Too many guilds, not enough players?

[Trapped]

At the same time there's a lack of people to do things with, there's a huge overpopulation in this game, just the wrong kinds of people.i

Players often avoid "wasting time" helping or interacting with most other players because they assume that player will never amount to anything and that there's no point in helping/interacting with him. The few times that you legit try to help someone, they'll either blow up at you or say "oh okay" and then disappear forever, making the whole thing meaningless for your own future.

For instance, your question could easily be answered through common sense if you only had a clue about the game, which only indicates further that they should avoid losing time with you. I'm not saying I agree, it's just that it is what it is. (The answer, btw, is "It doesn't matter. Is your performance, the one that you should be studying up on, good enough for the fights? That's what matters.", AP will certainly help where your skill/gear is lacking, however, and is outright mandatory for those participating in the race, but not very important for anyone else, save a few specs)

In TBC and before realms getting all connect-y we all had so few people to count on we just had to take a chance every time we met a stranger. Even if this stranger turned out to be garbage, maybe we could forge him into something better in the future and we need his help as much as he needs ours. Now most of the game is either solo-able or the tools can make up for the lack of good players around, so there's no reason to help someone get good - either they're already good or you don't want them.

Which of course doesn't work really well when you're trying to raid mythic on a bad realm, but at the same time it's just too much to ask a guild to "forge" someone from LFR Hero to Mythic Raider, particularly since most people will just feel they're good enough at some point and either drop their sub or drop the guild. My own guild has nearly became a "heroic rush" guild at this point, but we don't even get paid for it, the trials just get the loot and the AotC and then leave. Truly a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation.

Yeah I agree. Too many people that just view other people as possibles hindrances to their own fun.

[caervek]

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.

Pretty much sums it up, twice as many players required, less than half as many available, not good math

[HeiAggra]

The problem from what i see from players is we are 2Mythic on EN for example and the player that will wisp you will be like i want to raid everytime, i want all the gear so on and so on. Most of them are just bad players because they dont care for the group nor what they role will be in. They would do target swapping nor a special role needed in some fights so they can say heyyyy im top 3 on metters.
The wow playerbase need to change their mindset

[Sencha]

MMORPGs these days are whatever you want them to be. Be it housing, pet battling, raiding, dungeon crawling, AH mini game...
You are probably refering to EQ times and that was like 15y ago.

Also, you seem to know what customerbase. Please tell, noone else in the world knows...

please google "imo"

[kamuimac]

The problem from what i see from players is we are 2Mythic on EN for example and the player that will wisp you will be like i want to raid everytime, i want all the gear so on and so on. Most of them are just bad players because they dont care for the group nor what they role will be in. They would do target swapping nor a special role needed in some fights so they can say heyyyy im top 3 on metters.
The wow playerbase need to change their mindset

why ? because you think your way is correct way to enjoy game ? for them their way of playing if bringing them much more fun - who are you to judge which "fun" model is more important ?

- - - Updated - - -

, but at the same time it's just too much to ask a guild to "forge" someone from LFR Hero to Mythic Raider, .

that very common problem irl too - many companies face it when their managers are clueless idiots - basickly you are left with 2 choices : a ) you risk hire someone new train him from basics and bet on his loyality - this is a cheaper but longer way and b) you hire specialist in his field whom you have to pay ton of $ but he is work ready from day 1 - its exackly same for guilds only since they dont have to pay 99 % of them tries to go with variant b) and just isnt enough "specialists" in the game for all of them that why so many mythic guilds die.

its just natural selection of lazy

- - - Updated - - -

MMORPGs are not supposed to be games you play for 30min per day (log in, click button for matchmaking, play with random people, get my lewts, log off) imo. Not sure your interpretation of what you want = what the customerbase wants.

pls show me any definition of mmorpg stating how long should i stay logged in per day for game to count as mmorpg . go go im gonna wait patiently.

- - - Updated - - -

I think M+ exposed raiding. .

it didnt expose anything - it was known for years just mythic crybabies where constantly whining how anyone claiming that only 5-10 % of playerbase is interested in raiding is liar - mythic + extremly swiftly and brutaly proven what we knew for years that people indeed do not want to raid. it was well needed and will be very healthy for game overall.

shame that it didnt happen earlier maybe then WoD would never happen.

[Deleted]

biggest problem i run into with guilds is people in 5+ year old guilds that are stuck going nowhere, with officers have burned out but still cling to the nostalgia of their golden days. Who have aspirations for serious raiding but at the same time have long time members they don't want to let go whos life situation has changed (kids, work, etc). They try to make it work but it's a never ending uphill battle and nobody is really happy, and many of them would be better of switching to a guild that suits their current wants, but if they leave the whole thing will collapse in on itself.

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

I'm going to get legion here in a bit. What I've noticed from playing on my level 20's and under is how non social the community is. Maybe 2 people at most would respond to me when I asked questions or try to start a conversation. People literally sit there doing nothing and they're so immersed in their own worlds that they can't even reply back? Maybe this has to do with the whole crossrealm thing.

All I know is that when I was playing multiple hours a day in TBC, people would spark up conversations at the banks in Shat. You'd have like 15 people all partaking and it was nice to do that between raids/finding heroic groups. I know no one is forced to talk with you, but it's just ridiculous that there can be 50 people within distance and not one reply. It's not like I was spamming or seeking attention by spamming. An example is "How much AP would you consider I should have before I'm suitable for raiding?" and no one responded.

Or maybe people see your question and don’t have an easy answer? I mean, I would look at that and not even know where to begin. I’ve never asked a potential raider how much AP they had. I would be more likely to look at their gear and experience, their gear and talent choices (do they understand how their class works? Do their choices indicate that they know how it works?), and what kind of numbers they can put up. I suppose an easy answer might be at least two gold traits, preferably 3, but then again what kind of raid are we talking about? EN-LFR or ToV-H?

If someone asks “How do I find Tivos for the world quest?” I will answer that because I know the answer and it’s an easy question. If they ask something complicated like you did… Nah I would not try to go into all that in trade chat. If you were a guild mate I’d tell you to hop in Discord so we could chat. But I’m not gonna sit there in trade chat for 30 minutes while my WQs expire trying to sort out something that complicated.

That guild mate part is significant. I spend over half my game time helping other players, but I can’t help everyone or I’d never get anything done for myself. So I focus on my guild mates. We all have limits. That’s where I draw mine. Quick easy stuff for anyone, more complicated time-consuming stuff only for guildies.

[Deleted]

Haven't had to recruit a single person for my guild yet for Legion. Recruitment is always open, but I'm not actively pursuing new players just yet as there is still ample enough competition for spots in the guild.

We've supported people trying out new specs for legion and re-rolling as a result of not being able to cement a spot or achieve what they wanted to achieve and that has further increased the competitiveness within the roster. The last time I had to seriously push the boat out recruiting players actively for the raiding team was around August/September 2015. This is on a server that has around 4,000 players according to wowprogress. 12 Guilds pursuing mythic raiding, and a total of 90 guilds doing raiding of some kind on the server so far this tier.

We're 7/7 mythic and our application raid process is:
- What should we know about you?
- What character are you applying on?
- Do you have any links to logs of yourself?
- Tick which of the 3 raid nights you can make

Still get around 5-10 applications per week, and I spent a bit of my time talking to the other guilds on the server asking what they need to recruit so that when I turn people down that I would otherwise be inclined to give a chance to, I can point them on to a guild that is quite likely to recruit them.

In my experience there are plenty of players out there, even on low pop realms. It's largely about how approachable you make yourself and the guild you're in.

[Deleted]

My old casual guild which I left for a progression guild now to get serious business again is on rank 70 on a mid populated server. Definetly a lot of guilds are active right now with a smaller population. But beside that there are a lot Mythic guilds, too.

Would not say there are too less players as the amount of guild is still damn high, but they are split among those guilds.

[Deleted]

the community does not need a bunch of guilds with primary languages not English, not on the English servers at least.

Oh it does. If it didn't, they wouldn't be there. For me, finding a national guild back in WotLK was precisely what converted me from a complete huntard scrub to a semi-passable player progressing ICC NM and HC. Oh and all of that happened several months after I migrated to an Anglophone country.

While those guilds are fine for casual stuff, it further reduces the pool of players available for guilds, and guilds available for a guild-less player.

No. It provides a place for players for whom language barrier is a thing. They wouldn't join you anyway or you would /qkick them as scrubs.

And you know what? it was a motivating bummer. There was content I did not get to see outside videos until I outlevel'ed it years later. If you ask me, that is how MMO's raiding content should work.

Hello, window shopper. Well, I know better than window-shop. A lot of people do. Too bad for you.

And that is for a player not even looking for a mythic guild / mythic guild members. Blizzard really did neuter the raiding scene by giving everyone access to raids in 4 difficulty levels.

Maybe they finally started reading snowflake rants about welfare epics with slightly different eyes and decided that the monster needs to be put down pronto.

Slam-your-dick-in-a-car-door over and over and over until the boss dies

I feel very weird now. I never objected to a wipefest if the team was enjoyable and there was some gradual improvement showing.

But if they do, then those same salty asshole Raiders will pitch a complete fit if they deem "their" raid content too easy.

That's OK. The amount of players that can have problem like that is not particularly relevant.

The casual normies just log off and go play other games once theyve burned through the easily accessible content

If Blizzard insists on focussing on raids which means no long term casual content, yes. If they actually do think about engaging and rewarding stuff to do for the casual majority, the casual majority will stay.

What an accurate source of player census

Over the last several years it proved to be very accurate and reliable. Nothing an asshat would notice let alone concede of course.

Well then you completely misunderstand me. The fact the the GMs (and I'm not even an active player right now let alone a GM) need to recruit players like that to clear Mythic content at a reasonable rate is the fault of Blizzard.

To a degree. Once Blizzard denied snowflakes some speshulness, the thorny path towards snowflakedom became a lot less compelling. On the other hand, if you put up such requirements, you simply announce that you don't want to invest time and effort in teaching and gearing your recruits. Which is to say, you don't want to work towards having a great team, which in turn means you don't deserve to have one.

That is the point I'm trying to make.

We know what point you're trying to make. It's just mostly wrong.

I hate when people blame GMs for adopting the standards required to clear the content they're trying to clear.

The only standard is that your prospective mythic raider be decently quick on the uptake, willing to learn and willing to put time in to gear up with your help. Any requirements for gear and clears are just a way of saying you only want people who raided in guilds in the past.

Those standards are pretty much set by Blizzard when they design the game. Blizzard's design is stupid, unfair, and goes against the spirit of competition this xpac when it comes to raiding... especially high end raiding.

Oh dear. Unfair Blizsign? Were you quite so vocal about unfair design of Mythic-only bosses and Mythic-only rewards for clearing?

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.

Yip. Just remembered one of my very first (if not the first) M+ ever with a 870+ warlock (I was @~840 at the time). It was actually one of the easiest M+, NL, which I had no idea about at the time. Long story short, the twat could not resist the urge to whine "I fucking hate casuals", so in the end we got 2 chests and he got fuck all for being a twat. If I was a casual thinking about looking for a guild, the sheer numbers of twats like that one would make me think again.

People dont want to make applications, it is a game not a job.

Careful with such attitudes in the lovely warm circle jerk a.k.a MMOC You'll be unpopular or something

I think the poll in that thread of yours also shows you that 90% of people disagree with you.

To be more specific, 90% of the fervent circle jerking friends on MMOC disagree with a view clearly coming from a place different than the inside of their arses. Here, I corrected it for you.

3)Many "I want to join along with my 3 IRL friends and 3 cousins and 5 grandchildren and 20 ex girlfriends"

Shocking innit. Generally, normally developed people (as opposed to mouth-breathing autists who call themselves Mythic Ra1d0rz) care rather little for video games and a lot for friends and family. I do, of course, understand that this might be extremely confusing on MMOC.

4-5 months into the expansion, expansion hoppers are gone, bad friends got bored since "WE RAIDED EVERYTHING WE ARE SO GOOD" without realizing they took 3 months to kill 2/7 Mythic bosses that are undertuned as fuck for a Mythic raid.

You're so Mythic!!! <3 Not like all those terrible casual scrubs, who can barely manage 1-2 Mythic bosses per patch and who also breathe through their noses.

They may start to reject it but it is needed. If that level of socal cohesion is gone from this game then that's it for wow. Way too much else is done alone, raiding has to maintain the need for a guild otherwise the games identify is crushed.

Yeah, the core of game life for 15% of the playerbase totally defines the whole game, especially for the remaining 85%. Keep dreaming.

Got to say, all this thread seems to suggest that except the very few remaining, particularly speshul, snowflakes, the raiding guilds are mostly going down or going nowhere fast. Which I guess is not a bad thing. Once you said "welfare epics" it will forever remain having been said and karma surely is a bitch.

[Chemii]

I'm going to get legion here in a bit. What I've noticed from playing on my level 20's and under is how non social the community is. Maybe 2 people at most would respond to me when I asked questions or try to start a conversation. People literally sit there doing nothing and they're so immersed in their own worlds that they can't even reply back? Maybe this has to do with the whole crossrealm thing.

All I know is that when I was playing multiple hours a day in TBC, people would spark up conversations at the banks in Shat. You'd have like 15 people all partaking and it was nice to do that between raids/finding heroic groups. I know no one is forced to talk with you, but it's just ridiculous that there can be 50 people within distance and not one reply. It's not like I was spamming or seeking attention by spamming. An example is "How much AP would you consider I should have before I'm suitable for raiding?" and no one responded.

The thing is why is a level 20 worrying about AP when they have many other hurdles to get over before that?

Players will draw that conclusion pretty quickly too and choose to ignore it as it is not the sort of question a newbie asks - that has nothing to do with being unsociable, it appears fake and comes as a forced social interaction.

Imagine if in real life you just walked up to someone and asked them a question, no hello, no how are you, just bam "GIVE ME KNOWLEDGE".

No one talks like that to people they don't know.

[wooters]

my semi irl friends guild broke up, and people quitted playing because of the 20man only mythic. I have a hard time understanding why they decided to wreck the game for so many to cater to the very few at the top. idiotic blizz.. it ruined the expansion for a "million" players

[Saluun]

I began Legion with everyone else then due to IRL reasons I had to leave for 2 months. Once I came back I felt really salty that I'm behind a lot by now and that a new patch arrived. My guild beat HC EN. BlizzCon convinced me to come back so I decided to reroll completely. I hit 110 2 weeks ago as a ranged DPS.

I'm on a high populated realm in the EU, and I found the gearing process rather hard because people didn't wanted to invite me for normal mythics due to item level. Now I think I'm an avarage player, standing out of stuff, prioritising adds, interrupting if can, proper usage of pots, surviving etc. but that doesn't seem enough these days. I was trying to look for a guild for my level and.. I couldn't found any. Every single Guild Recruitment AD (And on EU-Draenor there is a shitton) was looking mythic raiding or would be about to begin mythic raiding. Don't get me wrong I'd love to be there too, but I just came back after 2 months, my mindset was still at Legion beginning.. I managed to do EN Normal when I had to leave but I can't remember what happened in there, same goes for CoS and Arcway.. was there once no idea what to do. I am sure there are guilds that are really desperate that they rather would take me and boost me to be there but I am afraid of that.

I have a fear that if a guild like that would actually take me that they'd also kick me very soon because I never done the tactics before, and I am way more behind the weapon and AK progression. I did manage to join a guild however, that is on my level but I'm sure it will disband soon because there are like.. no new people joining at all... or the ones we have from them (10 active members) around 4 shows up.. 5...

Obviously I don't want to be in top 500.. all I want is a laid-back guild that tries to clear content on the heaviest difficulity but takes it not too hardcore.

[Sencha]

pls show me any definition of mmorpg stating how long should i stay logged in per day for game to count as mmorpg . go go im gonna wait patiently.

That's why I said "imo". Reading is hard.

[Chrno]

Haven't had to recruit a single person for my guild yet for Legion. Recruitment is always open, but I'm not actively pursuing new players just yet as there is still ample enough competition for spots in the guild.

We've supported people trying out new specs for legion and re-rolling as a result of not being able to cement a spot or achieve what they wanted to achieve and that has further increased the competitiveness within the roster. The last time I had to seriously push the boat out recruiting players actively for the raiding team was around August/September 2015. This is on a server that has around 4,000 players according to wowprogress. 12 Guilds pursuing mythic raiding, and a total of 90 guilds doing raiding of some kind on the server so far this tier.

We're 7/7 mythic and our application raid process is:
- What should we know about you?
- What character are you applying on?
- Do you have any links to logs of yourself?
- Tick which of the 3 raid nights you can make

Still get around 5-10 applications per week, and I spent a bit of my time talking to the other guilds on the server asking what they need to recruit so that when I turn people down that I would otherwise be inclined to give a chance to, I can point them on to a guild that is quite likely to recruit them.

In my experience there are plenty of players out there, even on low pop realms. It's largely about how approachable you make yourself and the guild you're in.

the bolded part is something that makes you and your guild stand out from the rest. Applaus to you!

[Deleted]

I began Legion with everyone else then due to IRL reasons I had to leave for 2 months. Once I came back I felt really salty that I'm behind a lot by now and that a new patch arrived. My guild beat HC EN. BlizzCon convinced me to come back so I decided to reroll completely. I hit 110 2 weeks ago as a ranged DPS.

I'm on a high populated realm in the EU, and I found the gearing process rather hard because people didn't wanted to invite me for normal mythics due to item level. Now I think I'm an avarage player, standing out of stuff, prioritising adds, interrupting if can, proper usage of pots, surviving etc. but that doesn't seem enough these days. I was trying to look for a guild for my level and.. I couldn't found any. Every single Guild Recruitment AD (And on EU-Draenor there is a shitton) was looking mythic raiding or would be about to begin mythic raiding. Don't get me wrong I'd love to be there too, but I just came back after 2 months, my mindset was still at Legion beginning.. I managed to do EN Normal when I had to leave but I can't remember what happened in there, same goes for CoS and Arcway.. was there once no idea what to do. I am sure there are guilds that are really desperate that they rather would take me and boost me to be there but I am afraid of that.

I have a fear that if a guild like that would actually take me that they'd also kick me very soon because I never done the tactics before, and I am way more behind the weapon and AK progression. I did manage to join a guild however, that is on my level but I'm sure it will disband soon because there are like.. no new people joining at all... or the ones we have from them (10 active members) around 4 shows up.. 5...

Obviously I don't want to be in top 500.. all I want is a laid-back guild that tries to clear content on the heaviest difficulity but takes it not too hardcore.

Honestly most of the block you're perceiving here is in your own mind. A lack of confidence or insecurity somewhere that you just need to put to one side.

One of the biggest problems is the more hardcore/try-hard guilds are actually at the level you think you're aiming at. They take it very seriously, they'll watch top guild strategies and get annoyed when they can't execute them.

The AP farm & Titanforged system actually means its in the interest of most guilds to have a quick hour blast-through of EN heroic still. It's a development path into the main raid team. There's nothing wrong with starting at heroic, there's nothing really wrong with starting at mythic. Get some logs of yourself in pugs, see where you're ending up. Compare that with the guilds you're maybe interested in joining, or are actively recruiting. If you can get close to, or surpass, their parses while in a pug compared to what they're doing in a guild then you've got a good chance of being useful to that guild.

[slaise1]

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.

sounds like real life when it comes to companies. The employer dont want to put in effort to show the employee the ways.

[kamuimac]

That's why I said "imo". Reading is hard.

ye but saying "imo" implies you base you opinion on something - facts/situation / data/empirical experience etc - unless you are willing to admit that is basickly taken out of your ass and and direckly contradicts 12 + years of data proving that people in game do not want to raid hardmodes or do hard content (participation ratio data)

- - - Updated - - -

sounds like real life when it comes to companies. The employer dont want to put in effort to show the employee the ways.

and that why they fail once old generation of specialist leaves company for better one and they have nothing to replace them with - exackt same thing as guilds caninibalize each other in wow

[Deleted]

I went to great lengths to explain why this is happening : http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...t=archaic+tool

Players do not need and are starting to reject the guild concept.

The OP of the thread (you) have absolutly no clue why the guild concept exists, you get your answer in the first response - more or less.

Its an RP game, you're suppose to group up with others and have "clans" or guilds and do shit together. You can also choose to be a lone wolf without a guild, today that is alot easier than what it used to be due to the whole LFG system as you mention.
Its a part of the game genre, its not a techinal way of solving a problem, its just how we work socially as a species and was used in games to reflect reality.

You can rename guild to corporation and find that we still use this type of concepts in real life. The LFG system cant be so easily compared to real life systems but a human resource consulting firm isnt to far off.

To answer the title of this thread, i think it all started when the guild leader/management got to many perks from being leaders. 10% of all gold earned magically appearing in guild bank was the worst of them. This made everyone want to create thier own guild and feed of it. While you used to have to make friends and then you'd try to gather all of your friends in a guild so that you could all communicate and fuck shit up together.

[Vins04]

As a younger player I used to play / app to the best guilds on the server so I could do what I thought was the hardest content, now that I am older I mostly just play with my core group of friends from back in the day. The issue we really see is that unless you are the top tier and pushing content why would anyone join your guild. I mean if they want to chill and play with friends they are just going to stay doing what they are doing like I am.

IMO the only way to move forward is slowly over time add more friends. Don't rush it, enjoy the game have fun, Go Fish