Too many guilds, not enough players?

[l33t]

Do you think there will be as many guilds completing NH mythic as there are guilds completing EN mythic, i dont really think so, and this will destroy many guilds and bring back a recruitment boom to the actual good guilds.

ROFL, I think you should wear your damn glasses when you read the official Blizzard statistics. Mythic guilds are EXTREME minorities compared to guilds who killed at least one boss in normal/heroic. Why do you think you have problems recruiting people? Because a veeeery small fraction of players who want to raid, also wants to waste 15+ hours on it per week and deal with benching and split-farming (and 3-chesting m+ for AP items until your eyes bleed too). If only, mythic wannabe guilds will be destroyed, not NH ones.

[Marrilaife]

this will destroy many guilds and bring back a recruitment boom to the actual good guilds.

"The actual good guilds" have no problem recruiting. The average guilds do of course.

"Recruitment boom" sounds like a very timid name for a situation where players want to raid but are unable to find a guild and are in droves desperately banging at a very few doors. Does this remind me of something? Hmm, yeah, hardcore vanilla / TBC raiding where it was really hard to get into raiding if you weren't already a part of the scene. Where it mattered who you knew in which guild to bring you in, rather than your skill and enthusiasm. That's why so many people are nostalgic about those times, they "knew someone", got into raiding, and could lord over plebs that could never get in. Those same people would cry when any "welfare epics" or "catch up mechanisms" were introduced because all they were interested in was keeping the gap not any inch smaller.

"Very few guilds" is even worse than "too many guilds", because then we get into area of oligarchy instead of free market.

[kamuimac]

. All I'm saying is that we don't need four modes of difficulty

agreed - but be careful what you wish for - IF any mode would be to go it would mean removal of mythic since its least played and least enjoyed of all 4 modes.

careful else karma may bit you back.

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"Recruitment boom" sounds like a very timid name for a situation where players want to raid but are unable to find a guild .

this is only half truth - those people indeed want to raid but no in any guild - they want to raid ONLY in guild capable of carrying them to kills - thats why such players dont even consider for a second applying to guild that isnt at least working on guarm or helya mythic atm.

thats why guilds have problems because there is just to many selfish people around looking for carry to kills. for them its better to be worst performing player in cutting edge guild then best players in guild progressing through mythic,

[Deleted]

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.

[kary]

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.

Mythic guilds very, very, very rarely recruit from the casual base.

[Deleted]

This is a recurrent issue since Cataclysm and the incentive brought behind forming guilds. But as usual, it was done badly and was just a carrot on a stick design (get these bonus for joining a guild and leveling it up). So most guilds are artificially inflated and full of people not logging since weeks/months. And sometimes people just don't cooperate in the guilds and just join them for the passives.

[Soikona]

We aren't there yet but I think smaller group play will be the future of WoW and all MMO's moving forward. M+ dungeons have been a long awaited breath of fresh air and have clearly proven that small group content is overwhelmingly preferred. The logistical nightmare that we know as raiding today where guilds hold 20-40 man rosters is simply out of date. Were here to play a game and have fun not manage 20-40 people like it's a job. My hope is that Blizzard will soon come to this realization and introduce 10 or even 5 man raiding as the new end game content.

I can't agree. I hate mythic + myself. Reason purely because of lack of accomplishment. Nothing in WoW is as rewarding as spending a reset or two on a boss and finally defeating that boss. Something dungeons just can not do. Mythic+ caters to loot whores.

[Trapped]

I can't agree. I hate mythic + myself. Reason purely because of lack of accomplishment. Nothing in WoW is as rewarding as spending a reset or two on a boss and finally defeating that boss. Something dungeons just can not do. Mythic+ caters to loot whores.

Tbh, I think the addition of M+ dungeons is kind of an experiment Blizzard is doing to see if they can slowly phase out raiding. I think there's certainly people that legitimately like raiding, but an even larger portion of people that only do it because they feel they have to do it to get the most out of the game, or because they couldn't stomach the game just being a "filthy casual". Mythic+ is an alright idea, but let's face it, how many times are you going to run the same dungeon before it gets boring AF? We're only 3-ish months into the expansion, and people are already done/bored with them.

[melodramocracy]

I can't agree. I hate mythic + myself. Reason purely because of lack of accomplishment. Nothing in WoW is as rewarding as spending a reset or two on a boss and finally defeating that boss. Something dungeons just can not do. Mythic+ caters to loot whores.

You're correct, but I'd argue that m+ allows dungeons to stay entertaining for far longer than ever before, so in that regard they're a success.

[Soikona]

You're correct, but I'd argue that m+ allows dungeons to stay entertaining for far longer than ever before, so in that regard they're a success.

I didn't mean they where a failure. They are good, for that crowd. I more meant raiding will always be in my heart, and some mythic+ dungeons won't change that, and I know I am not the only one.

If mythic+ drags people away from raiding, how can raids be made more relevant?

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Tbh, I think the addition of M+ dungeons is kind of an experiment Blizzard is doing to see if they can slowly phase out raiding. I think there's certainly people that legitimately like raiding, but an even larger portion of people that only do it because they feel they have to do it to get the most out of the game, or because they couldn't stomach the game just being a "filthy casual". Mythic+ is an alright idea, but let's face it, how many times are you going to run the same dungeon before it gets boring AF? We're only 3-ish months into the expansion, and people are already done/bored with them.

Honestly, I got bored after the first few weeks of them.

[Skyepic]

Yes lol. Dead games that probably never reached 1-10% of WoW's subscribers during their peaks are lesser games and should not be models for other games.

Popularity of a game does not effect the genre of a game...that makes no sense.

You can't say X is not an MMORPG because it doesn't have as many subscribers as Y.

[Marrilaife]

Tbh, I think the addition of M+ dungeons is kind of an experiment Blizzard is doing to see if they can slowly phase out raiding. I think there's certainly people that legitimately like raiding, but an even larger portion of people that only do it because they feel they have to do it to get the most out of the game, or because they couldn't stomach the game just being a "filthy casual". Mythic+ is an alright idea, but let's face it, how many times are you going to run the same dungeon before it gets boring AF? We're only 3-ish months into the expansion, and people are already done/bored with them.

Well I do hope they keep track of participation numbers and how big is actually the playerbase that religiously runs m+ while avoids raiding. It looks like it's mostly raiders running high m+. Casuals maybe run a bit of lower keys but they also run lfr and pug normal / hc. Many people avoid completely m+ except maybe getting boosted by raiders on their key because "hurr durr group requirements I wanna press a button and queue".

I think the group that runs m+ and doesn't raid is probably as small if not smaller as the group that raids but runs very little dungeons only as much as necessary. But would be nice if Blizzard had the numbers to prove me wrong or right on that one.

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this is only half truth - those people indeed want to raid but no in any guild - they want to raid ONLY in guild capable of carrying them to kills - thats why such players dont even consider for a second applying to guild that isnt at least working on guarm or helya mythic atm.

thats why guilds have problems because there is just to many selfish people around looking for carry to kills. for them its better to be worst performing player in cutting edge guild then best players in guild progressing through mythic,

True, true, I agree with you people aiming way too high is a problem, I've seen so many people with barely any raiding experience, few pugs here and there, never stepped into mythic immediately apply to realm top guilds. Obviously they'll get declined.

But there's also the second side of this problem, guilds that are between 7/7hc and 4/7m and demand people to have 870+ or 880+ ilvl, 35 traits in artifact and generally 1) recruiting ilvl not people 2) demanding the recruits to be at the same level they already are, or even better. Then they're short on people but still keep declining recruits because "not good enough". Every recruit needs to be in "plug & play" mode.

That's why I get annoyed when people suggest things you could read between the lines "I hope something happens that makes other guilds disband just not mine so we can sit like vultures over a carrion and pick the best scraps for ourselves". Many guilds dream of a situation where a parallel guild disbands so they have players for grabs that don't need gearing up or explaining the fight to them.

That's how you can read all the wishes to "cull the number of guilds" "remove underperforming guilds" and similar suggestions in this thread. Free market doesn't work for them, they don't have anything special to offer to poach players from competing guilds, they won't "lower themselves" to recruit less progressed and geared players, they don't get amazing apps because those go to guilds above them, so they resort to wishful thinking "if only there were less guilds we'd have more players to chose from!"

[MonksPerSecond]

This has always been an issue, especially in the higher pop realms. Seems like there are 2 guilds for every one person on the realm. Have you tried looking through the list of guilds in the Guild Search feature when you are guildless? The last time i did it just seemed never ending, 20 some guilds all of which had the same name just altered the spelling. The over abundance of guilds makes finding a decent one a very stressful task and keeps you in the current ones you are in out of fear of the high amount of worthless guilds out there.

[Notdev]

Popularity of a game does not effect the genre of a game...that makes no sense.

You can't say X is not an MMORPG because it doesn't have as many subscribers as Y.

You also can't say "MMO's don't need to have social interaction" then mention a bunch of failed/unsuccessful/bad MMO's as your main reasoning why.

[Wingspan]

That's a fair point, but we're comparing hard heroic dungeons to raiding. Seeing dungeon content really isn't appealing as seeing the story played out in raid form. Having hard heroics really gave the casuals nothing to do, so that, in my opinion, is why many people left in Cata.

A valid point and I am sure it was part of the problem.

Also, normal mode raiding nowadays is by far MUCH easier than those Cata heroics were, and its really not asking a whole lot for people to get good enough at the game to clear normal mode raids.

This kind of depends on who you ask. From a developer standpoint, probably yes... but from a business standpoint, you really need to let your customer dictate how much skill or effort is required (or else you find your business failing at the core skill of being successful business... making money).

Oh, and BC/Wrath both had 2 difficulties of raid, and we all see how well they did. If done properly, that's all we need.

A couple of things here. I don't think BC had 2 difficulties. And I think it was Wrath that first introduced 4 different raid levels, although you could sort of count them as 2 pairs of 2 difficulties.

Also, no matter how successful both BC and LK were at expanding the raiding audience, LFR completely blew their success away. It was that 3rd tier of difficulty that really opened up raiding to the masses and helped to justify the money spent on raids.

[Osmeric]

But there's also the second side of this problem, guilds that are between 7/7hc and 4/7m and demand people to have 870+ or 880+ ilvl, 35 traits in artifact and generally 1) recruiting ilvl not people 2) demanding the recruits to be at the same level they already are, or even better.

Hmm. My main is ilvl 870+ and 35 traits. This is not that hard to have achieved.

[Alopex Major]

You're correct, but I'd argue that m+ allows dungeons to stay entertaining for far longer than ever before, so in that regard they're a success.

For some people, sure. Not for me. If they do shift focus to them, then I know I'll finally be completely done with this game.

[Marrilaife]

Hmm. My main is ilvl 870+ and 35 traits. This is not that hard to have achieved.

In that same manner you could say it's not that hard for a guild to achieve 7/7m EN by now. If a guild is still struggling mid mythic due to roster issues or whatever else, maybe they should settle for less than the well developed toons who are perfectly suitable to fit into a 7/7m guild therefore if they care, that's where they'll apply first.

There might be people who didn't play Legion since the launch, or rerolled, or for whatever other reason are behind on AK / AP / ilvl, as long as it's not too much and doesn't smell of "boost me guys", there could be potential recruits among them that middle of the pack guilds could fish out instead of hopelessly trying to compete with the guilds above them for the same player bracket.

[Osmeric]

In that same manner you could say it's not that hard for a guild to achieve 7/7m EN by now.

I'm 0/7M. I'm not even 7/7H.

[RyanEX]

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. That is the point I'm trying to make. I hate when people blame GMs for adopting the standards required to clear the content they're trying to clear. 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.

Raiding was great in the xpacs you mentioned (although I exclude DS from that "great" complement)!

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Do you even listen to yourself? High Level raiding has always been cutthroat. Anyone from Vanilla/TBC can give you stories of how guilds on most servers were in an almost constant state of flux with high end guilds poaching off of each other endlessly and from other guilds trying to move forward.

It's a simple matter. Guilds don;t want to be forced to backtrack. While progressing Mythic EN they don't want to have to run Heroic EN for Johny Random to get gear, so they aim for people who've already cleared heroic EN and have some Mythic EN experience close to what they have. Watch Preach Gaming's video on the Legacy of Vanilla to hear just how frustrating it was for guilds when it came to raiding.