Are guilds all over collapsing or am I just seeing a lot of bad luck?

[Drefan]

Blizzard had a problem. Players were quitting too quickly.

"I know what I'll do!" said Blizzard. "I'll make the raids more difficult."

Now Blizzard had two problems.

The content is not too hard. The pre-progression grind is killing of guilds, not the actual raid itself.
You put in so many hours, just preparing for the raid, and then the content is over within 1-3 weeks.
That's not worth the time investment, atleast in my eyes and I guess a lot of others feel so too.

You are basically farming mythic+ as a part time job just to make sure the content wont be overtuned since u lack the artifact traits "needed".
The main reason most people could hardcore raid was because you took time off work/school and was then able to make up for it after.
Which atleast for me has been impossible in this expansion. This is just my view on the matter, maybe it was diffrent for others.

[khazmodan]

Let's just say subs are down to 5 million. That's approximately 900 million in subscription revenue a year. Expansions don't cost more than a couple hundred million to produce. If they sell 5 million copies over it's lifetime they've recouped the entire cost of development. So it's pure profit. Micro transactions are just the icing on the cash cow of a cake they already have.



WoW could survive on 1 million subscribers and easily continue making enough cash to comfortably produce expansions. Most MMO's never had more than a million after the first year. EQ peaked at 500k and it has 20 expansions now. Other MMO's are also producing content with sub 1 million users in a F2P market.

98% of the players doesn't participate in Mythic raiding. So guess what? The core player base doesn't give a damn. They are happy with tons of content to participate in. Hell even PVP is more fun now that things are templated and you don't get stomped.

Player retention after 13 years is unheard of. Every month that goes by they are breaking new ground because *NO* product has maintained a subscriber base this large for this period of time. Truth? The game should've died 8 years ago but it's an anomaly. Saying what should be important doesn't make sense because we're long past that point in time. Either embrace the game or don't play. No one is going to quit a game they are happy playing because someone named Iceman said they should on a forum.

subs are probably down under 2 million but they still have a cash cow that they can keep going indefinitely because of so many that have good memories of this game. On the other hand, Blizzard seems intent on screwing up one of the best expansions they have ever released with excessive RNG and time sinks built to feed the new hours in game metric of success they have. WoW may not be dead but its sure as hell bleeding...

[Halicia]

I'd blame facebook before I blame blizzard.

Its harder than ever nowadays to find people that want to be "in a guild".

Most people want what the guild can give them. Namely, a raidgroup thats more stable and convenient than what they can find in the crossrealm group finder.

But they don't want to do any more work than necessary to retain that spot. Even if its only something simple like contributing to the feast/flask fund. Or helping a guildie with a dungeon now and then. The moment they're asked to spend THEIR TIME doing stuff that doesnt directly benefit THEM, they find the next location that will give the most reward for the least effort.

Yes, some people actually want to connect and form lasting friendly relationships with those they play games with... and are willing to go to great lengths to help out those in the same guild as them...

but in the 'age of facebook' it seems like these are a dying breed. people would rather add/delete anyone that doesn't fit into their mindset of instant gratification and reward... instead of looking at the longterm.... that they will get added/deleted in turn.

why are guilds collapsing ? cuz they weren't guilds in the first place. they were 1 or 2 "initiators" that everyone else was mooching off of. a real guild has more "initiators" than moochers.... and works hard to either "turn" those moochers into fellow intiators... or remove them from the guild.