The Theory of Raiding and Retaining the Hardcore

I can't help but think the showdown between World of Warcraft and Warhammer is going to finally prove or disprove some long held theories about MMO design. In particular, developers have long justified spending a disproportionate amount of time on raid content to hold onto hardcore players. The theory goes that hardcore players have a huge influence on other players and are directly responsible for keeping a large playerbase in the game. Thus it makes sense from a design point of view to spend more time on raid content. Even though this may be true it also seems to cause a schism to form between players who have the time to play with an organized guild and those who can only play in small blocks of time.

Based on the design changes to Wrath of the Lich King it seems obvious that Blizzard doesn't believe in this theory as strongly as it did in the past. This could be related to the large number of raiders that disappeared when arenas and battlegrounds started giving rewards equal to raid encounters. Whatever the reason, it looks like Blizzard has decided to make raiding more accessible by creating smaller 10-man versions of every raid zone. It's been proven that larger raids take more time to organize so Blizzard is hoping that smaller versions will increase the number of players that can access raid content. The larger raids will still have the better rewards and hopefully this will be enough to hold onto the hardcore raiders.

Mythic on the other hand decided to entirely skip the concept of large scale raids. Warhammer instead has large scale activities revolving around RvR objectives, but these are not exclusive instances like most raid content. Smaller groups and solo players will be fighting right beside the large guilds for the most part. Players who spend large amounts of time in game every day will have an advantage, but it won't be as insurmountable as the one found in raid centric games. The only problem I see is that the theory about hardcore raiders maintaining a large playerbase might be true. Both EverQuest and then later on World of Warcraft maintained very large player populations and heavily focused on raid progression.

So while the initial success of Warhammer is probably assured, the long term success depends on the theory of (more raid content = more hardcore players = more overall players) being untrue. If Warhammer can grow its subscription base after Wrath of the Lich releases then it pretty much means the theory is disproved. Since the two games are similar in quality, graphics, and playstyle it really will be the focus on either RvR or PvE raiding that will be the deciding factor. A growing playerbase for Warhammer means either hardcore players find RvR just as much fun as raiding or that most players are not influenced by the hardcore leaving a game. Either way it would probably mean that future MMO development would focus more on PvP content then we've seen in the past.