Since it's launch more then 6 years ago, the World of Warcraft (aka WoW) has become the worlds most popular paid MMO and has revolutionized the genre. The latest expansion, Cataclysm, launched last December and completely changed the landscape of the game in terrain and gameplay design. While the zones themselves where radically altered and many classes found entirely new mechanics (Hunters no longer use mana, Warlocks now only use 3 Soul Shards, Paladins must manage the new resource 'Holy Power', etc) the advances in raiding have been unheralded.

Here is some basic MMO/WoW lingo to help you keep up if you're new to all of this: An 'MMO' (Massively Multiplayer Online Game) is a genre in which players interact with other individuals with persistent online characters. The World of Warcraft is more specficially defined as Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game or a 'MMORPG'. A raid in WoW consists of 10 or 25 players banding together to fight enemies that one could not hope to defeat alone. A 'tank' is the person taking the damage and holding the attention ('Agro') from these strong enemies who are called 'bosses', while the 'healers' heal the people in the raid and the 'DPS' (stands for Damage Per Second) are the people that consist of the majority of the group and do damage to the bosses. Bosses generally drop items called 'loot' that players wear to make themselves stronger allowing them to encounter even more difficult bosses. While WoW did not invent raiding, it made it more appealing than other MMO's by making it easier for the average player to start raiding and punishing them less for failure.

Gameplay wise, previous expansions would force the player to learn simple mechanics like "do not stand in front of the boss"/"do not stand in the fire" or you will die. These simple problems would be coupled with the bosses doing inordinate amounts of damage to the tank forcing the healers to play their roles perfectly or risk failure. This would boil down to many of the fights feeling nearly the same for tanks and healers as the the mechanics would be more built towards challenging the DPS instead. This would also lead to frustration if simple mistakes were made by any of the three groups would result in repeated failure and the inability to kill newer bosses.

Cataclysm changed all of that by making fights that challenge all three groups differently, creating a diverse 'Heroic' mode that allows for more difficulty and providing many bosses with similar challenge.

For tanks, Blizzard has added in multiple creatures to fight during a single boss attempt, forcing multiple tanks to learn what they must hold agro on during an encounter and how to properly position the bosses in these more frantic battles. DPS must deal with more varied situations including target changing, movement and damage avoidance. Healers currently face the most difficult task of trying to use their individual skills most effectively on a specfic fight while learning how to heal as a team.

An example of this is the boss Omnitron Defense System. Wowpedia gives a detailed explanation of this boss that helps explain my new points on diversity of mechanics. DO NOT become overwhelmed at the wall of text in the spoiler below, it is simply there to show the new complexity of the fights in WoW.

Quote: This is counsel encounter consisting of 4 golem bosses with a shared HP pool of 32M. There will only be two entities moving and using skills at a time. When a new golem is activated the old one will be granted a shield. This is there to encourage the dps to switch targets. Players can stack them for extra damage from incidental AOEs, tank cleave, etc. The bosses do not do any cleaves, stacking buffs, or crazy AoEs that punish the tanks for this strategy. When the fight starts, only one golem is active. It has 100 stored energy, which starts draining as soon as you pull. Once the energy hits 50, another golem will "wake up" and join the fight. Once the first golem reaches 0, it shuts down, and a new one spawns. This continues in a cycle until you kill the boss.

Quote: Tanks: A "stream" from the back wall to the next golem will show you which one is spawning next. Get ready to pick that one up once your golem reaches about 3 or 4 energy. You will know what golem to expect based on the color of the stream. Don't stand in poison clouds, and don't let the boss stand in whirlpools.

Quote: Healers: When you see "Acquiring Target" go off, Magmatron's target is about to take a lot of damage. A helpful red beam points to whoever is being targeted. The tanks are eligible targets as well. Get ready with preventive healing/shielding. If you are running low on mana, stand in a whirlpool for some nice regen.

Quote: DPS: Stand in the whirlpools for a buff. Don't stand in the poison clouds. Kill any slimes that spawn (they spawn 3 at a time and you get a raid warning). If a slime is targeting you, kite it (especially if you are melee). They can be slowed so use whatever abilities are available to your raid. When a boss casts their "shield" ability (look for keywords Barrier, Shield, Shell, or Absorption) switch targets immediately, or bad things happen. Special note for melee: Your tank might get hit with the "Lightning Conductor" debuff. Watch out for this. If that happens, get away from the tank ASAP as they will be hitting you with a big aoe.

Quote: Everyone Spread out as much as you can. Don't stand in the bad stuff, but do stand in the good stuff. If you are targeted by Magmatron's "Acquiring Target" spell, stand there and take it (use damage reduction cooldowns if you have them; it will save the healer a lot of trouble).

But explaining this fight with words alone can be difficult so here is a video explanation if you prefer that:

As Wowpedia and Tankspot explain, all three groups are given new and interesting roles in encounters. Multiple tanks must control 2 of the 4 creatures while keeping the bosses from standing in certain areas. Healers and DPS must avoid certain effects on the ground while staying in some. Healers must also pay attention as a random ally in the raid can take substantial damage and must be healed accordingly. These newer fights are more complicated but do not punish the group for making mistakes. Ex: if a DPS stands in the wrong spot and dies, it is possible for the group to still kill the boss now. The game is less lenient on mistakes made by tanks and healers but a similar philosophy applies.

Some of you may be extremely confused and overwhelmed at at this point believing WoW to be too complicated but the true beauty lies in the leaniancy of these fights. If one is to stand in something negative for a short ammount of time, the punishment is not too extreeme and the player is unlikely to die. If the player forgets to stand in something positive, they might in turn do less damage/heal less but it is not a mistake that will cause problems. Here in lies the pearl of the new mechanic designs, normal versions of raids do not punish the player severely for making mistakes. If a player is seeking the old style of extremely difficult content, they can attempt the Heroic modes of these fights which has more difficult mechanics and is less forgiving overall but rewards the player with significantly better loot.


The final major change is the availability of content. Lets pretend your group is stuck on the Maloriak fight. If this was a previous expansion, the group would be forced to fail at killing him over and over with no other content to attempt. In Cataclysm, many bosses exist at a similar difficulty level, allowing the group to go to a different raid and kill different bosses. So instead of fighting Maloriak in Blackwing Decent, the group can instead go to the Bastion of Twilight and attempt to defeat the Ascendant Council, who are equally difficult but different in mechanics. This allows for more player progression and alleviates stress that repeated failure often brings.

These changes have brought about a less stressful and more enjoyable raiding experiences for me personally. I hope other developers learn from Blizzard and introduce some of these design changes into their MMOs making them more friendly to the hardcore and causal player.

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Sorry about the wall of text yet again, I tend to get rather verbose when talking about things I love. I'm going to begin playing Dragon Age 2 very soon and I hope to finish 999 this week while on Spring Break (Woo hoo!) I should have a blog post up about those 2 games by midweek and then some impressions about my families new iPad 2 after that. I'm still rather excited for the launch of the 3DS next week and I will definetly have something up about Pilot Wings Resort and my thoughts on the system on the 27th. I hope to make "A Man with No Hearth" a running feature on this blog over the next few months so let me know what you think. Thanks again for reading if you got this far, I really appreciate any comments and hopefully I'll get better at this as time goes on.

My background and info WoW info for those that care: I currently raid on the as an alliance Holy Paladin named Wumbo. I have killed every boss currently available in WoW on some character and have been playing the game on & off for 6 years now.