Where have all the Raiders Gone?

[MoanaLisa]

So, no I am not "too good to participate" but many are not good enough to earn my help.

If you honestly feel that way I have to wonder why you're running anything that involves contact with random people. To be clear, I think it's perfectly OK to think this way. I don't think it's OK to inflict that on unsuspecting strangers. To the extent that you do that it's a problem.

[Osmeric]

It's kind of shocking to me that as of today, 42% of the guilds registered on WoWProgress have NOT made it past Horridon.

Seriously, wouldn't you expect to be able to work easily through at least a handful of bosses on normal mode the first week? Instead, almost half of the guilds that felt like registering themselves as "raiding" guilds have brickwalled on the second boss.

I want to point out that your guild can show up on wowprogress.com even if no one in the guild registers it. All it requires is that someone (doesn't have to be a registered someone) asks the site to download data for your guild.

Anyone can also ask that a guild's stats be updated. Updates from registered guild leaders receive priority, but they all go through eventually.

I was going back and updating all the old guilds (that had raided in Wrath and/or Cata and had been tracked then) on my server, just to see what had happened to them. Most of the ones that had been missing were moribund, or had gone totally casual, but a few showed up with T14 progression and were added to the list.

[Glorious Leader]

The larger problem over the very long run may be that the raiding population for normal/heroics will continue to shrink to the point where eventually it won't be worth it to develop those difficulty levels either. There's a rather casual assumption on the part of some that Blizzard will never do this but I wouldn't be so sure about that. It's always good to remind people that if we see close to three dozen raid bosses in this expansion, it will largely be due to the popularity of LFR. Otherwise, there's a totally valid argument to have that MoP would be better off with zero raids and another two dozen dungeons instead. LFR participants are a potential resource for recruiting. Some won't be interested but many will if there's some genuine outreach attempted.

It's up to the raiding community and it's associated guilds to figure out how to expand and thrive again. Mostly, of course, a lot of the current raiding community will do what they do now, blame Blizzard for their problems and ignore the years of barrier-erecting and generally attempting to be very exclusive which is the main problem at the moment with regard to recruiting.

There's a reason why major-league baseball keeps farm teams and why the other major team sports actively look after young college players for new recruits. It works. You never ever hear about this in WoW, even among the most serious guilds. It's no wonder that guilds have difficulties sustaining themselves over the long run.

While I agree with most of what you said I think you down play the hand that Blizzard has had in all of this. Many of their choices in this expansion have only served to drive players away from normal raiding. The tuning of the raids for instance. They don't even have a really good curve for normal raids. Like Jinrokh is trash and then they rip the nob off the difficulty meter for Horidon. ICC and ULduar all had really good difficulty curves and they were amazing raids at least in part because they allowed for a wide tuning. In addition to this the whole slower catching up just serves as another barrier to entry for people who would even consider it. Like I got a buddy who's trying to set up a second raid group as part of a guild with an already fairly established raiding guild. He told me already he knows that first group is gonna start to poach his raiders because well catch up is pretty gay in mists and if you want to keep your raid together your going to have to start taking what you can. It's really bad.

I agree the community is bad about this and they've handled it poorly but the developers have had a role in this and I would argue in large part they are ultimately the ones responsible for it and ultimately they will be the ones to fix it. Theirs a good reason they blame Blizzard. Blizzard has been removing barriers to entry for YEARS only to now set them back up ostensible because they have lfr now. Well as you point out it may very well get to a point where it makes no sense to make normals. The raiding community is probably not in favor of that change, so I find it strange that certain members defend choices made by the developers which do NOTHING but exacerbate and fuel the situation.

Now before some smart ass decides to tell me to stop qqing I'd like to say that not only am I likely 10x the player that most of you are, I'm also completely okay with challenging bosses. They key is that raids should have a VARIETY and allow for as much open tuning as possible. In that fashion players can both be challenged as well as encouraged by the success they build up behind them. Not frustrated by wall after wall with no variety or deviation in sight. The raiding community I knew wasn't made up of complete and total sadists.

[Moistmuffins]

snip

You made good points until that last paragraph you added in the edit. Completely unnecessary first sentence. Other than that yes both are to blame but it doesn't excuse one or the other for what they've done to the community. They share the responsibility. One doesn't lose blame just because another is more to blame.

[MoanaLisa]

While I agree with most of what you said I think you down play the hand that Blizzard has had in all of this. Many of their choices in this expansion have only served to drive players away from normal raiding. The tuning of the raids for instance. They don't even have a really good curve for normal raids. Like Jinrokh is trash and then they rip the nob off the difficulty meter for Horidon. ICC and ULduar all had really good difficulty curves and they were amazing raids at least in part because they allowed for a wide tuning. In addition to this the whole slower catching up just serves as another barrier to entry for people who would even consider it. Like I got a buddy who's trying to set up a second raid group as part of a guild with an already fairly established raiding guild. He told me already he knows that first group is gonna start to poach his raiders because well catch up is pretty gay in mists and if you want to keep your raid together your going to have to start taking what you can. It's really bad.

It's no secret that when guilds ran into a wall on a boss in the past, Blizzard would do what they do and weather a storm of complaints from the raiding community that they were nerfing raids way too soon. So there's really no way to win here. However, I don't disagree that there's responsibility on both sides. It's not entirely surprising to me that when T14 came out the Normal versions were much stiffer than T13. The primary complaint I saw about T13 Normal was that it was simply way too easy and please in the future make it more difficult. If Blizzard overshot that a bit then perhaps they should do some nerfs. But you know as well as I what the response to that will be.

What I do think Blizzard should do though is work on being consistent in this regard. If this is the way it's going to be, then keep it that way and let the community adjust over time. The wavering back and forth is more the problem to my mind. To the other point you made I didn't much like that you could run a few dungeons in Cataclysm 4.3 and pretty much immediately catch up for T13. I did think it cheapened T11/T12 and made those raids completely irrelevant. Others liked it but it wasn't much to my taste. I'm all for catching up but there should be some work involved in it.

[Glorious Leader]

You made good points until that last paragraph you added in the edit. Completely unnecessary first sentence. Other than that yes both are to blame but it doesn't excuse one or the other for what they've done to the community. They share the responsibility. One doesn't lose blame just because another is more to blame.

Not really. Like Eschaton is a bit right when he says this community is pretty bad with how it handles things and it's precisely bad because certain members like to pile on others. I was just trying to head that off. I'm not sure I agree that shared responsibility is really the key here. Blizzard is ultimately responsible for the game it produces. What people do with that is another matter entirely. If the game is produced in such a fashion that it makes raiders disappear or turn to LFR than the raiding community can do little about that other than voice their concerns.

[Moistmuffins]

Not really. Like Eschaton is a bit right when he says this community is pretty bad with how it handles things and it's precisely bad because certain members like to pile on others. I was just trying to head that off. I'm not sure I agree that shared responsibility is really the key here. Blizzard is ultimately responsible for the game it produces. What people do with that is another matter entirely. If the game is produced in such a fashion that it makes raiders disappear or turn to LFR than the raiding community can do little about that other than voice their concerns.

They can voice their concerns, but their ideas are largely to take away LFR to make people raid again. That is not a good idea. The community has an equal share in trying to entice people into raiding. They cannot expect Blizzard to find them raiders. So yes shared responsibility is the key. Blizzard can try to appease everyone and there will people who will not like it that's fine. Blaming Blizzard for the lack of raiders when the raiding community doesn't do enough to promote raiding either is silly.

[Glorious Leader]

It's no secret that when guilds ran into a wall on a boss in the past, Blizzard would do what they do and weather a storm of complaints from the raiding community that they were nerfing raids way too soon. So there's really no way to win here. However, I don't disagree that there's responsibility on both sides. It's not entirely surprising to me that when T14 came out the Normal versions were much stiffer than T13. The primary complaint I saw about T13 Normal was that it was simply way too easy and please in the future make it more difficult. If Blizzard overshot that a bit then perhaps they should do some nerfs. But you know as well as I what the response to that will be.

What I do think Blizzard should do though is work on being consistent in this regard. If this is the way it's going to be, then keep it that way and let the community adjust over time. The wavering back and forth is more the problem to my mind. To the other point you made I didn't much like that you could run a few dungeons in Cataclysm 4.3 and pretty much immediately catch up for T13. I did think it cheapened T11/T12 and made those raids completely irrelevant. Others liked it but it wasn't much to my taste. I'm all for catching up but there should be some work involved in it.

I don't necessarily agree that consistency is the right choice when it's clearly the wrong choice. Blizzard has a choice here I think and it's pretty stark and clear. They can make raids like ICC and Ulduar where theirs a variety of bosses at all levels of difficulty, where tuning is open as possible, where the difficult curve is pretty good or they can make raids where every boss is a wall and theirs no curve.

Again ICC is the best model here I think and Ulduar to. The first wings were pretty easy with generally the last boss of each wing being the most difficult. In the first wing of Ulduar after flame leviathan you had 3 bosses to choose from. Two were relatively easy and XT the final boss that you needed to kill to progress was arguably the most difficult. In a similar fashion Saurfang is easily the hardest boss in the first wing and the next wing carries off from that with Putracide being the hardest and so forth and so forth. That's how you tune a raid. Give people walls but also give people other things that aren't walls so they can get some success behind them, get some encouragement to go forth and overcome those walls. In ToT it's pretty stark what happens after Jinrokh. Easy and then HARD. And it's hard at least in part because "catch up" and the gearing process is so slow in this expansion that it really means they either want people doing the previous tier still OR farming lfr to be able to complete it. It's kinda lame. It leads to poaching like in the example I used, it leads to frustration because their isn't enough variety and it's just imposing.

I don't care what the response is. If Blizzard want's to foster and help grow the raiding community in general than it really is doing itself a disservice by listening to players who cry about adjustments. If their okay shoving people into lfr and watching the community dwindle then yea stay the course, in fact amp it up more.

---------- Post added 2013-03-22 at 10:13 PM ----------

They can voice their concerns, but their ideas are largely to take away LFR to make people raid again. That is not a good idea. The community has an equal share in trying to entice people into raiding. They cannot expect Blizzard to find them raiders. So yes shared responsibility is the key. Blizzard can try to appease everyone and there will people who will not like it that's fine. Blaming Blizzard for the lack of raiders when the raiding community doesn't do enough to promote raiding either is silly.

Yea but that's not the correct course of action. I don't see why they think simple taking away lfr will bring all these people back to raiding, the more likely course of action is that people will simple leave the game. The community can't entice players to raid when the raids themselves aren't very enticing. What can the raiding community offer? Hey guys you can beat your face against this boss for hours on end with no variety and no other option and very poor difficulty curve or you can do lfr and if lfr isn't there you can leave the game?

It really is simple. If they want to encourage normal raiding then they need a balance of bosses in raids that are challenging but also that are not just walls. IMHO I think every raid should have at least one chess event or loot ship preceded by a fairly hard boss. If the carrot really is all that drives people in this game then if you put something like that behind a harder boss people are more likely to want to get past the harder boss. In addition to that the raids themselves need to have more options. Less linear raids, more open wings with bosses that vary in terms of difficulty. You want to get people hungry for these raids, not kill their desire with massive walls right off the bat. You want people to be having a good time by downing some bosses at first but giving them challenges later. It really is all about balance.

[Lord Blackmore]

honestly at my average level of raiding no. I am not interested in brining players in that do not meet at least a minimum level of experience and LFR certainly does not count.

Just don't bitch when you can't recruit anybody.

[Moistmuffins]

Many of the raids are still enticing and that's entirely up to how the community entices players into it. Most people don't look on sites like this or care for sites like this. Blizzard did a very good job promoting the Isle and ToT. Now if guilds want to get new people into the scene they need to be more willing to take someone with lesser experience. I'm not saying any jackass with LFR. But someone who maybe isn't up the progression of the guild, but seems willing to learn and improve. Look I agree the model of wings is a superior raid and that may help. But like I said the community needs to be willing to bring in new people if it wants to expand. Raiding in this game is already very niche. And with more players leaving than joining it will stay that way unless the community is less exclusive. Blizzard can make the raids as accessible as possible, but if the community still won't take new people it won't do anything.

[Osmeric]

They can voice their concerns, but their ideas are largely to take away LFR to make people raid again. That is not a good idea. The community has an equal share in trying to entice people into raiding. They cannot expect Blizzard to find them raiders. So yes shared responsibility is the key. Blizzard can try to appease everyone and there will people who will not like it that's fine. Blaming Blizzard for the lack of raiders when the raiding community doesn't do enough to promote raiding either is silly.

I don't think blaming the raiding community is useful or proper. Communities don't have volition; individuals do. The individuals in the raiding community are acting in response to the situations they find themselves in and the incentives they're offered. It's not reasonable to expect individually unrewarded altruism from the members of that community.

I wonder though if Blizzard is doing an experiment in this expansion -- making hard content, and seeing just what the response is. Their goal wouldn't be participation, but data. If they finally learn not many people want hard, fine. If they learn a lot of people like hard, also fine. LFR is there as a backstop to keep the sub losses from getting too bad if the number who want hard is low.

[Glorious Leader]

Many of the raids are still enticing and that's entirely up to how the community entices players into it. Most people don't look on sites like this or care for sites like this. Blizzard did a very good job promoting the Isle and ToT. Now if guilds want to get new people into the scene they need to be more willing to take someone with lesser experience. I'm not saying any jackass with LFR. But someone who maybe isn't up the progression of the guild, but seems willing to learn and improve. Look I agree the model of wings is a superior raid and that may help. But like I said the community needs to be willing to bring in new people if it wants to expand. Raiding in this game is already very niche. And with more players leaving than joining it will stay that way unless the community is less exclusive. Blizzard can make the raids as accessible as possible, but if the community still won't take new people it won't do anything.

No but their not enticing. That's precisely the point. If they were enticing people would be doing them because the raiding community generally is not full of assholes and theirs recruitment options all over the place. It's so hard to replace people and it's hard at least in part because of the difficulty curve in ToT and what BLizzard is asking of players to even attempt to begin normal raiding. In that case they are completely accurate when they say people would just rather say fuck it and run lfr. However the prescription isn't to remove lfr because that doesn't make normal raiding more accessible or attractive, it just makes the game overall less attractive.

The community is more than willing to bring in new people. THEY NEED NEW PEOPLE. I'm sure some people remain ignorant about this and are stodgy about it but those guilds are doomed to fail. Raiding in this game has been very niche but the decisions by the developers have made normal and hardcore raiding EVEN MORE niche. If they made the raids more like ICC and Ulduar and scaled the difficulty better (and did this CONSISTENTLY as eschaton points out) you'd see growth in the raiding community. It has nothing to do with lfr and everything to do with their instance design.

---------- Post added 2013-03-22 at 10:24 PM ----------

I don't think blaming the raiding community is useful or proper. Communities don't have volition; individuals do. The individuals in the raiding community are acting in response to the situations they find themselves in and the incentives they're offered. It's not reasonable to expect individually unrewarded altruism from the members of that community.

I wonder though if Blizzard is doing an experiment in this expansion -- making hard content, and seeing just what the response is. Their goal wouldn't be participation, but data. If they finally learn not many people want hard, fine. If they learn a lot of people like hard, also fine. LFR is there as a backstop to keep the sub losses from getting too bad if the number who want hard is low.

They don't need to do an experiment. The conclusion should have been fairly obvious from their attempt to make dungeons harder. It's never an middle ground with them and that's what bugs me the most.

[Otimus]

Many of the raids are still enticing and that's entirely up to how the community entices players into it. Most people don't look on sites like this or care for sites like this. Blizzard did a very good job promoting the Isle and ToT. Now if guilds want to get new people into the scene they need to be more willing to take someone with lesser experience. I'm not saying any jackass with LFR. But someone who maybe isn't up the progression of the guild, but seems willing to learn and improve. Look I agree the model of wings is a superior raid and that may help. But like I said the community needs to be willing to bring in new people if it wants to expand. Raiding in this game is already very niche. And with more players leaving than joining it will stay that way unless the community is less exclusive. Blizzard can make the raids as accessible as possible, but if the community still won't take new people it won't do anything.

By and large, if you see what certain people here are saying, they want it to expand by essentially pulling people out of thin air. They don't want new raiders, they want raiders who are... already raiding? It makes no sense, and seems super self defeating, not to mention lazy and selfish.

Frankly, if I've noticed anything, the MORE accessible things get, the HARDER the community makes it for people to get into it.

One thing that puzzles me, is, is the people who just look at what we're saying, and say "Blah, I don't want someone who doesn't put effort in". Well, freaking DUH? That isn't what we're saying. That's not what ANYONE is saying. What we're saying is, you raiders tend to exclude new people because they haven't ever raided, and never can now, because they're excluded from doing it because they never have. We also have a few people here who are basically saying "I don't want to spend time helping people who are beneath me. I don't want to associate with people who are beneath me more than I have to." Not those exact words, but the intent is all the same. It's all about winning at any costs, logic be damned.

[Osmeric]

They don't need to do an experiment. The conclusion should have been fairly obvious from their attempt to make dungeons harder. It's never an middle ground with them and that's what bugs me the most.

Well, they should have been able to figure it out even before Cataclysm, but apparently they couldn't. Maybe they need undisputed data to convince some reluctant believer in "hard is good" that he's been mistaken.

I'm wondering who this person is, btw. I'm thinking Morhaime -- otherwise, Morhaime would have fired whoever screwed up the tuning of Cataclysm.

[MoanaLisa]

@Atrahasis

I meant design consistency more than anything with an eye toward a predictable schema for difficulty. Whether that schema be a ramping up of difficulty as you progress through bosses or something else is something to discuss. I don't disagree with you on that score. I prefer things to ramp up as well.

@Osmeric

I'd guess Morhaime, Chilton and maybe Pardo.

[Had to consult the org chart to see who is who these days although I hear that Pardo is involved again with WoW].

[Otimus]

No but their not enticing. That's precisely the point. If they were enticing people would be doing them because the raiding community generally is not full of assholes and theirs recruitment options all over the place. It's so hard to replace people and it's hard at least in part because of the difficulty curve in ToT and what BLizzard is asking of players to even attempt to begin normal raiding. In that case they are completely accurate when they say people would just rather say fuck it and run lfr. However the prescription isn't to remove lfr because that doesn't make normal raiding more accessible or attractive, it just makes the game overall less attractive.

The community is more than willing to bring in new people. THEY NEED NEW PEOPLE. I'm sure some people remain ignorant about this and are stodgy about it but those guilds are doomed to fail. Raiding in this game has been very niche but the decisions by the developers have made normal and hardcore raiding EVEN MORE niche. If they made the raids more like ICC and Ulduar and scaled the difficulty better (and did this CONSISTENTLY as eschaton points out) you'd see growth in the raiding community. It has nothing to do with lfr and everything to do with their instance design.

---------- Post added 2013-03-22 at 10:24 PM ----------



They don't need to do an experiment. The conclusion should have been fairly obvious from their attempt to make dungeons harder. It's never an middle ground with them and that's what bugs me the most.

The last part about the middle ground is so true. They either make things WAY TOO EASY, or WAY TOO HARD. They never do anything gradual. Most all aspects of the game lack any sort of consistency and proper tiering.

[Moistmuffins]

I'm going to have to disagree with the notion that ICC and Ulduar style raids would result in a growth in the raiding community. Help? maybe. Growth? Probably not. As I said, which Osmeric seemed to miss, the blame falls on both parties. The raids may be too difficult, but the exclusiveness of raiding guilds isn't helpful. Neither is the idea that people should just be able to jump into the current raid after running dungeons. But there isn't going to be a middle ground on that one.

Making catching up too easy reduces the necessity for raids in general, whereas making it too hard reduces the amount of potential raiders. They can try and balance it out as much as possible, but as it seems now people are leaning more toward the idea of making catching up extremely easy again. This goes back to the idea of why even put so much effort into raids when, once they're in the next patch within the same expansion, the only people going back to said raids are completionists.

Edit: I do agree that Blizzard deals too much in the extremes, in pretty much every aspect of the game too. It's something they do to get an idea of what's too much and what's too little and what not, but the way they take it goes way too far on both ends.

[Osmeric]

As I said, which Osmeric seemed to miss, the blame falls on both parties. The raids may be too difficult, but the exclusiveness of raiding guilds isn't helpful. Neither is the idea that people should just be able to jump into the current raid after running dungeons.

I'm not missing it, I'm denying it. Not denying that there is exclusion, but rather denying that the raiding community can be held responsible for it. They are as much a victim of a system that causes that behavior as anyone.

You are falling into the common trap of blaming the individuals of a collective for the overall behavior of the collective.

[MoanaLisa]

You are falling into the common trap of blaming the individuals of a collective for the overall behavior of the collective.

It depends on what you're talking about really. The collective judgment about any forum topic--an important and deliberate distinction--is subject to a lot herd behavior and setting of memes which get repeated endlessly even after being proved false. If it's about World of Warcraft and is not something that's a common forum topic, it gets to be much more difficult to understand what's actually going on. Even common forum discussions are suspect in that regard because this isn't really a good sample to know anything at all about how people who don't post on forums feel about the game generally or individual parts of it.

Cataclysm was easy. People left in droves. No forums needed.

[Glorious Leader]

It depends on what you're talking about really. The collective judgment about any forum topic--an important and deliberate distinction--is subject to a lot herd behavior and setting of memes which get repeated endlessly even after being proved false. If it's about World of Warcraft and is not something that's a common forum topic, it gets to be much more difficult to understand what's actually going on. Even common forum discussions are suspect in that regard because this isn't really a good sample to know anything at all about how people who don't post on forums feel about the game generally or individual parts of it.

Cataclysm was easy. People left in droves. No forums needed.

First of all that's not true. People were complaining about the difficulty of all levels of pve content throughout cataclysm.
Second of all it's fallacy to try and link those two. Correlation is not causation.
Third of all people are still leaving in mists and without lfr it's likely more would leave.

As for your argument about consistency of design decision I must again respectfully disagree. Consistency for just the sake of consistency is bone headed. Consistently doing the wrong thing, whatever that is is boneheaded.