WotLK to MoP: A Trend Analysis of Raiding Difficulty.

[Birkhoff]

Lol'd at OP

OP is 100% biased. People didn't give up because normal mode is hard, people gave up because of LFR, the numbers are small because people moved on to LFR and aren't bothering with other modes. If LFR is removed, people would do normal mode and you would have solid proof that normal mode is hard or not.

[Osmeric]

Also, when I made these I didn't realize you had specified 10 man normal and used composite data for Cata/MoP because it should represent more or less what 10 normal did in Wrath - All active guilds.

The other thing to watch out for is the numbers from Wrath include KR/TW. Current wowprogress numbers do not.

[Osmeric]

People didn't give up because normal mode is hard, people gave up because of LFR, the numbers are small because people moved on to LFR and aren't bothering with other modes. If LFR is removed, people would do normal mode and you would have solid proof that normal mode is hard or not.

Pretty sure Cataclysm showed that your idea there is completely wrong. Even GC doesn't think LFR is to blame.

[NeverStop]

He was quite hard initially, but got a substantial nerf.

Horridon also got a substantial nerf, unless you'd like to argue 15% less HP on adds isn't significant.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/8953693

March 12
Throne of Thunder
Horridon
Reduced the health of Farraki Wastewalkers, Gurubashi Venom priests, Drakkari Frozen Warlords, and Amani Warbears in the Horridon encounter by 15% for 10-player normal mode and 10% for 25-player Normal mode.

[Glorious Leader]

Horridon also got a substantial nerf, unless you'd like to argue 15% less HP on adds isn't significant.

Evidently not significant enough.

[Birkhoff]

Pretty sure Cataclysm showed that your idea there is completely wrong. Even GC doesn't think LFR is to blame.

GC doesn't know jack shit

[Osmeric]

I'd be really surprised if LFR hurt organized guild raiding. I imagine the people that benefit most from it are the kind of people that spent all of Wrath pugging 100% of their progression.

I'm benefiting from it, and I did 25 man guild raiding through most of Wrath. Lower end guilds that could function in Wrath have no place in the current scheme.

[Birkhoff]

I'd be really surprised if LFR hurt organized guild raiding. I imagine the people that benefit most from it are the kind of people that spent all of Wrath pugging 100% of their progression.

LFR killed pugging

It's not that LFR is hurting organized guild raiding, it's that it's making many players quit. Many guilds are disbanding because of LFR

[Glorious Leader]

Are we talking about them being killed by LFR though or by the increased difficulty of normal? It could be argued that they're one and the same, but I do think it's worth making the distinction.



How? I mean I guess that's what I don't understand, is how LFR actually causes people to quit or a guild to die.

Do you think that tmmrw if they removed lfr people would simple go back to beating their heads against the brick wall of difficulty or would they simple quit the game? Or better yet if LFR had never existed do you think normal raids would continue to exist at this difficulty and we wuld see such large raid tiers or do you think raid tiers would be smaller in favor of dungeons and normals would be easier to scope up more players?

Hardcore raiders really ought to be all for lfr. If they knew what was good for them.

[Osmeric]

Are we talking about them being killed by LFR though or by the increased difficulty of normal?

The latter. LFR just determines if some of the players who were in the guild continue to play or unsub in disgust.

[Osmeric]

In World of Accessibilitycraft (and I don't mean that as an insult), that is post BC WoW where Blizzard thinks everyone should be able to see the majority of content if they choose, I think Wrath is basically what you can and should expect from Blizzard if LFR either never existed or ceased to exist.

Except that's not what we got in early Cataclysm, when LFR didn't exist.

[Glorious Leader]

Except that's not what we got in early Cataclysm, when LFR didn't exist.

And it's not what we get in mists were normal modes are not very accessible in terms of difficulty at all.

[Pua]

How? I mean I guess that's what I don't understand, is how LFR actually causes people to quit or a guild to die.

Big question.

If you're in a guild that only really does raiding as a group activity, you'd best hope you're good at it. Coming in to MoP, I think a lot of guilds hit the T14 "wall" (Stone Guards, Elegon or Heart of Fear), which left members ditching for guilds they might have liked less, or just falling in to LFR. Assuming the latter, those players really have to ask why they're bothering with a guild at all if it's not providing them anything.

That lack of social cohesion is, potentially, at the root of all this. When 25-man guilds were at their peak, so were subscriptions; this implies (and I mean IMPLY, not outright prove) there's a link between large guilds and whether players stick or not.

Look at it like this:

A 25-man guild has more room for redundancy (less cancelled raids), more room to try players out (who might be new) and more players (increases the likelihood of players doing "something" together).

I honestly think the destruction of 25-man guilds is the biggest contribution to the subscription loss.

[ObiChad]

Here's a bit of anecdotal data to add to the discussion. Do with it what you will. All of this is talking about 10 man normal raiding unless otherwise specified.

When Wrath was announced, my guild was quite excited about the idea of 10 man raiding. We struggled with numbers all through BC and 10 seemed like a good fit for us. Naxx went fine, Ulduar went slow only downing Yogg after getting some ToC gear and gaining the extend raid ID feature, ToC went pretty quickly, and finally ICC was stready progress after the intro wing until Sindragosa. After one level of ICC nerfs we got Sindy and then after numerous attempts and extends got Arthas. We only did the 10s, so had no help from 25 gear, and at the time fought tooth and nail that 10s could be "hard enough" if you did it with appropriate gear. I've come to accept that's not as true as we thought.

Come Cata we were excited to no longer be second class citizens. In theory the same difficulty level with the same ilvl rewards. Unfortunately we struggled. Be careful what you wish for. We were able to get Cho'gall down right before the patch/nerf but Nefarion proved to be too much. After the patch/nerf it felt almost too easy. Overall we found that tier punishing and we lost raiders going into Firelands. FL only made it worse. Got down Shannox but no further and lost 40% of the raiders. Recruited a bit and then the nerfs hit and we breezed our way up to Rag. Wound up stuck on Rag till Dragon Soul dropped. Knocked off the first four in DS without issue, then slowly knock off boss by boss in the second half due to gear upgrades (some from LFR due to lack of FL gear) and partly due to the gradual nerfs. I think we got Deathwing down after 1 or 2 levels of the nerf.

We all felt conflicted over LFR. Happy it was there, but felt it took away something from our Deathwing kill. That's something we still talk about and struggle with.

Come Mists, with the talk of normal being designed to be a little harder due to the LFR existing, the majority of our raiders just stopped raiding, occasionally doing LFR just to see what was up with the story. And so here we are.

Now this is just one guild, and it's all wrapped up many of us getting older, having kids, etc., but I figured it was worth mentioning.

[Pua]

Here's a bit of anecdotal data to add to the discussion. Do with it what you will. All of this is talking about 10 man normal raiding unless otherwise specified.

When Wrath was announced, my guild was quite excited about the idea of 10 man raiding. We struggled with numbers all through BC and 10 seemed like a good fit for us. Naxx went fine, Ulduar went slow only downing Yogg after getting some ToC gear and gaining the extend raid ID feature, ToC went pretty quickly, and finally ICC was stready progress after the intro wing until Sindragosa. After one level of ICC nerfs we got Sindy and then after numerous attempts and extends got Arthas. We only did the 10s, so had no help from 25 gear, and at the time fought tooth and nail that 10s could be "hard enough" if you did it with appropriate gear. I've come to accept that's not as true as we thought.

Come Cata we were excited to no longer be second class citizens. In theory the same difficulty level with the same ilvl rewards. Unfortunately we struggled. Be careful what you wish for. We were able to get Cho'gall down right before the patch/nerf but Nefarion proved to be too much. After the patch/nerf it felt almost too easy. Overall we found that tier punishing and we lost raiders going into Firelands. FL only made it worse. Got down Shannox but no further and lost 40% of the raiders. Recruited a bit and then the nerfs hit and we breezed our way up to Rag. Wound up stuck on Rag till Dragon Soul dropped. Knocked off the first four in DS without issue, then slowly knock off boss by boss in the second half due to gear upgrades (some from LFR due to lack of FL gear) and partly due to the gradual nerfs. I think we got Deathwing down after 1 or 2 levels of the nerf.

We all felt conflicted over LFR. Happy it was there, but felt it took away something from our Deathwing kill. That's something we still talk about and struggle with.

Come Mists, with the talk of normal being designed to be a little harder due to the LFR existing, the majority of our raiders just stopped raiding, occasionally doing LFR just to see what was up with the story. And so here we are.

Now this is just one guild, and it's all wrapped up many of us getting older, having kids, etc., but I figured it was worth mentioning.

Here's something for you:

"It's fine to share your own anecdotal experience. That is totally legit feedback."

From Ghostcrawler himself, this very evening.

[ObiChad]

Here's something for you:

"It's fine to share your own anecdotal experience. That is totally legit feedback."

From Ghostcrawler himself, this very evening.

That's largely why I decided to post it.

[Deleted]

Here's a bit of anecdotal data to add to the discussion. Do with it what you will. All of this is talking about 10 man normal raiding unless otherwise specified.

When Wrath was announced, my guild was quite excited about the idea of 10 man raiding. We struggled with numbers all through BC and 10 seemed like a good fit for us. Naxx went fine, Ulduar went slow only downing Yogg after getting some ToC gear and gaining the extend raid ID feature, ToC went pretty quickly, and finally ICC was stready progress after the intro wing until Sindragosa. After one level of ICC nerfs we got Sindy and then after numerous attempts and extends got Arthas. We only did the 10s, so had no help from 25 gear, and at the time fought tooth and nail that 10s could be "hard enough" if you did it with appropriate gear. I've come to accept that's not as true as we thought.

Come Cata we were excited to no longer be second class citizens. In theory the same difficulty level with the same ilvl rewards. Unfortunately we struggled. Be careful what you wish for. We were able to get Cho'gall down right before the patch/nerf but Nefarion proved to be too much. After the patch/nerf it felt almost too easy. Overall we found that tier punishing and we lost raiders going into Firelands. FL only made it worse. Got down Shannox but no further and lost 40% of the raiders. Recruited a bit and then the nerfs hit and we breezed our way up to Rag. Wound up stuck on Rag till Dragon Soul dropped. Knocked off the first four in DS without issue, then slowly knock off boss by boss in the second half due to gear upgrades (some from LFR due to lack of FL gear) and partly due to the gradual nerfs. I think we got Deathwing down after 1 or 2 levels of the nerf.

We all felt conflicted over LFR. Happy it was there, but felt it took away something from our Deathwing kill. That's something we still talk about and struggle with.

Come Mists, with the talk of normal being designed to be a little harder due to the LFR existing, the majority of our raiders just stopped raiding, occasionally doing LFR just to see what was up with the story. And so here we are.

Now this is just one guild, and it's all wrapped up many of us getting older, having kids, etc., but I figured it was worth mentioning.

My experience is pretty much this, but with a bit more success.

Main thing I notice between guilds like this and proper progress guilds is the reluctance to throw guildies under the bus to make progress. I quit raid leading for a while because I couldn't face telling those who I had played with for years (been to their home, been out with for a beer, knew them IRL as well) that they had no chance to raid any longer.

In fact, normal mode raiding now I'd be calling hardcore raiding if I had seen it during TBC. If I'd seen all the homework, gearing, reforging, gems, chanting, voip etc it takes just to down a normal mode boss these days back in vanilla I'd assume I was watching pro gaming for cash or some shit.

Thing is, personally I love it. I just don't like the escalting cost to the social side of things either. Devil? Meet deep blue sea.

[Osmeric]

Come Mists, with the talk of normal being designed to be a little harder due to the LFR existing, the majority of our raiders just stopped raiding, occasionally doing LFR just to see what was up with the story. And so here we are.

Notice the phrasing here. Your raiders stopped raiding because of the TALK that normals would be harder. Not criticizing that, just observing it. Players these days have enough experience to have a good notion ahead of time whether something is going to be too hard or not.

And, significantly, that means these players didn't show up in the actual raid stats. So when GC looks at "how many times does the average player wipe before he downs a boss or gives up", he totally misses players like that, who were smart enough to cut their losses at zero wipes.

[ObiChad]

Notice the phrasing here. Your raiders stopped raiding because of the TALK that normals would be harder.

Good point, although I'd point out a lot of our raiders had dropped out during Cata due to difficulty pre-DS, and assumed Mists would be more of the same. Even if the devs had said nothing, I expect many would have dropped due to that assumption.

[Pua]

Good point, although I'd point out a lot of our raiders had dropped out during Cata due to difficulty pre-DS, and assumed Mists would be more of the same. Even if the devs had said nothing, I expect many would have dropped due to that assumption.

I have to admit, I'll be extremely frustrated if they make the Siege of Orgrimmar more similar to Icecrown and Dragon Soul, just to launch the next expansion with Mogu'shan Vaults and Heart of Fear reloaded. I sincerely hope we hear some commentary regarding a solution, and I now know what I hope said solution is.

I just don't think my preference is what they'll go with.