1. #1

    Survival of the fittest.

    When it comes to semi hardcore raiding guilds whether it be 10s or 25s seems to be a common thing these days.

    Most of these guilds fight more to survive with a roster then to actually progress.

    Now we know this expansion has been great, the raiding has been really good but recently I have noticed long standing guilds falling over on a lot of realms. I am a recruitment officer for my guild so I notice these things.

    What do you feel is bringing about the downfall of many guilds lately especially on EU side?

    Is it because there are less players?
    Is it because people have less time to commit to a schedule in general?
    Or is LFR giving people enough to make them feel like they have seen the content and don't really want to spend the time wiping doing the same content on a harder level?

    The 1/4ly review will answer one of those questions this month but I don't really see a drop in players but just more players happy to play casually now.

  2. #2
    Deleted
    I can't really speak for the 9-10M people playing this game so I'll speak from what I know...

    I used to be a raid leader during late Cata (dragon soul) and early MoP until I left and formed my own guild.

    That guild I was in, making a long story short, crumbled due to forcing a transition back to 25-man when we were running 2 10-man teams (and one was severely lagging behind the other). Result: Angry people losing all their progress so a few officers could stroke their ego by going 25-man (and one who even admitted wanting to go 25-man 'cuz he could slack a bit more).

    We formed our own guild and had massive recruitment problems. Unintentional class stacking, progression raids with offspecs and trial raiders, etc, etc.

    This was because our realm had a major guild overbloat due to Dragon Soul. All the DS nerfs made it possible for nearly anyone who tried to progress so guilds kept going at it and more and more guilds were forming. Then, MoP raids hit, and all the DS heroes find themselves stuck on Elegon or Amber Shaper. Guilds start falling apart left and right and members started joining other guilds. Result: Once a relatively balanced realm with over 30 guilds with full heroic progression we go to a realm with only one Alliance guild running heroics (us) and about 7 horde guilds (doin' heroics). Plus maybe some 20~30 guilds still on normal progression or very casual progression.

    So, from this, what I guess happened: Lots of guilds disbanded by trying to change raid size and thus creating a bunch of disgruntled raiders or just making themselves get stuck on progression +++ 35%-DS-nerf guilds getting hammered by un-nerfed content and giving up +++ angry people who loved idling in SW too much and got pissmad at all the dailies.
    Last edited by mmoc31ca91b23a; 2013-05-01 at 03:15 AM.

  3. #3
    Quote Originally Posted by Grimord View Post
    This was because our realm had a major guild overbloat due to Dragon Soul. All the DS nerfs made it possible for nearly anyone who tried to progress so guilds kept going at it and more and more guilds were forming. Then, MoP raids hit, and all the DS heroes find themselves stuck on Elegon or Amber Shaper. Guilds start falling apart left and right and members started joining other guilds. Result: Once a relatively balanced realm with over 30 guilds with full heroic progression we go to a realm with only one Alliance guild running heroics (us) and about 7 horde guilds (doin' heroics).

    So, from this, what I guess happened: Lots of guilds disbanded by trying to change raid size and thus creating a bunch of gruntled raiders or just making themselves get stuck on progression +++ 30% nerf guilds getting hammered by un-nerfed content and giving up +++ angry people who loved idling in SW too much and got pissmad at all the dailies.
    hit the nail on the head, dragon soul firstly being so simple, stack and dps/heal every fight ment just about any LFR idiot could flawlessly execute tactics in normal mode, then the nerfs just made the instance a hilarious joke, so everyone made a guild and thought they was successful and skilled at the game because they could progress a 15 20 35% nerfed dragon soul.

    when MoP hit, BAM stone guards normal was harder than madness heroic and guilds we're dying faster than raid bosses.

  4. #4
    personally, i think it's burn out. i think there's been so much content (4 raids to burn through in the first ~5 months) that raiders are just exhausting themselves. we've already had about the equivalent of T4W, BWD, BOT, FL which took ~7 months.

  5. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by Nimitzles View Post
    Is it because there are less players?
    Is it because people have less time to commit to a schedule in general?
    Or is LFR giving people enough to make them feel like they have seen the content and don't really want to spend the time wiping doing the same content on a harder level?
    A bit of everything I suppose although it probably wouldn't be fair to not mention drama as well. Also personally I feel there are less and less people available who are willing to put in extra work into a guild that is required to keep some heroic progression going and the added difficulty probably isn't exactly helping there.
    Last edited by cFortyfive; 2013-05-01 at 03:39 AM.

  6. #6
    It's a combination of things, but I'll just write out what I believe to be the main two causes. It's a combination of burn out and lack of newcomers. You have long time raiders who are progressing, especially at the hardcore level until they eventually burn out and retire, however there are more people retiring vs joining the hardcore scene. This leads to guilds getting tight on the roster, and the eventual disbanding and "feeding" the other guilds temporarily. We're seeing it now with Exodus/Vodka having merged, eventually retired and now feeding the top guilds rosters for now.

  7. #7
    Compare boss tactics for entry (and not only entry) raids pre-Cata and you will understand why. 1-2 mechanics' fights, which didn't require much arcade skills. Now if you go to see tactics on normal bosses - there are pages of info just on one boss. Maybe some hardcore players don't see problem, but for most other people same MSV was far beyond terrible, because dogs were like Netherspite (Karazhan's second to last boss, skipped by many raids) on steroids, Feng was on par with Archimonde, etc. with tight enrage timer on each boss, with raids having zero exploration element.

    Mistake occured with Ulduar' hardmodes which later x-muted into heroic modes, which led to rise of so-called hardcore people and steady decline in raiding population due to overtuned normals (greatly evident for t11 and t14). Raids never were as tedious and with such abuse of arcade elements as they are now. Ofc many guilds are disbanding because recruitment pool becomes smaller and smaller, as normal raiding exists no more. And without proper normal raiding - there won't be proper recruits for hc guilds.
    Last edited by Ferocity; 2013-05-01 at 05:31 AM.

  8. #8
    I think the worst possible thing in this game is being a recruitment officer for a raiding guild, I think it's even more stressful then doing anything else ingame as your guild counts on you to bring in players. It's the most time consuming job by far with the least reward, if your guild fails or anything goes wrong those people blame you.

  9. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by Ferocity View Post
    Compare boss tactics for entry (and not only entry) raids pre-Cata and you will understand why. 1-2 mechanics' fights, which didn't require much arcade skills. Now if you go to see tactics on normal bosses - there are pages of info just on one boss. Maybe some hardcore players don't see problem, but for most other people same MSV was far beyond terrible, because dogs were like Netherspite (Karazhan's second to last boss, skipped by many raids) on steroids, Feng was on par with Archimonde, etc. with tight enrage timer on each boss, with raids having zero exploration element.

    Mistake occured with Ulduar' hardmodes which later x-muted into heroic modes, which led to rise of so-called hardcore people and steady decline in raiding population due to overtuned normals (greatly evident for t11 and t14). Raids never were as tedious and with such abuse of arcade elements as they are now. Ofc many guilds are disbanding because recruitment pool becomes smaller and smaller, as normal raiding exists no more. And without proper normal raiding - there won't be proper recruits for hc guilds.
    I agree with this - its just the problem which is created with progress or die model - people who want progress are droping guilds who were stuck on horridon/council (aka most of real casual normal guilds who dont plan to do any HC bosses when tier is current) funneling better players into better guilds but also resulting in actual stoping of raiding for weaker guilds - cause those weaker guilds have to recruit mostly undergeared players , gear them up and then veyr often they anyway leave for better guild ("cause my friend is already there and he got me a spot") so some guilds just gave up.

    Paradox of this is that DS was so much better raiding tier for those guilds cause they could have fun in normals and now - with the amount of arcade elements people just give up - if they wanted to play arcade they would do it - i understand that blizzard wanted to be creative but this is leading to this tier in fact being biggest fail tier in last few years if u look at boss kill count and guilds overall progress. People are just switching to lfr and have fun there that they dont have in normals. U say oh but normal should suffice for whole current tier - exept how many normal mode raiders are so commited to game to be wiping on normal bosses for half of year -_-

    Other thing is there is so much thing to do on your main that alts got left behind and people even if they woudl want to help their friends in weaker guidls dont have alts geared up enough to do so.

  10. #10
    Deleted
    Has there ever been a time when it wasn't about survivial for these guilds?

    A reason this might feel worse atm is because Dragon Soul was out for so long and was so easy due to the nerfs. You don't notice guilds collapsing during these periods because even guilds that stop raiding will often be telling themselves they will start again next tier. This has been exacerbated because guilds who normally killed maybe 2 or 3 heroic bosses in a tier suddenly managed to clear heroic Dragon Soul and got a warped view of how good they are.

  11. #11
    Its a combination really, (these might not quite be in order)

    It started when wrath came out, epics got easier, every tom dick and harry started raiding,

    Heroics got easier, making them a zerg run, people didn't need to communicate to do them

    LFD came out, people no longer had to manually search for groups, or didn't use the same groups as they had done in previous years from manually looking, they got randoms for every dungeon, no new bonds were made, it turned into a zerg run

    Strong current epics were released for Justice Badges at the time, again more people more planks coming into raiding

    LFR got released, zerg fest for raiding, again more douches getting gear thinking it made them real raiders, Also raiders who were doing LFR was seeing the content then going on to try to do normal / hc your going to be bored because youve seen whats after it,

    and lastly the community itself has changed, there is a lot more casual playing, raiders also have gone casual including myself, and I have to say the age group of the game has defo been lowered, each time I get a wisp to join the guild Im in, their like whats an app? do you raid on school nights? etc,

    All of these things slowly killed off "core" raiding since wrath, is what I believe

  12. #12
    Dragon Soul was too easy. "I killed Heroic Madness of Deathwing in August 2012, why can't I kill Normal Garalon? I'm a Heroic raider stuck in Normal Mode."

  13. #13
    Elemental Lord Sierra85's Avatar
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    Entropy. All systems are in a state of breaking down. Natural decay.

    Quote Originally Posted by Ferocity View Post
    Ofc many guilds are disbanding because recruitment pool becomes smaller and smaller, as normal raiding exists no more. And without proper normal raiding - there won't be proper recruits for hc guilds.
    this pretty much sums it up extremely well.
    Hi

  14. #14
    Summer is coming.

  15. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by xfreeder View Post
    Summer is coming.
    ^^ also /10char

  16. #16
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by NeverStop View Post
    Dragon Soul was too easy. "I killed Heroic Madness of Deathwing in August 2012, why can't I kill Normal Garalon? I'm a Heroic raider stuck in Normal Mode."
    Dragon soul was pretty much perfect for the playerbase.

    Last two tiers really haven't been.

    As far as the OP goes - Overtuned raids mean the pool of people who can do them goes down, leading to more cutthroat competition between whoever is left still in that pool. Comically the people left largely want the harder tuning, while simultaneously whining they can't find raiders.

    Put simply - if you want popular, if you want mass market, you need average people to be able to do the content.

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