon at the same time. When you encounter one of these portals, and it's green instead of blue, that means you've encountered a raid dungeon - and you're going to need some serious back-up before taking on the challenges inside. One of these green portals signals the entrance to Onyxia's Lair, a powerful black dragon that you will need all of the cunning and skill of a raid group to bring down.

Onyxia the Black Dragon

The black dragonflight was among the greatest threats to mortal life the world has ever known. Led by the fallen Aspect, Deathwing, the black dragons ravaged and subverted the kingdoms of humanity and elves for generations. Yet, during the Battle of Grim Batol (nearly fifteen years ago), Deathwing was defeated by his fellow Aspects and thought destroyed. Though some believe the great leviathan is merely hiding in seclusion, it'is clear he has no direct control over his diabolical flight.

Since Deathwing's departure, his eldest children have arisen to lead their brethren and recoup their failing numbers. Deathwing's eldest son, the malicious and cunning Nefarian, has claimed the burning fortress of Blackrock Spire as his aerie. There, aided by his loyal Dragonspawn, he subverted the remaining Blackrock Orcs and ensnared the black dragons not already under his control.

One of Nefarian's mightiest supporters is his younger sister, Onyxia. A clever, highly intelligent dragon, Onyxia is fond of assuming mortal guises, which she uses to secretly manipulate the affairs of mortal politics and commerce. Though Onyxia is relatively small for a black dragon of her age, she shares the same powers and abilities as the rest of her terrible flight.

Her searing breath weapon can melt both stone and iron. Her physical attacks, whether bites, scrapes or tail lashes, are lightning quick and nearly unstoppable. When cornered, Onyxia is fond of taking flight and blasting her troublesome prey from above.

Though Onyxia has been sighted traveling to and from Blackrock Mountain, it's rumored that she keeps a secret lair somewhere within the murky swamps of Kalimdor. It's also whispered that her brood of new eggs is hidden within her lair - awaiting maturation. Should anyone ever threaten Onyxia within her lair - within distance of her precious eggs - her wrath would be terrible beyond comprehension. . .