EU vs US guilds

[evotech]

Quick glance at the wowprogress data and there seems to be an obvious discrepancy in progress between EU and US. For a basic example, if you look at the entire first page listing 20 guilds, only 1 is labelled as US based.

Why is that? Is it simply based on population? NA continent of roughly 500 million vs EU continent of around 750 million? Or perhaps it's related to the vacation day schedule that EU countries get allowing those players to dedicate more time to raiding? Standard in US is about 2 weeks of vacation per year, whereas in most EU countries it's almost double as far as I know. Or is the game just simply not popular enough in the US?

What do you guys think makes the EU guilds better suited for competing and winning the world first races most of the time?

[FobManX]

Europeans get a LOT more vacation time than America. I think I read somewhere that in France they get 30 days paid vacation per year? Most places here in the US is 10, MAYBE 15(I get 10). And even then, people tend to not take them. With that much vacation time you can take a week or so off when a raid comes out and just crush it. It also allows you to take more time off at launch to get ahead of the cure early on.

I think you have more dedicated WoW gamers in Europe as well. I don't think WoW is as popular here anymore compared to your generic FPS's, League, Dota, etc.

[Dracodraco]

Europeans get a LOT more vacation time than America. I think I read somewhere that in France they get 30 days paid vacation per year? Most places here in the US is 10, MAYBE 15(I get 10). And even then, people tend to not take them. With that much vacation time you can take a week or so off when a raid comes out and just crush it. It also allows you to take more time off at launch to get ahead of the cure early on.

I think you have more dedicated WoW gamers in Europe as well. I don't think WoW is as popular here anymore compared to your generic FPS's, League, Dota, etc.

Vacation time makes sense for the top 20 and their insane skewing, but the trend stays relevant down into the guilds ranked in the thousands, so it's probably not a major role in the overall "why are there so many more high ranked EU guilds compared to US". 748 Mythic archi kills on US, 1310 on EU. That's almost a 1:2 ratio. It's probably more to do with a smaller playerbase, and less people taking it seriously.

[Octa]

The player pool is bigger and takes it more seriously, that's about all it comes down to.

I figured I'd have to read more than 1 post before I ran into the horrible "more vacation time" argument.

[Deja Thoris]

The player pool is bigger and takes it more seriously, that's about all it comes down to.

I figured I'd have to read more than 1 post before I ran into the horrible "more vacation time" argument.

It's not a horrible argument. It's basically the core reason as far as I can tell.

[Octa]

It's not a horrible argument. It's basically the core reason as far as I can tell.

Yeah man, all those world 2k guilds taking 2 weeks of vacation for progression. It MIGHT be a decent argument if the trend of EU guilds shitting on US guilds stopped at world 50.

[Deja Thoris]

Yeah man, all those world 2k guilds taking 2 weeks of vacation for progression.

It's clearly a reference to the top 20 or 50 since time invested is a large factor there. Please don't be intentionally dense.

[Octa]

But the trend continues right down the line so I'm not being dense. How do you explain it? If suddenly it evened out and US guilds started killing stuff at the same rate as EU guilds it might make sense but that's simply not the case as has been mentioned already.
I understand he asked specifically about the top 20 but I would argue that has MUCH more to do with amount of people playing and the amount of people taking it seriously than it does with vacation time. I get that time investment is a big factor but I really don't think it's the main factor and the vacation time argument is just horrible, IMO.
You might wanna try not being so purposely obtuse sometime just for the sake of forcing an argument.

[Holofernes]

i think it boild down to a more professionalized and competetitive approach to games in europe. Its in like every game, that the level of play is higher in Europe or Asia than in the US. And i think the bad social welfare system and social insurance problems that americans are victim too stops them from having time to play games, most americans live in fear of loosing their job / live / whatever. Europeans dont have that kind of fear to this extent, and dont work overhours that much, also in most of Europe working more than 8 hours a day is forbidden by law, so having two jobs or stuff like that is very uncommon.

[Deja Thoris]

You might wanna try not being so purposely obtuse sometime just for the sake of forcing an argument.

Take a look at the tone of your posts and reflect on that before you accuse other people.

I don't know why its different at the lower levels. I don't know if the EU even has a higher wow population that the US so I can't hazard a guess.

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[klaps_05]

wow is 12 years old, 99% of hardcore players either moved on or dont care any more, so a trend goes away faster in the US than in EU. if you look at top100, its guilds who barely made it for a blue rank on wowprogress couple expansions ago. not saying the game is easier now, there is just less interest in the US, which inflates the rankings.

[durrtygoodz]

wow is 12 years old, 99% of hardcore players either moved on or dont care any more, so a trend goes away faster in the US than in EU. if you look at top100, its guilds who barely made it for a blue rank on wowprogress couple expansions ago. not saying the game is easier now, there is just less interest in the US, which inflates the rankings.

Yeah god forbid a guild improves in TWO EXPANSIONS.

[Dracodraco]

wow is 12 years old, 99% of hardcore players either moved on or dont care any more, so a trend goes away faster in the US than in EU. if you look at top100, its guilds who barely made it for a blue rank on wowprogress couple expansions ago. not saying the game is easier now, there is just less interest in the US, which inflates the rankings.

Not actually true. Top 100 has remained very competitive - my guild's only gotten stronger over time and our best tier was rank #31 in throne of thunder, but since the merge of 10+25 into 20 man, we're fighting hard to get a top 100 spot, without having changed *anything* about our approach since our peak (1x split raids, no extended raid hrs etc). Was around top 100 for Cata aswell in 25 man, before 10 man got really popular.

It may in part be because of the asians being included in the top 100 this expansion, but generally, the top 100 is not any weaker than it was in Cataclysm. The very top might be, but the general level hasn't felt it.

[Coldvibes]

There are many more players in the EU than US, US players play more console games, EU takes the game more seriously/is willing to play more hours.

Skill is a thing I suppose but that's what happens when your region boasts twice the playerbase (and consequently raiding playerbase) of the others'.

[chronia]

I reckon though that vacation might be a small factor, but not as huge as ppl make it here to be. I mean you cannot say that EU gets alot more vacation, some countries do, some probably don't, as each country has their own laws about vacation and the number of days you get by law. For example here in The Netherlands you get 20 days by law, excluding national holiday's3 (when working 40 or more hours a week), if you work 30 hours you 15 e.t.c., some companies offer more days as a secondary bonus. However, a maximum of 15 of those days can be allocated by the company if they wish, for example quite a few companies close up shop here in the summer for 3 weeks, which will cost you 15 of the 20 days. Which leaves you with 5 days to allocate yourself. Those normally won't be enough to allocate enough vacation for all progress races or preparation. So yeah, some ppl in EU might have 20 or more days to allocate freely, but alot will also not have that benefit.

Now for example i work for a company that is based in The Netherlands, but also had a US branch office, and believe it or not, the US office actually has more vacation due to the fact that employees in both offices get the same number of vacaton days and the US has 1-2 more national holiday's. Now this won't be the same i reckon for every company in the US, but i also doubt that every US citizen only has 10 days to play with.

[BiggestNoob]

The difference in the overall numbers implies there's a large difference in number of raiders in the two regions. That makes sense as the EU contains ~55% more people than the US.

Within the top 50 guilds, it's pretty well known that the most important factor, even more important than the individual skill of players, as evidenced by these guilds often recruiting average players who have the time to raid progression schedules, is time spent.

The biggest difference between the US and the EU on average (comparing both EU wide average and a population-weighted member state average) is that the EU has a much higher unemployment rate (10.3-10.4 vs the US's 6.2). Their average hours worked per worker indicate 2-3 weeks less work per year for the whole of the EU, but population weighted this is actually 1-2 weeks more than the US. These numbers are per the World Bank and OECD.

The EU has a higher unemployment rate for reasons I think are obvious if you know anything about their politics and social progressiveness. That many more people free to play WoW all the time, coupled with a much larger population, is an easy explanation for the discrepancy at both the top-end and in the average case.

[Hyve]

EU > US 4Evah!

[klogaroth]

As well as vacation time there's also a difference between the US and many European nations when it comes to how many hours people usually work in a week.

If you combine a 50-60 hour work week + commute time with 20-25 hours of raiding + time spent preparing for raids there's plenty of potential for burnout.
A 30-40 hour week on that schedule leaves you with a lot more free time for things outside WoW.

[Deleted]

PS: EU is not only better in PVE but EU also crashes the muricans every Blizzcon at PVP :P

[joxur]

Europe has a much higher unemployment rate. No job = lots of time for gaming. It's literally that simple.