Lack of raiders -> Lack of progress -> Lack of raiders -> Lack of progress

[Gaidax]

So my guild just disbanded due to this horrendous cycle. Despite being around 15-16 really good players we never got enough people for Mythic, therefore we are not getting new recruits, therefore we are not getting into mythic and on it goes...

Anyone has the same problem? Figured maybe somenone is experiencing the same problem but stilm has alot of people that wants to continue raiding. The thing with my guild is that we raid 2 days a week (potentially 3) and must end raids at 22ish. I cant find any similar guild and all of us are stuck in limbo now. (We are good players, pretty much all rank high (top 10) on WoL often.

Story of my life... since this WoD Mythic change my guild is forced to take all kinds of derps we would not even look at in MoP just in hopes of cutting 20-man. We had to merge with another 10 man guild, many of which are good, but you have like 2 guys that are so horrible that they are basically on a charity raiding status and you need to take them and can filter them only after they wipe you like 5 times, otherwise guild drama.

The fact that we take them led to 2-3 of decent guys getting fed up and leaving or stopping playing because carrying and wiping on basic mechanics is not fun. So we ended up having like 17-18 guys on first raiding day of the week and anywhere between 18-13 on subsequent days.

So what happens? We go recruit more people and it's hard because our server is a desert, so we are forced to take questionable people in hopes they deliver and it is 50/50 so far, which results in us managing 20 man and again having derps bomb it, people losing interest... and the circle continues.

Honestly, 20 man is absolutely a bad change, it is very unfortunate we have to deal with it.

[Feali]

I believe that one of the reasons SoO ran so long was for people to adjust properly to the new raidsize. There was so much time to recruit enough players to play Mythic.

[Deleted]

If your having issues getting 20 people for a raid, than you would more trouble getting people for 25 man. 10man is there for if you want to do Normal or Heroic. But Mythic is 20 man & it will stay 20 man.

Guilds don't fall apart cause of the group size, they fall apart cause the group is shit or they get burnt out. Those people who leave are you sure they didn't leave cause they don't believe the group can progress in Mythic. People want to be carried they don't want to put in effort anymore cause they know Blizzard will just nerf everything for them.

Why does everyone want access to mythic? Mythic is the hardest raid difficulty in the history of wow, even above average guilds can't down more than half of the bosses in mythic, yet everyone and their grandma thinks they're mythic material and bails on guilds that can't do mythic.

Raid progression this expansion needs a fucking reality check: MYTHIC IS NOT FOR EVERYONE.

[Keosen]

You can't really expect the majority of 10man guild to double their size and succeed.
Although fixed number for mythic is something that will overall help raid design and experience for mythic raiders it ends up leaving out a lot more people than it should.

This decision ended up killing hundreds of 10man guild but barely touched 25mans, even guilds that were successfully expanded and went deep into Mythic they are not enjoying it (judging from discussions) the "team" feeling is lost going from 10 to 20.

Why does everyone want access to mythic? Mythic is the hardest raid difficulty in the history of wow, even above average guilds can't down more than half of the bosses in mythic, yet everyone and their grandma thinks they're mythic material and bails on guilds that can't do mythic.

Raid progression this expansion needs a fucking reality check: MYTHIC IS NOT FOR EVERYONE.

Usual shit as always.
Why not open Mythic only for Method and Paragon? I mean 3 weeks since BRF opening and only 3 guild cleared it, it's obvious that Blackhand Mythic is not for everyone i suggest disabling the encounter for all the terribad guilds (position 3 and lower)

[willemh]

I believe that one of the reasons SoO ran so long was for people to adjust properly to the new raidsize. There was so much time to recruit enough players to play Mythic.

Recruiting at the end of SoO? Goodluck when only like 1 out of 10 players was actually playing during that time :P.

Most guilds that get in trouble atm are those formed with the type of players that comes back for a new expansion, gets bored after a few months and dissapears again. With the insane amount of new guilds on my server I have no doubt many will disband within a few weeks/months when people get bored of BRF and my guild will gladly take the few dedicated leftovers .

A good tip to find a proper guild? Check how long it's been around and how stable progression has been. If a guild has been around for 6+ years and did stable progress every tier you can be sure it has a capable guildmaster/officers and it's like you'll have a great time

[Gnomorepuns]

If you don't like how your guild is moving then move to a better server/larger guild. Otherwise go to heroic mode because mythic isn't for you. People seem to not grasp the concept that cutting edge content is made for one raid size non-xserver. This makes them (with one size) to create much more, well...creative fights with a set size rather than watering down mechanics because they have to tune for multiple sizes.

Mythic one size, it will stay as one size, it SHOULD stay as one size. That is the bottom line. If you don't like it, DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT, rather than complaining that your guild dispanded. That stuff happens all the time to tons of people.

[Krazzorx]

Part of the issue with this topic is very few people have any larger of a perspective than outside of their own guild's experience, whether 10 20m.

However, remember that whether it's good or bad for the game, most will take the path of least resistance. We'd be having this same topic if there was theoretically a solo mythic difficulty which got removed for 10m.

Also, I think sometimes people confuse "killing guilds" with "forcing everyone to quit", sure some will quit, but people quit raiding all the time. A dead guild really is inconsequential if people go get recruited by other guilds and they bring their 2-3 closest friends with them.

[willemh]

And as always, the solution is to be more attractive to applicants.

Some people still seem to have this idea in their heads that guilds should hold all the power in the relationship, that applicants should come to them on their knees, groveling and begging for a raid slot and guilds should be super picky, waiting for perfect apps to fall into their lap. When, in reality, decent players should be just as picky and judging when it comes to joining a guild - if not moreso.

If you're "just another guild" that isn't progressing well, why should anyone join you? Their time is valuable too, why should they be expected to waste it?

In my 8 years experience as guildleader those players that dont want to bother writing a proper apply and invest time into convincing the guild they apply to that they are the right pick for that guild are less dedicated and more likely to leave/quit early. Players that take their time to write a proper apply are more likely to stick.

So I'm afraid I'll have to disagree with you. Trying to convince applicants to apply to your guild is less likely to result in dedicated stable recruits and those people that take their time to apply to your guild are far more likely to be dedicated stable recruits.

It all comes down to a reality check from both sides. To take my guild as example, we usually cleared all heroic bosses except the last one before the next patch was released, and in the final tier always killed the last boss aswell (lich king, deathwing, garrosh). We are a mediocre guild, around ~1500 world rank, that raids 3 days for about 8 hours a week. We havnt really had issues getting recruits. Basically we are one step below the server top guild and are happy to be there considering we raid half as much as them. Proper applicants will go to wowprogress, check out our progress, and that of the last 8 years and judge 'oh I want a guild thats capable of killing that final hard boss aswell before next content is released so this guild isnt for me' or 'Clearing most bosses in a stable environment and raiding 8 hours a week, sounds good!'.

Sure actively trying to recruit players might help short term when you're in a shit possition, but in my experience the most stable recruits are those that actively apply to your guild.

[Woodgnome]

Anyone has the same problem? Figured maybe somenone is experiencing the same problem but stilm has alot of people that wants to continue raiding.

Yes - I'm the GM in a guild in exactly the same situation (due to the fact that a group of friends decided to leave with no warning).

Being in the same situation I can tell you that almost no amount of recruiting can save you, unless at least one of these are true:

• You already have one or more Mythic Blackrock Foundry kills.
• You are on a highly populated realm.
• You are Horde side (not as important as the two above, but still a factor).

To everyone that claims you aren't recruiting hard enough, I've added around 40 people on Battle Tag over the course of 3 days - around 20 of those have actually bothered to accept my request and out of those only 2 people have applied. And those two were bad compared to our current players...

I've found a minority of the people I've contacted on the official LFG forums and the majority on WoWProgress (I wrote a PHP script that can grab players looking for guild on WoWProgress). What you'll learn from seeing/contacting this many players is:

• A lot of them simply don't reply to your ingame mails/Battle Tag requests.
• Most are not willing to server transfer.
• Many are not willing to faction transfer (and Horde side players LFG outnumber alliance side players by a large margin on WoWProgress).
• A couple will decline your offer based on your progress, even if their own progress is the same or worse.

Surprisingly I have gotten very few declines based on the fact that we don't actually have a Mythic raid team and the place.

Unless you're more progressed than my guild (or on Horde side on a high population realm) which is 5/7M and 9/10HC my best advice is to find a guild you can merge with and if you can't do that it's time to think about disbanding or just accepting your situation as a non-Mythic raiding guild.

Also, we're <Frenzy> on Doomhammer-EU alliance side! We're looking to merge!

[ComputerNerd]

its blizz fault with disabling xrealm mythic. create 20man only myth and prevent cross realm = recipe for that horryfying shit.

Mythic is meant to mean something, hence the fixed size.
Anyone who thinks it can be scaled is kidding themselves.
Look at the farce of 10m vs 25m how some fights would be easier in one format or the other.
It is IMPOSSIBLE to have a properly balanced and consistent difficulty in a format which scales to the number of players.

Adding a quantity of a mechanic such as adds or number or targets has breakpoints, and such breakpoints will make certain quantities of raiders more or less desirable were those breakpoints fixed.
That kills any possibility of a consistent difficulty at any size between x and y.

Therefore blizzard added a random element, where by adding players beyond a certain breakpoint you MAY get an increase to a mechanic to deal with, and so with that random is the removal of a predictable difficulty as two different raids with the same number can have different conditions to deal with.

If there is a lack of players on your realm then that is a community problem only.
Some realms thrived, some didn't for no reason other than the people on them.
Blizzard did not treat the realms differently.

The only way to have a balanced encounter in terms of difficulty is to have a fixed size roster, and so the numbers involved in the mechanics is going to be exactly the same for any raid group.

[Deleted]

Guilds have this problem since the start of raids, it's a vicious cycle that's hard to break, but not impossible to break.

You have to talk openly with your raiders about it and brainstorm ideas on how to fix the problem.

If people see you are working hard to fix it, they generally won't leave as fast than if you give the impression that you don't.

Also another problem with guilds is that they can be very selective when they don't have the means to really set those demands.

Sometimes you have to take in a few wildcards and see if it works out, just to reach stability in roster size.

[Hotsforyou]

This Cycle is starting to get old. Logged on last night after work to discover that 3 of our raiders, that we gave 4 piece tier to, up and "quit raiding" last night. We were already a couple people short to make the push into mythic. Having a Very hard time justifying my $15 a month right now without 10m mythic raiding.

[Slant]

Here's a truth for many people that many do not want to see:

Maybe you're not meant to make it. Maybe your guild just isn't meant to survive in mythic. It's harsh and I'm going to get hate for it, but there is no shame in joining another guild. They have great people, too.

[Deleted]

So my guild just disbanded due to this horrendous cycle. Despite being around 15-16 really good players we never got enough people for Mythic, therefore we are not getting new recruits, therefore we are not getting into mythic and on it goes...

Anyone has the same problem? Figured maybe somenone is experiencing the same problem but stilm has alot of people that wants to continue raiding. The thing with my guild is that we raid 2 days a week (potentially 3) and must end raids at 22ish. I cant find any similar guild and all of us are stuck in limbo now. (We are good players, pretty much all rank high (top 10) on WoL often.

Its really tough if you only want to raid 2 days per week. The massive majority of skilled players will gravitate toward 3+ night guilds. There are a few guilds out there who raid 2 nights, but there aren't many. It might be sad, but mythic content really isn't designed for people who only raid 6 hours per week.

[Gnomorepuns]

Here's a truth for many people that many do not want to see:

Maybe you're not meant to make it. Maybe your guild just isn't meant to survive in mythic. It's harsh and I'm going to get hate for it, but there is no shame in joining another guild. They have great people, too.

Thank you, it's true. If you want to go into mythic and your guild cant seem to break the barrier, then maybe its the problem with your guild rather than blizzard. Maybe its time to look for a new home. I did, and its not too shabby as of right now. Stop blaming blizzard for your guild's logistical problems. There is a way to fix it.

[cFortyfive]

So you planned on doing mythic, never got over 15 members and raid two times a week for about 3 hours and expectations were so high you had to disband ? Well .....

[psyquest]

We are having the same issue. We were the second 25 man heroic guilde in woltk and mop on my server (repeat: second heroic guild on the server). Thought we had the team for mythic, people left, people come. New recruits do not have the gameplay required for mythic level. We decided it was better for us to raid heroic if necessary instead of carrying 4-5 bad players. We are currently 21 "good" players and I am still missing 4-5 players to cover for sickness, vacation etc. But every week out of 4-5 enquiring players, none are good enough (either no gear, no xp or both)

As a raid leader here is what I found.

1 out of 20 players roughly are recruit material.
Lots of guilds have attracted players simply because they managed to kill kargath mythic and people are stuck in those guilds, waiting.
Lots of new players have started or restarted playing with WOD. Any players with long breaks of wow or no previous history is a liability. In fact all players we recruited with these characteristics stopped playing. This type of players do not have the "steam" to push for hard content, they kill last boss, go on vacation and dont come back.
Some guilds have 45-50 people, with up to 30 raiders that do not participate in mythic and just feed a main group. These players are content in being the bench just to be in x guild. shame.


Blizzard should have made mythic 15 man, 10 man guilds would have recruited 4-5 extra and managed. 20 man mythic means you need 25 to 30 players instead of 20 for a 15 man mythic. The difference is huge.

Kudos to those that are recruting easily.

[Shamburger]

So basically you're hamstringing your raid group by being pickier than your progression should really allow for, simply because three expansions ago you made realm second.

Really, I notice you didn't even mention anything about denying people for lack of performance, simply gear and achievements? Of course you're not going to fill those raid slots then, why would people who are geared and experienced apply to anything but top guilds?

Bovine is 100% correct. This right here is one of the biggest errors people make with recruiting.

My guild 5/10M at the moment. Do you think we only look at apps that are 5/10 or above because they're "equal" to us? We have 0 requirements for applications (aside from viable offspecs and attendance). We picked up a mage that was (at the time I think) 647 ilvl. They had LFR and some normal EXP in current content, but top 100-ish kills dates from SoO. Spend a couple weeks gearing her up and she's quickly rising to one of our top players. I feel like someone like who Bovine quoted would have just skipped this person app because they have shitty gear and no exp. No ones gets anywhere recruiting above what their progression is.

[Sierra85]

i actually like the mythic 20man model. 10mans were boring, not enough people in guilds.

[azurrei]

20 man only mythic is killing a lot of guilds.

- - - Updated - - -



That's another issue we've had. A lot of recruits only wanna come in for the farm content and then are no show for progression. I've lost count of how many people got through their trial, then suddenly then stopped showing up on progression night. Booting them is obvious, but it doesn't solve the fact that now you're right back to having to fill the spot all over again.

working as intended - they are just correcting something that should of never been available in the first place (10 man heroic version of a 25 man raid.) I have no problem if they ever want to go back to making 10-man raids with heroic versions - "side" raids like Karazhan or ZA. But the main raid should have ONE fixed size for the hard stuff... and if you can't keep a roster, then it is not for your guild. My guild doesn't have the roster to do Mythic and it doesn't bother me at all - it is what it is.