With the raid community dwindling, what is this barrier to raid?

[lnn0]

So this was my situation, I'm curious how you might have handled it. After getting my Realm First Heroic Rag kill some 2 years ago, I burned out and decided to give up this game I had played for so long. Fast forward to this summer and I returned. A couple months into MoP, I found myself wanting to raid casually. With my previous guild long disbanded, I looked to some casual/semi-serious guilds.

But I would have no such luck. After being denied time and time again for a few weeks for lack of heroic gear and "Ahead of the Curve" or "Cutting Edge," I finally caved and threw up an app w/ a semi-hardcore, more serious progression guild. I must've given all the right answers and asked all the right questions because I earned my roster spot and am now geared well beyond what I set out to be, but I am paying the penalty in the future to committing to more raiding time than I really want.

My other thought was to wait until the next xpac and start with a clean slate b/c no one will have any achievements at that point. What would you have done? And why have we created this artificial barrier to entry for raiding? Because honestly I have never seen so much emphasis put on achievements and top level gear.

[theWocky]

Actually, I had this happen to me in Lich King when I came back. Raiding is a mindset where it's like a relationship almost - can't quit it or people lose interest in you :P

[Aqua]

I don't know why casual guilds set their bars so high for recruitment... I mean back when most 'hard/semihard-core' guilds were starting out it was a fiesta of random people thrown together to see who could make it through, trial and error each lockout...

On my realm the best known casual guild takes pretty much any level 90, and they work great, had normal on farm for ages and even knocked over Morchok and Ji-kun heroic with a bit of advice and alt help, their raids are fun (I run a few alts with them occasionally) people are nice, and they have a grand old time just...raiding for kicks. Hell even if you suck, you're given improvement tips (If you respond poorly to said tips though you're ass is out and someone else gets to come in and play) Only requirement is that you've geared and gemmed and enchanted as much as rng allows.

Keep the door open, you'll never know who you'll attract.

I'm sorry you've had a rough time of it, I know the commitment to raiding can really pile up, it's chewed up more than a few people in my guild, and just recently we lost a great player to it. Do what makes you comfortable, and now that you're a bit more geared, You could...downsize... Sorry that sounds kinda rude to the guild that helped you gear up doesn't it, but if you're not having fun, you can't expect to enforce a positive raiding atmosphere and it will eat at you.

[Deleted]

I am raidleader for a Swedish 10m guild on outland EU. The guild was created by me and some irl friends in the beginning of MoP, and I decided to lead a raid group.

In T14 we got like 10/16 bosses down. In t15 we had a hard time in the beginning and first when we took in people that had skills we could get some progress (we have 12/12 now and faceroll it, but since people can't attend we can't do heroics). The thing is, it's VERY VERY hard at least on this realm to find good players with decent gear, that actually show up on the raids. Now the raiding team is kinda falling apart but I'm hoping to get it together before 5.4.

We've sometimes desperately taken in randoms from the guild asking them, do you know tacts, and can pull decent dps? They say yes, but when we are on the boss they cause the raid to wipe.

We should see if it works out to have backups in 5.4, if someone in the core team can't come. In t14 we had loads of people who wanted to raid and needed to select who was going to raid, we obviously took the best ones.

When I recruit people I try to chat a bit with them, and it's pretty easy to see if they have a clue about raiding.

[Sting]

I like the challenge in heroic raiding, but it takes way too much of my free time, I simply can't afford to spend 4 or 5 nights every week (on progress atleast) on it.

[Kalmah]

It has always been like that in my experience, at least it was like that all the way back to wotlk.

Pugs are mostly one-off runs, and don't require any commitment beyond that night's run. So they have absolutely nothing to gain by carrying an undergeared player who has probably never done the fights. In fact, they probably *need* to take overgeared players to compensate for the sucky ones.

Guilds on the other hand can afford to invest in players like you, because you're going to raid with them again.


There's also the matter of time needed to evaluate someone. When you're trying to assemble a pug, you don't really have time to look into every potential player's history. So you use need easy metrics like ilvl and achievements to quickly decide if someone is worth your time.
A guild on the other hand can afford to have an extensive application process to evaluate potential member's, which means that current tier experience isn't necessarily needed.

[clevin]

"...casual/semi-serious guilds. " OP - can you define that for us? And when did you come back? If it was early in MoP, what were you looking for?

I ask because I've seen people use terms like that and they mean "some heroic progress early in the tier" whereas to me it means guilds that might still be on normal bosses with maybe normal cleared and 1-2 heroic bosses down late in the patch.

[Lord Pebbleton]

People asked for Occu'thar's achievement the day it got released.

I can imagine the raiding community got even worse. That's why i grabbed my Ahead of the Curve: Will of the Emperor and kkthxbai.

[DrMcNinja]

People asked for Occu'thar's achievement the day it got released.

I can imagine the raiding community got even worse. That's why i grabbed my Ahead of the Curve: Will of the Emperor and kkthxbai.

I've seen way too many guilds recruiting to no end to get what they want and every time it ends up failing with their demands going up and up....

[mmotroof]

I don't know why casual guilds set their bars so high for recruitment... I mean back when most 'hard/semihard-core' guilds were starting out it was a fiesta of random people thrown together to see who could make it through, trial and error each lockout...

On my realm the best known casual guild takes pretty much any level 90, and they work great, had normal on farm for ages and even knocked over Morchok and Ji-kun heroic with a bit of advice and alt help, their raids are fun (I run a few alts with them occasionally) people are nice, and they have a grand old time just...raiding for kicks. Hell even if you suck, you're given improvement tips (If you respond poorly to said tips though you're ass is out and someone else gets to come in and play) Only requirement is that you've geared and gemmed and enchanted as much as rng allows.

Keep the door open, you'll never know who you'll attract.

I'm sorry you've had a rough time of it, I know the commitment to raiding can really pile up, it's chewed up more than a few people in my guild, and just recently we lost a great player to it. Do what makes you comfortable, and now that you're a bit more geared, You could...downsize... Sorry that sounds kinda rude to the guild that helped you gear up doesn't it, but if you're not having fun, you can't expect to enforce a positive raiding atmosphere and it will eat at you.

the feel of the game now is to DO EVERYTHING NOW. accessibility speeds up the process and people don't have time to train competent players, it's easier to jump into pugs and do normals so why bother with a real guild, etc

all this convenience has devalued every social interaction and every reward

[anjan011]

Most raider now a days can't defeat the number 0 boss, named "Attendance Boss"! Sad but true.

[ponth]

I'd love to raid, but what's stopping me, apart from the fear of burning out (again) is having to commit to being online and available at x time, x days a week. Odds are, I'll be online anyway, but having to really puts me off it.

Added:
As far as the barrier created by guilds, I think some of it comes from not wanting to risk recruiting a "bad" player. On the other hand, I've seen in several guilds that the officers have this idea that putting over the top ilvl/achievement thresholds somehow makes them look cool.

[Sierra85]

I'd love to raid, but what's stopping me, apart from the fear of burning out (again) is having to commit to being online and available at x time, x days a week. Odds are, I'll be online anyway, but having to really puts me off it.

yeah the dedication and the fear of letting others down because i decided to go fishing or go to the movies or do STUFF.

some sacrifices have to be made to raid end game competitively and when your priorities shift they shift. you can always look back and smile though.

[Isiildur]

yeah the dedication and the fear of letting others down because i decided to go fishing or go to the movies or do STUFF.

some sacrifices have to be made to raid end game competitively and when your priorities shift they shift. you can always look back and smile though.

You could schedule those for the weekend since most endgame guilds are only raiding 3-5 days a week (most often weekdays).

[clevin]

Committing to raid time is no different than committing to any other extracurricular sport. In the US at least, there are work leagues and other recreational leagues for various sports... and you're asked to commit to certain days and times for those. Raiding is the same.

For people who can't or don't want to do that, we have LFR.

I'm still waiting for the OP to come back and clarify some things...

[CptAwesome]

The barriers exist because most players are completely awful and have no business in any form of organised group activities.

Granted, the whole achievement thing is a bit retarded but that's really only something you see from bad guilds anyway, most sensible players are flexible on that if you can discuss it with any intelligence. Gear is a major issue though because if you're a 10 man (as the majority are) it's really painful to boost someone through the instance with two items per boss, there's a lot of sharding going on and I really wish Blizzard would address that.

In addition to that, there is no way to bridge the gap without raiding, which is also stupid. The highest ilvl available if you can't raid is around 520 and that's spending VP on items not upgrades. So you can see why it's pretty shit to take on people that are not up to date on raid gear. Also note that at this point in the tier, you either have guilds that have cleared the raid and either don;t need new people or can afford to be choosy about them, or you have weak guilds to whom gear is huge thing. So even though ToT was being cleared just fine by guilds wearing 525ish any guild still progressing in there will need people to be above 540 to get anything dead.

TLDR: Gearing people is incredibly painful and we don't want to do it. Especially when we don't know if we can trust you or not.

[clevin]

"...casual/semi-serious guilds. " OP - can you define that for us? ...

I still want to know the answer to this. A casual guild is one thing, a 'semi-serious' guild can be everything from "we're content to clear normal" to "we want several heroic bosses dead."

The reason I'm curious abut this is that OP came back in the summer... when 5.3 was out or about to be and ToT was already out. If you come back, gear up to 470 or something, you're of little use to a guild mid-ToT. You're of even less use to a guild that, at the start of 5.3, is progressing in heroics.

TLDR: Way too many unknowns here. We'll see if OP comes back or if they turn out to be another of these "drop a question, never come back" posters.

[kamuimac]

Most raider now a days can't defeat the number 0 boss, named "Attendance Boss"! Sad but true.

soo true -_- all my progress is on hold for last 4 weeks cause we constantly need to pug 1-2 people and for HC progress thats just not gonan happen gonan end this tier 8/13 cause puged people just fail so miserably even if they have liek 4-5 hc experience and 540 itlv gear ><

[clevin]

soo true -_- all my progress is on hold for last 4 weeks cause we constantly need to pug 1-2 people and for HC progress thats just not gonan happen gonan end this tier 8/13 cause puged people just fail so miserably even if they have liek 4-5 hc experience and 540 itlv gear ><

A LOT of this is that it's late summer, people are doing things before school/fall and it's 2 weeks until the next patch. You should expect poor attendance during summer, esp later in summer and late in a patch.

[ben-]

At this point it is realm population. I can also avoid the time commitment and expense by seeing the raids through LFR.