When asked about his vision for raids and PvE endgame in ESO he explained the controversial IGN quote by recognizing that World of Warcraft is the best in the business at constructing competitive progression raiding. ZeniMax doesn’t want to become embroiled in a struggle to out-do WoW at it’s own game, and would rather develop it’s own brand of large group PvE which fits the Elder Scrolls context. Most WoW-style raids involve 20+ players hacking away gleefully at the ankles of a much larger foe, when Matt Firor claimed “That’s not Elder Scrolls” it was this type of confrontation in particular to which he was referring. The developers at ZeniMax would rather pit a group of players against a much larger force of threatening NPCs to emphasize that heroic feel which is latent throughout the Elder Scrolls series. While nothing explicit is confirmed, it does sound like adventure zones are definitely penciled in as post-launch content. Hopefully there is at least one such epic endgame PvE encounter in the original launch version of the game, but if not, I hope we can look forward to adventure zones shortly after launch as a good compromise for players which crave large group PvE endgame. We should have a better opportunity to talk to Matt further tomorrow afternoon, so I’m hopeful that we can get more juicy details then!




THANK GOD

He said adventure zones would be the places to go for epic lewtz so there you have it raiders, if you where looking for wow type raids then this is not the game for you.

So it's going to be a more large scale war like format? Will there be sieges and castle busting involved? I just wonder what kind of battles we'll be seeing. Sounds like fun though. Hope it doesn't take too long after launch to come out otherwise people might not hang around long.

I like this.

Sounds like Aoe Zerg fest, i have a bad feeling about that.

Im really not sure they are making the right decisions, i think the cut there own flesh right know.

Not to cross post but I made a new thread about ideas and suggestions based on the clarification we got thats in the OP. http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1451470-ideas-suggestions-for-end-game-raids-adventure-zones/ Feel free to join in and lets please try to keep it civil and constructive. Thanks

I don't know why you started another thread on raiding, but okay.

Well if you read the thread its not really about raiding. Its about Adventure Zones ZOS has planed and what we might like to see and how they work.

I didn't make it far past the giant letters that essentially say "I'm biased."

Wow thats pretty damn rude and un-called for. Someone tries to make a constructive suggestion thread about info we learned and clarification and thats how you react?

You're right, I'm being unobjective and I apologize.

Um.. are you suggesting they make a PvE only version of Cyrodil? Because that would be kinda redundant.

It think its clear that Firor changed his mind after all of the community replies in the different forum sites

Lets not forget, initially he had gone as far as saying that there is really no endgame.
Now all of a sudden we get new version of Raids and progression gear (thats from a different quote).

At least I am happy that ZOS listens to the community.
Up to now we have gotten (in chronological order) action-like combat, polished first person, exploring enemy territories and now Raiding.
Kudos to everyone in the community for getting involved with all these issues. The game is MUCH better off because of the community and community feedback.

a zone with a castle to siege vs a raid would be way more fun

some people would say its the same thing but here's how they differ

a raid would consist of clearing a group or mobs before reaching a room that you can't pass without defeating the boss in the room
kill the boss you get more mobs then another boss - repeat til clear

a castle siege can be handled dozens of different ways
the castle can have multiple means of ingress, tailored around different approach types
there are gaurds stationed throughout the fortresses, but their patrol is lighter in less gaurded areas, its not impossible to sneak in without alerting any gaurds.

some groups may opt to bust down the main gate - alert the gaurds - ae fest down a swarm of gaurds and reinforcements
some may sneak in the back
some could do a quest outside to poisen or weaken the forces
some could do multiple options at once, using a main force to draw attention while a covert force sneaks in undetected

im sure the adventure zones will have bosses, but don't think onyxia a giant dragon we tank spank and kill, think a commander of a gaurd with a battalion of soldiers
if they tailor the adventure zones around castle siege type warfare utilizing the same design approach they are applying to pvp
then can u imagine the possibilities

Sounds like it might be similar to a PvP type of event except versus NPC's instead of players. Now this is something I can behind. Sounds wicked fun!

accepted, i apologize as well if it looked like I was jumping down your throat there, didn't need to go that far, sorry. Just trying to help here and contribute to turning that topic more constructive and productive.

Again.. That is redundant. What do you think Cyrodil AvA is for? Why would Zenimax waste resources coding events that players can easily create on their own? Makes NO sense.

Becasue some folks do not like PvP in any form but others want some sort of Raiding and If I've read the heart of the 8 previous raiding posts, people want raids but they stated explicitly not the WoW kind. If this comes to fruition it sounds like a grand compromise but I have a feeling at the end of the day some of these so called raiders want exactly what WoW offers. Hope I am wrong and I hope the community gets behind this because this sounds interesting and fun especally from someone who is most adamantly against WoW styled raiding. Time wil ltell I suppose.

This is a huge turn off. Looks like I shall pass until the game gets into a much more "finished" state.

while raiding is for me a big group cutting down some enemies and one or three bosses.
Adventure zones come with much higher ammount of enemies?! -&--#62; don't forget, the enemies get 'more inteligent' the more there are, well not really more inteligent, but they have much more options to fight you

i'm actually liking this. but I'm not a fan of raids so i'm not in a place to judge.

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the idea stays the same: a group of players, achieveing something hard to achieve.

That's good to hear. Gets pretty boring after you've killed the first coup ankles, this sounds like a better experience.

So what I've said all along has been confirmed.
AZ's are more generalist catering PvE endgame than raids...
some solo content
some small group content
some large group un-instanced
some large group instanced (ala closest thing we are getting to 'raids')

I can most certainly live with this if it is fun...

Also, I'm thrilled that a raid is more about large enemy numbers and less about uber-boss...

My favorite raid bosses have always been ones that relied heavily on large amounts of mob-spawning and the like...

LOTRO example: Burz (that was the first guy from Rift raid right?), Thaurlach (summoned a lot of void/world eaters), etc > single boss

SWTOR example: Kephess EC (himself, his giant battle walker, three large groups of Trandoshans, 3 assault droids, 2 advanced battle droids, several bombers) > Kephess TFB (it's just him... being a monster..)

I like this... Even as a tank I would much rather deal with 30 strong enemies than 1-2 full-out raid bosses... Feels more heroic when you are out-numbered.

"Now all of a sudden?"

Are you seriously saying that Firor "changed his mind" after a couple of threads that sprang up in only the last two days? Really?

Very possibly. Its very likely it was discussed, and even had plans drawn up. hell its even likely that they have parts of it in alpha stages already, but based on what has been stated it was not slated for the finished product. It is even likely that he was not the one to actually pull the trigger on it. Many many features get demanded by higher ups because marketing says that a game cannot be successful without a certain feature. Its why there are so many shooters with lackluster tacked on multiplayer options.