Legion: Worst expac for recruiting?

[Inukenshin]

I'm sure the expansion and amount of content that can be cleared every week plays a part because of burn out. The problem with turnover is that if it hits you all of a sudden it can be crippling to a guild. This is why a ~25 man roster is necessary. You need to be able to rotate players so that IRL issues and emergencies don't cost you raid nights. You start missing raid nights and the attendance issues begin to snowball and you start losing players. To small guild/group without a good bench that's devastating.

[Deleted]

The problem is lack of flexibility. Our guild is Danish only and have to decline a lot of people who wants in, due to our 26 core setup. If we increase this core setup, it will be hard to maintain raid times for everyone on farm and on progress.

But on the days we have 5-6 declines due to family, job or other issues, it becomes hard to get a good setup and the feeling of wanting even more players in increases. But you cannot fit more players, because if you increase it to 28 or 30 man in the core, people will leave due to not getting enough raid time.

Blizzard shot them selves in the foot when doing 20m only. It should be 20-30.

[Deleted]

Assuming its just "natural" for players to leave, or somehow shifting the blame to Blizzard is a very convinient mindset, as it absolves you, the GM or officer of any blame.


Alot of guilds are trash. And i am not talking gameplay wise. Even well oiled guilds who play well and largely do their jobs can still be pure garbage, because the social aspect is utter dogshit.

Nobody is expecting to become best friends, but guilds with no social element and no sense of community just feel like a group of mercenaries gathered together to slay some dragons. At least real mercenaries get paid. This means leaving the guild is very easy, you lose nothing of value, since gear is temporary.

[Deleted]

Well you're asking someone who just recently unsubbed and the first thing I did to prepare for hiatus was type "gl;hf;gg" and /gquit in all honesty, because I don't give a single solitary shit

But I'm an introvert. I'm fine with group activities but I enjoy long periods of time just doin' my own thing (and kind of need it to recharge anyway). When I started in 2005 it wasnt until about exactly a year later in 2006 I did my first raid. Annnnd $15 is still cheaper than a lot of other entertainment out there.

My 'lasting' relationships and friendships in the game are all pre-cata. Beyond that, well, I find the whole guilding experience indistinct and uninspiring. I have no good stories about banding together to defeat an obstacle, no one I still talk to, no one I miss.

It all got thrown out in favor of convenience. Maybe that was necessary for sub numbers. Maybe it's why sub numbers failed. idk.

I don't remember the year when I started. I started when the AQ patch was just coming out and in other aspects am in same boat, in terms of age and responsibilities as well as the introvert side, however I never felt the need to do everything in a group while in a guild, but having people to talk to on a guild chat and things with at least once a day or so was pretty much a must.

Maybe, but there are games out there which are on Steam sale these days rather frequently which offer more content than a month's worth, unless you just play it every day 8 hours straight.

I am the opposite in terms of those guild stories, but last time I had those experiences were in WoD, none in Legion so far. Guess that's an important difference. I wouldn't join a guild just to clear content, social interactions with strangers, often unpleasant ones aren't a price I am willing to pay for progression. Even when I have done Mythic raiding in past few expansion I've wanted a group who are people I actually care a bit about.

And if I am not raiding or doing organized PVP with daily interactions with players I enjoy spending time with I don't see what the game could possibly offer to warrant paying 15 euros for it. When guilds consist with less than 50% of people I enjoy spending time with, I am often among the next to take a break from the game.

But yeah, still don't quite get what people get out of it when compared to other offerings, unless they raid or do content that requires well organized groups of people to progress.

[Krazzorx]

It's better than WoD I'd say. The ability to transfer with gold makes it so much better.

[Frolk]

I could easily find job in NASA as main engineer with requirements that mythic guilds are asking from players these days.

Log on prepared for raid 2-4 times a week and keep their weapons up to date sure is hard.

[Krazzorx]

And we are fast approaching the point of AP being nearly useless. Such little benefit of grinding past concordance's 1st point. And getting to concordance is getting much easier as AK continues to scale.

[Deleted]

I don't think AP is the problem, I think legendaries are a much bigger deal. I know I was frustrated playing with a gimped character just because I wasn't lucky. Or rather, I was extremely unlucky, hitting three all spec-wide utility legendaries

[Deleted]

I don't think AP is the problem, I think legendaries are a much bigger deal. I know I was frustrated playing with a gimped character just because I wasn't lucky. Or rather, I was extremely unlucky, hitting three all spec-wide utility legendaries

Depends on what you are after, if you looking to get back in and have a chance at mythic raiding while only gaming 3-4 hours per day normally. You will have more than enough time to get the daily box, but depending on how far back you are starting. The AP difference might take awhile in that case, not saying getting lucky with legendary can't take a lot of time, but you have a pretty high chance of getting one from the boxes while you try and catch up in AP.

I'd personally not endure the grind for longer than week or two just to get to experience the only kind of content I enjoy. Some might, of course.

[emilylorange]

And if I am not raiding or doing organized PVP with daily interactions with players I enjoy spending time with I don't see what the game could possibly offer to warrant paying 15 euros for it. When guilds consist with less than 50% of people I enjoy spending time with, I am often among the next to take a break from the game.

But yeah, still don't quite get what people get out of it when compared to other offerings, unless they raid or do content that requires well organized groups of people to progress.

Eh. Attachment to characters, the feeling of time already spent. Conceptually I miss my main, even if intellectually I know what I miss doesn't outweigh what I'm fed up with. I'm going through my steam list from summer sale games I never touched, as you mentioned.

Torchlight II makes me so sad because it was developed by what used to be Blizzard North, no? The character I chose has a lot of the periodic maintenance self-buffs that remind me of feral, the music is very similar to Burning Crusade, and the sound effects for creatures are from the same license free pack near as I can tell

But then I remember AP grinding and decide forlorn nostalgia is good enough lol

[Krazzorx]

I think part of the problem for some is people don't want to run more than 20 because then some have to sit. But that's just not practical. You want around 25 people. It's a very tough team challenge so people occasionally need to sacrifice for the team and sit.

[Trend]

I was playing with friends just doing PvP and M+ for a while and they all quit. I had wanted to get back into raiding anyway and that sealed the deal. It was very time consuming to find a guild that was a good fit. Between raid hours, caliber of play and expectations (on both sides), class/spec needs and the atmosphere of guild life, there are a lot of things that can derail a connection. And there are only very poor tools around trying to find potential fits. I have a feeling that there are a lot of players out there who give up before putting all that effort into finding something.

I considered building a tool to help this process, but making it work would require a critical mass of guilds and players all using the tool and I really don't have the desire to do the required promotion of it to get to that point. The coding would be the easier part. In any case, the other side of the equation is that Blizzard really needs to make it easier to transfer for guilds and players to get matched up. That's just my opinion, but I think they would help their bottom line if they gave you one free transfer for every n months of consecutive subscription or something like that. I think they're just hurting themselves by not making it easier for players to find good fits. How many people end up quitting who would like to continue to raid if they could find something that would work for them?

I think if raids and players could get matched up more easily, what you would see would be the mismanaged or obnoxiously run guilds folding up with the worthwhile players get dispersed to solid crews and/or consolidate to form new groups. Right now, there is just so much noise and no good way to cut through the nonsense IMO.

[emilylorange]

I think part of the problem for some is people don't want to run more than 20 because then some have to sit. But that's just not practical. You want around 25 people. It's a very tough team challenge so people occasionally need to sacrifice for the team and sit.

Here's the thing tho.

If I commit to raiding 6-9 hours a week I expect to be in a raid.

I don't spend my off-time maintaining a character to sit around and wait for 19 guys I can drop and replace with 19 other guys.

For a top-performing guild, sure, but 99% of the people who think they have to pull min-maxing shit to down bosses months after the world-first race is over really would benefit from, as usual, learning not to stand in the bad things and pressing keys in the right order.

[Shakou]

I think one serious issue (depending on where you play, I play on US-Illidan) is that from the end of WOTLK until now we've just had a constant influx of refugees from other servers that come over here and clog everything up.

There are some legitimately good guilds that have come to this server from other places and have had some success, but for the most part there's just a whole slew mediocre raiding guilds that came here thinking they can have instant success and just have the most ridiculous and unrealistic expectations from players that their own lazy/bad leadership often does not live up to.

I'm saying this as a quality player that regularly parses 90th percentile and up can adequately play nearly any class/spec competitively, shows up on time for raids, and goes beyond what average casual joe does to prepare for raids, if you're trying to be a serious mythic raiding guild but you don't even know how to go through logs and (accurately) review performance you have no business leading a mythic raiding guild and of course people are going to be constantly in and out of your guild until someone pulls the plug on it.

Some of these guilds either just have a constant flow of people leaving and joining, or they do things to retain as many players as possible like make their logs private and so on because they know better guilds will easily snipe anyone good out of their guild, but they're all trying to hoard as many players that are in need of a guild as possible.

Because of all this and related activity the game for many has just become very anti-social, and our server in particular just has an extremely toxic environment unless you're in one of the guilds that has stability and strong leadership that understands that you can't build a strong guild in a toxic social environment.

This is something I think will only become more and more an issue the older the game gets and the more people leave, and I don't think there's any real solution to it because people are just burned out from constantly trying to help bad players be better.

This is why stuff like elitist jerks and so on isn't a thing anymore.

Best case scenario, Blizz will provide free transfers for certain realms or do more server mergers so people have a larger pool of players to work with.

But on the whole, if you're having trouble retaining players at some point you gotta think about what it is that you're doing that is causing that. Mass recruiting until something sticks is not a solution.

[Trapped]

Why do people, who don't feel the need for a guild, play this game? I am not saying they shouldn't, just don't quite understand. If it wasn't for the social ties and interactions I, personally, would've quit in WoTLK already. I don't see how the game has anything special to offer in contrast to most of the newer games out there (MMORPGs or simply RPGs).

I do know many of the guild these days are just organizations made up of strangers, which is why I can't seem to enjoy the game nor can I tolerate raiding mythic as well as I used to. It's not just the time, I just don't have the loyalty for these random 19-24 people.

I would've thought things would've been even more focused on improving the social sides of the game instead of abandoning them in favor of easier and quicker access to things. Maybe I am just not part of the target audience anymore.

I don't however see the point in logging on just to do things solo or with strangers. There are far better options out there for that kind of stuff, that do not require a subscription fee. Like I have traded farming AP, Mythic + grind and WQs for doing side quests and exploring the world in Witcher 3. Far more engaging gameplay and no sub fee.

Yeah I don't get it either. The basis of an MMORPG is to play with other people, but it seems there are way more solo players than their used to be. Guilds and friends are what used to keep me subbed to the game, even during content droughts. Guilds are seen as more of a hassle than what they're worth it seems.

Also, this is the reason why we see tons of people come back for new patches, eat up all the content, and then quit logging on. They are solo players and only play for the content, not to play with friends/guildies.

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I think one serious issue (depending on where you play, I play on US-Illidan) is that from the end of WOTLK until now we've just had a constant influx of refugees from other servers that come over here and clog everything up. .

Yup, a point I touched on earlier. Everyone wants to run a guild, and in the end, there winds up being more guilds than a server can healthily support. So instead of 10 strong guilds, you end up with 20 mediocre ones that can't fill a roster without pugging.

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Yup.

My (lower level) guild has basically given up on mythic and just does heroic for this very reason. We don't have players who want to log in and discover they've been benched.

When we work our way up to 20-22 players, we dip into mythic but then a couple quit just due to normal turnover, and we end up with 18 or 19, and because we can't replace the missing people with pugs from our shitty, shitty realm, we just cancel raids or run heroic, and everyone starts to get real frustrated.

Cross realm mythic would solve my issue.

Would 10/20 Mythic solve the problem as well? I'd suggest flex Mythic, but I don't see that being tuned competitively.

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It's better than WoD I'd say. The ability to transfer with gold makes it so much better.

True, but doesn't that just show there's a problem? Server communities and long-standing guilds used to be the spine of the raiding scene. Server transfers just exacerbate the bigger issues, imo.

[TheDeeGee]

It seems like every Expac there is a topic popping up about, worst this, worst that.

Looks like Blizzard can't get anything right...

[Trapped]

Assuming its just "natural" for players to leave, or somehow shifting the blame to Blizzard is a very convinient mindset, as it absolves you, the GM or officer of any blame.


Alot of guilds are trash. And i am not talking gameplay wise. Even well oiled guilds who play well and largely do their jobs can still be pure garbage, because the social aspect is utter dogshit.

Nobody is expecting to become best friends, but guilds with no social element and no sense of community just feel like a group of mercenaries gathered together to slay some dragons. At least real mercenaries get paid. This means leaving the guild is very easy, you lose nothing of value, since gear is temporary.

Yup, guildies and friendships are what used to keep people subbed. Now, we have this huge group of people that sub for new content/raids, get their LFR kill on the big baddy and unsub for 6 months. And like you said, if there's no friendships or social attachments in your guild, you don't have much incentive to keep logging in.

[unclecreepy]

Blizzard killed incentives for being in guilds other than if you're looking to focus on Mythics.

No surprise at all that less and less people are in guilds.

[judgementofantonidas]

I have been guild leading since early BC, and maybe it's just me, but Legion seems to be the absolute worst expansion when it comes to player retention in guilds and overall guild recruitment. It seems that we see a huge influx of players when new raids/patches come out, all the guilds snatch them up, and then the players slowly dwindle, and the recruitment treadmill ensues. I was listening to the Convert to Raid podcast the other day, and one of the "speakers" on there was Tattva from Line of Sight gaming, and I think he said they've lost 15 of their core Mythic raiders over the course of however long. I think that's what happened to Nihilum as well, and ultimately led to them closing up shop (75% turnover rate).

So, to all the guild leaders and/or officers out there, how are you doing in the recruitment department? Are you seeing a constant stream of new recruits, or are you able to keep most of your core raiders together?

there should really be a cap on guilds per server. flash in the pan guilds seem to be a dime a dozen always forming and impolding while established guilds that have been around and will continue to stay around suffer.

[Deleted]

there should really be a cap on guilds per server. flash in the pan guilds seem to be a dime a dozen always forming and impolding while established guilds that have been around and will continue to stay around suffer.

That would be silly as it would've prevent those who just want to build a guild with their families or friends and do their own business from doing just that. No shared banks, etc.

Blizzard killed incentives for being in guilds other than if you're looking to focus on Mythics.

No surprise at all that less and less people are in guilds.

I guess they could make more guild achievements and things for other forms of progress.

--

I made some good friends when I last took part in a nice reroll guild "project", I wonder if those are still worth the effort. Seems it's hard to have a raiding guild that's not focusing on b lining it to the mythic content, which I don't really have the time and energy for. Seems like many guilds bleed out of players before they can properly even get started unless they manage to get some progress very very quickly.