ZakuII:
Ah but the prestige among the community of nerds.

This sort of boss is a fantastic thing in my opinion. I'd be happier to spend 18 hours fighting a single boss than 18 hours grinding for levels. Sadly the order is non negotiable. Very, very few people will ever accomplish this which is what makes it gold in a world of MMO's where everyone is 'special'. Reaching a point where your players physically have to suffer and endure to win is sort of a new benchmark. Much like chess, you can be the greatest genius but if your opponent can stall you may lose your concentration, and then he can beat you with his superior stamina reserves. Like i said before, it's pure gold to pit people against AI in this sort of fight, which will never tire.

I completely agree. The suspension of disbelief that most MMO's require (everything respawns as soon as you look the other way) is just staggering. I love the idea that there is an almost unbeatable end boss, instead of one that gets his ass handed to him on a daily basis and everyone just accepts this as a part of the game (I'm looking at you, Ilidan).
The only reason these people played for 18 hours and got sick is because they've bought in to the stupid MMO tradition of placing you in an environment where everyone around you (other players that is) are potentially just as good as you or better, but still try to convince you that you are some sort of special hero who can beat every monster in the game whenever you feel like it or get a few friends together to help.

Most of you neglected to realize that they only fought the boss for 18 hours, they didn't actually kill it...

Any boss fight that drags on for more than 18 minutes makes me want to puke.

I hate boss fights.

I think the fact that they put an 18+ hour fight into the game is fantastic. It's not like you're required to fight it, it's there if you really want to take that time and effort, and everyone else can skip it without consequences. It's good to see a game where the truly hardcore of MMO nerds can accomplish something that most users can't, unlike most other MMO's, where defeating even gods comes down to simply grinding enough.

'Okay, so, everyone ready?'
'Yep.'
'Sure.'
'Hold on, I'm putting my hospital, the pizza place, and my roommate's cell on speed dial.'

You know, I can picture this boss as a special event that causes a number of guilds/linkshells to ally themselves together to take this thing down. You know, sorta like another way to bring the community together. Think about it, if there was like 70 people fighting this thing at once (lag much?) I'm sure it wouldn't take 18 hours. But yeah, I don't think the dev's intended for the Warden to be fought by only like 15-20 people. (Mind, I've never actually played XI, but I'm assuming that aside from the unhealthy amount of required grind it's like any other MMO).

I heard about this the other day I laughed so hard if I were there I'd leave about a half hour in.

So, is it supposed to take that long or is it just that nobody has figured out how to beat it yet so they were wasting 18 hours trying and failing?

It looks like the latter to me, a case of the party having superb defense/healing/whatever but lacking the right firepower to actually put together whatever silly combo it takes to kill it.

-- Alex

Rabid Toilet:
I think the fact that they put an 18+ hour fight into the game is fantastic.

I'm really confused where to put the blame here, so I think I'll just ride the fence and go for both camps.

"Fantastic" is not the word I would use to describe this attempt. I would almost consider it to be foolhardy. While I know it's the players' choice how to spend their time, what can it possibly say about priorities if you are willing to play for 18 hours straight like that? Where does it stop? I think players need to take more responsibility for themselves and the time they spend, because as much as this probably shouldn't have been developed this way, this really has the awful potential to turn into one of those "played til death" stories you see floating around. I'm really trying not to judge these folks, but there has to be some kind of separation between game and life priorities here.

Square Enix honestly shares some of the blame because they created an encounter like this, maybe without proper internal testing to ensure that it wasn't ever going to take this long. MMO players have addictive personalities, and the fact that this boss was made to be fought for literally the course of 3/4ths of a day is foolish at best, and morally ambivalent towards the well-being of players at worst. Developers must be able to predict at some point how the hardcore base of their fans will react to an encounter. Someone should have been monitoring that fight after a certain amount of hours and stopped it right when it got to a point where progress wasn't being made.

Regardless of what you folks think, the whole thing to me is pretty ridiculous.

GodsClown:
This reminds me of that boss from FF12, yahzmat? Yeah...boss that takes what, 6 hours to kill, if your lucky? Godly bosses are cool and all that, but seriously, they should only take an hour tops.

A WoW raid instance such at Temple Keep can be done is 2-3 hours, Black Temple would probably take 4-6. SSC would take 3-5. Basically, you could do 3 out of the top 4 raid instances in WoW, and that boss STILL wouldn't be dead.

It's Yiazmat you're thinking of. But you're right, even the most epic bosses shouldn't take more than an hour, it just stops being fun after that. Monster Hunter Freedom 2 had a time limit of 50 minutes for each boss fight. Hell, even the final fight in Shadow of the Colossus could be knocked over in ten minutes or so. 18 hours is just stupid.

Another interesting comparison: you could finish Heavenly Sword 4 times, and the boss would probably still be on his last legs.

This is funny to me, I don't feel sorry for em' it's their fault.

Really should a boss fight not be a test of skills and teamwork, not endurance?

I'm fine with it taking 10 minutes, maybe half an hour if it is a truly epic battle, to test the team's skills and concentration over a longer period, but anything more is just daft to me.

But then I think formula 1 racing is silly too, oh 72 laps? what are you proving that you couldnt prove in 10 or 20? (I know you'd have to make adjustments for a shorter race, but you get the point). To me the only reason to make it a 70+ lap race is the hope there'll be some quality pile ups thru a lack of concentration. (cynic much?)

The guys were stupid in doing this, but... well, they wanted to do it, so I don't know what to say.

Wow and I thought that tank in the frozen lake in FFX was hard.
They should call the Warden "The One Grind To Rule Them All."

Jhereg42:
I'm sure that after the first 5 hours it became a matter of pride. "We've been at this 5 hours, no way I'm giving up. I'll never get that time back."

All of the sudden it was 18 hours later, and they'll never get that time back.

Please; waste of 18 hours? What, they played FFXI instead of... er... playing more FFXI?

Yeah, this is such fail. At least Absolute Virtue has a slight glitch that could be exploited to beat him quickly. PW is just terrible.

The only time in my life I've ever felt ashamed to say that "Final Fantasy XI is my game"...

That's not a game, that's a second job.

D_987:
According to games manuals your supposed to take a break every 15 mins...

I thought it says you're supposed to take a 15 minute break every hour??

I thought you were supposed to break 15 controls per 18 hour boss fight? Any way you look at this its ridiculous. Just don't put an 18 hour long boss fight in your game. If there's cattle, they'll eat whatever grass you put in front of them.

I can only say that producing a boss that'd require people to be at it for 18 or more hours shows that there might be a slight continuation from the leveling in said game, since it sounds to me like exactly the same thing: repeat actions A,B and C long enough to obtain a new item/skill/amount of stats for your collection. However when a boss is introduced to get an epic long fight, 18 hours is way too much. Take Kil'Jaeden, Illidan or Archimonde for example (talking WoW here btw). They feel like epic kills not because they take hours (perchance hours of wiping before your first kill, but that's not the point here), but because they are a royal pain in the backside and require you to be working together as an awesome team. It's the teamwork that makes it happen, not the time spent on killing him. Even if Blizzard or Square Enix were to design a final boss to take hours, make it a somewhat accpetable amount along the lines of 10-14 hours, at which point the amount of time needed still excludes most to nearly all people from doing it (which is a good thing I guess), yet is short enough to prevent people from literally getting sick of the fight.

Though I do agree that having to take shifts on a boss is somewhere between really hardcore and really worrying...

PlayOnline:

The past two weeks have seen considerable feedback from players regarding the amount of time required to combat the Pandemonium Warden, a recently implemented Notorious Monster (NM). Discussion has spread significantly throughout forums, and it has become apparent that this is indeed an issue of major unrest in the community.

We would like to assure players that the development and management teams place a high value on their feedback, and the issue has since been taken under serious consideration. Together with Absolute Virtue, it has been deemed that the combative techniques for weakening these NMs are too difficult. As a result, some players have engaged these enemies using unanticipated methods which led to extended battle times. It is by no means the desire of the development team to see players involved in encounters that require an excessive amount of time and effort to complete. It was for this reason that previous measures were put into practice which prohibited NMs from being held in battle for prolonged periods. In response to these events, we have determined that further alterations are required to prevent such battles from exceeding a certain predetermined length of time.

Included in the version update scheduled for early September will be modifications to the degree of difficulty of Pandemonium Warden (and associated pets), Absolute Virtue (and associated pets), and Jailer of Love. The aim of these changes is to create battles where a decisive outcome may be reached within a shorter period of time.

The development and management teams would like to take this opportunity to express their commitment to a healthy and wholesome game environment for players everywhere to enjoy, and to thank them for the continued feedback.

Square's learned their lesson, it seems...

I would have just taken breaks in between and got the group to go back after a while.

That way less illness and also get more done in life:D

dib_dib_9@hotmail.co.uk:
I would have just taken breaks in between and got the group to go back after a while.

That way less illness and also get more done in life:D

lol, if only that would have worked. If you leave the monster alone, he'll disappear and then you have to do months of playing over again to get back to him.

If you're designing your games to keep people sitting at them for more than four hours at a clip, you're designing your game poorly.

The way this boss fight goes it seems to imply that the player doesn't even have time to hold the mouse (or PS2 controller) in one hand and dial the pizza guy with a cell phone in the other, much less get up to answer the door when the pizza guy arrives or even pick up a slice of pizza or the Coke bottle.

That's just hardcore messed up right there. That's worse than anything EverQuest ever inflicted on society.

I think as far as MMOs go, WoW is still the gold standard because it's designed to be player-friendly.

God and I thought that stupid dragon in FF XII was over the top with 50mil HP. Frakker wasn't even hard just took forever to whittle down. I just set my gambits then check every 10 minutes and took like 5-6 hours to beat. Wheres the fun in that ?

SimuLord:
I think as far as MMOs go, WoW is still the gold standard because it's designed to be player-friendly.

lol...

ElArabDeMagnifico:
OK guys, remember, this is totally reasonable.......if every registered user fights this guy at the same time!

Seriously it sounds like the only way to do it.

Weird but to me that actually sounds like a fun boss, one that requires the entire server (1000s of people) to defeat would actually make it seem like a final boss. Also that would allow people to drop in and out of the fight. Just a thought but maybe that was the idea behind this, not something for only a handful of people to do it.

Remember that we're talking about a game with achievements for leveling up all 18 classes to level 75. According to mygamercard.net, there isn't a single person in the world with a gamerscore of 1250/1250. Only five people have 1000 or more.

Someone should get SquareEnix on the phone and explain to them the concept of playtesting.

D_987:
According to games manuals your supposed to take a break every 15 mins...

According to law, you need a break every hour or so when working with computer screens.

If someone wants to break the rules, then there's no need to blame the supplier of the experience. If I stick my hand in a blender, then lawyers shouldn't be able to blame Moulinex for not telling me not to.

Still, 18 hours is soft. I've gamed for 40. Try taking on "The Sleeper".

Joeshie:
YOU WANT TO HAVE FUN IN FFXI? YOU CAN'T. YOU MUST GRIND. YOU MUST PARTY. YOU MUST GRIND AND PARTY....ALLL THEEEE TIIIIMMMEEE.

Doesn't that apply for every MMO? The only exception to this rule I can think of is EvE which forces you to grind then party, possibly while people are killing you.

Copter400:

Joeshie:
YOU WANT TO HAVE FUN IN FFXI? YOU CAN'T. YOU MUST GRIND. YOU MUST PARTY. YOU MUST GRIND AND PARTY....ALLL THEEEE TIIIIMMMEEE.

Doesn't that apply for every MMO? The only exception to this rule I can think of is EvE which forces you to grind then party, possibly while people are killing you.

If I'm not mistaken, in FFXI you must party before you are allowed to grind at all. And it better be a damn good party.

poleboy:
If I'm not mistaken, in FFXI you must party before you are allowed to grind at all. And it better be a damn good party.

Grind from levels 1-10 (or 15, depending on your class), take you about one real life day. Party from levels 10-20, take you between 1-3 real life days. Afterwards, do whatever you want. At around level 40-50, you can also choose to do Campaign, Besieged, Assault, and other means of getting experience. Difference between this game and most other MMOs is that most everyday quests don't give any experience points.

Firstly, he is NOT a boss. He is an extremely difficult OPTIONAL monster which people are hoping will drop some very nice gear or weapons. They spent 18 hours trying to figure out how to beat him and were unsuccessful, this same thing could happen in many titles, as well as in many other things in life if someone had the foolishness to try for such a long duration. It does NOT necessarily take as long as your are implying to beat him. The more difficult monsters in FFXI are designed requiring players to utilize certain strategies. Without them, some of these are near-impossible to defeat. Pandemonium Warden is one of two monsters we have yet to figure out how to defeat.

It is beyond ridiculous that one group spent so long trying to defeat it. It is even more ridiculous that it spawned all of these new articles. So now, your going to point blame at SE because a few select individuals didnt have the common sense to limit themselves? Ridiculous.

Oof, this was bumped a bit late. But it's worthwhile to respond.

moocows:
Firstly, he is NOT a boss. He is an extremely difficult OPTIONAL monster which people are hoping will drop some very nice gear or weapons. They spent 18 hours trying to figure out how to beat him and were unsuccessful, this same thing could happen in many titles, as well as in many other things in life if someone had the foolishness to try for such a long duration.

I would honestly argue this isn't apples to apples. Yes, all gaming, as well as any hobby, can turn into something you spend a lot of time on, sometimes up to the amount that was given. But the difference here is that this is an MMO. MMOs are by nature carrot-on-a-stick, requiring players to reach higher and higher achievements to prevent from losing subscribers. I'm an MMO player, and there are a lot of MMO players out there that have difficulty for varying reasons stopping their playtime. MMOs are thus by nature addictive. You can spend 18 hours on a hobby, or a gaming session, or whatever, but most hobbies aren't designed from the ground up to periodically raise the bar for those that partake in them in an effort to create some illusion of "beating the game".

It is beyond ridiculous that one group spent so long trying to defeat it. It is even more ridiculous that it spawned all of these new articles. So now, your going to point blame at SE because a few select individuals didnt have the common sense to limit themselves? Ridiculous.

If you look at my post, you'll see I lay the blame on both sides. Certainly Square Enix has some share of responsibility for designing an encounter that has the ability to take this long, but, I'm sorry, the players in that guild share some of the blame too, in my opinion.

Despite the design of MMOs, it is ultimately the players' choice about how much time they decide to devote to playing. If the encounter was that difficult, those in the guild should have realized the inability of this to work as intended and stopped. While people's life choices are their own, people who fail to take responsibility for their own well being due to anything they choose to do cannot lay the blame 100% somewhere else. This isn't just Square Enix's fault, it's the fault of the players for letting the priorities of the game take precedence over their well-being.

I hope this is a lesson not just to game developers who design these encounters but to players who play games at the expense of other, possibly more important things, like themselves.