Too many guilds, not enough players?

[pmkaboo]

And this is why i believe that removing the 10 man format was a mistake. Large formats are better and preferable no doubt, but the game doesn't support them totally anymore.

yea there are just millions of people playing the game every day, how the hell could it support 20 man format is completely beyond me... oh wait, how about we stop splitting them into a million realms and asking for 25-45$ whenever they dont want to limit their choice to a tiny fraction of all the available options...

[Gorgodeus]

And this is why i believe that removing the 10 man format was a mistake. Large formats are better and preferable no doubt, but the game doesn't support them totally anymore.

The 10 man format that used to exist when you had the same gear drops as 25 man was what caused the issue in the first place. Everyone thought they could run a guild, and thus we now have way too many guilds, and too many that instead of disbanding or merging with another, keep trying to recruit.

The game fully supports any size raid team put into the game. It is the playerbase that has to learn that there are simply too many guilds.

[Deleted]

There is no-one to recruit, yet the requirements are way too fuckin high. I don't mean skill, cause you should always go for the people that play well. But gear, AP level, experience of fights! I mean if you want people to join you, you have to accept fact that you need to show em how the fights are done and gear em up a bit. Also don't expect no life lvl of AP you twats.

[ComputerNerd]

And this is why i believe that removing the 10 man format was a mistake. Large formats are better and preferable no doubt, but the game doesn't support them totally anymore.

The game supports them as much as before, if anything it being easier to to the better communication tools.
The problem is the community, which deemed two formats easy enough when both were equally rewarding in gear.
But then found one of them "too hard" when they actually had to make a choice.

There is no-one to recruit, yet the requirements are way too fuckin high. I don't mean skill, cause you should always go for the people that play well. But gear, AP level, experience of fights! I mean if you want people to join you, you have to accept fact that you need to show em how the fights are done and gear em up a bit. Also don't expect no life lvl of AP you twats.

This too.
More complaints about lack of people to recruit, but a bar raised ever higher.
Consider that if players learn in a constructive atmosphere, the requirements may not need to be so high.

[voidillusion]

The 10 man format that used to exist when you had the same gear drops as 25 man was what caused the issue in the first place. Everyone thought they could run a guild, and thus we now have way too many guilds, and too many that instead of disbanding or merging with another, keep trying to recruit.

The game fully supports any size raid team put into the game. It is the playerbase that has to learn that there are simply too many guilds.

So your solution is for some guilds simply becoming extinct and absorbed by others. Are you aware of the impact that this has on the social ties of many players?

[Teri]

yea there are just millions of people playing the game every day, how the hell could it support 20 man format is completely beyond me... oh wait, how about we stop splitting them into a million realms and asking for 25-45$ whenever they dont want to limit their choice to a tiny fraction of all the available options...

Exactly, too many small realms that make no sense anymore, I see more people from my faction from other realms then my own connected these days.

Can't even be a nice guy sometimes and help a lowbie in a city cause you cannot trade with them....

[wikinews]

Your server and faction popularity plays a role in this as well.

+ If you're looking for ranged this expansion it's going to me more difficult compared to finding a melee.

There are a lot of factors at play here.

[Kirbypro]

The game population will continue to decrease, it is difficult to replace good players who leave the game.

[Teri]

The game population will continue to decrease, it is difficult to replace good players who leave the game.

Small realms will get smaller, transfer costs usually don't justify moving unless your in a hardcore raid background already really.

[iky43210]

This happens every expansion. Flood of people coming back to the game at the start = many more guilds are up and running, and as people start to leave some guilds have to close down.

On the bright side, guild recruitment will actually get easier at some point later down in the expansion when more guilds are trimmed.

[Gorgodeus]

So your solution is for some guilds simply becoming extinct and absorbed by others. Are you aware of the impact that this has on the social ties of many players?

Yes, when you have too many raid guilds, some should cease to exist. When it was all about 10 man raiding, everybody and their brother decided to start their guild. Guilds going away does not stop social interaction at all. You can do tons of stuff in-game with friends without being in the same guild.

In Vanilla when it was 20/40 man raids, most realms only had a handful of raid guilds, and things were just fine. You were lucky if there were 3 actual raid guilds on a given realm that could clear content.

There are simply too many guilds that arose from the 10 man format, and eventually enough will die off.

[akaTheDude]

I wish they would bring back 10 man raiding.

[Allenseiei]

First of all, my server is healthy and guilds usually don't have huge problems if they are established. Less established guilds have more problems because people look for stability and an assurence of success of that guild. Also people seem to overestimate their capabilities quite a bit in those less established guilds and often meet frustration when their raid meets a wall. There is a huge jump from certain raiding levels (raiding perspective) to others, and it's painfully obvious that people are not ready to make those jumps. The content and the community as a whole does not "prepare" players that want to aspire to higher levels.
Mythic progression without overgearing the content or any significan nerfs is all about constatly tackling a big brick wall with the rest of your guildmates untill, through repetition, good personal execution and strategic coordination, bring that wall down.
What content brings anything similar? LFR is one shoted. Normal mode is also one shoted. HC doesn't even require 1/10 of the pulls mythic bosses require even for their intended audiences. Then you try mythic, where u are nearing only 60 pulls on the first boss of mythic and people drop out, give up and leave. Thus the guild disbands, they go to another and they also disband, the cycle repeats.

10-man raiding was a mistake because it created a section of the community ever so increasing not ready and not prepared to meet logistic capabilities that higher raid teams require. It's easier to adapt people from 40 man to a 25 man raid, since you jump from much more complicated logistics to lower ones. Going from 10-man to again a higher raid size creates a huge wall on people who dont want or simply can't adapt to new logistic requirements.

Talking from a top 100 perspective, we do get a lot of applicants however over 90% don't pass the trial because they don't bring something new to the raid. We aren't a guild that requires you to fill out a form or anything, our only questions are: "What is your experience? Which guild do you come from? How can you improve our raid?" We rarely turn anyone down for a trial period, since you never know if you will find rare gems. People with low ilvl that trial in have a grace period, however this expansion we are less lax, since you have mythic + as a secondary gearing path and we expect you to pull your own weight. However, if your performance (mostly mechanic wise) is lacking we don't hesitate to ask you to leave.

To be succesfull or not depends on the commitment of your players. More players flooded the game with WotlK and new players replaced old players we have a huge mix of players in the years after. Succesful guilds meet similar conditions as more traditional guilds:
Discipline and Goals: Players are not known to meet any of these two but there is a minority who is willing to leave aside their inmaturity to set a goal and they are willing to put their part into achieving it. That's all you really need to have a stable guild. Is it easy to find players like that? No, like I said, they are a minority.

[IceMan1763]

There is no-one to recruit, yet the requirements are way too fuckin high. I don't mean skill, cause you should always go for the people that play well. But gear, AP level, experience of fights! I mean if you want people to join you, you have to accept fact that you need to show em how the fights are done and gear em up a bit. Also don't expect no life lvl of AP you twats.

The content some of us want/wanted to do is tuned around no life levels of play.... twat

[Deleted]

Well for me, most of my friends and friends from others guilds on my server the raiding died and roster started to falling down, when they introduced mythic, harsh 20-man top raiding.

Since the Wotlk through cata and MoP i was in a 10man first casual then semi-hardcore-heroic 10man guild. People logged in even after burnout because we knew each other, TS was always full and we could laugh, offend each other and then laugh again, even when we couldn't down one boss cause of some stupid mistakes. It was fun. Then the mythic was introduced and we were forced to bring more players to our closed circle. That slowly shut down TS as less and less people enjoyed chatting, some groups formed and players left cause they didn't want to take part in that and....puff, our guild was gone.

Now I do not raid because I do not have any time to participate in some raids weekly(but even if I could, i wouldn't), and one and only friend that keep playing and "trying to raid", is saying that there is hardly any "community" in those mythic guilds where roster is being shuffled every week or so. And he is done as well.

[Deleted]

The content some of us want/wanted to do is tuned around no life levels of play.... twat

Then don't complain it's hard to recruit.

[IceMan1763]

Then don't complain it's hard to recruit.

I wasn't complaining... I don't even play this stupid grindfest bore of an xpac any more. Took me a few weeks to see the forest for the trees.

I was offering my personal opinion as to why it's hard to recruit. Blizzard is tuning around no life levels of play, therefore the tendency is for all guilds (but especially those trying to push Mythic) to attempt to recruit no lifers who might actually have the gear/AP/right legendary required to clear that level of content.

It sounds to me like you are one of the fanboi whiteknights trying to blame the guild leaders who are simply recruiting based on the environment the Blizzard dev team has put in place (and it's an awful, unfair, noncompetitive, boring, grindfest, bs environment I want NO part of).

[Deleted]

Raiding was in better state before Cataclysm. Guilds were 25 man, bigger than today's requirement for mythic, while realm populations were smaller than they are now. Yet there were more guilds doing high end content than there are now (except for few mega realms).

Then 10 man raiding happened with multiple modes. Then even more modes were added. Then flex mode happened. Then flex mode was applied to everything below max level raiding. It split population.

Too many modes, flexibility of raid size for easier modes cause players to lose interest in mythic. Mythic is not new content, it is seen as simply yet another mode by many players. Why bother with it when content can be seen with less hassle in easier mode? So even though server population are bigger, much fewer players want to do mythic. Thus mythic recruitment issues.

Another issue is titanforged gear. Mythic requires preparation. When dungeons and easier modes can give players gear on par or better than mythic raids, it becomes more relevant. Players want to do that content to be as prepared as they can be. Doing same dungeons and raids over and over and over and over again causes fast burnout. By time players are ready for mythic, they are already burnt out.

Excessive amount of raiding modes and excessive RNG are to blame. Game was much better without them.

[darklogrus]

Doesn't surprise me, you can't continue to shit on the casual base and then wonder why there's nothing to recruit from. Now watch as this causes the top half to slowly crumble.

[Deleted]

I wasn't complaining... I don't even play this stupid grindfest bore of an xpac any more. Took me a few weeks to see the forest for the trees.

I was offering my personal opinion as to why it's hard to recruit. Blizzard is tuning around no life levels of play, therefore the tendency is for all guilds (but especially those trying to push Mythic) to attempt to recruit no lifers who might actually have the gear/AP/right legendary required to clear that level of content.

It sounds to me like you are one of the fanboi whiteknights trying to blame the guild leaders who are simply recruiting based on the environment the Blizzard dev team has put in place (and it's an awful, unfair, noncompetitive, boring, grindfest, bs environment I want NO part of).

I'm not interested in raiding. And seems to me you are white knighting retarded GMs who wanna recruit imaginary raides, with perfect gear, perfect legendaries, perfect AP and who already are 7/7 and 3/3.

When I was raiding properly in Wrath, Cata and WoD, it was ALWAYS the smart applicants who turned out to be good players. Just chat with them for few minutes and you will know. Gear, experience or so, does not matter at all.