Guilds Falling Apart a Lot This Patch

[isadorr]

You misunderstand, completely. I never said the fights were too hard, we never got the chance to get far. After cleared MSV our guild disbanded and it took a while to transfer old guild over. Our resident Mage then left to raid on an Italian realm since his English was pretty bad and our 2nd tank had to leave since he was approaching a pretty hefty portion of his University course during our HoF progression, halting that even further.

Because we simply haven't been able to raid as a guild our overall progression is low, despite many of us being able to PuG the fights or complete them individually with other groups. Naturally, we want to all raid together, but we haven't been able to recruit because our guild progression situation.

Stop judging people, please.

I apologize, i wasnt attempting to judge, i took what you said about 5.2 approaching as if you were looking forward to that content as if it would be easier since you had been struggling. Recruiting is a nightmare, 99% of people who fill out the application say elitist even though in vent they dont know their own class. It seems to be out move when people are called out on things they should know. I hope you get some good players and look cross servers for people. Many guilds pay for xsfer of a player when they are recruiting which is another great way to get a player. We have done that a few times now and gotten good players but 25 dollars to some is more than they would like to spend.

[celinamuna]

I hope that they don't change the difficulty of the next tier normal mode compared to this one. While i did not progress as quickly as i hoped (and we did hit the roadblock a few times, be it elegon or garalon) none of the other bosses were over the top (i think on average all other bosses took 1 week or less). Now while i only had limited play in heroic modes (and way later than when they were still "competitive" i do enjoying the challenge, and the new twist on the bosses i've already killed.

At the same time, my raid group did go through a lot of players (i think ~5 tanks, 2 healers, 5+ dps)

[Granyala]

As for "numbers they should be pulling" - where in game would they learn what to do? The game doesn'#t tell you, and if you don't work it out yourself you get benched. It's all a bit of a mess.

I dunno if you've played Hots, but it looks like blizzard has really learned a thing or two about training people up for SC, the walkthroughs are brilliant. Wow could do with something like them.

Damn, why can I only agree to this once?!

I played EvE online a few days ago and I realized what WoW was really missing:
PROPER TUTORIALS!
The tuts in EvE are excellent. They not only teach you what you need to know in this vast and complex universe via text, but they also show you via gameplay.

If WoW had something like that, the number of inadequate people would be reduced by at least 50%

(and we did hit the roadblock a few times, be it elegon or garalon) none of the other bosses were over the top (i think on average all other bosses took 1 week or less)

Same here. Elegon, Garalon and Will took us longer than a week. Every other boss fell within 1-3 Evenings of tries. Typically we manage 15-20tries in one night, so perfectly reasonable.

[isadorr]

This is all rather odd to me. I have been playing since TBC and made a conscious decision to raid. Then i decided what kind of raiding and went that route. I knew that if i chose casual i would be struggling and killing bosses rather slowly like my friends i had ran with before. I raided with a progression based guild and cleared everything months before my friends did. It was accepted that being in a casual guild meant slow progression and the people in those guilds were fine with that because they knew that. Now people want to clear content they dont have the skill for or the patience for. Why? Logging into a game is to just play a game right? To do anything further is based on your motivation and your goals.

The people in your guild will tell you what goals to set by their numbers. So by looking at the players in your guild you know what progression you are most likely going to see just like a team in sports, what you have is what you have. Now if you want to replace some of the bad players then your progression would change but otherwise it doesnt. That is your choice, just yours, you are making a decision that progression isnt as important. So why is progression important if you just raid with friends you know arent that good? Why should you progress the same as others putting in more effort?

[Darmalus]

I think it's going to shift it. I would bet that normal modes in the next tier will end up being easier than the current tier normal modes. That will allow more casual raiding guilds to clear normal modes during that tier. 30% is quite a low number for clearing normal modes by the end of the tier. I would assume that Blizz wants that number more toward 60-70%. Just my guess.

Maybe. It's an interesting conundrum. I used to raid normal modes, now I'm exclusively LFR. I have no doubts Blizz can track things like that.

So it makes me wonder, are the low clearance rates really a problem? If Blizz sees that a large portion of people who cleared normal modes switched to LFR without ending their subscriptions, and sees that the current crop of people not clearing normal/heroic are the same people who tried and failed before LFR was around, then it's not so much a matter of losing raiders as more raiders decided to do a reduced difficulty level.

Man, things like this make me wish I had access to Blizzards database.

[Deleted]

I apologize, i wasnt attempting to judge, i took what you said about 5.2 approaching as if you were looking forward to that content as if it would be easier since you had been struggling. Recruiting is a nightmare, 99% of people who fill out the application say elitist even though in vent they dont know their own class. It seems to be out move when people are called out on things they should know. I hope you get some good players and look cross servers for people. Many guilds pay for xsfer of a player when they are recruiting which is another great way to get a player. We have done that a few times now and gotten good players but 25 dollars to some is more than they would like to spend.

It's more that we're looking forward to it as a chance to be at an even level as everyone else, and to have a fresh start. If we can get a full, regular team then I'm looking forward to the fights. They do indeed look tough, but that sort of thing can be very fun when you have a team of hard-working and dedicated individuals.

The server we're on atm is populated well, but it does seem to be combination of end of patch blues and lack of current tier progression that's hit us, not because we can't find decent members on our server. We've attempted to reach outside our server, but so far the only interest has come from either former guildmates back on our old realm or friends of friends. Were we a guild with top progression I imagine it'd be easier for people to justify throwing down £15 to join us, but when you're joining a guild that's not progressed very far and you only have their word that they will get far with a full group, it suddenly becomes harder to justify.

[isadorr]

I hope that they don't change the difficulty of the next tier normal mode compared to this one. While i did not progress as quickly as i hoped (and we did hit the roadblock a few times, be it elegon or garalon) none of the other bosses were over the top (i think on average all other bosses took 1 week or less). Now while i only had limited play in heroic modes (and way later than when they were still "competitive" i do enjoying the challenge, and the new twist on the bosses i've already killed.

At the same time, my raid group did go through a lot of players (i think ~5 tanks, 2 healers, 5+ dps)

Once you get that set group of players though you are set. And you kept looking for good players which is really smart and you are gearing good players instead of wasting gear. Progression becomes easier and the guild itself becomes better with a better overall raid group.

[Deleted]

This is all rather odd to me. I have been playing since TBC and made a conscious decision to raid. Then i decided what kind of raiding and went that route. I knew that if i chose casual i would be struggling and killing bosses rather slowly like my friends i had ran with before. I raided with a progression based guild and cleared everything months before my friends did. It was accepted that being in a casual guild meant slow progression and the people in those guilds were fine with that because they knew that. Now people want to clear content they dont have the skill for or the patience for. Why? Logging into a game is to just play a game right? To do anything further is based on your motivation and your goals.

The people in your guild will tell you what goals to set by their numbers. So by looking at the players in your guild you know what progression you are most likely going to see just like a team in sports, what you have is what you have. Now if you want to replace some of the bad players then your progression would change but otherwise it doesnt. That is your choice, just yours, you are making a decision that progression isnt as important. So why is progression important if you just raid with friends you know arent that good? Why should you progress the same as others putting in more effort?

No one is asking for the same progression, the case is being put that the average should be catered to.

For example, this tier only 30% of raiding guilds have cleared everything on normal. 1% have cleared HC sha. If blizzard were to change the difficulty so that was 50% of raiding guilds clearing stuff on normal, it would still leave a load of heroic progression for those who are further up the scale.

T14 basically features a series of arbitary cockblocks, a higher difficulty than DS and a gating system which makes it more awkward than it really has to be if you don't want to play hardcore or progression. And, now the numbers have dropped, blizzard will probably have to release something undertuned to make up for it.

Hey ho.

[Arbs]

The end of a tier always has guilds disbanding, and the beginning of a new tier always has new ones forming. It's the lifecycle of WoW.

Pretty much, Tier always see guild lose people and rebuild in new Tiers.

Casual Guilds comes & go while Progression guild ussually stick together or have new recruits that fill up the empty spots.

[Belloc]

Isn't there a point where blizzard also needs to change and learn?

Sounds to me like you haven't been playing for very long, if this is the kind of point you're trying to make. Look back at the game in Vanilla, BC, WotLK, and Cata and then tell me that Blizzard hasn't changed and learned. As it is, you sound like you have no clue what you're talking about.

Why can't a friendly guild have some progress? it's entirely a tuning decision at blizz HQ. For some reason, rather than design raids for the tens of thousands of half assed social guilds out there they design it for the top end of the hardcore and let the normal folks struggle. It's a bit weird, frankly.

Here's the problem with "friendly" guilds: "Friendly" is being used to describe guilds with players that don't care to improve. Let me say that again, players that don't care to improve. We all know what I'm talking about here -- the DPS that are always lowest on the meter, always get gear upgrades, and never come anywhere approaching the other players. Players that don't listen or act when you ask them to go read a class guide. Players that die in the fire and fail to properly execute encounter mechanics.

Let me tell you about my friendly guild: Back in DS, we were on a 1-night-a-week raid schedule. We would raid for 3-4 hours. With this raid schedule, we cleared Heroic Dragon Soul by the time the debuff was up to 15%. So, how is it that we beat other guilds that were on 2-3 day schedules, who never could've come anywhere near handling heroics? Well, we had a good leader and players that mostly actually tried. Sure, we had some people that I wouldn't have preferred to bring along, but we made it work.

The "Friendly" guilds that you're talking about? The players don't try. They don't bother learning how to properly play their classes. They go into fights with poorly chosen stats, run out of mana, die to lack of healing, die to enrage timers, die in the fire, etc. They don't try.

You might not like to hear this, but Blizzard does not tune for hardcore raiders. They tune Normals for average players (assuming that they'll spend time learning and wiping) and they tune Heroics for above-average players (assuming the same). If they tuned content for the hardcore, do you honestly think that all of the raids would've been cleared, on heroic, within a week or two? No. Hell no. You're not even trying to think if that's what you believe.

The majority are never bad, buddy. They are the normal, the average. To be good you have to be better than average> if you are worse than average you are bad.

if the average DPS is 30k and the best dps is 60k, 45k dps is good dps, even if it won't get yuou progress. That's how good, bad and average work, good buddy.

Your example is flawed. You aren't taking into account gear improvements, getting better at fights, or, really, any realistic factor. You're just taking a snapshot, looking at numbers and making assumptions. That is not how it works at all.

If you want your "friendly" guild to succeed, then have those "friends" stop wasting your time. Get them to spend 10-15 minutes reading their class' guide on Icy-Veins or Elitist Jerks and maybe, just maybe, your "friendly" guild will actually have a chance at clearing content. As it is, they're just weighing their $15 a month against everyone else's. That doesn't sound very friendly to me.

If you don't know HOW to play your character, WHY should you be clearing content? To expect that is borderline retarded. Stop doing that. Stop blaming Blizzard for the failings of your fellow raiders. Have them get their shit together.

[kennyisnotdead]

Most guild's raiding is short lived with each expansion and sometimes patches. If the player chemistry isnt there that's a big cause also of people losing interest.

The best guilds have been around for a good amount of time and dont have a need to advertise in trade chat for raiders.

Find a guild who rarely recruits for their raid team and when your having your interview make sure they are a good fit for you. in most cases thats how they will also make their decision. Kids in school are an issue and couple who play together are always high risk, especially if they have kids. Make sure you interview them right back.

If your guild has recently exploded your in good luck with a new patch coming out. There will be some 10 man raid guilds looking to expand to 25s. Have fun with it.

[isadorr]

Maybe. It's an interesting conundrum. I used to raid normal modes, now I'm exclusively LFR. I have no doubts Blizz can track things like that.

So it makes me wonder, are the low clearance rates really a problem? If Blizz sees that a large portion of people who cleared normal modes switched to LFR without ending their subscriptions, and sees that the current crop of people not clearing normal/heroic are the same people who tried and failed before LFR was around, then it's not so much a matter of losing raiders as more raiders decided to do a reduced difficulty level.

Man, things like this make me wish I had access to Blizzards database.

The boss fights on the PTR are rather high tuned but they are 522ilvl so they should be. I am guessing that the 5.2 tier will be a challenging one if it is anything like the PTR. Even LFR on the PTR was more difficult feeling than the normal mode of this tier but it is LFR. Heroic bosses are a handful to say the least and the normal bosses have good a lot of health which are dps checks for most guilds but progression guilds should have no problem with them. I think that more people went to LFR as it is easier. 10man raids may seem easier but you cant carry a bad player let alone a few bad players, which i think is a large part of the slow progression people are talking about.

People of the same mindset seem to eventually come together which results in bad raid groups at times making raiding very difficult. Sometimes you get people that all know their class and their rotation that comes together and then you have a very good raid group. Or you have people come together that value friends, drinking, and dont want to pull someoene in vent and talk to them about their horrible numbers. Or there is a few that are doing rather bad holding back the group and no one really wants to say anything.

Can anyone answer this? If you are all friends and you want to progress, then wouldnt the person that is pulling the horrible numbers want to step up and say maybe you should find a replacement for me? You dont want to hold the guild back or cause your friends to wipe everynight. You hear people say i just do this for fun and when you replace them they get mad and leave the guild.

I have a friend i helped out and they were doing horribly. He asked me to raid lead on a alt, i talked to guild in vent and everyone said they knew their class and really wanted to progress so we raid and at the end of the night i am talking to the GM friend of mine and I ask about certain players way under what they should pull. He says oh they have always been that way since cata. I talk to these players and none are really interested about learning their class so i told him if he wants to make changes then things will get better otherwise he is wasting his time. So we change out 5 of the 10 and full clear the every next week. That is all you have to do to clear normal modes. Cut the fat and things will get better overnight.

[Deleted]

Sounds to me like you haven't been playing for very long, if this is the kind of point you're trying to make. Look back at the game in Vanilla, BC, WotLK, and Cata and then tell me that Blizzard hasn't changed and learned. As it is, you sound like you have no clue what you're talking about.

Played since vanilla beta.

Here's the problem with "friendly" guilds: "Friendly" is being used to describe guilds with players that don't care to improve. Let me say that again, players that don't care to improve. We all know what I'm talking about here -- the DPS that are always lowest on the meter, always get gear upgrades, and never come anywhere approaching the other players. Players that don't listen or act when you ask them to go read a class guide. Players that die in the fire and fail to properly execute encounter mechanics.

You say that like it's a bad thing.

Let me tell you about my friendly guild: Back in DS, we were on a 1-night-a-week raid schedule. We would raid for 3-4 hours. With this raid schedule, we cleared Heroic Dragon Soul by the time the debuff was up to 15%. So, how is it that we beat other guilds that were on 2-3 schedules, who never could've come anywhere near handling heroics? Well, we had a good leader and players that mostly actually tried. Sure, we had some people that I wouldn't have preferred to bring along, but we made it work.

Great. So what?

The "Friendly" guilds that you're talking about? The players don't try. They don't bother learning how to properly play their classes. They go into fights with poorly chosen stats, run out of mana, die to lack of healing, die to enrage timers, die in the fire, etc. They don't try.

Right. I said this. it's completely normal. Most people just want to arse about and get some gear without needing to research or spend ages learning lots of different stuff. What's wrong with that?

You might not like to hear this, but Blizzard does not tune for hardcore raiders. They tune Normals for average players (assuming that they'll spend time learning and wiping) and they tune Heroics for above-average players (assuming the same). If they tuned content for the hardcore, do you honestly think that all of the raids would've been cleared, on heroic, within a week or two? No. Hell no. You're not even trying to think if that's what you believe.

Then how come the clear rate isn't where it would be if blizzard catered to the average? Why do HC modes exist at all?

Your example is flawed. You aren't taking into account gear improvements, getting better at fights, or, really, any realistic factor. You're just looking at numbers and making assumptions. That is not how it works at all.

The numbers were irrelevent to the principle. I suspect you know this.

If you want your "friendly" guild to succeed, then have those "friends" stop wasting your time. Get them to spend 10-15 minutes reading their class' guide on Icy-Veins or Elitist Jerks and maybe, just maybe, your "friendly" guild will actually have a chance at clearing content. See, that's the thing here: If you don't know HOW to play your character, WHY should you be clearing content? To expect that is borderline retarded. Stop doing that. Stop blaming Blizzard for the failings of your fellow raiders. Have them get their shit together.

I don't want them to succeed, at least not as the priority. I want them to be friends.

[happyzod]

This tier has been off drastically. Specifically Garalon and Elegon(though elegon was fixed). Normal modes should clearable by the average player, within a std. I'm thinking blizz should aim for a number like 66% of raiders should be able to clear normals by the end of the patch. With hard modes, I don't care what difficulty blizz wants to tune that content towards.

[yjmark]

Maybe. It's an interesting conundrum. I used to raid normal modes, now I'm exclusively LFR. I have no doubts Blizz can track things like that.

So it makes me wonder, are the low clearance rates really a problem? If Blizz sees that a large portion of people who cleared normal modes switched to LFR without ending their subscriptions, and sees that the current crop of people not clearing normal/heroic are the same people who tried and failed before LFR was around, then it's not so much a matter of losing raiders as more raiders decided to do a reduced difficulty level.

Man, things like this make me wish I had access to Blizzards database.

Personally, I think the low clearance rate is a problem - for only 1 (long winded) reason. Most raiding guilds are 10-man. There is no 10-man LFR. So for most raiding guilds, normal mode is the only option for a guild run.

[eschatological]

Normal people don't care about rankings. They want to have fun.

I don't care about rankings. I want to have fun. I'm also 13/16H and raid 9-12 hours a week, have a 60 hour a week job, and a social life.

The problem is, fun is subjective. Now, I don't know you, but I'm in my 30s now, and WoW launched *after* I finished college, and the video game culture I grew up in, with the true nerds, considered a real challenge that took you endless amounts of time to beat to be "fun." One of my fondest video game memories of my childhood is finally beating Contra without the 30 lives cheat which is now immortalized in gaming history. Same with beating Super Mario Brothers 1 and 3 without warping.

WoW was made in light of that culture - where hardship and challenge was considered fun, worthwhile, and rewarding. Now, maybe you want to argue that the game's audience has shifted away from that. Maybe you're even right (though I don't believe you are). But fun is still subjective, and fun, for a good chunk of us old school nerds, involves a challenge.

They make casual MMOs like GW2 for the kids who expect everything handed to them and the adults who no longer want to make the time and put in the effort and still get rewards. WoW isn't one of them. Maybe it's time you accept that, and you move on. I have my raid team, full of working professionals with families and kids, and we pledge 12 hours a week to each other, to be present, and get shit done. And shit gets done. And I have my friends in a different guild, who are 8/16 normal mode, who raid the same 12 hours, and don't bother learning to play their class to the max because WoW isn't their main hobby and they don't care to be any better, we're just there for the company of each other. And that's fine too. The disconnect is when the latter group thinks they should have the same progression as the former group without any sense of their own self-responsibility. Heroic modes aren't hard. Normal modes are laughable. I cleared 16/16 on my blood DK the week he hit 90, in a pug which had previously stalled at 4/16 in past weeks and only needed firm direction and helpful suggestions to improve their play. It's shocking to me how many tanks in normal mode don't understand the concept of the shield/mirror buffs on Feng, for example, or how healers on Elegon don't understand the improved healing on targets inside the circle plus their own improved heals for themselves standing in it.

[Granyala]

Can anyone answer this? If you are all friends and you want to progress, then wouldnt the person that is pulling the horrible numbers want to step up and say maybe you should find a replacement for me? You dont want to hold the guild back or cause your friends to wipe everynight. You hear people say i just do this for fun and when you replace them they get mad and leave the guild.

They want to. But even with all the help and gear they get they just can't seem to be able to do it. You can explain the rotations and priorities a million times, there comes a point where the player actually has to DO it.

One example would be one of our warriors who does Tank DPS (~50K) with item level 493.

It sucks when attendance is low and you are being forced to take people like that with you, despite their numbers.

And then there's movement. 50Wipes on Blade lord HC were only due to the same 5 people constantly movement failing. There really isn't much you can do about it, if you're not in the place to swap them out. :/

Guess thats where the frustration for a lot of folks comes from and it's only understandable that they want their easy content back.

Blizzard failed hard in Wrath and DS. They should never have dropped the difficulty in the first place. Now peeps got a taste of easy epixx and when you take that away again, there will be QQ.

[isadorr]

Played since vanilla beta.



You say that like it's a bad thing.


Great. So what?


Right. I said this. it's completely normal. Most people just want to arse about and get some gear without needing to research or spend ages learning lots of different stuff. What's wrong with that?


Then how come the clear rate isn't where it would be if blizzard catered to the average? Why do HC modes exist at all?




The numbers were irrelevent to the principle. I suspect you know this.


I don't want them to succeed, at least not as the priority. I want them to be friends.

Then go talk about the game being too hard, anyone with a brain being a elitist, drink beer and as you said it isnt a priority to progress, go be with your friends. People want to get rewarded for being bad and putting no effort whatsoever into it, sounds like the welfare program.

Every point you attempt to make is just someone standing there with their hand out like a homeless person on the side of the street. You want the gear that people put effort to get while you sit there drinking your beer on the side of the road asking for everything for free. How do you know the clear rate isnt what blizzard wanted or expected? Do you think they dont know that the overall talent base of players in wow is bad? Like you said the majority of players like you. No effort or motivation to improve and if you had taken the time to write all of this you could have learned your class in that time but who wants to do something elitist like that?

[happyzod]

I don't care about rankings. I want to have fun. I'm also 13/16H and raid 9-12 hours a week, have a 60 hour a week job, and a social life.

The problem is, fun is subjective. Now, I don't know you, but I'm in my 30s now, and WoW launched *after* I finished college, and the video game culture I grew up in, with the true nerds, considered a real challenge that took you endless amounts of time to beat to be "fun." One of my fondest video game memories of my childhood is finally beating Contra without the 30 lives cheat which is now immortalized in gaming history. Same with beating Super Mario Brothers 1 and 3 without warping.

WoW was made in light of that culture - where hardship and challenge was considered fun, worthwhile, and rewarding. Now, maybe you want to argue that the game's audience has shifted away from that. Maybe you're even right (though I don't believe you are). But fun is still subjective, and fun, for a good chunk of us old school nerds, involves a challenge.

They make casual MMOs like GW2 for the kids who expect everything handed to them and the adults who no longer want to make the time and put in the effort and still get rewards. WoW isn't one of them. Maybe it's time you accept that, and you move on. I have my raid team, full of working professionals with families and kids, and we pledge 12 hours a week to each other, to be present, and get shit done. And shit gets done. And I have my friends in a different guild, who are 8/16 normal mode, who raid the same 12 hours, and don't bother learning to play their class to the max because WoW isn't their main hobby and they don't care to be any better, we're just there for the company of each other. And that's fine too. The disconnect is when the latter group thinks they should have the same progression as the former group without any sense of their own self-responsibility. Heroic modes aren't hard. Normal modes are laughable. I cleared 16/16 on my blood DK the week he hit 90, in a pug which had previously stalled at 4/16 in past weeks and only needed firm direction and helpful suggestions to improve their play. It's shocking to me how many tanks in normal mode don't understand the concept of the shield/mirror buffs on Feng, for example, or how healers on Elegon don't understand the improved healing on targets inside the circle plus their own improved heals for themselves standing in it.

You're taking the elitist approach towards things. That's how PvPers did it in the past. Now, bgs are full of bots and participation in arena has gotten so bad that previous 2200+ players have a hard time getting past 2k. If we've learned anything, its that a larger pool of players is good for everyone, even your own raid group if someone decides to flake out. To foster that larger group, you need to make at least the normal modes accessible to people of all skill levels.

[Deleted]

I don't care about rankings. I want to have fun. I'm also 13/16H and raid 9-12 hours a week, have a 60 hour a week job, and a social life.

The problem is, fun is subjective. Now, I don't know you, but I'm in my 30s now, and WoW launched *after* I finished college, and the video game culture I grew up in, with the true nerds, considered a real challenge that took you endless amounts of time to beat to be "fun." One of my fondest video game memories of my childhood is finally beating Contra without the 30 lives cheat which is now immortalized in gaming history. Same with beating Super Mario Brothers 1 and 3 without warping.

WoW was made in light of that culture - where hardship and challenge was considered fun, worthwhile, and rewarding. Now, maybe you want to argue that the game's audience has shifted away from that. Maybe you're even right (though I don't believe you are). But fun is still subjective, and fun, for a good chunk of us old school nerds, involves a challenge.

They make casual MMOs like GW2 for the kids who expect everything handed to them and the adults who no longer want to make the time and put in the effort and still get rewards. WoW isn't one of them. Maybe it's time you accept that, and you move on. I have my raid team, full of working professionals with families and kids, and we pledge 12 hours a week to each other, to be present, and get shit done. And shit gets done. And I have my friends in a different guild, who are 8/16 normal mode, who raid the same 12 hours, and don't bother learning to play their class to the max because WoW isn't their main hobby and they don't care to be any better, we're just there for the company of each other. And that's fine too. The disconnect is when the latter group thinks they should have the same progression as the former group without any sense of their own self-responsibility. Heroic modes aren't hard. Normal modes are laughable. I cleared 16/16 on my blood DK the week he hit 90, in a pug which had previously stalled at 4/16 in past weeks and only needed firm direction and helpful suggestions to improve their play. It's shocking to me how many tanks in normal mode don't understand the concept of the shield/mirror buffs on Feng, for example, or how healers on Elegon don't understand the improved healing on targets inside the circle plus their own improved heals for themselves standing in it.

All I am doing is looking at how people actually behave and making (the not amazingly radical, surely?) point that maybe blizzard should be designing around what they have as a playerbase.

Most players don't research, don't care, aren't that bothered, want to down bosses quite quickly etc etc

Now, you can make the argument that they shouldn't - and that's fine. But, absent some sort of in game teaching tool it's an argument that's going nowhere. normal modes are incredibly difficult, HC modes almost impossible. I had some friends come to wow as a sortof group for the start of mop. Their first ever raid boss was stone guards.

Which is taking the piss, frankly. They levelled to 90 easy enough, though it took some time. They geared up in the exmode HC's and scenarios. I gave some pointers about raiding (I ain't great but I know some stuff) - off they went to their first ever raid and they proceeded to get completely rolled on the first boss in MSV for a few hours with no hope of getting anywhere and then they jacked it in. most of them are still about, doing dailies and the odd BG and stuff.

The diconnect between raiding and the rest of the game is massive. Theres two ways to narrow it - one is to make the raids for the playerbase blizzard actually has and nerf stuff, the other is to teach people how to play the game as they level up.

But what you suggest? The "magically learn what to do and want to wipe endlessly" thing - it doesn't happen. it never will.