Why do US guilds/servers fall behind EU/Asia

[Tesclo]

4 guilds cleared Dragon Soul in the US on release day (and 101 on the day after)
225 cleared Dragon Soul on EU on release day.
14 guilds cleared Dragon Soul in TW on release day.
66 guilds cleared Dragon Soul on KR on release day.

^^ taken from a blue post yesterday which was taken from wowprogress. Does anyone else think it's odd that EU players seem to have a much easier time raiding then US players? The top guilds in the world (aside from a few) are either in the EU or Asia. Why is it that US guilds fall behind?

[Deleted]

i first thought simply the populations are much larger, but the numbers just dont add up to make sense for it to be that.

[Kharli]

it's alot more people who LIVE in europe maybe? the majority of subscribes comes from Europe go figure..

[Summer]

Clearing DS on normal release day is not any kind of sign of being better tbh. That's probably more to do with server stability on launch night anyways :P Rather compare how many guilds cleared it on hard during the first month or something.

[Seriss]

US players can't be that much worse than EU players, can they? It would just seem very weird if there was a skill gap that large between demographic groups.

Maybe US players aren't quite as interested in PvE content and don't rush through it on day 1? *scratches head*

Who knows?

Also, what Summerwind said. What do the stats say about DS heroic? Is EU still so far ahead in numbers?

[Arbs]

it's alot more people who LIVE in europe maybe? the majority of subscribes comes from Europe go figure..

Actually its Asia > US > EU.

[Deleted]

Clearing DS on normal release day is not any kind of sign of being better tbh. That's probably more to do with server stability on launch night anyways :P Rather compare how many guilds cleared it on hard during the first month or something.

Probably this. Blizzard always have issues with deploying patches and the US being the first to recieve them, come up against the brunt of the issues that arise, meaning they have larger downtimes than us most of the time.

[Divinedoom]

It's because of how the times are shown on wowprogress, and the poster did not acount for that. I can't remember what was exactly off about it, but the time of kills shown on wowprogress for american guilds are not the american realm times I believe. I think it is because wowprogress uses the time from 1 time zone for all guilds regardless of region for comparisons sake. In reality much more then 4 US guilds cleared DS normal on the first day.

Looking at my own guilds kill times, the times mentioned on wowprogress seem to be GMT while the european servers run GMT+1. I can't confirm for sure if US and Asian kill times are also shown in GMT but my guess is they are. I'm not sure on what coast the american server time is based, but basicly what it would mean if the kills were shown in GMT that any kills made in the evening in america would be shown as done the next day during the night on wowprogress. In essense making it look like only the guilds that killed Madness normal during the afternoon killed it on release day, and ofcourse most guilds raid during the evening. Especially on a day where servers come up late due to the patch.

Edit: Although to be fair the poster does seem to realise as he mentions the day after for US while he doesn't for others. But he just didn't explain it.

[Razorice]

Can we see some sources that actually confirm any of the continents being better?

[dgreen]

Well its hard to say what exactly caused such a huge difference, but I know my guild wasn't in a huge hurry to finish it the first day since it didn't really matter. We cleared it that week and moved onto heroics right away when they opened.

[Deleted]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't USA start their resets earlier than Europe? By that logic, when 4.3 dropped in EU, the US servers were already fighting bosses and youtube was already filled with kill videos. Therefore, the EU servers had it easier a bit, because they already knew what to do (assuming they didn't practice on PTR).

Just sain'

[Deleted]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't USA start their resets earlier than Europe? By that logic, when 4.3 dropped in EU, the US servers were already fighting bosses and youtube was already filled with kill videos. Therefore, the EU servers had it easier a bit, because they already knew what to do (assuming they didn't practice on PTR).

Just sain'

How can EU watch kills on youtube from the US, if the US haven't killed em yet?

[Divinedoom]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't USA start their resets earlier than Europe? By that logic, when 4.3 dropped in EU, the US servers were already fighting bosses and youtube was already filled with kill videos. Therefore, the EU servers had it easier a bit, because they already knew what to do (assuming they didn't practice on PTR).

Just sain'

Not really, you could argue it is like that with Heroic modes perhaps because those are often a bit more secretive on the ptr. But there would have been plenty of kill videos from the ptr around for American guilds to look at as well.

It is the fact that the numbers are most likely wrong because of how wowprogress presents it's data, as I mentioned above.

[Pua]

Can we see some sources that actually confirm any of the continents being better?

"Better" isn't even easy to define, never mind who actually is better; does being able to devote 14 hours a day to raiding make you a "better" player than someone who works or won't?

I'll try to find the link, but Xav of Premonition US spoke about the difference between EU guilds and US ones when he was asked why EU guilds have always dominated the top three. He spoke about a lot of things, but the two most interesting were time zones and professional application. In the US, there are (I think) nine time zones which will have an impact on the availability of 25 different people. In Europe, it's far less and guilds such as DREAM Paragon are close to exclusively Finnish. The professional application he described was more to do with the fact that, in America, sitting on your farter for days on end just wasn't practical because there was nowhere near the type of student/welfare financial support to allow players to do it.

How much of a difference all this makes is up to you, and I daresay spurious "facts" will be trotted out in order to prop up which side of the argument you sit on. My own personal inkling is that if you were to somehow come up with a metric for finding the best 500 players in the world, the higher percentage would be American because they seem to devote less time to games and are never really that far behind.

But that's only an inkling.

[tylenol]

Actually its Asia > US > EU.

Eh..

738,199,000 (2010)
Europe, Population

4,164,252,000 (2010)
Asia, Population

311,591,917 - Jul 2011
US, Population

[Deleted]

Well it's hard to say, American guilds most likely play worse, that seems like a solid conclusion. Especially seeing that Americans get the patches 1 day early.

Eh..

You do realise those are irrelevant, right... We are talking about WoW subscription numbers and as far as I know they go Asia > US > EU.

[Deleted]

Eh..

738,199,000 (2010)
Europe, Population

4,164,252,000 (2010)
Asia, Population

311,591,917 - Jul 2011
US, Population

Continent vs Country, sup braah

2010
Asia 4,164,252,000
America 934,611,000
Europe 738,199,000

[Senathor]

Mods please lock this thread, It's just stupid lol

[Anjerith]

I knew when I saw that blue post that there would be a post like this on these forums.

The honest truth is that there are many regional and logistics issues with US Guilds that EU guilds simply do not have to deal with due to a greater number of their players being located in smaller areas.

Sorry EU players, I do not belittle your effort or skill, it just ISN'T that your "better" or "Worse" than US or Asia players. Likewise, if suddenly US Guilds took the lead on normal kills, it wouldn't be due to sudden influx of talent, it would be because the Guilds started to consolidate into more exclusive regional formats.

[Deleted]

There may be some logic to this thread, just looked up the top 10 PVE (not pvp) guilds, 7 are from the EU, 2 from Asia and 1 from US.