Are guilds all over collapsing or am I just seeing a lot of bad luck?

[Raxz]

I've joined a couple different guilds, alliance and horde, since Legion launch and they all started out strong but have collapsed to the point of raiding not just slowing down but actually brought to a halt because nobody wants the pugs to outnumber the actual guild members. It starts with losing one or two key raiders and then the guild seems to fall in on itself from there as these key players tend to be the main "initiators" (people who are actually willing to raid lead, play tank/heal/support, get people flasks and food, go on recruiting sprees, etc.) Occasionally they will bounce back but then start bleeding people again which only gets worse the more people see "oh, it's a dead guild" and wise up and leave.

I talk to friends about the state of the game and they all say the guilds they're in are dead too. It seems that unless you're willing to constantly drop guilds to go find a more active one, "dead guild" is just the default constant? Or am I just in a weird microcosm where me and everyone I know happen to be dealing with this at the same time?

[Lochton]

Hmm, a lot of bad luck, as well as expectations that people shouldn't have.

[Deleted]

No you just have bad luck and look obviously for the wrong guilds.

[IceMan1763]

It's not just you, the outside of raid time grind required to keep a character raid ready, especially at the mythic level, is far beyond anything this game has seen going back to at least Wrath. This is burning out players (and thus guilds) on the game at an exponential pace that hasn't been seen before.

They are probably at an all time low for subs right now or close, and will continue to fall. At this rate, they will probably only release TOS and then possibly a very half hearted last raid a long ways down the road. If they make another xpac, it will likely be the last for WOW.

[Yosemiteesam41]

It's not just you, the outside of raid time grind required to keep a character raid ready, especially at the mythic level, is far beyond anything this game has seen going back to at least Wrath. This is burning out players (and thus guilds) on the game at an exponential pace that hasn't been seen before.

They are probably at an all time low for subs right now or close, and will continue to fall. At this rate, they will probably only release TOS and then possibly a very half hearted last raid a long ways down the road. If they make another xpac, it will likely be the last for WOW.

LOL WHAT? What a crock of a post. Nothing but a bunch of lame babbling BS!!

[IceMan1763]

LOL WHAT? What a crock of a post. Nothing but a bunch of lame babbling BS!!

Since Blizzard releases only BS numbers like "total hours played", I could also be right. It's pretty clear that Blizzard has WOW on maintenance mode at this point.

The collapse of long time guilds left and right isn't normal... this xpac is designed to burn the playerbase out faster than ever. Blizzard is learning the hard way that "total hours played" is only a good metric when those hours are fun and engaging, neither of which is true about what is required to keep a character raiding relevant.

[darklogrus]

It's an all to common theme in Wow, early expansions the guilds are boomin and by mid expansion over half of those guilds quickly dry up and vanish and it will see another half dry up during the next raid release. Just peeking in on my server, 90 guilds beat any version of EN only 55 went 3/3 on ToV and now in NH, its under 40.

[clevin]

I think you really need to look at the age of the guilds, too. I'd bet that guilds have a fairly high death rate in their first year or so, but the longer they're around, the less likely they are to disband.

The other thing is that low activity != disbanding or collapsing. If you started NH with 12 guild people in the raid then yeah, you likely are at 8-10 now, perhaps less depending on your guild. A lot of mid-core raiders do normal or heroic, clear them or hit some wall and feel kind of bored, so they do other stuff, especially if the raid is 'done' in the sense that they're just farming and not progressing.

[Deleted]

Our guild went from 8 pople at the start of Legion and needing to PUG to 22 and starting Mythic raids right now. So no, its not universal.


Guilds have disbanded all the time. And new ones have been founded all the time. And some have stayed, with varying degeree of raid and other activity.

[threads]

of course they are. tons of people started playing in the beginning of the xpac and then reality hit them when they saw how badly designed classes are and reliance on grinding AP and legendaries. game sucks atm.

[Deja Thoris]

It's anecdotal but I think lots are.

The jump from 3M to 4M is quite big and I think ppl have stopped giving a shit.

[Deleted]

My guild stopped raiding for the first time in 4 years. We started into nighthold with about 30 raiders and 5 people quit before mythic even opened. We did pretty well for the last years but Legion has been a struggle from the getgo.
I get it though - raiding is a lot more work and a lot less rewarding than ever before.

[PraisCthulhu]

It certainly isn't true for my guild. We splintered off of another guild at the start of NH (we were too "hard core" and had "unrealistic expectations" because we didn't want to be wiping 6+ times to H Ursoc in January) and had just 10 people. We are now up to 15-20 people per raid night with only 1-3 non-guildies (I don't call the PUGs because they are regulars who just don't want to server transfer due to real life friend reasons). Granted we aren't a hard core guild. We don't raid Mythic and we aren't 10/10 Heroic yet. I think this contributes to our success though. Because we aren't pushing to try and get cutting edge achievements, we have not had to do things like enforce getting 54 traits in your weapon or the other grinds. Our only 2 requirements are don't repeatedly die to the same mechanics and perform to your ilvl (basically blue parses for DPS).

[Deleted]

It is currently very common. The main issues so many guilds are collapsing including more casuals and even better guilds :

1) Heroic Gul'Dan is actually quite hard for casual guilds. Many have given up on it.
2) The jump from 3/10 mythic to 4/10 mythic is huge. You actually need 20 good people, with gear, who know what they do and a bit of luck
3) People are burnt out. LEGION has been a long repetitive RNG grindfest.
4) People are fed up and quit. Mostly because of RNG. It simply isn't fun to see other people getting better gear although they are worse.
5) Content. Looks good on the surface, but is actually badly designed.
6) PvP is a complete failure. Some people like to do some PvP from time to time, atleast it was that way in older expansions. Doesn't happen with LEGION anymore, because PvP has been the worst it has even been, besides the changes who look good on paper, but in reality are the worst thing that ever happened to WoW PvP.
7) Class design is on an all time low. Some speccs have been pruned and simplified so much they are beyond help. Rotations and speccs just don't feel right. Reality and intuition are disconnect. (I haven't played ALL speccs so I can't speak for everyone)

And many more reasons, but to write everything down and go into the specifics would be too time consuming, but to sum it up : the problems are mostly due to design choices from Blizzard

[Dracullus]

Well that didn't take long for a "WoW is dead" spin on this thread - but you are late to the show. According to this prophet, WoW died in 4/2015 and was by far surpassed by ESO and Wildstar.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...2#post29402702

"What happened to ESO and Wildstar? They killed WoW, that's what happened. WoW will be shut down during WoD."

So keep the predictions coming

In some whining thread (honestly don't remember which one, there are too many...) someone found old posts from different forum about BC. Same stuff as now, BC is shit, changes are killing WoW, etc.

WoW have stable over 10 million players on launch since about 5 (!) expansions. Some stay only for launch and maybe big patches, some stay all the time. But hey, WoW will die this time for sure!

Gaming culture really changed in last 10 years. In 2003 we could play Morrowind 4 intense months straight (without fast travel and markers on map of course), Oblivion took me around 3 weeks, Skyrim even less. Same thing with WoW. We simply 1) have less time, 2) are used to quality of life improvements, 3) want to experience more games. Games are design differently. So comparing subs mid expansion from old times is pointless.

More sense make comparing WoW to competition on the market. Only big MMORPG that didn't drop subscription model is FFXIV - but they don't reveal subs numbers either. But I think we all can bet that if FFXIV have similar subs number, they would reveal it in heartbeat.

[Myztikrice]

It certainly isn't true for my guild. We splintered off of another guild at the start of NH (we were too "hard core" and had "unrealistic expectations" because we didn't want to be wiping 6+ times to H Ursoc in January) and had just 10 people. We are now up to 15-20 people per raid night with only 1-3 non-guildies (I don't call the PUGs because they are regulars who just don't want to server transfer due to real life friend reasons). Granted we aren't a hard core guild. We don't raid Mythic and we aren't 10/10 Heroic yet. I think this contributes to our success though. Because we aren't pushing to try and get cutting edge achievements, we have not had to do things like enforce getting 54 traits in your weapon or the other grinds. Our only 2 requirements are don't repeatedly die to the same mechanics and perform to your ilvl (basically blue parses for DPS).

You do equivalent content to someone solo queuing into pugs casually. There is nothing about your story that is a success, it is a status quo.

[Queen of Hamsters]

Every expansion has seen guilds disband. Every expansion has had some people looking for such happenings to fuel their own confirmation bias that "WoW is dying", even moreso when WoW is doing great like it is in Legion.

Want a guild that's less likely to die? Search for one that's been around where at the very least the people in charge are not the sort that quits and starts playing all the time.

[Tahlee]

It is currently very common. The main issues so many guilds are collapsing including more casuals and even better guilds :

1) Heroic Gul'Dan is actually quite hard for casual guilds. Many have given up on it.
2) The jump from 3/10 mythic to 4/10 mythic is huge. You actually need 20 good people, with gear, who know what they do and a bit of luck
3) People are burnt out. LEGION has been a long repetitive RNG grindfest.
4) People are fed up and quit. Mostly because of RNG. It simply isn't fun to see other people getting better gear although they are worse.
5) Content. Looks good on the surface, but is actually badly designed.
6) PvP is a complete failure. Some people like to do some PvP from time to time, atleast it was that way in older expansions. Doesn't happen with LEGION anymore, because PvP has been the worst it has even been, besides the changes who look good on paper, but in reality are the worst thing that ever happened to WoW PvP.
7) Class design is on an all time low. Some speccs have been pruned and simplified so much they are beyond help. Rotations and speccs just don't feel right. Reality and intuition are disconnect. (I haven't played ALL speccs so I can't speak for everyone)

And many more reasons, but to write everything down and go into the specifics would be too time consuming, but to sum it up : the problems are mostly due to design choices from Blizzard

Pretty much nailed everything with this. Point #2 is likely the biggest thing from a raiding standpoint. The jump from 3 to your 4th boss is like going from an LFR Guldan to a heroic Gul'dan. The sheer # of guilds dying and collapsing due to this stranglepoint is staggering. GJ blizz.

Pvp.. lol.. biggest joke it's ever been. Most of our guild has always been avid pvp'ers outside of raids and I bet I can count on one hand how many pvp matches the guild as a whole does in a week now.

Add in the retarded RNG of the game.. bottlenecks for gearing up weapons with relics etc.. just the biggest failure of a xpac yet.

[SoulSoBreezy]

I've joined a couple different guilds, alliance and horde, since Legion launch and they all started out strong but have collapsed to the point of raiding not just slowing down but actually brought to a halt because nobody wants the pugs to outnumber the actual guild members. It starts with losing one or two key raiders and then the guild seems to fall in on itself from there as these key players tend to be the main "initiators" (people who are actually willing to raid lead, play tank/heal/support, get people flasks and food, go on recruiting sprees, etc.) Occasionally they will bounce back but then start bleeding people again which only gets worse the more people see "oh, it's a dead guild" and wise up and leave.

I talk to friends about the state of the game and they all say the guilds they're in are dead too. It seems that unless you're willing to constantly drop guilds to go find a more active one, "dead guild" is just the default constant? Or am I just in a weird microcosm where me and everyone I know happen to be dealing with this at the same time?

Both.
Guilds come and go but overall the playerbase is heavily fragmented after multiple series of inflation/deflation of subscribers, leaving players spread out across these hundreds of servers. It can be hard to find each other.
I've heavily preached for Blizzard to push for a much better guild finder/player finder tool that helps build these sorts of relationships; IMO there's too much emphasis in quick play sessions and PUGs.

[HumbleDuck]

I don't have any statistics, but in my realm, no major guilds collapsed, while during BRF and HFC many did.

And about lower ranked guilds, well, they collapse left and right and that's not news.