The Decline in Hardcore Alliance Raiding Guilds

[Vigilate]

Aw, you mention Dread but not my guild faction swapping too? And we beat them ;_;

All I have to say is Berserking. Ber-fucking-serking.

Edit: Although as long as Midwinter keeps doing their thing, I wouldn't say it's really a tremendous issue yet.

I kind of got bad with updating the post on MMo-Champion. The one on the official forums is a lot better to be honest. :P

[wickedbastard]

Sry cba to read your full post, but ive seen top raiding guilds (alliance and horde) switch realms since TBC.

[shise]

Funny. My realm, Darksorrow, is purely an alliance server.

I miss the BC and eeeeearly wotlk horde vs alliance there. I dunno about classic since I was in Sunstrider as horde, and left it at middle BC when the horde literally died there... to later on become one of the strongest servers.


Things come and go.

[Kazgrel]

Sry cba to read your full post, but ive seen top raiding guilds (alliance and horde) switch realms since TBC.

So you grace us with a nominee for Captain Obvious Quote of The Day. Splendid.

[wickedbastard]

No problem!

[Severance]

There are tons of reasons to be horde. There are 0 reasons to be alliance. At least from a hardcore raider's POV.

Even for non-hardcore reasons, Horde can be more compelling.

1. The races all feel unique, in both models and "culture".
2. The racials are appealing even if you aren't hardcore. They provide benefits you can see (not just increases on a stat sheet), are useful in a lot of situations, and are proactive instead of reactive.
3. Travel is easier. The docks just don't compare to the zeppelins.
4. Alliance lore is just not as compelling as Horde lore, when you're actually playing the game.
5. Blood elves. Yes, it's that big of a deal for many players.

[delus]

People keep saying that it's because of recruitment reasons. I don't think that's exactly true though.
http://wow.realmpop.com/
take that with a grain of salt

[Tiberria]

People keep saying that it's because of recruitment reasons. I don't think that's exactly true though.
http://wow.realmpop.com/
take that with a grain of salt

The overall player base is fairly evenly split, sure. However, you have to look at the percentage of top 25-top 50 - top 100 raiding guilds that are Horde versus Alliance. As a hardcore guild, this is where your recruitment pool is coming from, and is what matters, not the fact that the overall population is a 50/50 split.

[Vigilate]

People keep saying that it's because of recruitment reasons. I don't think that's exactly true though.
http://wow.realmpop.com/
take that with a grain of salt

Hardcore guilds are not necessarily concerned with raw population when they're looking at recruits. Looking at WoWProgress, Horde outnumbers Alliance practically 3:1 at the high end level.

[delus]

Hardcore guilds are not necessarily concerned with raw population when they're looking at recruits. Looking at WoWProgress, Horde outnumbers Alliance practically 3:1 at the high end level.

Seems to me that poaching from each other is not the best way to go about recruiting. I think It is something more like possibly imbalanced racials factoring in. Plus, Alliance players outnumber Horde by roughly 5% at 90.

[lakhesis]

Seems to me that poaching from each other is not the best way to go about recruiting. I think It is something more like possibly imbalanced racials factoring in. Plus, Alliance players outnumber Horde by roughly 5% at 90.

It's absolutely the most efficient way to go about things. Look at the best players from the guilds just under you in progression, or the players who're frustrated with their current guild at a similar or higher & see what you can offer them that they're not already getting.

Not necessarily the nicest, not necessarily the way people will phrase what they're doing, but it's part of the equation when it comes to effective recruiting. You don't want to artificially create any hurdles to forming the best possible team. It's just the PVP side of PVE... a top end raid guild isn't just competing against the NPCs.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

Yes, but then GC pretended this major discrepancy never existed when asked pointblank about buffing Alliance racials to match the Horde.

Which is why that would never happen; they actually care about those players.

I believe he said no one plays for racials.

Which is funny because we had a long debate on these forums of if raiders would have to be Pandaren for the food buff.

[TirielWoW]

Seems to me that poaching from each other is not the best way to go about recruiting. I think It is something more like possibly imbalanced racials factoring in. Plus, Alliance players outnumber Horde by roughly 5% at 90.

While it is true that poaching isn't going to fill all of your raid spots, it is something that goes on, and poaching attempts happen a lot more than I think you might realize. Two weeks after joining Demise, I got letters in my in-game mail trying to poach me for a much more progressed guild. Other guildies of mine have had the same thing happen in recent weeks, particularly the ones who have had good RNG and managed to get their ilvl 600 cloaks. We've lost people to several more progressed guilds this tier. Only two went to another Alliance guild. The rest went to Horde guilds.

With that said, you have to also consider the fact that a server that has extremely hardcore, well-progressed guilds on it is going to attract far more decent and above players than a server with a dead population. You're more likely to draw recruits from one of those servers, as a hardcore guild, because they're more likely to have progressed themselves due to the environment they're playing in. So if the vast majority of guilds are Horde, the vast majority of potential recruits you'll be looking at will also be Horde. And since going Horde to Alliance means paying $55 instead of $25, that's a serious concern when you are trying to recruit. $55 is not chump change for most people, and most recruits bring at least one, if not more, alts. So we're looking at a minimum of $110 for the trial + one alt.

[MrExcelion]

That's why I'm glad we're no longer in the top 40 US 25mans Heather. The US60-80 range puts us out of mostly poach range. I was getting poach mails all the time. I still do sometimes, but since we're lower ranked and I don't have the troll racial to parse as high as Fire it's only 1-2 times a month now instead of twice a week. Demise was one of those guilds that has sent me mails on several occasions. I understand that's what they gotta do at that level because you're not going to find that level of talent on GR, or at least not without 50 other guilds making offers for those 540+ ilvl people. (or if you're a Warlock, Warlocks are basically like Boomkins on Heroic Rag, they'd get 100+ replies in their threads if they were decent due to the stacking requirements. 6/7 or even 7/7h guilds were making offers to boomkins with only a shannox kill)

As for that guild mentioned earlier in the thread that left because a better guild transferred there, I can't blame them. Realm firsts are silly and used as the excuse for transferring, but it's more just about moving away so they don't have to worry about getting cannibalized by the higher ranking guild. I know Raiding Rainbows had to deal with that.

And yeah, I've noticed that a lot of apps simply won't come here because we don't offer a paid transfer, and other guilds do, especially 10mans because they'll be willing to foot the bill for an app here and there instead of several times a month. It's lame. There's very little reason for them to come to Alliance unless we offer a paid transfer because they can probably find a guild willing to pay for one, or they realize they'll do less dps on Alliance. If they're a hardcore min/max DPS, they might not go Alliance for that reason alone, not to mention if most hardcores are Horde now, if it doesn't work out they won't have to pay 25 extra dollars when they have to move servers again.

Anyhow, this thread motivated me to tweet ghostcrawler about letting us have a racial bank or getting racial reform in 5.4. I've bugged him every raid tier about it. Via twitter I requested that Lei Shen be a guaranteed Runestone drop, changing Warbringers to be immune to most forms of CC because of griefing, and making a more social version of LFR, and they've followed up on all 3 of those suggestions, so there's some glimmer of hope I can get this changed. It still won't change the fact that most guilds are Horde now and they'll still be the more appealing faction to go to for the aforementioned reasons. I really think Every Man for Himself was the only thing keeping the factions balanced at all all this time, but it's not enough anymore because PVP participation has been on the decline this expansion, which 5.3 attempted to remedy.

But yeah, wish me luck I guess. I really think messing with server change/race change revenue is a hands-off issue for Blizzard. Racial reform and server merges seem to be big no-nos. But I have hope! For now at least. This thread gave me the motivation to tweet about it again.

[delus]

Funny, I already sent him a tweet to look over racials. You're not alone in this one.

[TirielWoW]

As for that guild mentioned earlier in the thread that left because a better guild transferred there, I can't blame them. Realm firsts are silly and used as the excuse for transferring, but it's more just about moving away so they don't have to worry about getting cannibalized by the higher ranking guild. I know Raiding Rainbows had to deal with that.

I wasn't trying to say that their reason for transferring was wrong. I actually understand it - I'm on the same server, and I'm not happy at all that a 10 man much more progressed than either of the two 25s fighting it out just showed up. There's almost no way to compete with a good 10 man as a 25 man guild, so.

I guess it's just another example of why I don't think that the lockouts should be shared. :-P

[Deleted]

Hardcore raiders are sad. Playing factions they don't like, playing races they don't like, all because of 1% increase in performance. Or perhaps they don't even care what they play, which is even more sad.

[Thallidomaniac]

Hardcore raiders are sad. Playing factions they don't like, playing races they don't like, all because of 1% increase in performance. Or perhaps they don't even care what they play, which is even more sad.

The reward (getting a World First, Region First, or even Realm First) would be worth it in their eyes.

[Vigilate]

By the way, making some edits to the main post to bring it up to date/fix some errors.

[TirielWoW]

Hardcore raiders are sad. Playing factions they don't like, playing races they don't like, all because of 1% increase in performance. Or perhaps they don't even care what they play, which is even more sad.

It's far more than 1% when you add up the number of people in your raid with the better racials.