What is a Raid?
For the beginning, let’s start with what exactly is a raid. As defined by the dictionary a raid is “a sudden attack on an enemy by troops, aircraft, or other armed forces in warfare” ((Bing Definition Search)). For Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games, or more commonly known as MMOs, these are large groups working together to complete objectives and receive rewards. These raids can happen in set instances or open world focusing on objectives that cannot be completed alone or in a smaller group.
For a bit more clarification, a set instance is another area that you enter through a queue or through a gate and load into an area that cannot be entered otherwise such as dungeons and personal homes where no other player that is not in the group can interfere or see what is happening within. Those are considered set instances and can have multiple copies that different groups or individuals can be inside. Open World meanwhile is the regular areas of the game that can be traveled between cities/bases or even the cities/bases themselves. Places where you can run into everyone and anything such as regular mobs and special events. Typically open worlds have single boss or large mobs that are defeated by massive groups for the objective and only take a short time to complete along with having simple mechanics. Another open world type of raid is PVP where enemy players face off in groups that cannot otherwise be faced in arenas though these are less common as they need to be scheduled ahead. Set instances (dungeons, operations, raids, etc) meanwhile contain a combination of mobs and single bosses and can take up to two or three hours to complete. Some can be completed in shorter amount of time, but the larger more rewarding ones often times take those two hours to complete.
Set instances also have more specific mechanics such as pressing a button (or buttons in certain orders for harder modes) that if not pressed can cause the entire group to wipe or merely make it take longer than the raid should have. Another difference is that open world is only based on the difficulty of the area while the difficulty of the set instance can be chosen or set before the group enters it. Both types of raids are a lot of fun and quite rewarding for completion either experience or item wise. Try your hand at both and see what you like. Personally, I love both even though my computer doesn’t always handle open world all that well. Thanks for taking the time to read and have fun raiding!