Guilds Falling Apart a Lot This Patch

[yuca247]

Could it possibly be that people have more and more real life things to do and they are happy with running LFR and doing other things that doesn't require them to schedule their whole lives around.

I for one must say once I stopped raiding 4 nights a week I felt like a huge weight was lifted off my shoulders and I started to enjoy the game more.

Maybe others have felt the same way lately who knows.

[Nasriel]

I'm not a raider anymore, I can't be bothered but my Alliance guild has always had this issue... It happened during Wrath, Cata and is still occuring during MoP. The only problem these days compared to Wrath is that my server is so much more dead it's making it hard to find replacements and with the guild having two raid teams which are also having attendance issues it makes it really hard to keep the two teams going...

For example Team 2 just had their H Pally quit for unknown reasons and they need to replace. Team 1 had a warrior tank to begin with but he couldn't make the raids on time so he stopped playing.... they tried to recruit but couldn't get anyone new so asked a druid tank to start tanking for them out of desperation... I warned them to NOT get this guy as he was in a raid team during Wrath, decided he was sick of the guilds progression rate and stopped turning up for raids without warning... quit for most of Cata, but came back for DS, started raiding with Team 3. Stayed a couple of weeks then again just stopped logging in without a word. Now MoP Team 1 has him as a tank, they went out of their way to gear him in MSV and again he's disappeared without a word >_<;;

[Deleted]

I think the change to raid lockouts contributed to this as well. It's so easy to find a 10 man raiding guild on every non dead server and if you you don't like your current guild, you just jump to another etc. 25 man guilds have a hard time, we all know that. Recruiting and keeping enough players in your roster be it 10 or 25 is hard, when there's so many bosses and little time to just "have fun" imo.

Normally we'd have a small break between Tiers but this time there's 16 bloody bosses. My own guild is 15/16 Heroic and hopefully we'll kill Heroic Sha before 5.2. But that leaves us with no break before 5.2 and we still have to keep up with food, flasks and charms while also capping VP. It's rough on most raiders and many I think many people made the choice of just not doing it. But if you chose to "just not doing it" in a guild like mine, you lose your raiding spot.

Add to that, there haven't been any significant nerfs. So many guilds haven't even been able to clear all 16 bosses on Normal. If you're in a social raiding guild and can't clear more than MSV and the first 2 bosses of HoF every week, I could imagine it would get boring.

Also, a lot of raiders who used to have several alts, haven't had time to play them as in previous expansions. I'm guessing that there's overall less pug groups, at least from what I see on my own server.

Anyways, I think that one of the biggest factors in guild disbanding is the amount of 10 man guilds we see atm. Not saying it was a bad choice Blizz made, since I made the swap from 25 to 10 man myself. But I do believe it plays a major role.

[ihyln]

I don't care about rankings. I want to have fun. I'm also 13/16H and raid 9-12 hours a week, have a 60 hour a week job, and a social life.

I know you are trying to make yourself to look like some well adjusted god player of wow so don't take offense to this when I call you a bullshit liar. 12 hour workdays? Plus playing 2.5 hours a day? AND a social life? My wife is a nurse, she works from 7am to 7pm, every day. So that means she leaves at 530am and comes home around 830pm. So for you to say on top of working you somehow manage to play on average 2.5 hours a day is ridiculous.

Then you keep harping on how your friends in a different guild are not hardcore yet somehow know enough about their guild dynamics that you can say they wish to have the same progression speed as a hardcore guild. Mind boggling, not only are you a god mode wow player you can read an entire guild's thoughts! Yet you completely fail to understand how the dynamics of MMOs are changing today. The people that grew up on WoW have less time for wow, that's why things are getting easier, not because some podunk guild demands easy progress. If anything, everyone wants a FAIR shot at progress.

Please contact Guiness Book of World Records to claim your biggest bullshitter in history award.

[Deleted]

I think the change to raid lockouts contributed to this as well. It's so easy to find a 10 man raiding guild on every non dead server and if you you don't like your current guild, you just jump to another etc. 25 man guilds have a hard time, we all know that. Recruiting and keeping enough players in your roster be it 10 or 25 is hard, when there's so many bosses and little time to just "have fun" imo.

Normally we'd have a small break between Tiers but this time there's 16 bloody bosses. My own guild is 15/16 Heroic and hopefully we'll kill Heroic Sha before 5.2. But that leaves us with no break before 5.2 and we still have to keep up with food, flasks and charms while also capping VP. It's rough on most raiders and many I think many people made the choice of just not doing it. But if you chose to "just not doing it" in a guild like mine, you lose your raiding spot.

Add to that, there haven't been any significant nerfs. So many guilds haven't even been able to clear all 16 bosses on Normal. If you're in a social raiding guild and can't clear more than MSV and the first 2 bosses of HoF every week, I could imagine it would get boring.

Also, a lot of raiders who used to have several alts, haven't had time to play them as in previous expansions. I'm guessing that there's overall less pug groups, at least from what I see on my own server.

Anyways, I think that one of the biggest factors in guild disbanding is the amount of 10 man guilds we see atm. Not saying it was a bad choice Blizz made, since I made the swap from 25 to 10 man myself. But I do believe it plays a major role.

I would argue that in any raiding guild you feel compelled to do LFR, Daylies for charms, VP cap and keep well supplied with food and flasks. And as someone said earlier in this post if raiding isn't fun why do it. And with this amount of extra work to feel properly prepared for raiding each week. People just say no it is not funny anymore.

A more controversial point would be that since a lot of guilds change to 10 man, raiders in those guilds might feel that they hardly get a night of now a days. Back in the days of 25 man raiding well bigger bench leading to more opportunities for one to pass or give notice that you can't raid for some time. In 10 man that could become a problem, when you take a small break which might cripple your guild for weeks.

[IxilaFA]

Well my guild had a very rocky start to this tier, but we've stabilized with a decent core of raiders and have made significant progress in the last two months. The disturbing thing is not the fact that some of the top guilds on my server have completely collapsed, nor that there is a lack of other guilds to fill that void, but more that we've had an open Warrior position for about two months now and only like, two applications total. That doesn't hold much hope for the future. If one of our core members has to leave for any reason (real life issues, new job, etc), we're pretty much screwed since we are pushing by on scraps as it is. Hopefully we can get a couple more additions with open recruitment between tiers and be able to ride out this wave of "barely making a raid group each week."

As for my server, that's a different story. We went into the expac with 3 hardcore raiding guilds, about 7 or 8 "midcore" (mine included), and like 20 small-time casual guilds. The #2 and #3 hardcore raiding guilds completely dissolved (one just disintegrated over night and the other transferred to Mal'ganis), two of the midcore guilds haven't been able to make progress since Christmas, another one dropped to casual status, and the rest of us are still barely plugging away. My guild moved from 9th ranked during DS to now the 4th best guild on the server. It's very eerie, the Auction House has dropped off, I barely see anyone doing dailies, and when I run LFRs, etc, I never see anyone from my server. Not a good sign for the future at all. This is all coming from a server that was decidedly Medium population since I started on it in BC. We even reached a peak of "High" population during WotLK, when tons of PUGs used to down Heroic bosses in Icecrown. Now there aren't even any Normal MSV or HoF runs going on. Very sad.

BTW, one of the hardcore raiding guilds I mentioned was on the server and ranked #1 since the day that the server started. It was a shame to see them explode over night.

[Deleted]

Well my guild had a very rocky start to this tier, but we've stabilized with a decent core of raiders and have made significant progress in the last two months. The disturbing thing is not the fact that some of the top guilds on my server have completely collapsed, nor that there is a lack of other guilds to fill that void, but more that we've had an open Warrior position for about two months now and only like, two applications total. That doesn't hold much hope for the future. If one of our core members has to leave for any reason (real life issues, new job, etc), we're pretty much screwed since we are pushing by on scraps as it is. Hopefully we can get a couple more additions with open recruitment between tiers and be able to ride out this wave of "barely making a raid group each week."

As for my server, that's a different story. We went into the expac with 3 hardcore raiding guilds, about 7 or 8 "midcore" (mine included), and like 20 small-time casual guilds. The #2 and #3 hardcore raiding guilds completely dissolved (one just disintegrated over night and the other transferred to Mal'ganis), two of the midcore guilds haven't been able to make progress since Christmas, another one dropped to casual status, and the rest of us are still barely plugging away. My guild moved from 9th ranked during DS to now the 4th best guild on the server. It's very eerie, the Auction House has dropped off, I barely see anyone doing dailies, and when I run LFRs, etc, I never see anyone from my server. Not a good sign for the future at all. This is all coming from a server that was decidedly Medium population since I started on it in BC. We even reached a peak of "High" population during WotLK, when tons of PUGs used to down Heroic bosses in Icecrown. Now there aren't even any Normal MSV or HoF runs going on. Very sad.

BTW, one of the hardcore raiding guilds I mentioned was on the server and ranked #1 since the day that the server started. It was a shame to see them explode over night.

sems to be a common problem for a lot of smaller servers. On my server 2 guilds just transferred away from the server because it was dead and they also couldn't recruit people. Or more precisely nobody applied.

[BloodGutter]

Pretty much this. I don't raid anymore. HToC in Wrath broke raiding for me. I started to do Icecrown, cleared the fist wing the night it was released and just never went back. I can't be arsed anymore. I'd rather play my alts, quest and do a ton of other things the game offers.

Why should I commit to a set bunch of nights and times to log on anyways? I can just as easily queue up for a LFR if the mood strikes, and not be tied down. Hell, I can even decide to do only one boss and log and still be able to go back and finish the rest at my own pace.

That is why you guys are having a hard time recruiting and keeping players.

i guess less people are looking for a challenge in the game they play and just more of a time sink. which is fine, to each their own. but i'd rather be wiping on hard fights until i get the kill than facerolling LFR over and over for weeks on end.

[Peking_Man]

I am in the only accessible 25 man guild in the realm. We get 4-5 application per day. At the same time 10-man guild struggle to find a single core member for weeks.

[tawoko]

This xpac has been a pain for recruitment. My 10 man guild can barely keep 4-5 competent, friendly people in our core. When we finally feel like we're building steam and getting a solid core, people quit the game, or stop showing up. I'd say of the past 5 raiders we lost, only 1 of them actually quit the guild. The other 4 either vocally quit, or just stopped logging in.

Honestly, look at MSV. It isn't fun. You can consider yourself on "farm mode" in MSV, but next week, you'll wipe 10 times on stone guard, elegon, or will, to very stupid shit. Then you look at HoF, TOES, they just aren't fun or interesting.

[NeverStop]

This xpac has been a pain for recruitment. My 10 man guild can barely keep 4-5 competent, friendly people in our core. When we finally feel like we're building steam and getting a solid core, people quit the game, or stop showing up. I'd say of the past 5 raiders we lost, only 1 of them actually quit the guild. The other 4 either vocally quit, or just stopped logging in.

Honestly, look at MSV. It isn't fun. You can consider yourself on "farm mode" in MSV, but next week, you'll wipe 10 times on stone guard, elegon, or will, to very stupid shit. Then you look at HoF, TOES, they just aren't fun or interesting.

Elegon is my favorite boss this tier. You get to kill a badass dragon while getting buffed by the Titans. I love MSV but hate HoF (bugs, bugs everywhere).

[Dvaldin]

Seems there's a fair number of posts that agree there's something different this time around about putting/keeping a raiding group together. That fact alone says something.

[Deleted]

This xpac has been a pain for recruitment. My 10 man guild can barely keep 4-5 competent, friendly people in our core. When we finally feel like we're building steam and getting a solid core, people quit the game, or stop showing up. I'd say of the past 5 raiders we lost, only 1 of them actually quit the guild. The other 4 either vocally quit, or just stopped logging in.

Exact same thing happening to my guild. And to make it worse, me and a friend started this guild right after the launch of MoP.

My mate has since burned out and stopped playing the game due to a bunch of reasons. Now I'm stuck here, with a partial raid team without full attendance, with little to no RL and/or GM experience. (Started the guild because of the inability to find a guild that fit me during the course of a small year.)

We're just a social raiding guild, still stuck on normal modes. I just don't even know anymore what to do to get 10 people online, motivated and amped to try and progress on normal mode bosses this far into the patch. It seems that people still doing normal mode T14 now are 'social' enough not to want to wipe at all, or try to get some progress this far in the expansion.

Oh, and the best part, the few people that DO want to raid are not getting the chances needed to gear up, in order to prepare for T15. So, we'll be stuck running T14 well into 5.2, with an even smaller chance of finding raiders that know their class, want to raid and don't mind wiping with progress in mind. (I'd say the average ilvl is 485-490, a little under the presumed requirement for ToT. Here's to hoping we can just endlessly farm the first (few) bosses to gear up, rather than get back into t14...)

Signed,

A completely lost RL and GM.

Edit.

Reading back on this, it might be a good idea to post my situation in the raid forum to see how experienced RL's would handle the situation.

[Outofmana]

It would be best for blizzard to release a new tier right before christmas, so not 50% of all guilds die because of the christmas break.

[Dracodraco]

Personally noticed alot more "high-end" guilds, that being top 250 (while they were active, obviously) breaking down -
Off the top of my head:
Solidarity.
Heretic.
Balance.
Alternate Reality.
Sublime.
Loot FTW.
Flare EU.
Nihilum (argueably due to leadership and not due to the patch, though).

Probably more that I don't even remember, and US guilds that I've never kept track of.

[Deleted]

It changed from world of warcraft in wrath to the lameness of cata and now has become world or workcraft.

A lot of people I know have just given up waiting for it to get better. And add in disasters like D3 and faith in bliz is very very low. The attitude of blue posters does not help, so arrogant and blaming the playerbase for WoW's problems, it just does not look like getting better anytime soon.

[ro9ue]

I think the strangest part of all of this is I've been seeing a lot of drops in activity in players before the tier is even finished. In DS, it died down after we had DW on farm, which was totally normal, but this time it's like people don't even care about finishing the tier.

I was a GM of a guild in low pop server with heroic DW on farm in DS and we had almost 3 10 mans going, the third we picked up a few pug dps, and a 4th alt run. When MoP hit, a lot of people hit 90 and were cockblocked by dailies and reputations on getting started with VP/JP gear and we lost a few right there. Then we had a huge drop in players randomly throughout the start of MSV to the point where we couldn't even do 2 full 10 mans without alts and pugs.

On that particular server, it was low pop so it was impossible to recruit. I also seen a few notable guilds merge and vanish. A few of us decided to go to a high pop server and try that out. It was a little bit better, but after a while more people were dropping. I'm not even sure what could account for it. It's not like there's another big MMO out there to flock to, and I doubt all these WoW players suddenly had something come up. I've been playing since WoW was released and sure you lose a few people, but there were always new people to pick up. Ever since about half way through the Dragon Soul era, I just noticed a steady decline in activity across the board.

In my opinion, people left during DS because a lack of content - which is totally understandable. With MoP, I think hitting that huge brick wall of reputation and gearing up at 90 was what killed the rest of the motivation to play. Only the players who I noticed would be online every day stuck around. I guess because dailies fit their schedule of daily play, but the guys who would do most of their gearing up 2-4 days a week got left behind and just said fuck it.

Right now I'm just accepting the fact that WoW is losing momentum and just hoping I can hold my old guild together and at least scrape up a 10 man for the rest of T14 so we can do Throne of TK. If not, I'll probably just end up doing challenge modes with my core 5 that are left and hit up ToTK in LFR and just hang around until EQ3 or ESO come out.

Oh well.

[Whiskra]

It's basically a few shortsighted changes (LFR, 10/25 item equality, dungeon finder) introduced over a long period of time to please an unpleasable playerbase that now comes to bite everyone in the ass. Things will probably not get better (except for the actual raids, because they need to be better to attract players to doing it), but people will most likely just continue to lose motivation more than ever now.

[Dukenukem]

As a GM of a fairly casual raiding 25 guild (3/16H atm) I gather feedback from all of people who leave my guild and even get some info on those who stopped playing. The main reason for leaving is almost all time stagnation in our progress. Reasons for stop playing WoW are more numerous - No money, No time, RL issue of other nature (mainly poor school results), Other games (DotA2 mainly) and again stagnating progress. We as guild are aware that we wont go much higher in progression on this tier so we can understand those who lay back a bit before patch is here as its not that they stopped talking with us and they are excited for the ToT raid. We recruited more people to raid with (from guid which fall apart) and we prepare for ToT.

The main reason for guilds falling apart is not that people stop playig, but the leaders who stop caring for their guilds.

[Radalek]

The main reason for guilds falling apart is not that people stop playig, but the leaders who stop caring for their guilds.

This is the biggest truth of them all.
I'm GM of top 50 guild, 25 man. I know if me and my officers would quit that guild would go down. It's hard to find new people willing to put up the effort needed to lead the guild, especially 25 man one. When leadership quits it's usually the end.