WoW is a very social game and many activities are designed to bring players together. WoW compels players not only to interact, but to cooperate. Instances, also known as dungeons, are the best example of cooperation in WoW. To successfully complete an instance and gain the most possible progress, players must create a team of characters with a balance of strengths and weaknesses. If the balance is completely wrong, the group will have trouble even starting the instance. If the balance is close but not quite right, the group might work its way through most of the instance but fail to finish the last and hardest part. Just as winning in sports such as soccer or lacross, completing an instance successfully is rewarding to players in part because of the team effort involved. In some cases, WoW even rewards teams that complete instances in a particularly skillful manner.
What are Instances and Why Do Players Do Them?
A Portal is a Magical Door that Separates an Instance from the Rest of Azeroth
An instance is a unique place separated from the rest of Azeroth by a barrier, called a portal, that isolates the group in the instance from other players. While many groups can challenge an instance at the same time, each group will have a private version of the instance, so, unlike the rest of Azeroth, they are not competing with each other to complete their task. Moving in and out between the rest of Azeroth and an instance is called “zoning”.
Instances are a good excuse to get together and play with friends (real life friends or online friends). Players chat, joke around, get mad at each other, and do all the other things in instances that they do with their friends in real life. Also, instances often contain highly desirable objects for their WoW characters, such as particularly good gear, unique mounts, and gold. Generally speaking, the more difficult the instance, the higher the quality of the rewards for doing all or part of it.
In addition, characters that participate in groups that kill mobs and bosses in instances gain reputation (known as rep) with factions. Characters with high levels of reputation with a given faction can buy gear, pets, mounts, and other items from that faction.
Finally, instances are a good way to progress. Many quests start or end in instances and playing in an instance is a good way to get experience to help a character progress. Friends will often team up to help each other complete an instance, or they will help an individual friend go through an instance repeatedly so he can get a particular gear item or complete a quest. As in real life, in WoW friends help friends.
Fighting Powerful Bosses Requires Skill and Teamwork
Challenging an instance requires fighting a series of bosses, each of which is preceded by mobs in groups. Bosses are particularly strong NPCs with special powers and strengths. Defeating a boss, also known as “downing” a boss, takes much more planning, group coordination, and individual skill and power than fighting a group of mobs. Bosses vary in their powers, so each time the group comes up against one, the group must change its fight strategy slightly. Most groups coming up against a boss for the first time will use the internet to read (or watch) strategy guides. Quite often, if there are members of the group who have already fought the boss with a different group, the less experienced players will learn from the more experienced players.
Because each group is slightly different, strategies have to be modified to accommodate the strengths and weaknesses of the group. Also, because players often run the same instance a number of times and, therefore, fight the same bosses with different groups, players will learn several strategies for battling any given boss. With experience, players learn to form groups with particular classes and abilities suitable to the strategy they prefer in an instance.
Social Skills: Putting Together an Effective, Balanced Group
As explained in an earlier post, WoW characters come with a range of strengths and weaknesses. When it comes to running instances, however, these strengths are divided into three broad categories: tanks, healers, and dpsers. A well-formed group for a typical instance will include at least one tank, one healer, and three dpsers. The tank’s primary job is to attract the attention of the mobs and bosses so the healers and dpsers can do their jobs without being killed. The healer’s job is to restore health to the tanks and any other character that incurs damage during a fight. The dpsers’ job is to do damage to the mobs and bosses and eventually kill them.
Tanks are particularly durable. They wear heavy plate armor and have high levels of health. Because their job is to keep the mobs and bosses away from the other players, tanks have to be very durable and absorb the damage caused by the bosses and mobs. Tanks also have abilities that generate high levels of threat, sometimes called hate, in the mobs and bosses. When the mobs and bosses feel threat from the tank, they stay focused on the tank. Tanking an instance requires skill and concentration, especially if there are multiple mobs because if a mob stops attacking the tank and attacks one of the other characters instead, that character will very likely die. Sometimes tanks also do a high level of damage during the fight, but that is not their primary responsibility. The tank’s job is to generate threat so the mobs and bosses attack them and not the other members of the party and then to absorb the damage that the mobs and bosses cause. Tanks have gear and skills that allow them to generate threat, avoid damage as much as possible, and absorb damage when necessary.
Healers keep everyone alive. Healers have abilities that allow them to give health back to other characters, especially the tank, who sustain damage during a fight. Without a healer, most characters, even tanks with all their extra armor and health, would quickly die in a fight with an ordinary mob found in an instance. Healers, too, have to concentrate carefully during a fight so they know which players need to be healed and what kind of healing spells they should use. The process of healing, unfortunately for the healer, also causes threat and the healer has to be careful to heal and to time his healing spells so his own threat does not overpower the threat generated by the tank. Just as tanks have gear that absorbs damage and helps them generate threat, healers have gear that helps them heal. The tradeoff is generally that healers are susceptible to damage, especially from bosses. They also tend to not do as much damage as dpsers.
Dpsers, the third category of character needed to run an instance, are principally responsible for damaging and eventually killing the mobs and bosses in the instance. Dpsers generally lack the talents to resist damage, generate threat, or heal others. They may have some small abilities in any or all of those areas, but their primary job is to do damage. Dpsers, like healers, generate threat in the normal course of doing their job of dealing damage, and they have to be very careful not to exceed the threat from the tank. Dpsers, like healers, wear gear and have talents that increase their ability to do damage to mobs but make them generally susceptible to damage.
Clearly, the roles of characters in an instance are interdependent. If a healer is distracted during a fight and the tank dies, it is virtually certain that the whole group will die. If the tank does his job poorly or is distracted and the boss or one of the mobs breaks loose and attacks the healer, the group will almost certainly die. Similarly, dpsers have to deal out damage to the boss or mob faster than the mobs or bosses deal it out to the group. They must also balance their damage generation with their threat levels. It is often said, “If the tank dies, it’s the healer’s fault. If the healer dies, it’s the tank’s fault. If anyone else (dpsers) dies, it’s their own fault.” The first two parts of this statement are generally true, but if the tank is simply unskillful, under geared, or too low a level, he will not be able to keep his threat higher than the DPSers or the healer. Similarly, if the healer is unskillful, under geared, or too low level, he will not keep the tank alive. The healer should also keep the other players alive if they get attacked or injured regardless of who is at fault because if the dpsers die, the boss or mobs will not be killed and eventually the rest of the group, the tank and the healer, will also die.
WoW includes a fourth category of skill that is essential to successfully running a difficult instance: crowd control, or CC. CC abilities stop or significant slow the attacks of mobs. If a group of mobs are so strong that they can kill the tank or too numerous and the tank cannot generate enough threat on all of them, CC abilities reduce the number of attacking mobs by freezing, stunning, or transforming one or more of the mobs and thereby reduce the burden on the tank and healer. Groups rarely include characters that are in the group solely for CC. CC is usually an additional ability in dps characters or the healer. Again, a well-formed group will carefully include the right kinds of CC required by a given instance.
A Raid Group Has Multiple Tanks and Healers as Well as DPS for Challenging Difficult Instances
The vast majority of instances can only be played with groups of five or fewer characters. Other instances, especially the more difficult ones, require groups of 10, 25 and even 40 characters because of the difficulty of the mobs and bosses. Instances that require more than 5 characters are called raids. Some instances have two levels of difficulty, normal and heroic. Heroic mode is always more difficult and may require more characters. Raids for the most advanced players are usually run with 10 players in normal mode and 25 players in heroic mode. The quality of rewards rises in a more difficult instance, and raids, which are particularly difficult, provide particularly good gear. Therefore, players are motivated to find other players with characters that complement the function of their own characters and who are of a high enough skill and gear level to assure successful completion of the instance. If the group fails, the players do not get the rewards they want, and not only do they have to pay for repairs but the time they spent putting together the group and attempting to run the instance is wasted.
Social Lessons: Peer Pressure and Group Behavior
Once started in an instance, a group will generally stay together until the instance is completed or the group decides that the instance is simply too difficult for that particular group. Players generally don’t like to leave a group before the instance is done because of the time it takes to put together a new group and re-run whatever part of the instance they have already done. Also, no one likes it when another player leaves early, forcing the rest to find a replacement or even abandon the attempt because of the time it takes to get the replacement. Players who have a reputation for leaving after an instance is started generally will not get invited into groups in the future.
Getting a bad reputation for leaving a group early creates peer pressure to play with consideration for others. Players learn not to accept invitations into instance groups if they are not going to to stay long enough to finish the instance, or at least that part of the instance that the group is scheduled to run that day. The time and effort it takes to find replacements or to switch groups also creates peer pressure to behave well within a group. Rude players sometimes find themselves kicked out of a group that they have joined, even though that means the rest of the group has to invest time in finding a replacement. WoW is a game and most people play WoW for fun. If another player is taking the fun out of the game by being rude or offensive, the rest of the players can, and will, force him out of the group.
Instances and Time Commitments
Given all the requirements for a well formed group, finding the right mix of characters can take a good deal of time. The game of WoW includes functionalities that help players find other players with characters that compliment the skills and abilities of their own character. Players can look for someone with whom they have previously played, or they can simply search for other characters with the right functional abilities who happen to be playing at the same time. Either way, it can take as little as two minutes or as long as two hours to put together a group, depending on whether friends are playing at the same time, the difficulty of the instance, and the needs of the individual group.
Instances themselves can take several hours to run, too. A good group can finish the shortest instances in as little as half an hour, but this is unusual. A few of the instances can take so many hours to run that groups will divide the instance so they can spend a few hours each day working on it, but instances have a “reset” schedule at which point all work completed by a group is erased and they start over at the beginning. Characters in a good group don’t mind resets because they want to run the instance as many times as necessary to get the gear and other things that come from the instance. However, if the group is struggling to complete the instance, resets can be frustrating because the group never gets to complete the instance and receive the associated rewards.
Tips for Parents
Parents often complain about how hard it is to tear their kids away from WoW. Hopefully, it is now clear that a child’s reluctance to tear himself away from WoW is not simply a matter of addiction. If a child is outside playing soccer or in his room studying and a parent calls him to dinner, there are few consequences to the child for stopping what he’s doing and rushing to the table. The rest of the kids can continue playing soccer without him, and the books will wait until dinner is over. Even a TV program can be paused and resumed later. Stopping in the middle of an instance, however, to rush off to dinner has consequences to the child’s playmates. They cannot easily continue the instance without him, and finding a replacement can take time. Also, the child’s gameplay suffers because he may have to start the instance over again from the beginning and whatever time has already gone into doing the instance has been wasted.
Parents can minimize the impact of interruptions on their WoW-playing children by giving them plenty of advance notice regarding activities (such as dinner) that will require the child to stop playing. Set the dinner time well in advance and tell the child, or get him into the habit of asking what time dinner will be before he starts an instance. The child can then avoid starting an instance that won’t be finished by the appointed time. In addition, the parent can assign a regular block of time for WoW during which the parent promises to not intrude on gameplay in return for the child’s commitment to stop gameplay at the prearranged end time. Having a regularly scheduled game time makes it easier for the child to coordinate with friends to run an instance together. Scheduling time this way, also teaches important organizational and prioritization skills. The discussion around when and how long to make those blocks of scheduled game time are great opportunities to review priorities and show parental respect for the child and his interests.
Parents should understand that given the amount of time it takes to run an instance well, a minimum of two hours in a scheduled game time block is reasonable. Compare that time requirement with activities the average American parent regularly pursued in his youth and continues to pursue now. The average basketball game on TV lasts two hours. If the child is running instances regularly, especially if he is running raids, he may need three to four hours in a block, which compares with the average baseball and football TV broadcast of three hours. Keep in mind that this does not mean that the child needs to play WoW three to four hours per day. Most groups that run raids, for example, will only run raids three or four times per week, just as many Americans will only watch three or four sports events on TV in a week.
Find out your child’s raid schedule and allow longer blocks on those days, restricting game play on other days to some time frame that is shorter than the time allocated for raids. Your child will still need the additional non-raid time because of the preparations required for doing instances or raids. Your child will need time to buy food and potions for the instances as well as run quests and level his character’s professions to make money to buy the things he needs. The total number of hours in a week that a child plays WoW does not need to match, let alone exceed, the total number of hours in a week that the average American watches TV, which is over 28 hours according to Nielsen Media Research.*
Instances and raids are also a great conversational opportunity for parents and their children. Kids love to talk about running an instance in much the way sports fans like to talk about a game they watched or played. They grumble about someone who made a mistake and cost the team time and advantage, and they heap praise on a player who does particularly well. At the end of well run instances, if the members of the group don’t already know each other, they usually say things like, “Thanks for the group. That was fun!” “Great heals!” ”Awesome tanking!” “Hey, friend me and let me know next time you need heals/a tank/dps.” Running an instance well generates excitement. Running it poorly generates disappointment. Either way, kids like to talk about it. As a parent, you should listen and ask questions. Turn WoW into a communication opportunity rather than a fight.
Terms to Remember
Boss: A particularly powerful mob (or group of mobs) with unique abilities that requires more than the usual skill and coordination by the group to kill. Bosses drop better than normal gear as well as bonuses to reputation and experience.
CC: Stands for Crowd Control. The ability to limit the damage caused by a mob by trapping it, changing it’s form, or slowing it in some way, thereby reducing the burden on the healer and the tank.
Down or Downing a Boss: To defeat, usually kill, a boss.
DPS: Stands for Damage Per Second. The ability to quickly inflict large amounts of damage on an enemy target.
Hate: See Threat
Healer: A character in a group whose responsibility is to provide health to the other members of the group and himself.
Heroic: An instance that is set to a mode that is harder to do than normal, but will provide higher quality rewards if completed.
Portal: A magical door between two places in Azeroth, usually into and out of an instance. It can also refer to a door that connects from one part of an instance to another. A portal with a skull on it leads to an instance set for heroic mode.
Raid: An instance that requires more than 5 players to complete.
Tank: A character in a group whose responsibility is to attract and keep the attention of mobs so they don’t attack other members of the group. The tank may also do significant damage, but this is not a requirement of the role.
Threat: The power generated by each character fighting a mob that causes the mob to turn it’s attack on that character. Mobs will generally attack whichever character in a group is generating the most threat against that mob.
Zoning: Moving from one zone to another within the 3D Graphical universe in which WoW is played. In particular, moving in and out of an instance.
References
* Nielsen Media Research, “Nielsen Media Research Reports Television Popularity is Still Growing,” September 21, 2006
