Hey, I’d first like to introduce myself. I’m known as Blade, and I am the Co-founder, Graphic Designer, and Community Manager at Tamriel Foundry. Tamriel Foundry is an ESO fan site dedicated to theorycrafting, and mechanics discussion in The Elder Scrolls Online.

(Note: I will use references to World of Warcraft in this article to back some of my claims; this doesn’t mean I want an Elder Scrolls WoW clone.)

With the recent influx of information released today, there was a quote from Matt Firor that concerned me for the games well-being, and that is about no raiding in ESO. In an interview with IGN, Firor was quoted, saying “I'm also happy to see that the design so far seems focused on exploration and questing rather than grinds. There are no raids, after all – "That's not Elder Scrolls," says Game Director Matt Firor – but there are four-man dungeons and three-faction open PvP with sieges in the beleaguered province of Cyrodiil.(1)” Some of you may be wondering why this is a big deal, and this article is directed to you.

MMO’s are split into different groups of players, easily separated by two groups of people. You've got PvP players, and PvE players. Let’s start with talking about the PvP players first. PvP’ers are gamers who enjoy the adrenaline rush from fast paced and intense combat against enemy players. In order for PvP to be successful in a mmo, there needs to be incentive to engage in combat with enemy players. The incentives normally come in the form of PvP ranks, and gear acquired through PvP. You also need to give players who enjoy PvP places to play, which normally involve instanced PvP, in the form of arena or battlegrounds, or open world PvP such as open world RvR. ESO is taking the route to stay away from instanced PvP, and instead focus all of their efforts on their open world RvR. Interviews in the past have confirmed the presence of Realm Ranks obtained through your effectiveness in PvP, as well as gear obtainable with Alliance points, but what does this mean for PvE players?

The term PvE player defines a much broader group of people than PvP player. You’ve got gamers who enjoy playing solo, and questing through the game content and crafting or rerolling at max level. Players who enjoy running in small groups, and completing smaller scale dungeons such as 4 man group dungeons in ESO. Lastly, you’ve got your PvE raider who enjoys large scale complex scripted encounters, and these are the players I am going to be focusing on. While I do understand that raiding is not absolutely essential, I do believe that it leads to the overall longevity and success of an mmo. Many of the comparisons I’m going to be making will be made to WoW because it is currently, and has been the most successful mmo to date.

World of Warcraft does many things right, but one aspect they’ve done better than the other mmo’s is how they’ve handled their raiding. While WoW does feature a plethora of other content to do, the primary reason people continue to sub is for their progression raiding. In WoW’s 7 years of existent Blizzard has released 41 different raids, in a series of 4 different expansions, an average of 10 raid encounters per expansion. Even now, WoWprogress records 15,532 raiding guilds are currently progressing through WoW’s scripted encounters. There is no surprise that even after 7 years, World of Warcraft maintained 10.3 million subscribers in the end of June, 2012 (2). Is it coincidence that the mmo that understands the importance of raiding also has been top dog for 7 long years? I don’t think so. I believe that if ZOS doesn’t seriously consider developing scripted raid encounters as a priority, and would rather release it after launch, they’re going to cause a large group of the mmo community to not even consider buying their game, and first impressions are everything. I’ve been an MMO and Elder Scrolls fan for many years. My first real RPG was Morrowind, and I was ecstatic when I heard the news about Elder Scrolls coming to the mmo scene. I want this game to succeed, and want it to be the best it possibly can. I hope some of you fellow raiders can stand behind me, and tell Zenimax Online that we want raiding to be more of a priority than it currently is in ESO.

Top MMO Subscriptions & Raid Numbers
World of Warcraft: 41 Raids
Lord of the Rings Online: 15 Raids
Rift: 13 Raids
Everquest 1: Too Many to Count http://everquest.allakhazam.com/wiki/eq:raid_progression_guide
Everquest 2: 22 Raids

Vote in the Poll Here: http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1450601-poll-no-pve-raids-in-eso/

Resources:
(1) http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/03/19/the-elder-scrolls-online-just-might-be-awesome
(2) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15672416

yep good post.

Feel free to add here as well http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1450601-poll-no-pve-raids-in-eso/ already got a thread going about it.

Oh boy...
It's already begun...

There trying to be as simmilar as to the older TES games as possibly while keeping it MMO. So I dont think we need raids...

Good luck, I support you.

Though I'd like to post before people start the "don't need raids because I personally don't care for them therefore nobody should have them, even though it doesn't affect my gameplay in any way, shape or form" posts.

Thanks for the post Blade. I'm hoping this reaches more people.

Hope it continues. Raiding is a huge part of MMOs. Just because you personally don't like them doesn't mean the majority agrees.

100 % support, love raiding.

Good post Blade. I'm still hoping this is IGN doing what they do, and being wrong in a sensationalist way to get page hits.

If not, then I think we need to break out the pitchforks. I'm not much of a raider myself, but I just don't think ESO will have much of a chance to succeed on a AAA level if it doesn't bring in this staple of the MMO genre. That's why I'm having trouble believing they wouldn't include it.

+1!!

though it's kinda late in the development stage, they should still take this seriously, I completely agree with everything the OP wrote.
if they want to be the next biggest MMO and not just a good MMO or a REALLY good MMO, they'll need to have raids, I love raids and I'm 100% positive that I'm not the only one that does.
please, even if you start of simple, add some real raid progression to this game.

and raids don't always need to have BIG bosses, add a huge city, where 30 people enter at once and work in coordinated teams to completely take over the City in a pve environment!
having it consist of multiple parts, maybe some kind of secret boss underground, or the leaders turn out to be something you weren't expecting them to be! there are plenty of powerful figures in the TES lore, and we know you can create more that have been long forgotten in the other ages .

please, become the best game ever, if you can't do that, atleast become the most fun game on all aspects, don't just neglect a really big one reconsider raiding!

It's plausible this is an attempt to give them more time at developing end-game and still meet the launch deadline.

What % of WoW's population actively raids? (Non Raid Finder) Also, what % of WoW players actively raided back in vanilla and BC, when the game was flourishing? I ask this only because Im interested to know.

Back when I played WoW and the game was at its golden era, most of the people I played with just PvP'd, quested/explored, crafted, ran 5 mans and later 5 man heroics. I dont remember raiding being such a huge contributer to the games success, I think the lore, original warcraft fanbase, all the many different activities the game offered, plus a lot of polish, made WoW what it is today.

In my personal opinion, the raids in Cataclysm were all pretty horrible, and the last time I actually enjoyed a WoW raid was Ulduar. Maybe Im just alone on that.

I think ESO should have raids, but Im not sure that they should be a priority for launch. Perhaps a raid focused major patch after release, giving players plenty of time to hit max level, max crafting, explore the world etc.

I won't be participating in any raids unless they are 100% necessary (painfully boring imo) but I don't see why they shouldn't have them. They won't really be for gear progression since the best gear can be crafted, but if people like repeating the same boring, flavorless and non-dynamic content over and over again why deny them that?

+1

Raiding in one form or another is a must in a themepark MMO.

Is there a new source for this?

Not entirely true , if they add raids then it goes without saying that all of the best gear in the game has to drop from the raids , otherwise what would be the point of raiding?, therefore forcing anybody who wants to be competitive in PvP to do raids whether they want to or not since there is no PvP stat in ESO, by the sounds of it with the system they are using now anybody can get the best gear if they level up their crafting , I have no issue with raids as long as they don't become the only means of gaining the best gear / items ingame.

Im very much hoping that this game is as sandbox as possible, it is TES afterall.

No. People claim that because they've said you can get some of the best gear from crafting, that you can get all the best gear from crafting. It's failed deductive reasoning.

Thank you for posting Blade.

Personally, I could not imagine playing an MMORPG without some form of progression Raiding. While PvP in MMORPGs is fun, doing PvP is still a lot better in PvP specific games like PlanetSide 2 and even LoL.
What MMORPGs do best is the PvE content, and while questing and casual dungeons are ok, they have never managed to keep players playing a game in the long term. Progression PvE is at the very heart of every sucessful MMORPG, in fact, it is their very soul.

Although I like the idea of MMOs evolving into something more and I dont like when I see them devolving into something less. ESO has nothing serious to fill in the vast gap of Raiding.
It is true that ESO will have adventure zones with some Boss fights. That sounds just like the World Bosses in other games and definately not a substitute for organized Raiding.

I was certain I was going to play ESO until today, but the last thing I want is to invest time building up a character only to get to Endgame and find out that I have to quit because there is nothing else to keep me enganged. If I wanted to buy a game so that finish it, then single player games do a much better job at that.

Right now, ESO sounds like another GW2, where people will play it for 2-3 months and then move on because there is nothing else for them to do after they clear all the casual content.

It wasn't a large percent. In fact they flat out mentioned that they were trying to make it easier to raid and more interesting to raid because it was not good from a game design standpoint to dedicate so much to something a small percentage of players see. They have been successful at getting more people to raid, but it's been due to the raids becoming easier with text telling you what to do. They have also moved on to other ways to keep players (such as pokemon).

He is right, if ZeniMax want to turn TESO into a game like Warhammer online where PVE raiding is just a second thought then they will be biting off their own face. More and more i'm getting the feeling that all they really care about is RVR in Cyrodiil.

I not saying that raiding should be the be all and end all of PVE but there deafeningly should be a big part in raiding in this game.

According to this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10YwzynVwgY you will have to do every aspect of the game to get the best gear. So crafting will propably only get you BiS gear for certain slots.

Indeed:

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/821/feature/7226/Elder-Scrolls-Online-Crafting-in-Tamriel-Revealed.html - last section entitled "Will my crafts be useful?"

Something they COULD do is make the best resources drop from raiding and such. But it's interesting that crafters can also enhance dropped items. There's a lot of potential here for some interesting and non-static multi-layered gear progression (unlike, say, WoW's completely linear system).

LOl, you can forget hoping that TESO is sandbox, you can already see it's a themepark MMO.

"When I asked Sage about raiding, he said that ESO's adventure zones are designed for larger groups of PvE players. You can actually go into the adventure zones with a small group and accomplish some goals, but there are large areas in these maps dedicated to larger group experiences. There will be some warning when you're about to trigger one of these encounters (and they may even end up instanced), so a small group won't suddenly find itself face to face with a Daedric Prince!" Source -http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/03/19/the-elder-scrolls-online-interview-paul-sage/.

"30 different dungeon experiences ESO will have at launch" ~ same source as above.
"ESO's adventure zones are designed for larger groups of PvE players. " ~ same source.

There is raiding, they just don't want to call it raiding.
Y'all need to start reading information in a more in-depth way before jumping to crazy conclusions...
"ESO HAS NO RAIDS, IT'LL FLOP, QQ NOT PLAYING!", 2 weeks later... Oh, I was wrong about that hahah, turns out they actually meant (blah blah blah).