Raid (gaming)

A raid is a type of mission in a video game, where the objective is to use a very large number of people, relative to a normal team size set by the game, to defeat a boss. This type of objective is most common in Massively multiplayer online role-playing game, where the servers are designed to handle the number of users while not significantly impacting performance, thereby reducing server lag. In RTS games like StarCraft, the term is used differently, see Raid (military).

Raid Bosses

Usually a boss has enough defenses that it would be impossible to defeat it outside of the designed raid size parameters for the particular boss. For example, a normal team size in a game may be 8 people, but a raid for a particular boss may be up to 40 or more people. A normal team size wouldn't be able to handle the level of damage that the boss can do, therefore it is necessary to have enough people so that the damage dealt by the boss is manageable. This can be done through a large enough group of healers and other damage negation classes. Another benefit of an extraordinary large group of people are stacked buffs, where the damage dealing classes are buffed, through an increase in damage or accuracy, by other classes such that the damage dealt to the boss is enough to kill it.

Character Types Utilized in Most Raids

Character types typically represented in a raid:
*Buffers augment allies' stats and abilities.
*Crowd controllers render one or more enemies harmless or reduce their effectiveness.
*DPS reduce enemies' HP by doing damage.
*Debuffers reduce enemies' stats and weaken their abilities.
*Healers restore allies' HP.
*Tanks hold aggro and absorb damage, effectively shielding defensively weaker allies from attack.

Raid Loot

Item drops from raids can often be very rewarding. Sometimes the items dropped from a raid boss can be a unique, or a maximum stats item, giving players of the game an incentive to participate. Other rewards can include very large amounts of experience earned and gold dropped. The reward for raids can be high due it's high risk factor. The large number of people in a particular raid group inherently increases the chance of any individual executing an action (or lack thereof) that would be detrimental to the raid as a whole, up to and including raid failure. This is why it is important to have a strategy to defeat the boss, before the raid begins. A raid leader is almost always needed to control the group, because otherwise a group so big would inevitably fail in confusion or in conflict of orders.

Instanced or Public Raiding

Raids can occur in an instanced zone or a public zone. An advantage to a raid being in an instanced zone is that the raid leader has control of who gets in. An advantage to a raid being in a public zone is that anyone is free to join the raid when they like, as long as they do not disrupt the original raid group. Disadvantages to public raids are that they are more susceptible to griefing, and sometimes cannot be rezoned, as instanced can, unless the boss is reset by the server.

Health Risks and Conceptual Flaws in Raiding

There is much academic discussion about the concept of raids as they currently are designed in major graphical MMOs. With growing concerns about the addictive nature of MMOs, the fact that raids require3-4+ hours of constant gameplay leads some to believe they are inherently (and physically) unhealthy. [ [http://www.ripten.com/2008/08/14/final-fantasy-xi-guild-spends-18-hours-fighting-boss-suffers-physical-torment/ Final Fantasy XI Guild Spends 18 Hours Fighting Boss, Suffers Physical Torment] ] [ [http://muckbeast.today.com/2008/08/12/fed-up-raiding-sucks-as-a-sole-form-of-end-game/ Fed up! Raiding sucks as a sole form of end game content.] ]

Also, some game developers believe the way raids and raid guilds can totally dominate yourlife (dealing with sign ups, planning, guild drama, etc. makes it an almost 365/24/7 committment)could potentially give people a false sense of accomplishment that impacts their ability tocare about real life goals and accomplishments. [ [http://muckbeast.today.com/2008/08/17/raiding-provides-a-false-deceptive-sense-of-real-accomplishment/ Raiding Provides a False, Deceptive Sense of Real Accomplishment] ]

Players should be aware of these dangers when deciding if they want to get into raiding or towhat extent they want to get into raiding.

Games with Raiding or Raid Bosses

* Age of Conan
* Anarchy Online
* City of Heroes
* Dark Age of Camelot
* EverQuest
* EverQuest II
* Lineage II
* Lord of the Rings Online
* Lunia
* Ragnarok Online
* Rappelz
* Tibia (computer game)
* World of Warcraft

References