Where have all the Raiders Gone?

[Deleted]

What's the point? I raided for 7 years but come mop I can see all the content and "raid" when I feel like it in lfr. But! The main reason I stopped raiding was the fact that bosses are starting to get very boring. Reusing old raid mechanics from fights in years past is not fun. Doing a boss that is doing the same move with a different name that a boss did 4 years ago is bullshit.

Uh, reusing old mechanics? Where in ToT for example? o0
Some are similar, for sure, but a lot of mechanics are really new

[Deleted]

I love raiding, it's simply best thing in WoW ever. People who doesnt do it, or think LFR is good replacement are missing a lot imo.
There's nothing like wiping on a boss for few raid nights or even weeks, and from the perspective "it's impossible, we'll never make it" to actually get you tactics right and perform at 100% and get your first kill. After that you think "well, that was actually really easy, dunno why we were struggling so much"
You lose it in LFR since every boss just falls down, and there's no sense of accomplishment

[YouAreAllWrong]

The whole "Raid or gtfo" mentality these MMO's now have is why lots of MMO's have failed and why WoW is stale for a lot of people.

Bingo!
The reality is that most people don't actually care about raiding at all. They did it because it gave them a sense of progression which is essential in a Themepark MMORPG. Once they found out that they can still progress their characters through other means, they gave up raiding.
Blizzard knows that and that it why they added so many things to do besides raiding in this expansion. And that was the reason why Cata lost so many subs, because there were not many things to do besides raiding.
I personally would like to see Blizzard expand on this design. Try to make a WORLD of Warcraft again and not a World of isolated Raidcraft.

[Maniac2]

I love raiding, it's simply best thing in WoW ever. People who doesnt do it, or think LFR is good replacement are missing a lot imo.
There's nothing like wiping on a boss for few raid nights or even weeks, and from the perspective "it's impossible, we'll never make it" to actually get you tactics right and perform at 100% and get your first kill. After that you think "well, that was actually really easy, dunno why we were struggling so much"
You lose it in LFR since every boss just falls down, and there's no sense of accomplishment

Many of us, old-school raiders who gone casual can tell you "been there, done that". At some point all of us will get tired of raiding, Im sure we will, sooner or later. A year ago if someone told me that Im going to be casual now, I would call him nuts and tell him he dont know me. But at some point, it just happens. In my case, LFR was that switch which pulled me to casual waters (among other things).
Its like our grandmas/grandpaps say " You will see when you come to my age". Its just inevitable...

And its win-win scenario really - my wife and I have really good marriage now, my kids dont laugh at me anymore for playing game (its like their territory), we travel now a lot to see the world, we have lots of friends coming to our house etc. Before, it was just like 2nd job - all home activities were tied to raid/dailies times...

[Ater]

Well if you play on an EU server and are on a "dead" server with few raiding guilds and I can recommend you to check out my server, Twisting Nether, it's very much alive with a lot of raiders and raiding guilds.

Tier 11, number of guilds that killed Halfus normal: 291
Tier 11, number of guilds that killed Halfus heroic: 125
Tier 12, number of guilds that killed Shannox normal: 351
Tier 12, number of guilds that killed Shannox heroic: 223
Tier 13, number of guilds that killed Morchok normal: 328
Tier 13, number of guilds that killed Morchok heroic: 261
Tier 14, number of guilds that killed Stone Guard normal: 302
Tier 14, number of guilds that killed Stone Guard heroic: 152

My guild is a pretty small casual guild ranked like number 50 on the server or something like that and in spite of the fact that we are not recruiting right now we still have got four different applications to join the guild as raiders in the last week.

[Terridon]

Had similar trouble.
Nobody wanted to raid in start of MoP. But now it's getting easier to get people it seems.

Might simply have been because you could more or less be on par with normal raiders, with valorgear, lfr-gear and upgrades.
I don't really know why, but i see a lot more interrest. If i ask i get answer pretty fast now.

[lordzed83]

I was in top raiding guild On Shattered halls for few years. We used to raid 5 days 5 hours + alt runs on weekends and had all realm first up to Ulduar when me merged with other guild due to ppl having stuff IRL .I myself got a 10hours/5 days a week job and could not be back for raid times GM got new job in other country he had to quit. Two officers had a child and had no time to play anymore. So on so on.
I moved to few guilds later on and started our own 10m guild with start of cata with friends to clear normal raids.

Then BANG LOOKING FOR RAID came out. I would say half of my friends including myself lost interest in normal raiding.
ATM i could do some raiding again but 25m. But on new realm we moved to continue 25m there are no left . All guilds are doing 10m and well thats not fun in my opinion :/

So as a guy that used raid hardcore and got realm first 80 all i do nowadays is:
1. Log in on ZEED do daily quests till exalted
2. Do random HC in prot for extra box
3. Then or i look for RBG group or i do lfr that i have not done this week.
4. Log my Resto shamy alt and do random hc +lfr
5. Mess around on my resto in pvp

Thats it 4-5 hours gone heh

[potis]

Because

1)Raiders grew up, no time or will to raid anymore, scheduled raiding doesnt really work when you cant handle it.

2)Most raiders just wanted to see the content, raiders that wanted the glory and items are still raiding, if not in WoW, there are other games, LFR fixed that..See the model boss, see the few "New" abilities or the idea behind them --> Move on.

3)No new raiding blood, or the tiny amount of raiding blood that exists is pushed away because "Raiding experience?" "Started in WoTLK" "No thanks"

[Deleted]

Blizzard took decisions which unfortunately seriously gimped the raiders headcount. It seems to think it's not important, personally I think it is a major mistake: I know of many people trying to come back to wow and abandoning as it is too hard to find raids.

- One shared 10/25 ID. This was the beginning of the end because guilds lost lots of flexibility and had to choose between 10 and 25. on my server at least the number of raids and guilds significantly declined after the ID change.

- LFR. LFR is both great for those who never intended to seriously raid and a curse for small raiding guilds decimated by it.

- 5.2 Blizzard makes it hard for new raiders / players coming back. This is a major mistake as a new tier was traditionally the best time to come back to the game. Now people coming back to the game see they are supposed to farm stuff for a few weeks in order to go to ToT and they aren't coming back. Guilds who lost for example a tank and found a guildy willing to tank with an alt will also waste weeks - an most players simply won't wait that long.

Two of the best way to mitigate the problems would be:
- Cross server raiding. Unfortunately you can only do old raids cross server although it would help tremendously filling rosters for new raids. Blizzard actively refuses to extend it to new raids because it would supposedly destroy guilds, which I don't believe for a moment. Better have a guild with 8 raiders plus 2 raiders from another realm than a zombie guild with no raid.
- Affordable transfers for all characters from one server to another. Who wants to leave all the alts behind? Who wants to pay 20x11 EUR to transfer one's 11 characters? It would be very easy to avoid chaotic transfers, such as limiting whole alt transfers to once a month or whatever.

So yes there are less and less raiders and in no small part due to unfortunate Blizzard decisions. I would welcome official Blizzard statistics on the number of raiders and raid done per week per server since WOTLK or before but I think we all know why these numbers are not public.

Having faked players count for Financial analysts for a few years (with free trials and whatnot) Blizzard should begin to tackle the raiding issues if it doesn't want to see the subscribers numbers dwindle. Especially as nothing new happens in PVP (hello Spectator mode) and the wow pvp all but disappeared from the esport tournaments scene (e.g. MLG). Were it not for great player-organized tournaments (NAO, Yaspresent, AT) as well as popular twitcher PVP would be completely dead.

I know my experience is cannot be generalized to the whole Wow universe but I know for a fact that it is true on both factions of my server and true for most people of other servers I talk with while doing inter-server stuff. And to see that 18 of the 20 best guilds in the world at the present time are officially recruiting is quite revealing.

[Otimus]

Because

1)Raiders grew up, no time or will to raid anymore, scheduled raiding doesnt really work when you cant handle it.

2)Most raiders just wanted to see the content, raiders that wanted the glory and items are still raiding, if not in WoW, there are other games, LFR fixed that..See the model boss, see the few "New" abilities or the idea behind them --> Move on.

3)No new raiding blood, or the tiny amount of raiding blood that exists is pushed away because "Raiding experience?" "Started in WoTLK" "No thanks"

Number 3 is a really, really, really good point. Most raiders I've seen are a VERY unaccepting bunch, and just want people who've already raided with other guilds in the past. Usually, anyways. Not always. but it seems abnormally, and unfortunately common. Raiders, with their toxic attitudes, will eventually make organized raiding a ghost town in a few years. It's pretty much already heading that way.

And let's face it, the elephant in the room that everyone wants to ignore is that from the game's launch in 2004, till T15 in 2013, not many people have ever really raided all that much. You'd think knowing that, these people would be a little less.... the way they are.

[judgementofantonidas]

I think its more of an issue that LFR rewards both wiping and terrible players. Hey don't worry if you die, you'll be carried by the rest of the pugs. It's a terrible idea that greatly contributed to the downsizing of guilds and raider population in general. When raiders retire due to real life and such, they are no longer able to be replaced by quality players. "I did it on LFR so i'll be fine"... yeah no you won't. Back in DS was a prime example. Hey we didn't wipe on normal madness of deathwing, we didn't have to kill the exploding thing either or even move from it. *stands at impact zone and dies* WTF?!? Inc wipe"... it's just really bad.

But i guess that is the target audience now.

Cannot agree more. After the final tier of Cataclysm ended I had another player actually compare his guild to ours favorably. We had completed heroic Dragonsoul ten man prior to mop talent release and his guild had completed Dragonsoul Raid finder......................................

[Deleted]

Simple fact is you can not be a raider and have a flexible social life. LFR fixed this. Those that are OK with giving up their time still continue to raid. Nothing wrong with that, just not everyone is willing to do that.

[Assumi]

I quit organized raiding when my guild was 5 bosses into BT. Since then I've just done trade pugs and recently LFR.

Everyone has their reasons, personally for me I just had a moment where I realised I was scheduling time around playing a video game and I just instantly became very disinterested in it.

I like to get on my games and progress or play whenever I feel like it. Be 3pm one day then 2am the next. Guild raiding just didn't offer that.

[judgementofantonidas]

Number 3 is a really, really, really good point. Most raiders I've seen are a VERY unaccepting bunch, and just want people who've already raided with other guilds in the past. Usually, anyways. Not always. but it seems abnormally, and unfortunately common. Raiders, with their toxic attitudes, will eventually make organized raiding a ghost town in a few years. It's pretty much already heading that way.

And let's face it, the elephant in the room that everyone wants to ignore is that from the game's launch in 2004, till T15 in 2013, not many people have ever really raided all that much. You'd think knowing that, these people would be a little less.... the way they are.

The reason for raiders always being a comodity on short supply is not that we smell funny, have toxic attitudes, or drive other players away as you state. Simply put there is a level of skill REQUIRED to down pre-nerf content. Many players do not have the skill to do so nor the determination to improve to the point where they do.

Nobody looks down on the professional athlete who builds himself to the point where he is BETTER than other people. You can go to GNC and pay the same money as that professional athlete and not get the same results because you do not put in the same effort or honestly do not have the same genes that influence your chance at success but you never berate that person for being better than you.

In the MMO comunity you do. OMG that guy wouldn't take me to raid because (i don't feel like gemming, enchanting, reforging my gear correctly), or (I don't see the need to understand nor maximize my class mechanics because "it is only a game") and that player who does play at a more acceptable level is automatically labled an elitist or worse. It is honestly pathetic.

---------- Post added 2013-03-18 at 10:32 AM ----------

Simple fact is you can not be a raider and have a flexible social life. LFR fixed this. Those that are OK with giving up their time still continue to raid. Nothing wrong with that, just not everyone is willing to do that.

Senior NCO in the Army National Guard which requires me to donate more time than my "one weekend a month". See selfless service.
Low level manager in Fortune 500 company.
Expecting Father.

Raids 3-4 days a week when other players are available.
Bitches of a blue streak when they are not.

Still I would argue that with my demanding schedule your model would paint me as a non raider.

[Otimus]

The reason for raiders always being a comodity on short supply is not that we smell funny, have toxic attitudes, or drive other players away as you state. Simply put there is a level of skill REQUIRED to down pre-nerf content. Many players do not have the skill to do so nor the determination to improve to the point where they do.

Nobody looks down on the professional athlete who builds himself to the point where he is BETTER than other people. You can go to GNC and pay the same money as that professional athlete and not get the same results because you do not put in the same effort or honestly do not have the same genes that influence your chance at success but you never berate that person for being better than you.

In the MMO comunity you do. OMG that guy wouldn't take me to raid because (i don't feel like gemming, enchanting, reforging my gear correctly), or (I don't see the need to understand nor maximize my class mechanics because "it is only a game") and that player who does play at a more acceptable level is automatically labled an elitist or worse. It is honestly pathetic.

For one thing, you've displayed in many comments yourself, highly, HIGHLY toxic behavior. Throwing off the cuff insults at people for doing certain things, wanting to remove people from being able to do certain things and so forth. Secondly, I do understand there's a certain skill level. That's fine. You just can't assume everyone new is horrible by virtue of being new, which is generally a thing in the raiding community, and why it isn't growing, and hasn't really grown all that much since WOTLK. It's like the old guard wants to keep within it's own old guard, or whatever. I think you didn't understand what I was getting at, not really. The problem is, is that to a lot of people, experience > skill, or experience = skill, or whatever. Basically, people whom have never done something, are 90% of the time, going to never be allowed to do it, by virtue of having never done it. That's a problem.

Also, if you think the toxic behavior doesn't exist, that's absurd. Toxicity in every aspect of this game pervades it's community. It's horrible. The only thing worse off is League of Legends/Other MOBA games.

[Assumi]

the wow pvp all but disappeared from the esport tournaments scene (e.g. MLG)

This is just the result of how the game is designed. The high end tournaments were just a collection of all the same comps doing all the same strats in a typical Defensive/offensive CD back-and-forth for an hour before they started implementing time limits.

MLG spokepersons have said that lack of variety was a big issue for WoW, when a full tourney roster is 5 classes over 3 comps in 90% of the games, we have issues. (Though I really find this reasoning awful, as all of MLG's FPS games tend to be nothing but everyone using the same weapons/perks/whatever but I digress)

[judgementofantonidas]

For one thing, you've displayed in many comments yourself, highly, HIGHLY toxic behavior. Throwing off the cuff insults at people for doing certain things, wanting to remove people from being able to do certain things and so forth. Secondly, I do understand there's a certain skill level. That's fine. You just can't assume everyone new is horrible by virtue of being new, which is generally a thing in the raiding community, and why it isn't growing, and hasn't really grown all that much since WOTLK. It's like the old guard wants to keep within it's own old guard, or whatever. I think you didn't understand what I was getting at, not really. The problem is, is that to a lot of people, experience > skill, or experience = skill, or whatever. Basically, people whom have never done something, are 90% of the time, going to never be allowed to do it, by virtue of having never done it. That's a problem.

Also, if you think the toxic behavior doesn't exist, that's absurd. Toxicity in every aspect of this game pervades it's community. It's horrible. The only thing worse off is League of Legends/Other MOBA games.

Again. You are not correct. Not when it comes to me i particular. And I can only argue for me on this subject.

A player who shows no experience through gearing, a look at their armory and boss kills along with who they completed them with to ensure they were not purchased, and a quick glance at their spreadsheet on askmrrobot will be excluded from bring PUGGED into and form of progression kill or even farm content with my guild. We are not raiding to share our experience with players from other guilds, or carry players who refuse to put in the work to learn on their own.

This goes double for a player wishing to pug into a raid near the end of a patch when everything is on farm, has been out for months and it is generally expected that players should know the content.

So far I am the model of what you are stating.

NOW....

A new Guild member is asked to run in one of our raids. After doing the same checks on leaning that we would prior to taking a pug into a raid we ask that player to correct any deficiencies, use guild resources to facilitate them doing so, point them at the guild resources to have some grasp of the bosses we will be encountering, then have experienced players in the group help that player if he struggles with the content until such time as he proves that he is beyond help and needs to be replaced for the good of the group.

Two totally different scenarios. You will always have the player who refuses to "bow down" to the guild structure. You will always have the player who doesn't see the need to spend gold, valor, time on upgrading gear "because I will only replace it in raid". And you will always have the players that choose to be a valued member of the team by doing everything they can to improve and validate their being in the group in the first place.

Would you honestly choose to run with only players who will ensure that you never complete or players who put in the effort to?

[Ridesdel]

All ranks are server, not world.

I will say this, I have raided since TBC, I started shortly after the start of TBC, and rocketed a maged up to 70, faster than many thought possible, because, after talking to a few "Hardcore Raiders" in school they said it was the most fun they have ever had. So in TBC I was DPS, my guild never got very far because even though we where relatively good, not the best, but better than average, we where used as a stepping stone guild. In fact, many of the people who where in the top 3 horde guild came through my guild, but that's another post for another topic.

Come WotLK, this time I leveled my alt prot/holydin up to raid level and raided as the off tank in 10 man, and heals in 25. while we where never top of the progression lists we where in the top 25 of the server most of the time. ICC comes out, and for a while we are in the top 10, but then the raid lead of the 2nd 10 man group has a disagreement with the guild leader because he was stripped of his officer rank because he did not show up to his raids for a week, left the guild, and took nearly all our raiders except for the ones that where with us since TBC, as when they where recruited they went through the secondary 10 group instead of the core.

Cata comes, several more raiders have left due to burn out, and do not come back. But still we are able to raid, but this xpac we started raiding before we where ready, to great consequences, the first tier we couldn't get past the first 2 bosses because once we started raiding most people thought they had enough gear to get the first few bosses down, and devoted all their time to gathering mats for flasks and feasts instead of farming heroic 5mans. After about 2 months of this I had an argument with another of the raiders over how to down a boss, simple thing really, but at the time it was our 5th wipe of the night, but no changing tactics so everyone was running hot, I just had hit my boiling point then and took a 3 month break to come back during 4.2. I went back to raiding on my holydin, but not with my guild group because of the way I had just disappeared for 3 months, I waited until they offered me my spot back, instead of demanding it back. All if fine and dandy until DS, LFR comes out and the raiding population explodes due to alts being able to get geared enough to start DS. We go back to having 2 10 man groups we progress along the back end of the bell curve, but still fairly quick, and everything is fine....fast forward 5 months, back down to one group, but still doing normal because it was an easy farm, noone raided on alts other than LFR, just getting burned out.

Now MoP, first few months, big population of raiders, our guild has no trouble getting the people on for raids, but lots of trouble getting gear due to the daily grind and poor luck in heroics. When we finally get our gear to 460+ for all of our raiders, our pool had shrunk to the core 7 people that have been raiding with us since begining of Wrath, and a few long time members that just got into raiding in MoP. Despite trying to recruit, many of the competent raiders have left the server, or stoped playing, during end cata, leaving just recount heroes to choose from, many who don't last long because they refuse to learn the fights. come the current patch, 5.2, small bump in trade about people looking for 1 DPS/Heal/Tank for 20-30 min at a time, but when Sha is up a full 40 man takes less than 10 min to fill, with the last 5 min looking for tanks and healers if it's not started by a guild.


TL;DR Through out the history of WoW my guild has seen first hand the rise of raiding in TBC and WotLK, but then the serious, and profound decline begining Cata, and the subsequent rise when LFR came out, and the drop again, when gating for entry level came back.

Moral of this rant? If the starting tier of raids where not so heavily gated, but more like Naxx(WotLK) we would see a bigger pool of raiders because they don't give up so early because of the massive amount of work you would have to put in to get the gear level to even walk into a raid and expect to have a snowball's chance to down even the first boss.

[Assumi]

Senior NCO in the Army National Guard which requires me to donate more time than my "one weekend a month". See selfless service.
Low level manager in Fortune 500 company.
Expecting Father.

Uh huh, I'm an astronaut and fight herds of t-rex in space to protect Earth.

[Otimus]

Again. You are not correct. Not when it comes to me i particular. And I can only argue for me on this subject.

A player who shows no experience through gearing, a look at their armory and boss kills along with who they completed them with to ensure they were not purchased, and a quick glance at their spreadsheet on askmrrobot will be excluded from bring PUGGED into and form of progression kill or even farm content with my guild. We are not raiding to share our experience with players from other guilds, or carry players who refuse to put in the work to learn on their own.

This goes double for a player wishing to pug into a raid near the end of a patch when everything is on farm, has been out for months and it is generally expected that players should know the content.

So far I am the model of what you are stating.

NOW....

A new Guild member is asked to run in one of our raids. After doing the same checks on leaning that we would prior to taking a pug into a raid we ask that player to correct any deficiencies, use guild resources to facilitate them doing so, point them at the guild resources to have some grasp of the bosses we will be encountering, then have experienced players in the group help that player if he struggles with the content until such time as he proves that he is beyond help and needs to be replaced for the good of the group.

Two totally different scenarios. You will always have the player who refuses to "bow down" to the guild structure. You will always have the player who doesn't see the need to spend gold, valor, time on upgrading gear "because I will only replace it in raid". And you will always have the players that choose to be a valued member of the team by doing everything they can to improve and validate their being in the group in the first place.

Would you honestly choose to run with only players who will ensure that you never complete or players who put in the effort to?

But, again, doesn't that ensure that new people are excluded by virtue of being new? Don't you see that as a problem? It's absolutely unfair. It's not like they're magically going to get to do content elsewhere. They'll be shoehorned into just being able to do something like LFR, because no one will "allow" them to do anything else, because.... they've never done it before. Regardless of how much effort they've put in, or are putting in. They simple lack the previous experience, and thus, aren't allowed to do stuff. That IS a problem. How isn't it a problem? Why should new people be excluded from activities because they weren't there from the beginning?

Let's propose this scenario: There's a guy who wants to raid. He's min-maxing up the wazoo. He reads up on his class. He's gemmed, enchanted, and all that. He has maxed out cooking, he has all the right professions. He has his flasks. He has all that stuff. Only problem is, is he's never been in a raiding guild. he's never raided before. He has zero experience. Should he be punished for that?