Where have all the Raiders Gone?

[Reyzzz]

I don't have to. Ultimately, I don't care if any of you see it as I do. But I've been confirmed in this view by not just a post on EJ, which was kind of a reference back then even if it died down nowadays somewhat, but also by a ton of fellow raiders who realised this to be right at the core when I spoke to them about it. They all had an epiphamy regarding this. But feel free to be the know it all that can't acknowledge someone else being right.

What are you trying to prove? That people who are bored of the game don't enjoy it anymore. Come on, learn to move on.

[Galaddriel]

If you included lfr attempts and clears, you'd probably see that overall raid attendance is up.

The people concerned about the number of raiders are looking for raiders for their raid groups. They could care less how many people are running LFR.

[judgementofantonidas]

The people concerned about the number of raiders are looking for raiders for their raid groups. They could care less how many people are running LFR.

Exactly this.

I have operated my guild for six years now. We always succeed at clearing all normal mode content prior to nerf.

We recently lost one healer to the US number 17 guild and removed one due to childish actions during raid.
During cata we would have had 7 healers clamoring at the door to get into our raid group. During wrath we would have had twice that many plus 3 warriors and a Dk who just didn't bother to read our guild spam.

Now there are dozens of guilds on our server, none of them willing to give up a player, all missing 2-3 players that they would need to steadily raid, and no fresh recruits that are even worth notice because LFR teaches them that it is OK to stand in things, go afk during a boss fight, and all the other things that would typically get you ejected from a normal raid if not the guild.

[antelope591]

The answer is simply that the gap between lfr and normal modes are too big. You can't expect casual raiders who got used to easy wotlk then farmed easy mode DS for months to suddenly pick it up and tear it up in a raid like ToT. You think they would be more likely to say "yeah we'll just put in more hours, work to improve our play so we can do this!" or just say "fuck it I'm doing LFR". Anyone with a brain could see raiding numbers would plummet like a rock with a raid the size and difficulty of ToT. You're asking for a complete change in a casual mentality that's been part of the game for years now.

[Crashdummy]

It's more important to look at how many people are attempting normal / heroic bosses rather than success rates.

The conventional idea of raiding is shrinking because of the existence of LFR, not because of normal mode difficulty. The appeal of LFR to your average player isn't specifically the difficulty level, but the ability to raid whenever you want.

If you included lfr attempts and clears, you'd probably see that overall raid attendance is up.

Morchok N had 62k guilds killing it, in a tier with LFR.
Stone Guards N had 40k, with LFR.
Jin'rokh N has 20k guilds killing in over one month, with LFR.

Normal raiding is not dropping because of LFR, its dropping because the difficulty is going up and people are unable to proceed and are left behind.

LFR is not the reason why people are not raiding Normal, its difficulty.

I know many friends that would love to raid normal, but they cant because its too hard for them.

[Glorious Leader]

Who's arguing that individual mechanics are harder? Yes, staying out of fire isn't any different that it was 7 years ago.
What people are growing frustrated with is when they layer 10 different mechanics, over 3 phases, with (required boss mods) screaming at me, a raid leader directing,and a somewhat complex rotation. It grows fucking tiresome to do this for even the low 9 hours a week I do it these days.

(Please don't try and convince me your raid group would be successful without bossmods.)

Straight the fuck up this guy is on the money. Try being a healer in this fucking model. You have all of the above but the pleasant addition of the constant fucking battle to be as cheap as you can casting spells, while abusing every regen ability you have until you all stack and abuse your throughput. Every fight is now like heroic bethliac. Stack heal stack heal stack heal and when your not stacked healing you have to be as CHEAP AS YOU POSSIBLE CAN. I hate fucking healing this expansion and it's no wonder the que times have sky rocketed.

This entire expansion has been one big stick beating the crap out of the player base. It's no wonder less people are raiding normals. Why bother. Especially with the tuning of these raids. You can't even take your friends who maybe arne't the best players into a normal raid any more. Just to appeal to some cry baby on a forum with a massive ego who some how managed to convince the developers that raids could be tuned so god damn tight (exclusively on 10 man I might add) to appeal to his vanity as a player.

---------- Post added 2013-04-08 at 03:24 PM ----------

Morchok N had 62k guilds killing it, in a tier with LFR.
Stone Guards N had 40k, with LFR.
Jin'rokh N has 20k guilds killing in over one month, with LFR.

Normal raiding is not dropping because of LFR, its dropping because the difficulty is going up and people are unable to proceed and are left behind.

LFR is not the reason why people are not raiding Normal, its difficulty.

I know many friends that would love to raid normal, but they cant because its too hard for them.

sadly I think this is only true on 10 man. You can carry alot of people in 25 man.

[namelessone]

During cata we would have had 7 healers clamoring at the door to get into our raid group. During wrath we would have had twice that many plus 3 warriors and a Dk who just didn't bother to read our guild spam.

Did you expect those "clamoring" 7 healers to sit on their thumbs forever waiting for you to condescend and give them a spot so that they can finally play the game? OF COURSE they went to LFR, because they want to PLAY, not to sit on short list forever. It's your own damn fault.

[roahn the warlock]

I can tell you why I stopped. Normal raiding is way too boring. But on the flipside, having to spend time on the bench when we don't need a warlock, and need something else, is boring. And unfortunatly there is no middle ground. Because every middle ground guild always seems to end up trying for hardcore. Then half the people make their own ubber hardcore guild and fuck the other 15 people.. and they go and either find another mid-ground guild. Or do the same thing, and join a low guild and build it up.

I quit because I was tired of constantly finding my guild disbanding, then needing to jump through hoops to find a new one.

Also, blizzard listened to the rose tinted glasses pains in the asses who decided to make the game ridiculous like it was in TBC. Wrath raiding was my favorite raiding (because there was more room for us middle ground players) . Now we are stuck with LFR facerol, regular raiding, and pain in the ass raiding.

Think about it. wrath had 4 lvls of difficulty. Cata had 2. MoP has 3. Ya wonder why more people raided in wrath. Blizzard needs to stop listening to their playerbase and do what they want.

[namelessone]

I think it all comes down to the same issue that caused people to cry foul about LFD. Matchmaking systems take power away from control freaks. In earlier expansions people were either forced into a guild or quit the game at max level, there was nothing else to do to progress your characters. This caused a lot of guilds to develop an overblown sense of importance. The demand for a spot far outstripped the supply, giving a lot of power to GMs and officers, teaching them they can get away with anything, there will always be people begging for a raid spot.

When MOP offered so many things to do at endgame besides raiding people have finally realized they no longer need to suck up to jerks to be allowed to play the game.

[Galaddriel]

sadly I think this is only true on 10 man. You can carry alot of people in 25 man.

Only 155 out of 244 US realms have 25 mans guilds.
Part of the problem?

[Crashdummy]

It's more important to look at how many people are attempting normal / heroic bosses rather than success rates.

The conventional idea of raiding is shrinking because of the existence of LFR, not because of normal mode difficulty. The appeal of LFR to your average player isn't specifically the difficulty level, but the ability to raid whenever you want.

If you included lfr attempts and clears, you'd probably see that overall raid attendance is up.

Oh, an by the way, of the 40k guilds that killed Stone guards N before 5.2, even after the item upgrade nerf, only 13k killed Empress, which is not even the last boss of the tier but is required to proceed to the next one.

So, its not that people are not attempting to raid, its that raid has become so complex, and difficult, that drove away most of the people to cater to the elite (which is called elite because its a little group).

Heroic raids should be for the elite, Normals should be for normal people (go watch a graph of a Normal curve, and you will see how many people should be finishing Normals), while LFR should be for everyone.

Right now we have Heroic raids for an ultra elite group (500 guilds killed Sha of Fear Heroic before 5.2), Normals for the elite + a few more, and LFR for the rest.

---------- Post added 2013-04-08 at 01:03 PM ----------

sadly I think this is only true on 10 man. You can carry alot of people in 25 man.

You can carry some dps and even a healer in 25, but you wont be carrying any tanks or more healers than that.

You really cant carry a lot of people with current boss mechanics, this is not vanilla 40 man raids where 15 ppl (being generous) carried the rest.

[Glorious Leader]

You can carry some dps and even a healer in 25, but you wont be carrying any tanks or more healers than that.

You really cant carry a lot of people with current boss mechanics, this is not vanilla 40 man raids where 15 ppl (being generous) carried the rest.

You can carry anywhere between 5-7 DPS on normal modes depending obviously on how the rest of your dps performs. Their one size fits all approach to raiding is fucking stupid. You can maybe MAYBE carry 1 dps in 10 man and on some fights you can't.

We started running raids on 25 man and laughed at how fucking easy they were by comparison. Horridon is a joke when you've got the extra 10 dps to interrupt and pump out dps on the adds (the same exact number of adds on 10 man even if their hp is lower) and all kinds of dispells and cleanses. 25 man raiding is so much more friendlier.

---------- Post added 2013-04-08 at 04:11 PM ----------

Only 155 out of 244 US realms have 25 mans guilds.
Part of the problem?

Yea. The raids are exceedingly challenging on 10 man. Blizzard one size fits all approach to raiding is driving players to lfr.

[Berraant]

It went from at least clearing the first wing of ICC on normal to just killing Morchok on Normal with doses of LFR to just LFR in MOP. Just an example of the issue.

[Deleted]

I don't understand that thirst of more loots, more gears that people casually call character progression.

My philosophy in MMOs is this

Gear are means to an end, not the end itself.
I feel (and that's just me, everyone is entitled to their opinion) that looting better gear just to collect gear and up your stat is pointless in itself. Ultimately, in a few month, the gear will become outdated anyway, it will end up in the bank and a few years later being sold for a handful of gold.

Gears are tools, necessary to the real goal. The goal is adventure. To take on challenges, raid bosses, heroics dungeons, PVP. Gears are only tools. I do not value gears more than i value a hammer or a screwdriver. What i value is what i can do with those tools.

100% agree with this.

Ive been the top geared Rogue on my realm more than once over the years and yet i couldnt care less about gear... I was all about downing as many bosses as possible and competing against all the other great raid teams on my realm. I havent ever used transmogging cos i genuinely do not care one bit what my toon looks like...

Its all about downing the content and having fun in a great group of people to me... always has been and always will be.

Since Wow has managed to dismantle their own community over the past couple of years its obviously going to have an effect on the amount of raiders out there. It appears to me like only the guys who crave for loot r still playing Wow and us players who played for the teamspirit and community left the building a long time ago...

[hyphnos]

100% agree with this.

Ive been the top geared Rogue on my realm more than once over the years and yet i couldnt care less about gear... I was all about downing as many bosses as possible and competing against all the other great raid teams on my realm. I havent ever used transmogging cos i genuinely do not care one bit what my toon looks like...

Its all about downing the content and having fun in a great group of people to me... always has been and always will be.

Since Wow has managed to dismantle their own community over the past couple of years its obviously going to have an effect on the amount of raiders out there. It appears to me like only the guys who crave for loot r still playing Wow and us players who played for the teamspirit and community left the building a long time ago...

I'm rich and I don't care about money. I only like having a lot of money so I can enjoy the challenge of investing and making even more money. If I was poor, I'd still invest only for the challenge because I really can't imagine what it is to not have a lot of money.

[judgementofantonidas]

Did you expect those "clamoring" 7 healers to sit on their thumbs forever waiting for you to condescend and give them a spot so that they can finally play the game? OF COURSE they went to LFR, because they want to PLAY, not to sit on short list forever. It's your own damn fault.

Not at all. We rotate skilled players in and out of our groups all the time. That is why we recruit 365 days a year. The competent recruits have completely dried up.

---------- Post added 2013-04-08 at 01:34 PM ----------

I can tell you why I stopped. Normal raiding is way too boring. But on the flipside, having to spend time on the bench when we don't need a warlock, and need something else, is boring. And unfortunatly there is no middle ground. Because every middle ground guild always seems to end up trying for hardcore. Then half the people make their own ubber hardcore guild and fuck the other 15 people.. and they go and either find another mid-ground guild. Or do the same thing, and join a low guild and build it up.

I quit because I was tired of constantly finding my guild disbanding, then needing to jump through hoops to find a new one.

Also, blizzard listened to the rose tinted glasses pains in the asses who decided to make the game ridiculous like it was in TBC. Wrath raiding was my favorite raiding (because there was more room for us middle ground players) . Now we are stuck with LFR facerol, regular raiding, and pain in the ass raiding.

Think about it. wrath had 4 lvls of difficulty. Cata had 2. MoP has 3. Ya wonder why more people raided in wrath. Blizzard needs to stop listening to their playerbase and do what they want.

heh. in addition to our shortage of healers we are also on the lookout for a competent loc who does not have dillusions of tankedness.

---------- Post added 2013-04-08 at 01:35 PM ----------

It went from at least clearing the first wing of ICC on normal to just killing Morchok on Normal with doses of LFR to just LFR in MOP. Just an example of the issue.

This is just untrue. We were the 5th guild on our server to kill morchok and were amazed that we one shot a new tier boss at that time.

[Deleted]

LFraid put me off raiding. I need to do raidinglite, for gear for normal modes?

(I dont have heroic loot from the previous tier as I'm a returning player).

25 man raiding was much more fun for me, but not many guilds are raiding 25 man with 10 man being a lot easier to organise etc, as such finding a 25 man guild is harder.

LFRAID, is killing mainstream raiding. Being bored as hell doing it in LFRAID, I have much less intention to do it on normal.

[judgementofantonidas]

LFraid put me off raiding. I need to do raidinglite, for gear for normal modes?

(I dont have heroic loot from the previous tier as I'm a returning player).

25 man raiding was much more fun for me, but not many guilds are raiding 25 man with 10 man being a lot easier to organise etc, as such finding a 25 man guild is harder.

LFRAID, is killing mainstream raiding. Being bored as hell doing it in LFRAID, I have much less intention to do it on normal.

25 man guilds are re-emerging all the time due to the ease of downing content once you get past the organizational hurdles.

[masterman]

I'm rich and I don't care about money. I only like having a lot of money so I can enjoy the challenge of investing and making even more money. If I was poor, I'd still invest only for the challenge because I really can't imagine what it is to not have a lot of money.

Same, shame that the economy is in such shit right now or I could be doing more investing

[Vulcanasm]

At the height of Cata my guild had 4 raid groups, a Saturday alt run and a Sunday/Monday RBG team. Now we are having trouble fielding teams on our evening and late night groups. When MoP dropped we had a wealth of players that were frothing at the mouth for a chance to raid. Literally 40+ players on everyday. We figured Fielding 1 team wouldn't be an issue but fielding 3 teams might be difficult. With in the first 3 months we were one of many guilds endlessly spamming trade to find 1 more dps or 1 more healer for raid. I have seen some of the other guilds that we used to compete with going through the same issues.

My main reasoning in posting this is I'd like to know from players, guilds and realms outside of my own if the number of actual people raiding is way down. I wish there was a way to see how many players are actively participating in non-lfr raids on a realm.

Is the only option left to leave mid to low pop realms all together. Maybe join the masses on the high pop realms along with the que time to play?

I think the main answer lies in economics. The height of WoW's popularity (2008-2009) corresponds to the economic recession. Nobody had a job.

There are data to back up my claim:
* Unemployment and underemployment are down everywhere.
* The Daedalus project ( http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/gate...ographics.html ) found the average WoW player was mid-twenties (I believe 25-26) with some college education -- *the* hardest-hit demographic of that (second) Bush Recession.
* The Information sector has recovered more than any other in the United States (cf. http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t14.htm ). Although I cannot prove this, I suspect this sector produces the most WoW players.

Simply put, many people have jobs now that didn't before. They simply lack the free time required to play a game 20-30 hours a week.