Where have all the Raiders Gone?

[starlord]

where have all the good players gone and where are all the pros?
wheres a raidwise kungen to fight the rising odds....?

[Mormolyce]

A stupid, mindless little system, you mean. You know, world is not really covered in two colors - black and white. Where do that people belong, whose skills are too good to farm mindless LFR, but too bad to run new tier normal modes?

Well maybe Blizzard should make the raid in 14 different difficulty levels?

Once upon a time raids only had one difficulty and everyone had to make do. Then they made Heroics so the really hardcore groups had content that challenged them. Then they made LFR so time-poor people could still raid. I think that's enough personally. They can't make a difficulty level for everyone.

Also, there's really no way to make LFR any harder while still letting you queue for it. Unless you're willing to make the effort of grouping up, learning strats and working together you'll never be able to defeat bosses with NM level difficulty (not that NM is hard it just takes teamwork). It doesn't matter how good you think you are personally. Raiding isn't about you, it's about the team.

[Deleted]

Lol you surely don't see the problem here. If only I was a random idiot who dies in a fire... I won't write here if that was true.
I'm, of course, not the Big And Shiny Elitist as you. I am raiding since BC. I was good enough to do WotLK and Cata raids full normal and 50%+ heroic/hard modes in actual time. I was good enough to raid t14 11/16 hm. And BAM! Suddenly I'm too bad to raid normal t15? Even more, whole my raid group suddenly became too bad to raid normal t15? Magically in one patch night we became baddies for no reason, lol? Cool story.

then why you whine? you clearly said it's too hard so you dont raid.

[Bad Ashe]

i know that the minority of competitive raiders are very vocal and would deny this very strenuously but raiding actually started to die at least a YEAR before LFR.

this is just my opinion, but i think Ulduar was the last real mountain to climb.

think back. uld hardmodes are still compared to today.
as soon as tourney came out and nerfs began hitting Uld all that had their achives would snub their noses at those getting around to getting them.
then there's the tourney itself, super fast, super boring, and soooooo overfarmed. anyone else remember how many paytoplay carries there were in there? probably the most of any raid still in current tier ever.
then there was ICC. it was long, it took a lot of coordination, but wasnt hard at all.
~insert an entire year of grinding here~

then we suddenly get Cata and LFR. not only are raiders at this point burned out on such a long period of stagnation, but LFR just makes the entire raid just more of an ez mode plowfest than ever.

~blah blah cata this cata that, (cough firelands cough) blah blah~

now we have set in stone the gear through LFR mentality and no need for guilds at all really.
its just over.

the competitive nature of having to EARN that raid spot in order to see the endgame was what kept the game alive the most, now they're trying desperatly to find new hooks to keep new kids coming, and it is all just adding up to a "daycare" game for kids.

[Dyros]

It's been said that reused bosses and abilities are an issue, but there's more to it than that.

Raiding with a team turns WoW into a goddamn job, more so than it can already be at times. Putting the lengthy leveling and gearing process aside, being a part of a raid team means you must log in regularly multiple times each week, regardless if you enjoy the fights, because you're depended on. The same goes for everyone else in your guild; you depend on them to show up and perform well regularly in order to progress. If people can't make it or just don't get along with one another it's like a wrench being tossed into the machine, causing delays and frustration.

The only people who raid with guilds these days are players wanting to see hardmode content or that have a group of friends to raid with. LFR cuts the logistics and social interaction out. No dependency on guildmates to log in. No deliberation on gear. No headaches over wiping. No pressure. Raiding on your own schedule, not being roped in when you're not wanting to play. Many of us happily take the downgraded gear for it.

[MoanaLisa]

LFR = least effort required, gear is 'good enough' for the next tier of LFR, so you find many players who feel that dealing with a set group and scheduling isn't worth it.

Don't expect a change in the trend anytime soon.

This is an important thing. LFR is its own progression path. The only things it really shares with normal/heroic raiding is the artwork and the name of the bosses. LFR can be a stepping stone toward normal raiding but guilds have to put aside their bias about LFR for that to happen. As easy as LFR may be, it's worth something to know the rooms, know what the bosses look like and have a general feel for the fight if one intends to step up. But if you're not interested in doing that, LFR will take you from beginning to end. When you think about it for more than 10 seconds, it's a very attractive thing if you've soured on raiding guild culture as many have.

[l33t]

then why you whine? you clearly said it's too hard so you dont raid.

Lol you obviously have reading issues.
The question is: where's all raiders gone?
The answer is: they left raiding because normal modes are too hard and boring.
And there will be less and less raiding people thanks to elitists like you, who just stupidly don't want to understand that by overtuning difficulty of normal modes Blizzard are in fact destroying playtime of semicasual/semihardcore groups.

Blizzard doesn't need to cater to every little interest group. The current model addresses the needs of most of the players, which is just find. It's not stupid nor mindless. And TBH, I find it doubtful that there are a lot of people that fit into the "too good for LFR, suck too much for normal mode".

*sigh* Oh yes, then why this topic exist, if everything is good and everybody have their place?

[StumpedMonk]

Alot of people are afraid to raid don't wanna be screamed at or they've heard horror stories of guild break ups and don't wanna get involved.

[Anthas]

@Dyros:

Couldn't have said it better myself.

[Deleted]

Yeah LFR killed it for me, in dragon soul I saw the entire instance in the first couple of weeks and after a while it just got more and more boring. The tactics in nm and hc were just slightly different and the gear was identical with small colour changes. Add alt runs and I felt I was doing the raid 10 times a week.

In MOP I stopped nm and hc, I just do the LFR (or did) it is absolutely mindlessly easy, never got any reward (not that thats a major problem just felt that nm was even further away), absolutely no team work or social interaction needed, might aswell be a 1 man scenario and it drags on for far too long.

Any loot I do win I don't feel I deserve. Can barely bring myself to upgrade it so I just mostly pvp this expansion.

Also it must be hell for Blizzard having to balance LFR, 10 man nm, 25 man nm, 10man hc, 25 man hc. Back in the day there was 25 man.That's all, and the quality was much better. That's just my opinion.

[Osmeric]

Wrong. I ran a poll here on this very topic, and most players agree that "seeing all the content" means "seeing it as it was ORIGINALLY designed, without any nerfs." Most players agree that seeing a raid zone in LFR does NOT count as seeing the content.

So, the obvious solution is to eliminate any mode harder than LFR. Then LFR will be "seeing the content"!

[Deleted]

People don't like responsibilities. When you are in a raiding guild, yes, you need to show up at certain time, have functioning brain and be a normal, social person. You can't do anal jokes, mum jokes, troll others. You have to be helpful, calm and willing to spend some time to learn new things. Yes, there will be days when some people will be cranky, you will perhaps get into a disagreement with someone - but you know, this is all normal life. If you treat raiding like a second job then raiding is not for you. If you treat it like a hobby and if you enjoy playing with others then it's for you.
(Excluding people who want to raid but don't have time and they are stuck in LFR, although I would rather unsub then satisfy with less).

[Deleted]

I cannot even bring myself to run LFR most of the time, what is it exactly people enjoy about it?

[Deleted]

I cannot even bring myself to run LFR most of the time, what is it exactly people enjoy about it?

I don't know. I suspect to get gear? And why some people pay money to go afk or be dead in LFR is beyond me. Or be on follow or auto-attacking.

[Deleted]

Things in personal lives change, for some people, on a daily basis. That as well as boredom, lack of commitment, growing up...

Personally I don't have the time needed to properly dedicate myself to a serious raiding team, so LFR suits me fine at the moment. Gear isn't as good as it is in normals, but you get to the see bits and pieces of the content/areas and sometimes get a reward for your efforts - that's enough for me and I'm happy with that.

In WOTLK I was in a T8,T9 and T10 realm first guild. It was great fun at the time, but I now have other things that I feel my time is better spent on. Not only that but the game has also changed drastically since then.

[Deleted]

It's been said that reused bosses and abilities are an issue, but there's more to it than that.

Raiding with a team turns WoW into a goddamn job, more so than it can already be at times. Putting the lengthy leveling and gearing process aside, being a part of a raid team means you must log in regularly multiple times each week, regardless if you enjoy the fights, because you're depended on. The same goes for everyone else in your guild; you depend on them to show up and perform well regularly in order to progress. If people can't make it or just don't get along with one another it's like a wrench being tossed into the machine, causing delays and frustration.

The only people who raid with guilds these days are players wanting to see hardmode content or that have a group of friends to raid with. LFR cuts the logistics and social interaction out. No dependency on guildmates to log in. No deliberation on gear. No headaches over wiping. No pressure. Raiding on your own schedule, not being roped in when you're not wanting to play. Many of us happily take the downgraded gear for it.

Personally I view it more as a hobby like playing soccer or football. Those are games where you too have to depend on others being there to play with if you want to play a game. And yea you depend on them if you are going to play a game against another team. And you show up for the team sometimes even if you would rather stay home and read a book.
Personally i think that raiding schould be a player organised team game. LFR is terribly convenient but it is just a hollow single player experience. When you pay for an play an mmo I think that there schould be some multiplayer related experiences with other people. Paying for a subscription for what essentially is a single player game just feels dumb.

So yea social interaction is actually kind of great instead of being a loner freak in a basement paying for playing a single player game.

Where you are right is that now a days the only people raiding are those going for hardmodes. For people raiding for normals there is no real room the recruits they used to have find it more convenient just to see the content through LFR and they know fully well that whatever gear they might farm anyway in normal mode is going to be worse than the LFR gear from the next raidinstance.

[tarc70]

Our guild had been losing members with each expansion that it was tough to raid in Cataclysm, but we did it with another guild of people we had partnered with to do 25s in Lich King. Then when Panda dropped our main two organizers just said they were burned out. And the truth is so was I. I won't blame the game or poor mechanics. I have played for 5-6 years. I am tired. I find myself doing other things in life much more. Before I was just dating women, but now I found a woman I am totally into and spending time with her is so much more exciting than a video game. I do some pet battles and other stuff that I can pick up and leave at any time rather than make a committment to a raid schedule. The main reason I was hanging on to raiding was I loved playing with my friends I met in WOW and later met in real life. I am happy with not raiding but I know I can raid with some friends if I want, but for now it just doesn't excite me anymore.

[Mad_Murdock]

So yea social interaction is actually kind of great instead of being a loner freak in a basement paying for playing a single player game.

You guys really need to get over these stupid stereotypes. Someone doesn't play the way you think they should, so clearly they are some "Insert age old stereotype here"

Let's see how it works when I try one on you. If you need to have social interaction in a video game and you have the time to commit 12-16 hours a week for Hard mode progression raiding, then you are just a, dorm room dwelling, man-child living off your parents, who obvious is afraid to venture out into the real world and make real friends, which is why your video game needs to have social interaction. I think people who pay to play a video game so they feel like they are around other people is kinda dumb.

See, you can squeeze anyone into some type of inaccurate stereotype. But falling back on stereotypes is just a weak cover for not being willing (or able) to see the whole picture.

[Lord Blackmore]

*sigh* Oh yes, then why this topic exist, if everything is good and everybody have their place?

You missed my point completely. Blizzard can't cater to every single person's needs. There are always going to be players who fall into the gaps of what Blizzard provides. The people who are allegedly too good for LFR, but aren't good enough for normal raiding are the exception, not the rule. And unfortunately, the current options won't work for them.

[ro9ue]

Straight up, LFR is just more convenient. Raid when you want, get the same loot, see all of the bosses. Generally speaking there are fewer wipes than progression normals and heroics.

What bothers me are the people who say constantly the current content is too easy and it was harder before. I went from a very, very hardcore vanilla player. Server first boss kills, only guild to get into Naxx40 on my server and even get Rank 11 in PVP. I remember Molten Core raids the raid time was 9pm. We'd be staring at the 2 Molten Giants at the front of the instance until about 10:30pm until all 40 people got there. Then you have trash, and get maybe a few bosses down the first night and retire at 1 or 2 in the morning. Then you would log in every night and do the same thing. I didn't even count the time you had to spend grinding out resistance gear, arcanums, tubers or god knows what else was required for that shit. It was like a 40hr a week job to play a game. Yea, the 'social' aspect was a lot better in comparison to LFR because you spent that much time with everyone. Me personally, I'd rather my game take less time so I can socialize in real life with people.

These days if I feel like raiding I can just log in whenever I want and get into a queue. I see all of the content, get the same gear, and spend far less time. Hell I barely even care about enchanting and gemming anymore. So you might argue, is that healthy for the game? It's tough to say. For the people who wanted a social experience online, it will make the game worse. But for the millions of casual players, it's a great game. You would need to find a game that stays true to its niche, like EverQuest 1 where it doesn't make things easier and forces a lot of social cooperation, but then you're sacrificing a lot of your time. I'll take my LFR 2-3hrs a week.