Why are Statics so difficult sometimes?

[RiyahArp]

Base on these 2 comments I can say two things,

ive played other mmos, and have done raiding in ffxi. And the older games there never really was a need to tell your friend not to play ,because old school raids were more a function of time than skill. You just showed up in a group and worked out your role. There really wasn't the whole professionalization of the metagame in many earlier mmos.

And I've also seen what happens when one person chooses the raid over their friend.

The person who chooses the raid stops doing things with their friend. The raid takes up so much time and energy, that they don't really want to grind older stuff. The friend becomes more of a hanger on; they always compete with the raid even if they choose to not do it. Because raids really do take a lot of time.

Discord? lol. You end up on the raid discord, because you spend more time with the static and do things that are important to them.

I think a lot of people don't realize this happens until its too late.

[Sigma-Astra]

And I've also seen what happens when one person chooses the raid over their friend.

The person who chooses the raid stops doing things with their friend. The raid takes up so much time and energy, that they don't really want to grind older stuff. The friend becomes more of a hanger on; they always compete with the raid even if they choose to not do it. Because raids really do take a lot of time.

Discord? lol. You end up on the raid discord, because you spend more time with the static and do things that are important to them.

I think a lot of people don't realize this happens until its too late.

Somehow, I feel as if you're pitting one extremity that has occurred because you've seen it happen once and think it's the standard norm all of the time here.

[Raven2014]

ive played other mmos, and have done raiding in ffxi. And the older games there never really was a need to tell your friend not to play ,because old school raids were more a function of time than skill. You just showed up in a group and worked out your role. There really wasn't the whole professionalization of the metagame in many earlier mmos.

Then I would LOVE to hear the name of the MMO you played. I played WoW over 10 years ago, and if you tell me can walk into a raid with less skill ... then I know you're not being honest. Meta wasn't as "popular" seemly because the internet wasn't as active back then, but people still checked your gears, your enhancement. They also look at your numbers during the pull. Sure, you can sneak in large raid or casual like the 24men or Primal EX equivalent, but no way you gonna get a slot in stuffs like Heroic Raid without know your class inside out.

And I've also seen what happens when one person chooses the raid over their friend.

Like I said, being friends - real friends - is also about respecting each other needs. Being friends don't mean, or shouldn't mean the obligatory or possessive type of "we must be together 24/7 and do everything together". I have RL friends play various MMO with me, but they are very casual. They know I'm interested in end game, and they don't. But they know what are my raid nights, and they respect those time. But outside of that, we have fun, hang out and chill with each others. In fact, I bought a casual friend of mine in this game a house right across mine. We helped each others farming material for our workshop, talk crap in our personal link-shell ...etc... But at the same he's never one that you can take into an end game raid beyond EX - Primal, he doesn't have the commitment for it. We're been together since 2.0, and he's actually like the only casual in our niche group, with one other guy are even more HC then me. But this guy never once ask us "hey, can you take carry me in your raid because I want the loot LOL". Real friend, with real respect, don't do that to each others.

Because raids really do take a lot of time.

And this is, again, why I have to question your claim about your end game experience. It's very warped and skew. Do you know people in HC or even just MC groups tend to keep their friends really well? Because outside of the few week of progression, these people don't spend a lot of time in raid. For example this week my group clear 5-8 in about 2h on Tuesday. Guess what we do for the rest of the week? Running map, holding events, wiping in 24men, farming mats for workshop with our 'casual' friends. In fact, the people who actually have to spend a lot of time in raid are usually the casual people who don't have static and have to pug. See the oxymoron in your perception here?

Discord? lol. You end up on the raid discord, because you spend more time with the static and do things that are important to them.

Like I said, you ask most people who are in a cross-server static, we spent very little time with our actual static outside of raid.

I think a lot of people don't realize this happens until its too late.

No, what I don't think you realize is you're talking a lot of these base on your assumption prejudice, as someone who are actually in this, I can tell most of your views are either warped, or far from what the actual truth is.

[Erakir]

Then I would LOVE to hear the name of the MMO you played. I played WoW over 10 years ago, and if you tell me can walk into a raid with less skill ... then I know you're not being honest. Meta wasn't as "popular" seemly because the internet wasn't as active back then, but people still checked your gears, your enhancement. They also look at your numbers during the pull. Sure, you can sneak in large raid or casual like the 24men or Primal EX equivalent, but no way you gonna get a slot in stuffs like Heroic Raid without know your class inside out.

EverQuest. EverQuest raiding was vastly different than WoW raiding and can be seen somewhat in the design of Molten Core which was made by a lot of EQ developers as I understand it, where you didn't need all 40 people on the ball or with great gear to clear the encounters (this is just what I've heard, I only started in WoW just before BC came out and so my progression raiding in WoW started with Karazhan, which I love as an entry raid for a host of reasons).

EQ didn't have raid cap sizes for a long time, and when first implemented I believe it was....72? 60? I can't quite recall, it was just during Planes of Power - the 4th major expansion. There wasn't a "raid UI" system in place, period. People just formed numbers of groups, one of the groups would get the credit for the kill (most damage of all parties), and then the guild would work out loot since the corpse would become lootable by anyone like..5 minutes later or something like that. Yes, ninja looting was a very real thing as a result.

In EQ with loot not being tied to instances and instead tied to world spawns entirely, your raid force could be 30 people or 80 people, all depending on how comfortable they were with each other and how often loot would be available. It was self governing; it had to be. An extra person who was literally not causing wipes or trains was an asset, whether they did half the damage of your top DPS or not. If they were cool with the raid system your guild had in place, then it was cool. If you were a cleric and could hit a Complete Heal macro every 20 seconds, you were an asset. If you were a level...uh...was it 55? Mighta been....anyway, lt's say 55+ Mage you were an asset for Call of the Hero, let alone summoning Mod Rods and dropping them on the ground all fight.

To put this in perspective, we had someone who only played a cleric who was a long running joke. You could duck in EQ by pressing D, it'd interrupt any spellcasting and prevent you from casting spells. She was screaming in guild chat for 10 minutes in a fight about not being able to heal at all. Everyone told her she was ducking. Press D. She couldn't do it for around 10 minutes of that 30 minute fight.

She was an asset.

One guild on our server raided with 80-100+ people and had a "Gratz Brabak" system where every upgrade, no matter how big or how small to their main tank, went to him before anyone else. My guild didn't do that, we spread loot around based on a complex bidding system based off DKP. Very different approaches. We both were very successful at around the same progression level doing this. We were also known for having multiple people playing 2-5 characters at once, multibox style. We'd play each others' characters if a friend couldn't be there for a raid. You were still effective playing 3+ people easily.

Don't get me wrong, skilled players were great and all, but the hardest raiding in EQ did not require your raid force to be great. It needed a few people who knew how to spawn/pull stuff and to set up the basic strategy, then a bunch of worker ants....or a smaller total number of highly skilled players that could do more on the fly than overwhelm with attrition.

I raided Vex Thal for a long time on my Wizard knowing very little about the zone and playing Golden Sun 50% of the time. I was one of the strongest wizards in the guild at that time. Same with NToV.

Hell, I raided in Velious with my guild before I was LEVEL CAPPED and all I could contribute were tiny lure nukes. It was no big deal if I died, but me being there made the boss die slightly faster. I was therefore an asset, albeit a small one at the time.

I don't mean to detract from the rest of your post (honestly I have a lot I could say when it comes to experiences managing progression raiding from WoW), but early MMO raiding was a different beast than what WoW went towards with hard modes in WotLK and even before then with BC. The shift towards raid caps allows for much more finely tuned and interesting encounters, but also puts more emphasis on a minimal skill level for players - not that this is good or bad inherently, it's just an observation. This might be best evidenced by one of our longest running members from EQ who re-founded the same guild on WoW eventually having to retire playing as his skill level wasn't high enough for the harder modes they started introducing that we wished to progress towards. Was unfortunate to see him just slowly withdraw out of knowing that he couldn't cut it anymore, and stopped raiding altogether. He was about 50 at the time I believe and represented so much of what our guild was about, personality-wise.

[RiyahArp]

EverQuest. EverQuest raiding was vastly different than WoW raiding and can be seen somewhat in the design of Molten Core which was made by a lot of EQ developers as I understand it, where you didn't need all 40 people on the ball or with great gear to clear the encounters.

FFXI raiding was also more slower and more about time commitment. It actually had the same problems as EQ, mostly because it copied a lot of the formula. The bigger problem is that they also started skill gating with chains of promathia, which led to Sea being underused, and a more casual (but still very hard) focus in the next expansion. But most of the core raids or things weren't as skill based as opposed to time based. You farmed a pop and then claimed a mob.

[Erakir]

FFXI raiding was also more slower and more about time commitment. It actually had the same problems as EQ, mostly because it copied a lot of the formula. The bigger problem is that they also started skill gating with chains of promathia, which led to Sea being underused, and a more casual (but still very hard) focus in the next expansion. But most of the core raids or things weren't as skill based as opposed to time based. You farmed a pop and then claimed a mob.

Aye I've heard similar. I can't fairly comment since I only ever got to around 60 in XI, but I know the endgame had a lot in common with EQ (especially when looked at through the lens of the modern MMO too).

I know EQ moved more and more towards what we see in WoW, too. More things going on with encounters, needed more awareness, etc. Not anywhere close to what we have today, but it shifted that way nonetheless. Certainly didn't start that way though, heh.

[Jojoya]

Because raids really do take a lot of time.

During Cata and MoP in WoW I was raiding with the #2 and then the #1 guild on my server. When we were pushing hardest at progression, we were still never raiding more than 11 hours a week because real life just didn't allow for much flexibility in their schedules. Normally the raid week was 7-8 hours. I still had plenty of time for my friends that weren't raiding or even playing WoW.

It comes down to how many commitments you've got going simultaneously in your life and how well you've learned to manage your time.

Sometimes people refer to other people as friends when they really aren't. They're just people they know casually with a single interest in common and they don't associate outside of that interest. Once upon a time, those people would have been called acquaintances instead of friends but social media's insistence on labeling everyone as a friend has warped what friend used to mean.

As interests change, people with very little in common are going to drift apart. That applies to real life friendships as much as it does game friendships. We all change over time. Trying to blame a game for a loss of a friend is silly when the reality is the friend just had a change in interests.