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

[Banard]

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?

Yes and no. Long lasting guilds are chugging along like normal...the issue is lots of people came back for legion and decided they were special snowflakes and built a guild or "re-booted" their old guild.

The # of raiding guilds at the end of WoD and the beginning of Legion is quite drastic.

Now...wow has a large portion of people that will come back and quit...this time i think there was more then the past several xpac...but now there quitting again...to the point where recruiting now is getting harder than the end of WoD...not because there is less people but because people are spread out across more guilds.

Compounding this issue...the whole AP/legendary grind...has led to people feeling burnt out....add wipe 50+ of a boss...and they start to disappear.....

The key to look for a long lasting guild....then go to Warcraft logs ....how long have they been consistently raiding? What is the turn of like?

Put some thought into the decision beyond their current progression.

- - - Updated - - -

My server is shrinking, not growing.

Yes but poplar ones are growing....the #'s of mythic raiding guilds that transferred to Sargaras is mind boggling...especially since you can now use wow gold to get off a server.

[IceMan1763]

Legion is pretty good don't get me wrong but myself and a lot of other people I played with during the first 3 months are just bored and over it. They enjoyed grinding for x amount of time then not having to worry about more grinding until raid login. Now you always need to be pushing something and actvities to keep up to daily with on your main. Which is good for a MMORPG but in WoD it was the exact opposite so its hard for people to not feel lazy thanks to wod.

WOD gets a bad rap for the "lazy" vibe but the dynamic you describe where you spend a few weeks early in the xpac playing a lot to get raid ready and then not much is required after has been true since Wrath. WOD made alts easier by essentially allowing you to level offline through garrison quests, something I would never have allowed if I was the lead designer. "Leveling" your character while you're not even playing crosses a line for me, as does getting gold while you're not even playing. Allowing you to get gold while not playing I think was a big factor in the gold inflation WOD experienced which made gold in Legion a nightmare for players who skipped WOD or unsubbed early.

The big difference between WOD and MOP, an xpac I think which was generally well liked by the player base, was that MOP genuinely had non raid content that was well received by the playerbase. WOD had garrisons, shipyard, twitter integration, and a ridiculous fight with the playerbase over flying they are still continuing to this day. Those "features" were not well received and weren't considered engaging or fun by a large portion of the playerbase.

- - - Updated - - -

Yes but poplar ones are growing....the #'s of mythic raiding guilds that transferred to Sargaras is mind boggling...especially since you can now use wow gold to get off a server.

This is an opinion, not a fact. Long time Guilds and long time players leaving at a high rate this xpac. They are probably close to an all time low of subs and will reach new lows within 6 months, by my estimation.

[Banard]

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.

You sir are not a very bright investor.

Every WoW xpac has sold like hot cakes....no matter how low the subscription has gotten. Legion even broke some records.

WoW is profitable off the sells of the xpac alone. It is why monthly subscriptions have not increased ...that is just icy on the cake....increasing has a bigger probably of convincing people to buy the initial xpac/game.

Blizzard invest $X into the development of wow and in return gets $X from the sales. <---that alone is a working LOW RISK investment.

- - - Updated - - -

This is an opinion, not a fact. Long time Guilds and long time players leaving at a high rate this xpac. They are probably close to an all time low of subs and will reach new lows within 6 months, by my estimation.

This is not opinion BUT FACT. Sargaras has been growing...a server growing is different then wow subs declining ...that is two completely different things. It has come to the point where the server has full several times the past month (not by much 2-3 people in que line and takes less then 30 secs).....but the population of Sargaras has been increasing. Increasing at a cost of the population on other servers....but increasing.

[leviathonlx]

A friend and I did a little experiment and took note of a bunch of 3/10M guilds that were recruiting on our server about a month ago and decided last night to check on them.

Out of the 35 guilds at that time we wrote down only 6 of them have had a new progression kill in that month, 7 of them have stopped raiding entirely and the funniest part is TEN of them have disbanded completely. Hell I joined a guild that had been around since MoP and two weeks after we had a bad progress night, logged in the next morning and the guild was gone. The volatility in guilds Blizz has created by making EN a joke and Nighthold a series of brick walls is astounding.

Reminds me of when Siege got nerfed for a good part of the end of MoP and it created all these "mythic raiders" who couldn't handle Highmaul or BRF and called it quits.

A lot of the 3/10 guilds were flash in the pan guilds that managed to only clear an undertuned EN a couple weeks before Curve was gone while massively outgearing the raid and were created during Legion or shortly before. These guilds are the type of guilds that collapse the moment they hit a brick wall such as an actual hard encounter. Others were guilds that should have just been heroic only guilds that maybe had 8-9 good players (and cleared EN in the same amount of time as the above flash in the pan guild) and can no longer carry all the players they could carry before. Needless to say what ends up happening is either the good players burn out or they jump ship to a 4/10 guild. Then finally you do have your old time guilds that have just eventually collapsed which has always occurred which is usually followed up by a group of raiders making a new guild that may or may not fail.

[Banard]

The game is dying as far as the competitive raiding scene. WoW is more geared for casual gameplay.

This statement is not supportive of facts. WoW more geared for casual gameplay? To raid in the "competitive raiding scene" and have multiple alts ready...the hours...the time....ya more geared towards casual game play.

Competitive Raiding? There is no such ...have you looked at the time these top guilds spend in raiding.....it takes me 2-3 months of raiding to have the same amount of time these top guilds put in their first week.

There arn't many people or groups of people that can do that. There are many players in wow that can perform just as well if not better then the "competitive raiders" but cannot do so because of the time commitment required.

There was no scene ...hopefully one day they can produce one...currently there is not.

[dextersmith]

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.

Could subs possibly be lower than wod?

[ufta]

Step 1 - Stop joining guilds that advertise "looking for raiders" in trade chat.
Step 2 - Get on guild recruiting forums and find a longstanding guild who's raid schedule/policies work with your life.
Step 3 - App to that guild.
Step 4 - Get out your wallet and transfer to your new guild's server.
Step 5 - Profit.

[Anon56]

Like most people in this thread already told you it's you and entirely you, you don't have luck. WoW is in an healthy state and people aren't totally burning out one after the other over this glorified diablo season.

[tss]

The binary thinking a lot of you exhibit is really obnoxious. Just because guilds have disbanded before doesn't mean the churn isn't higher now. Are all the non-cutting edge mythic guilds who are having trouble even recruiting people who meet the mythic standard just a vocal minority? Doesn't seem like it to me.

[Averrix]

My guild started with about 25 for EN, dropped down to about 16 for ToV, down to 12 for NH and is now completely gone. No, we weren't a hardcore guild, only raided twice a week and only did heroic mode, but the grind to stay relevant, I know, drove people off.

[Marema]

My guild for the last few years has died multiple times. We raid, raid leader gets burnt out, most guild members leave. 6 months down the road, raid leader comes back and wants to raid again, we recruit, raid, then another few months goes by and it all repeats.

Personally I like it this way. Raid, break, raid, break, etc. Game is a complete waste of time anyway so if I miss out on some gearing up its no big deal. There's always next raid or next expansion!

[Dartz1979]

Well blizzard did take away alot of guild perks thats what brought people together as incentives so yeah.

[Teri]

Like most people in this thread already told you it's you and entirely you, you don't have luck. WoW is in an healthy state and people aren't totally burning out one after the other over this glorified diablo season.

Small pop servers are experiencing far more problems with this then the usual few large ones. Situation on those servers, and nothing being done about it by blizzard is not healthy for the game at all... except for blizzard's wallet of transfer money.

Transfers alone won't fix this issue.. small realms are still there even if 1000 ppl transfered off ... Blizz knows the problem (blizzcon confirmed it) , but they Ignore it or even dare to say "if you dont want CRZ go to a RP realm" /sigh.

- - - Updated - - -

Well blizzard did take away alot of guild perks thats what brought people together as incentives so yeah.

Guild perks worked both way, you had to level up the guild so it made them less dynamic, lots of tiny guilds were leftovers from the whole 10 man raiding scene and because people didn't want to leave their guilds we likely got Flex and Cross-realm raiding instead...

- - - Updated - - -

Yes but poplar ones are growing....the #'s of mythic raiding guilds that transferred to Sargaras is mind boggling...especially since you can now use wow gold to get off a server.

Yes they are but does it fix the problem? By adding larger queues to a few large servers? For PvE realms it's the worst as there is only 1 large english one per faction English EU. Does blizz really expect for 50% of their playerbase to transfer to a few large servers while letting the small ones die??

Sargeras US is the worlds largest server for alliance, only Stormrage rivals it for PvE, Situation on EU-English is far less diverse.

EU Horde English PVE only wow progress:
Draenor : 33243
Magtheridon : 7073
Chamber of Aspects : 5698

See the steep drop off if you want PvE realm?

Not much different on Alliance:

Silvermoon : 34752
Argent Dawn (RP): 12710
Connected Emerald Dream: 5881


My current horde realm is at 1885 Horde, only option for a transfer would be Draenor.

Yes those numbers represent 110 character with a tier 19 heroic kill but EN skews the numbers up a lot ... I would love to see an update to those numbers only counting tier 20 when it opens.

Overall progression is higher on PvP realms but not everyone wants to play there.

[smaktat]

It seems that unless you're willing to constantly drop guilds to go find a more active one?

Oh wow constantly joining and leaving with no repercussion? Gee willikers Johhny sure seems like group finder mentality to me!

[Banard]

Step 1 - Stop joining guilds that advertise "looking for raiders" in trade chat.
Step 2 - Get on guild recruiting forums and find a longstanding guild who's raid schedule/policies work with your life.
Step 3 - App to that guild.
Step 4 - Get out your wallet and transfer to your new guild's server.
Step 5 - Profit.

with the issue surrounding recruitment you don't trade/recruitment forums are the same thing? Good guilds will do everything possible to advertise ...trade included.

Want to find a good guild?

Check warcraft logs and see how long the guild has been successfully been raiding. Simple as that. Where you see the name is not the important night...you see spam in trade, are looking, raid times look good....do research...

wish wow progress would update their progression list to include raid times, would be very ideal.

- - - Updated - - -

I'm not sure what you are trying to argue here...you are proving my point. When I raided competitively from 2006-2010, there was a rather large and diverse competitive raiding scene. With each passing expansion, the game has been tailored to casual players and it shows with the number of top end guilds quitting all together.

There has never been a competitive raiding scene....2006-2010? Serious?

The only competitive part that existed was due to server community...i remember caring back then too...but it was due to knowing who was on the server. It had nothing to do with casual or hardcore or anywhere in between.

WoW has become more casual with different raid types.....real end game has not...especially with legion.

Mythic Raiding is lights years beyond burning crusade and WOTLK raids.

There is nothing causal about end game mythic raiding....you are wearing some thick rose tinted glasses if you think otherwise.

- - - Updated - - -

Oh wow constantly joining and leaving with no repercussion? Gee willikers Johhny sure seems like group finder mentality to me!

Yes it is the # 1 thing wow needs to address going forward.

How to bring community back to wow? All those added tools are awesome....if it was like BC and taking a hour to find 5 people to do a heroic dungeon i would be out the door in no time.....and probably get trampled on the way.

I have no idea how to fix that...but a lot of issues can be solved if that question "starts" to be asked that question.

[lockybalboa]

Yep people are extremely burnt out by this stage of the expac with the grindless grind. There are less raiding guilds now for sure.

[ThePants999]

<snip>

Interesting signature. I find myself wondering whether the moderators haven't realised what it says, or simply don't mind as it's sufficiently obfuscated :-)

[IceMan1763]

You sir are not a very bright investor.

Every WoW xpac has sold like hot cakes....no matter how low the subscription has gotten. Legion even broke some records.

WoW is profitable off the sells of the xpac alone. It is why monthly subscriptions have not increased ...that is just icy on the cake....increasing has a bigger probably of convincing people to buy the initial xpac/game.

Blizzard invest $X into the development of wow and in return gets $X from the sales. <---that alone is a working LOW RISK investment.

Are we talking about investments or playing a game? If making the company a good investment results in a bad game then I'll buy some Activision stock and still not play the game.

This is not opinion BUT FACT. Sargaras has been growing...a server growing is different then wow subs declining ...that is two completely different things. It has come to the point where the server has full several times the past month (not by much 2-3 people in que line and takes less then 30 secs).....but the population of Sargaras has been increasing. Increasing at a cost of the population on other servers....but increasing.

Which is a much shorter queue than earlier in the xpac, and that's a fact. Nothing you say is backed up by any kind of numbers or factual information, making it your anecdotal opinion.

[Zenfoldor]

I've seen it too. However, I have a larger belief in it being a natural pattern in WoW's content cycle, than anyone having a specific problem with the game. Burnout happens in every xpak. That's what happens when you have to make a game with 6 months worth of content last 1.5-2 years.

[Kreeshak]

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

Agree with this: expectations that people shouldn't have