Raiding is completely irrelevent to sub numbers pre end of Wotlk, because of the lack of endgame players in general.
Raiding was probably almost irrelevent in Wotlk - ofc since cata players have been rushed to endgame asap and the old levelling model has gone away. But this just means that you can't really compare the two eras all that well for these purposes.
I've been keeping an eye on this thread, and I gotta say, I completely agree with Grimble. Raiding just isn't as important as it once was, and has been getting less and less so as the years and expansions go on. Which probably explains a lot of the dissatisfaction I've experienced with it these past few years (since Wrath).
You can't clear full heroics in a single day until you've outgeared the content. Method is in the lead right now at 13/14H. If what you said was true, Garrosh would have been dead the day they released the final wing of SoO. Those guilds also pull tricks to come as close to outgearing the content as possible. They'll run through normal modes multiple times the first couple of weeks, bringing different characters to each raid in order to funnel all the tier gear to the "main" characters that they're going to run heroics with. Sure, a casual player can just show up to raid 2 hours a week at the end of the expansion when 20/25 members of their raid are fully decked out in full heroic gear for the current tier. For the first few weeks, however, even the best guilds are struggling to kill bosses. Unfortunately many players don't even bother to show up for progression. The pop in a couple of months after their guild has been raiding and then they piggy-back on their guildmates hard-earned gear levels. That's why they're under the misconception that raiding is faceroll easy and that raids can be cleared by good players in scant hours. If you have a group of hardcore raiders that's willing to carry you through content then you can raid casually in just hours a week. Otherwise you're not going to clear heroics until late in the expansion when everything's been nerfed to hell and back. Now that flex raiding is in the picture, however, I don't think heroics will be nerfed anymore. I doubt you'll see many casuals clearing heroic raids this time around.
Why is it cliquish or bad to want your whole group performing at its best? Most of the time that type of stuff is discussed in O chat because its easier to voice concerns and figure out a problem in there rather then outting the person in vent or G chat. I call that being thoughtful. If you make a habit out of being raid-unaware and/or doing sub par dps, then your damn right I will exclude you on purpose.
And I simply meant that no group can acquire the gear and skill required to clear all the heroic bosses by only raiding one day a week unless it's a marathon 6-hour raid. They can slow down at the end of the tier's lifespan, at which point they've already spent weeks and/or months raiding 4-6 hours a week to acquire the gear to reach that point. Just because after spending months repeatedly clearing a heroic raid a group can attain a gear and skill level that renders them capable of clearing it in a single day doesn't make it a viable play style for casual players. Casual players don't have the scheduling flexibility required to reach that point. Getting carried through a heroic raid in a day isn't going to appeal to casual players.
My daughter was whining about having to add and subtract a bunch of fractions the other day. Having taken various calculus classes, that stuff is second-nature to me and requires very little effort whatsoever, so I was pretty amused. I still remember, however, being just as frustrated as she was when I was her age. Sure, it takes her two hours to do the work that I can do in five minutes, but I spent many hours myself working through those problems before I got to that point. I don't expect her and her classmates to knock that stuff out in five minutes the way that I can. Why do we set even higher expectations for a mere game?
Last edited by Ronduwil; 2013-10-01 at 09:53 PM.
That's because the tools are so much better and the competition is so much more intense these days. For one, there were no heroics in Vanilla/TBC. It was 10/25 man. Also, how many world first contenders were spending months clearing the raids in PTR before they went live? Yes, they took less time, but they also took less effort. Don't take my word for it. Take it from the horse's mouth: Exodus Disbanding Facebook Post
Although the flipside of your same argument says that the reason could just as easily be that the raids themselves are easier now than they were in the past. There is no way to prove that the skills of the raiders are better now than they were before.
there have been some very good threads on these forums discussing how the vast majority of skilled raiders have left the game... The top guilds dropping from 25man to 10man is a STRONG indication that there is a serious lack of skilled raiders around right now for example.
My point is that its only opinion which says raiders are more or less skilled now than in the past. U can never prove it one way or the other.
With as many bosses as SoO has, sure, it wouldn't be possible in a single raid. But something along the lines of Firelands, or Dragon Soul, yeah, it happened (one raid day per week heroic clearing groups).
However, this is no longer a discussion about gear and skill, but available time and scheduling convenience.
I know it happened in Dragon Soul. At the end of the expansion. However, Dragon Soul was first released at the end of November. Heroic Madness was first killed at the end of December. The guild who did that spent far more than one hour per week. Competitive guilds were raiding pretty much non-stop for that first month, employing tactics like clearing normal modes with multiple characters in order to funnel as much tier gear as possible to their main characters. Even once they got that first full clear done I'm sure their raids still took 2-4 hours per week. Once the majority of the group was decked out in full 410 heroic gear and the mobs were nerfed then the clears ran into the 45 minute range. That doesn't change the fact that those players running the 45 minute clears had been raiding for 2-4+ hours per week for weeks or even months before getting to the point where they could clear the raid in less than an hour. The only players clearing heroic raids exclusively on one hour a week were the ones who got carried through them.