Where have all the Raiders Gone?

[Moistmuffins]

I'm not missing it, I'm denying it. Not denying that there is exclusion, but rather denying that the raiding community can be held responsible for it. They are as much a victim of a system that causes that behavior as anyone.

You are falling into the common trap of blaming the individuals of a collective for the overall behavior of the collective.

This would be true if the system was the cause of the behavior. They could just as easily be exclusive to a more appropriate standard yet choose not to. Not because of the system, but because of their own wishes and demands. Many guilds demanding their applicants have equal or greater experience than the guild itself has is not because of the system.

[Glorious Leader]

I'm going to have to disagree with the notion that ICC and Ulduar style raids would result in a growth in the raiding community. Help? maybe. Growth? Probably not. As I said, which Osmeric seemed to miss, the blame falls on both parties. The raids may be too difficult, but the exclusiveness of raiding guilds isn't helpful. Neither is the idea that people should just be able to jump into the current raid after running dungeons. But there isn't going to be a middle ground on that one.

Making catching up too easy reduces the necessity for raids in general, whereas making it too hard reduces the amount of potential raiders. They can try and balance it out as much as possible, but as it seems now people are leaning more toward the idea of making catching up extremely easy again. This goes back to the idea of why even put so much effort into raids when, once they're in the next patch within the same expansion, the only people going back to said raids are completionists.

Edit: I do agree that Blizzard deals too much in the extremes, in pretty much every aspect of the game too. It's something they do to get an idea of what's too much and what's too little and what not, but the way they take it goes way too far on both ends.

I'm not convinced they will bring it back either because the dmg is done at this point. It's not likely people will come back. They can stem the tide though and they can bring SOME players back into it and that is vastly better than the continued bleed.

---------- Post added 2013-03-22 at 11:21 PM ----------

This would be true if the system was the cause of the behavior. They could just as easily be exclusive to a more appropriate standard yet choose not to. Not because of the system, but because of their own wishes and demands. Many guilds demanding their applicants have equal or greater experience than the guild itself has is not because of the system.

The system IS the cause of the behavior. The behavior of players leaning towards LFR and not raiding normals. It isn't the Raiders fault or the raiding communities fault.

[ichinisan]

Pretty much like everyone else is saying. Played for so long and I can't find the energy to keep bothering...and now I am waiting for Hearthstone...wait, is this how it feels to be old?!

[Moistmuffins]

I'm not convinced they will bring it back either because the dmg is done at this point. It's not likely people will come back. They can stem the tide though and they can bring SOME players back into it and that is vastly better than the continued bleed.

---------- Post added 2013-03-22 at 11:21 PM ----------



The system IS the cause of the behavior. The behavior of players leaning towards LFR and not raiding normals. It isn't the Raiders fault or the raiding communities fault.

Ok we agree on the first point then. It would probably just subside the bleed.

However, to the second part your explanation is true for only have of the issue. The bleed is because of the system. The exclusion is not. So not only is there a bleed the community then excludes new comers. It makes it even harder for repairs to start.

[Glorious Leader]

Ok we agree on the first point then. It would probably just subside the bleed.

However, to the second part your explanation is true for only have of the issue. The bleed is because of the system. The exclusion is not. So not only is there a bleed the community then excludes new comers. It makes it even harder for repairs to start.

Well no not really. I don't think one or two icc ulduar type raids will bring players back to normal. I think a broader shift in their mentality MAY regain some players back to normal raiding. It's hard to think of anything that can do that really, the dmg is already done but if ANYTHING is going to work it's going to have include a new way of thinking about raids and instance design building on what did work in previous raids. Part of that is the better ramp up and more open tuning.

The "exclusion" by a minority of the raiding player base has ZERO I REPEAT ZERO impact on how many people raid. Why? Because the world of warcraft is a big place with lots of guilds and lots of potential guilds that could be raiding. Even if Jhonny Hardcore's guild doesn't want to take scrubsy mscrub their are lots of other guilds on lots of other servers who would welcome him BECAUSE THEY NEED PEOPLE. Supply and demand. Supply and demand. Eventually Johnny hardcores guild will die out anyway. Max Planck said it best. Science progresses one funeral at a time. In a similar fashion raiding should progress one dead guild at a time. It doesn't because well content is to imposing for the average player.

[Slant]

It really is simple. If they want to encourage normal raiding then they need a balance of bosses in raids that are challenging but also that are not just walls. IMHO I think every raid should have at least one chess event or loot ship preceded by a fairly hard boss. If the carrot really is all that drives people in this game then if you put something like that behind a harder boss people are more likely to want to get past the harder boss. In addition to that the raids themselves need to have more options. Less linear raids, more open wings with bosses that vary in terms of difficulty. You want to get people hungry for these raids, not kill their desire with massive walls right off the bat. You want people to be having a good time by downing some bosses at first but giving them challenges later. It really is all about balance.

And that, my friend, is the paragraph that describes the current failure of raid design. The normal mode encounters are not walls at all. They are quite doable if you have a proper running team. What you're asking is Blizzard to reward bad raiding *once again*. And the more they do that, the more two things will happen: a) veteran players will get bored and leave, Cataclysm is a good example of that... and b) people will never improve. You don't have to improve as a community if Blizzard is dumbing down the game for the sake of "streamlining" or "accessibility". Eventually, and I'm close to saying it is actual reality right now, WoW is turning into an arcade hack'n'slash with lotsa buttons. The MMO part is dying a little bit each time a LFD or LFR style feature is introduced. How can I teach anyone something in LFR, when in 9 out of 10 cases he'll not listen to me and in the 10th case he'll be from a different server and I won't talk to him ever again?

In WotLK and Cataclysm I ran a TON of pugs on the side for my alts mainly. But I deliberately made them open for the whole server. To meet new people, to see if someone was interested in sniffing around inside a raiding guild and to give something back to the community by providing proper raid leadership for people that don't usually have access to it. That worked and that is exactly what Moist is missing in today's raiding community. I totally agree with him. It isn't there anymore. Thank LFR for it. I've had a break during DS because I got bored senseless by Firelands, when I came back I was shocked at the lack of communication all across the board, public channels, /2, guild chat... I didn't even hope that randomly assembled people in LFR would actually talk to each other, so I wasn't disappointed when they didn't. But that is the fact that's missing right now. There is no MM in our MMORPG anymore. It's all just solo content and everyone in your dungeon/LFR is just an extra filling up the NPC slots for your single player roleplaying game. GG.

Edit: I forgot to add that with LFR and all, it's almost impossible to get a PUG going on weekends these days. People aren't depending on them anymore to get their fix. Too bad, I liked those pugs, I miss them. *sigh*

[Glorious Leader]

And that, my friend, is the paragraph that describes the current failure of raid design. The normal mode encounters are not walls at all. They are quite doable if you have a proper running team. What you're asking is Blizzard to reward bad raiding *once again*. And the more they do that, the more two things will happen: a) veteran players will get bored and leave, Cataclysm is a good example of that... and b) people will never improve. You don't have to improve as a community if Blizzard is dumbing down the game for the sake of "streamlining" or "accessibility". Eventually, and I'm close to saying it is actual reality right now, WoW is turning into an arcade hack'n'slash with lotsa buttons. The MMO part is dying a little bit each time a LFD or LFR style feature is introduced. How can I teach anyone something in LFR, when in 9 out of 10 cases he'll not listen to me and in the 10th case he'll be from a different server and I won't talk to him ever again?

In WotLK and Cataclysm I ran a TON of pugs on the side for my alts mainly. But I deliberately made them open for the whole server. To meet new people, to see if someone was interested in sniffing around inside a raiding guild and to give something back to the community by providing proper raid leadership for people that don't usually have access to it. That worked and that is exactly what Moist is missing in today's raiding community. I totally agree with him. It isn't there anymore. Thank LFR for it. I've had a break during DS because I got bored senseless by Firelands, when I came back I was shocked at the lack of communication all across the board, public channels, /2, guild chat... I didn't even hope that randomly assembled people in LFR would actually talk to each other, so I wasn't disappointed when they didn't. But that is the fact that's missing right now. There is no MM in our MMORPG anymore. It's all just solo content and everyone in your dungeon/LFR is just an extra filling up the NPC slots for your single player roleplaying game. GG.

Edit: I forgot to add that with LFR and all, it's almost impossible to get a PUG going on weekends these days. People aren't depending on them anymore to get their fix. Too bad, I liked those pugs, I miss them. *sigh*

Res ipsa loquitur. The matter speaks for itself. They listened to you, made normal modes hard but they also offered an alternative. Guess what people chose? It's very simple. You either make raiding normals a more attractive option (i.e with better scaling of difficulty, better tuning and less barriers to entry) or you can stay the course and watch more and more players fall into the LFR sink.

The funny part is that most of you probably don't want normal raiding to become so niche that Blizzard potentially says fuck it it's not worth developing this but instead of asking them for moderation in their normal raid design (which is only pushing players out of normals) you'd rather tell them to do the opposite and make it harder. It's like that scene in that mel brooks film where the guy holds a gun to his head. Blazing sadles.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8yZKMow0ME

[Otimus]

Res ipsa loquitur. The matter speaks for itself. They listened to you, made normal modes hard but they also offered an alternative. Guess what people chose? It's very simple. You either make raiding normals a more attractive option (i.e with better scaling of difficulty, better tuning and less barriers to entry) or you can stay the course and watch more and more players fall into the LFR sink.

The funny part is that most of you probably don't want normal raiding to become so niche that Blizzard potentially says fuck it it's not worth developing this but instead of asking them for moderation in their normal raid design (which is only pushing players out of normals) you'd rather tell them to do the opposite and make it harder. It's like that scene in that mel brooks film where the guy holds a gun to his head. Blazing sadles.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8yZKMow0ME

Simply put, raiders who act like this don't live in reality, and have some insane tunnel vision about the game.

[Glorious Leader]

Simply put, raiders who act like this don't live in reality, and have some insane tunnel vision about the game.

Who? me? or the guy I'm responding to?

[Otimus]

Who? me? or the guy I'm responding to?

The guy you're responding to, sorry! (I was agreeing with you)

[Slant]

Res ipsa loquitur. The matter speaks for itself. They listened to you, made normal modes hard but they also offered an alternative. Guess what people chose? It's very simple. You either make raiding normals a more attractive option (i.e with better scaling of difficulty, better tuning and less barriers to entry) or you can stay the course and watch more and more players fall into the LFR sink.

The funny part is that most of you probably don't want normal raiding to become so niche that Blizzard potentially says fuck it it's not worth developing this but instead of asking them for moderation in their normal raid design (which is only pushing players out of normals) you'd rather tell them to do the opposite and make it harder. It's like that scene in that mel brooks film where the guy holds a gun to his head. Blazing sadles.

I think you misunderstand me. The alternative is killing the game. That is the essence of what I said. So they definitely did not listen to any of us. They catered to some imaginary casual raider whining about difficulty. I say let them whine. They'll whine until that 5 man group gets their raid gear or even until the solo player can finally say "Yeah, I log in and get my top tier raid gear all by myself, I love this MMO...", I'm sure the irony is not lost on you.

We don't want any raiding to become a niche, because, honestly, there is fuck all left in WoW except raiding. Even PvP is a joke compared to real competetive games like SC2 or LoL as the top dogs right now. Yes, I'm telling them to make it harder. Or at least stop dumbing it down. Every time Blizzard takes the minimum entry level down a notch, raiding is closer to the bink of being meaningless in general. But the sheep that are running LFR don't care about raiding. Why do they even go into LFR? The loot is crap, the "content experience" is worse than the worst single player rpg out there. I raid because I like the challenge of boss mechanics, why the fuck do people even go LFR? If they want to see their cute cast animations, they can use the dummies for that. And that is why eventually they lose interest, get bored and give LFR the bad reputation that it has.

People are always talking about things like "Oh, if Blizzard reverses their policy now, people will leave in droves!". Well, they won't leave in droves, because they're mindless drones, we all know that. And who is talking about the trickle of skilled players that left over the past 4-5 years because of this policy? No one. They have no voice, because they're mostly gone and don't give a damn about WoW anymore. But I remember them on my server. And you may not believe me, but the numbers of skilled players that left because the challenges got less and less (and not just due to us becoming more experienced or simply "better" at playing this game) is probably higher than the numbers that would leave if LFR were dropped as a concept and minimum raid entry would be reinserted to normal mode raids.

Sure, it's the communities responsibility to be a nice community for everyone. True. But we can only do so much within the ruleset Blizzard gives us. And right now, we can do jack for the reasons that I've explained in my two previous posts.

[Demeia]

All I know is that ToT won't win them any raiders. I for one am about ready to pack it in with Horridon. I'm nearing the very end of my rope. I'm not going to get any better at my age; perhaps they just want young people playing this game now. When you can't clear the 2nd boss and you've been assured it is NOWHERE near as difficult as the rest of the instance, wth is the point? Do they really think normal modes should be 75+ wipes per boss? Because, if so, they are in for a big surprise...

[Slant]

So if you're older, you should have the wisdom to not believe everything they tell you. They are challenging, but if you wipe on Horridon 75 times, chances are your raid leader hasn't grasped the strategy or you're not the only one not being able to follow instructions. It's hardly just your own fault. And this is what troubles me a lot of the times. It's rarely the raiders. It's the raid leaders being lazy fucks. One common sentence I hear is "It's their job as raiders to read up on strategy, I shouldn't have to explain every detail to them."

Well... that attitude works if you're in the top 100 of guilds world wide. But it certainly doesn't work for my level and I think I'm pretty average. Tell your raid leader to learn the strategy and then explain it to your raid so you guys know what the mechanics are about, then you'll have little problem with these normal modes. Apart from individual mistakes, of course. But usually, there is no doubt about those.

And that is why I see so many guilds fail to do better on my server. And ultimately, that may be why people area put off raiding. It's perhaps not the community as a whole, but rather guild leaders and raid leaders. Huh... we should talk about that, rather than if LFR is responsible for raiders leaving.

[Deleted]

So if you're older, you should have the wisdom to not believe everything they tell you. They are challenging, but if you wipe on Horridon 75 times, chances are your raid leader hasn't grasped the strategy or you're not the only one not being able to follow instructions. It's hardly just your own fault. And this is what troubles me a lot of the times. It's rarely the raiders. It's the raid leaders being lazy fucks. One common sentence I hear is "It's their job as raiders to read up on strategy, I shouldn't have to explain every detail to them."

Well... that attitude works if you're in the top 100 of guilds world wide. But it certainly doesn't work for my level and I think I'm pretty average. Tell your raid leader to learn the strategy and then explain it to your raid so you guys know what the mechanics are about, then you'll have little problem with these normal modes. Apart from individual mistakes, of course. But usually, there is no doubt about those.

And that is why I see so many guilds fail to do better on my server. And ultimately, that may be why people area put off raiding. It's perhaps not the community as a whole, but rather guild leaders and raid leaders. Huh... we should talk about that, rather than if LFR is responsible for raiders leaving.

No mate, no.

Blizzard are designing an experience for a population.

If that population fails to be captured by the experience blizzard creates, blizzard has failed, not the population. Very simple, this.

Normal mode bosses should be doable with LFR levels of output + a bit of organisation. They ain't. Personally I was sure after the utter fuck up of T11/12 and then putting it right that occured in T12 with the nerfs and T13 that was actually completable by mere mortals that blizard had learned a lesson.

But no. Stuff is overtuned. Again.

[NeverStop]

All I know is that ToT won't win them any raiders. I for one am about ready to pack it in with Horridon. I'm nearing the very end of my rope. I'm not going to get any better at my age; perhaps they just want young people playing this game now. When you can't clear the 2nd boss and you've been assured it is NOWHERE near as difficult as the rest of the instance, wth is the point? Do they really think normal modes should be 75+ wipes per boss? Because, if so, they are in for a big surprise...

Don't worry, once you get past Horridon you'll faceroll everything up to Durumu. Horridon is the Garalon of this tier, but the bosses after him are a joke with the recent nerfs.

[HardCoder]

What I do think Blizzard should do though is work on being consistent in this regard. If this is the way it's going to be, then keep it that way and let the community adjust over time. The wavering back and forth is more the problem to my mind. To the other point you made I didn't much like that you could run a few dungeons in Cataclysm 4.3 and pretty much immediately catch up for T13. I did think it cheapened T11/T12 and made those raids completely irrelevant. Others liked it but it wasn't much to my taste. I'm all for catching up but there should be some work involved in it.

If normal mode is consistently hard enough that thoroughly casual guilds can't clear it after, say, 2 months of 6 hours a week, then that will be the end of casual normal mode raiding. People just don't find having one or two bosses on farm for multiple weeks rewarding or interesting.

[MoanaLisa]

If normal mode is consistently hard enough that thoroughly casual guilds can't clear it after, say, 2 months of 6 hours a week, then that will be the end of casual normal mode raiding. People just don't find having one or two bosses on farm for multiple weeks rewarding or interesting.

I'll try this one more time. I'm not saying that Blizzard should make normal raiding more difficult or anything of the kind. I'm saying that when they sit down to design a raid the general difficulty of the raid level should be vaguely predictable. Too easy in one tier is just as bad as too difficult in another. Going back and forth between the two extremes is very likely more harmful than settling on one or the other. Too easy? You'll piss off one group of raiders. Too hard? You'll piss off a different group. Going constantly back and forth? You piss off everyone.

That's my point. Perhaps it's too difficult to do with a changing game populace. I don't know. But having raids generally be totally unpredictable and wildly variable from tier to tier in terms of difficulty is the worst of both worlds. It may well be that Horridon is too difficult as is but as sure as the sun rises in the east tomorrow morning if they nerf the fight they will get a storm of complaints about it.

[Deleted]

PvP getting more popular i guess xD

[Gondlem]

But, really, aren't you basically saying you have to raid before you're allowed to raid? I mean, you're beating around the bush, that's basically what I'm gathering from this. It's a big catch 22.

No I mean, there's other ways to convince people you're competent. It's just that "I cleared LFR" isn't convincing because LFR has no mechanics and you can clear it while afk.

[Yseraboy]

Same with Illidan-US, people need to stop using anecdotes as evidence.

Thats probably because guilds like mine, on Ysera, had all the raiders server-transfer [and faction change] to get to where the action is i.e. Illidian.

GM sold the guild for 60k on his way to the server-transfer queue.