Whose guild has "died" after the Thanksgiving break?

[Marrilaife]

I can confirm that titanforge got turned down a lot. In Legion I'd gladly do HC reclears with some shitter recruits or pugs or whatnot because there was a real chance to get an upgrade. Right now Normal is dead and HC is really bad as not many geared characters do this. I maybe saw 3-4 Titanforges raidwide worth a damn in BFA. In Legion there was a nice titanforge at least once each run for somebody.

I swear in Legion people argued titanforged is not that common, it's just perception because we only remember the crazy titanforges...

Well I'm still wearing 390 + socket hc gloves that I got early on and couldn't replace all this time in Uldir, because the titanforge was so high. Only 1 big item like that on my main, but I was never super lucky to be decked in titanforges in every slot. I feel in Legion a lot of my titanforges had something to do with weekly m+ chest having +20 ilvl over dungeon drops as far as I remember, and now it's only +10 (+15 on azerite but those don't "forge" by default). So yeah lots of my alts ran around in these "mythic 15 titanforged" items due to how weekly reward was auto-titanforged.

Across my few alts I've seen quite a decent amount of titanforges, however often they're "wasted" titanforges for example 340 emissary item upgrading to 360 but I already have a 370 item. Nevertheless it still happens.

[ro9ue]

This is interesting. What content was there in Legion that we don't have now?

Legitimate question, since I've barely played this expansion.

Collecting Artifact skins and working on each alt's class hall campaign. And then later the class titles/mounts and mage towers. After having unique content across all my alts (12 classes) it's hard to go down to 2 (1 for each faction).

Gotta catch em all is a great motivator. The artifact skins were super unique and each class had what, 24 to unlock per spec... 72 per class.... 864.

[Marrilaife]

You also have 4 item slots that can't TF. One being your neck nothing drops there at all now, the 3 azerite pieces still eat up spots on the loot table but will always be the same. So smaller bits can TF even if they do the stats on those pieces are so much smaller. The difference between 5 or 10 item level on bracers is tiny and if it isn't the stats you want not worth it at all. Then you have weapons which can only WF so really you have 5 things that cant do anything. Heroic isn't worth trying to farm for most due to how easily dummies can fuck up a few of the fights in there too. Mix in the lack luster loot table on half the bosses and nobody bothers.

Tbh I can't remember myself ever farming heroic "for titanforges", only reason why in legion I was pushed towards running lower difficulties was "for legendaries" and tbh can't say it was great design, people were burning out left and right, I remember so many people quit during Nighthold and Tomb and so many guilds disbanded, running the same raid on 3-4 difficulty levels, then old raids, then m0s and all the mind-numbing content because apparently m+ was deemed the lowest legendary blp / drop chance contributor per unit of time spent (tons of threads about that back then) you had to run low, zergable content if you were missing a crucial legendary for your spec, because that maximized your blp per hour of playtime.

In Antorus, once I had all the legendaries set and upgraded, I don't think I stepped into heroic on my main, except last boss for trinket upgrade (that took a bit as well). I ran it on several alts though.

The Uldir loot table is a problem of its own, it feels like every week we're just getting a pile of cloaks. There are dire gaps in itemization, for example there's only one agility 2h weapon for all your brewmasters, bears, ferals and survival hunters, while there are 2 goddamn daggers that only 2 specs of 1 class use in the game, and 2 ranged weapons (bow & gun) that also only 2 specs use on 1 class. Azerite is lackluster, with usually having 1 item for 1 slot (for example only 1 plate shoulder) and then other 2 slots having 2 items, there's a high probability none of them have your BIS trait (not counting 1 mandatory archive for reorigination array). There are 3 rings but none of it have versatility, if you happen to prefer that stat.

Another problem is class design in relation to loot. If you create a loot table where every stat appears on average as often as any other, but then you create a class / spec design mix where easily 80% of the specs prefer haste, that's a huge issue. Just check the price of gems, at least on my server haste gems are easily 20x more expensive than mastery gems. I know fixing classes is mission: impossible for Blizzard so at least adjust loot tables so specific stats are more prevalent on specific armor types depending what stats are specs balanced around.

P.S. Also what the hell are the trinkets. How come my 355 DMC is outsimming mythic Uldir trinkets.

[Frostyfire14]

Yup, I raid on 2 characters, in two difference guilds. Both have died due to attendance.

[Kokolums]

This is interesting. What content was there in Legion that we don't have now?

Legitimate question, since I've barely played this expansion.

It didn't have azerite armor. I look at azerite armor and I think to myself "you mean i have to keep ALL of these pieces because they are rebalancing and altering classes and affixes so any of these could turn out to be BiS at any time?" Eff that. That is a headache.

The Mage Tower kept me going as well. I assumed from the start that they would slowly nerf mage tower and that the correct move was to build up every class and then blitz the tower at the very end, which I did and went 22/36. I was working on Brewmaster Monk for 23/36 literally in the final 3 hours before they shut it down. Got close a couple of times. I made it a goal to get at least 1 mage tower skin for every class and achieved that at least.

[nekobaka]

Historically once. Generally though I have found the guilds I have been in to slow down between thanksgiving and new years. After that things pick up. Definitely had a lot of nostalgia raid runs around Christmas time.

[Elestia]

I'm not sure we played the same expansion? EN was really badly tuned intro raid, much due to Blizzards inability to tune their own RNG designs. The stress of grinding before EN progression really sucked (remember all those endless Maw runs?) and titanforging made sure you sharded most of the loot you got during your progression. It was one of the worst designed raid experiences in long time.

I'd agree it was miserable for people that made it miserable for themselves.

Heroic EN was cleared by my guild on day one -- that's an awesome experience. Mythic EN was engaging and easy enough loot pinata for Nighthold. Imo, most of the anxiety at the beginning was adjusting to the new systems that were being introduced. They ended up working because they didn't ultimately interfere with how people liked to play.

Everyone with half a brain knew AP grinding was a fight for marginal gain with little benefit. I'd point out that at least you had a reasonable option to maximize your artifact progression at a heavy pace if you so chose. BfA scaling makes grinding the azerite levels impossible - just to churn out more $$$. People deserve to find their own standard of what they feel is efficient progression, worth their time and when, especially when as a consumer you're being forced to pay into a timegate. By this point in Legion, people had complete artifact trees. I'd bet less that half of players now have full azerite unlocks, exaulted with champions and over level 25 averaged.

With Legion, doing the Suramar story and emissary daily for AP was easy mode and quite enjoyable whereas content was tied to progression in a meaningful way. M+ was bonus loot - take it or leave it. Halls of Valor was a bonus too -- The game itself felt like it was providing which is what BfA is starved of which is simple old fashioned easy mode WoW grind. The happy medium where everything feels obtainable where you can do what you want.

BfA improvements? Rep requirements have to go. Have the rewards, ditch the gear -- put the gear upgrades where they belong: crafting. Implement a rigorous rule set that governs server sharding for world pvp and communicate this to the playerbase. Ditch azerite traits on gear - put green stats back on helm shoulders and chest. Make traits unlockable similar to pvp talent selection. Eliminate neutral bland traits, maybe incorporate more of what we knew from Legion traits. Finally, put a damn cap on AP that is obtainable in X hours and be done with it. Let players see it, know it and work on it on their own pace and time - otherwise noone cares about it while simultaneously crying about learning the same trait 5 times because their armor is high level.

[Dylamoo]

Most of my guild quit a few weeks before thanksgiving. Now we have the opposite reason, we hate titanforge, and we hate RNG. With masterloot gone it made things not bearable to play. The mechanics of the game are good pve wise, we like the difficulty in pve and mythic+ but drew a line because things became too casual friendly. It's probably a sign that WoW isn't for people like us anymore.

[lummiuster]

I agree that it's dumb how gear power affects (or doesn't) rated PvP. Not sure that I agree the difference between a fresh 120 and a max geared 120 is 5-10%, which is what I think you said. Since the stat optimization is so much better on the latter and you get the advantage of optimized trinkets and azerite traits I feel like the difference is quite a bit more, but whatever. I also think it is strange that you put a sweeping statement that is true only of rated PvP in this thread as a reason raids have fallen apart, but whatever on that too.

Because most people in my previous guild, were raiding mythic just to get better gear for PVP superiority. I never understood why people would want gear if it's not for this lol. What's the point of farming normal Uldir gear to be strong enough to raid the same fuckin raid in heroic dificulty and then again in mythic lol. I thought the fun was that all this effort would reward you with super powerful gear that would help you wreck havoc in WPVP/PVP.
BTW trinkets are heavily diminished in PVP (50-75%). Except PVP trinkets. Same thing with azerite traits. The damage difference between geared and non-geared is little, secondary stats do have a bigger weight but still not enough.

[Reachie]

Ours died mid-October. I had played with some of these people since VANILLA.

Reasons why people quit:

M+ is absolutely terrible now; it was great in legion, but no point in running it now.
The amount of classes that for some reason have a huge lack of interest and fun.
Removal of Master Looter ruined the raiding experience for a lot of us; going 3 weeks with no upgrades due to RNG makes the game not fun.
Warfront and Island Expeditions are pointless and bring no value.

After all of this; we realized; why do we play a game that has zero fun?

Maybe I'm just cynical, but a few of us started playing Vanilla on one of those private servers and haven't had this much fun in a long time.

Stupid I know, but pretty sad how bad this expansion is.

[FelPlague]

Only thing that springs to mind is the Mage Tower. I didn’t like Legion either for the record. 7.2 was one of the most underwhelming patches we’ve ever had and 7.3 wasn’t exactly impressive. 7.1 just added a mini raid and mega dungeon.

7.1 also added the new world quests, wotlk pets, new nagrand arean map, honor talent rework, alcaz island stuff, suramar campaign, new profession stuff.
also new emotes.

[HuxNeva]

This is bullshit dude. 8.1 is a way bigger patch than 7.1 was. And you are comparing a 3 boss raid (Trial of Valor) to a 9 boss raid. Trial of Valor was a good raid, and i would agree that it could make up for a 9 boss raid if it was shit, but as far as im aware the consensus is that the dazar'alor raid is great.

Except we were in Nighthold 2 weeks sooner than we will be in BfA's second raid, and that is without a small filler raid to keep us ticking over, or legendaries to chase.
Compared to Legion, BfA's release schedule is glacial and that is why people feel the 'content drought'

[Alopex Major]

Collecting Artifact skins and working on each alt's class hall campaign. And then later the class titles/mounts and mage towers. After having unique content across all my alts (12 classes) it's hard to go down to 2 (1 for each faction).

Gotta catch em all is a great motivator. The artifact skins were super unique and each class had what, 24 to unlock per spec... 72 per class.... 864.

Don't forget Suramar. While it personally wasn't my taste, a lot of people loved it, and it was a lot of story/content to do at max level.

[Thestuff1992]

Except we were in Nighthold 2 weeks sooner than we will be in BfA's second raid, and that is without a small filler raid to keep us ticking over, or legendaries to chase.
Compared to Legion, BfA's release schedule is glacial and that is why people feel the 'content drought'

There also isn’t much to do even with 8.1 coming out next week. 8.1 fixes shit that should’ve been fixed in beta so it doesn’t really add much aside from a new warfront, legion invasion WQs 2.0 and currency farming (which is a good step but the content still sucks so..)

Look at what @FelPlague posted about 7.1. It actually had a ton of shit for everyone. I loved the suramar campaign weekly quests, honor talent rework was decent for my class, etc. Alcaz island was actually pretty cool too, went there with some buddies to see what was up and enjoyed the time.

8.1 has nothing like that really. It adds reskinned world quests from legion (yay more of the same shit we already did!), a warfront and currency vendors for warfronts and islands however both of those are still very boring.

We killed mythic ghuun last month and we talked about burnout yesterday. Basically everyone’s just gonna chill until the new raid comes out however islands are still “required” until you hit neck level 33. Not like there’s much to do but all of us were happy at this point during legion aside from the legendary grind on top of AP grind. Can really feel the difference in quality here.

TLDR: Mythic+ used to be the way to grind AP which was fun but now it’s islands (aka brain dead trash grind simulator), legendaries allowed old content to be repeatable even though the acquisition method and drop chances were all fucked up, artifacts were much more fun to progress than azerite armor so the grind was better as a result (unlocking +10% damage to X ability every 5 or so levels is boring, but unlocking that every level on the way to getting a big ability felt great), Suramar campaign was interesting and fun for me personally. Difference is massive imo.

[kaintk]

I'm not surprised that guilds are dying. There's not much to do in this expansion and it feels like we're in a content drought despite it only being the first patch. 8.1 isn't doing enough to fix that.

yeah after only a few month,nothing left to do apart from the raid, wq =boring and serve nothing since azerite only unlock power, dont power them like in legion, no leg to farm = meh, mm+ being = you do your week chest and thats all, so the day of reset , you do some thing for 1-2 hour and the other 6 days are like = MEH.. !

they kept the boring grinding of legion but removed all the things that was fun in it, like power your artefact or the leg ding, even table mission are boring to do since the gold mission is so low, it's not worth it, so why leveling other alts ?

bfa = boring for all

[Moggie]

they kept the boring grinding of legion but removed all the things that was fun in it, like power your artifact or the leg ding, even table mission are boring to do since the gold mission is so low, it's not worth it, so why leveling other alts ?

bfa = boring for all

Key point here. Blizz removed all the rewards and kept the same type of annoying grind going. Least in Legion, there were gold, leggos, paragon mounts, etc... even hidden things were around to do. Now? You’re still grinding your artifact weapon but it’s now in the form of a necklace and the traits 3/4th the time aren’t even worth it. As many problems legendaries brought to the table, least they added a layer to the classes. Blizz took those away and even more pruning happened so not much left there. It pains me when folks whine about paragon mounts and not wanting those...well played, the same folks thought ML was a great decision, or getting rid of leggos was awesome, or even (this made me chuckle) so many people applauded having an artifact neck instead of a weapon without giving much thoughts to how it was all being implemented (and folks in Alpha and Beta were desperately trying to get Blizz to listen).

Tier? Gone, so even raiding feels super underwhelming and when you do it’s all about TF on things you probably already have, plus each class lost their identity with tier bonuses and looks. That’s bigger than folks realized. Still waiting for Blizz to show off their hard work on gear appearances, all of which currently look like a lvl 20 green you got from a quest... let’s forget ML fiasco. Had they left it for guild groups, it’d be fine but enforcing it and forcing raiders to endure the RNG boss is demeaning and not fun. You may have gotten lucky with gear, but guarantee many others in the same raid got screwed by RNG. And their overall raid design this tier is an absolute mess, an area Blizz generally shines. Uldr is not that good, and not too well received. Class stacking is acceptable, sometimes. Not nearly every boss. That’s a design failure.

Islands, just another name for Scenarios a la MoP. We’ve been there, done that. Warfronts I consider a huge disaster the way it’s planned out... which is to say, it isn’t well planned and absolutely useless for players as a whole...but let’s put hotfix in for ilvl requirement to prevent alts from using it to gear (the original community idea for it since main’s generally don’t need anything there). Alts are super tedious to bother with nowadays and not very fun.

Hell, even the quests leveling up were not very well done overall vs every other expansion.

So, overall it’s not surprising guilds and teams are breaking up or throwing in the towels. It’s too early to tell whether it’ll go down as the worse expansion, but so far it’s not looking super good. Least WoD had the good raids going for it. >.<

[Marrilaife]

Key point here. Blizz removed all the rewards and kept the same type of annoying grind going. Least in Legion, there were gold, leggos, paragon mounts, etc... even hidden things were around to do. Now? You’re still grinding your artifact weapon but it’s now in the form of a necklace and the traits 3/4th the time aren’t even worth it. As many problems legendaries brought to the table, least they added a layer to the classes. Blizz took those away and even more pruning happened so not much left there. It pains me when folks whine about paragon mounts and not wanting those...well played, the same folks thought ML was a great decision, or getting rid of leggos was awesome, or even (this made me chuckle) so many people applauded having an artifact neck instead of a weapon without giving much thoughts to how it was all being implemented (and folks in Alpha and Beta were desperately trying to get Blizz to listen).

You're attributing BFA problems solely to reward structure, however adding a reward to crappy content makes game tedious, not fun.

Biggest problem is class design. Your character and its gameplay is the most important way you interact with the game. If people find their spec bad, clunky, slow, weak, lacking tools to deal with various situations in pve or pvp, frustrating to play (problems like too much rng in rotation, feast or famine resource flow, dead talents) then of course their motivation to play drops by a lot. For some reason wherever I turn, I see havoc demon hunters. Why? Because the spec has everything it needs to be fun. But there are many specs that just feel lacking.

Another problem is how fun is the content. Adding bigger rewards to the same boring grind doesn't make it any less boring. What if instead of braindead islands and warfronts we would get a proper player housing system, or some treasure hunt minigame for actually worthy treasures, or solo challenges. You can't appeal to everyone, but things like paragon reps and islands seem to appeal to next to no one, only people who like them are people who like the rewards from them, not the content itself.

[Revak]

I remember reading a post where they clearly stated the main problem of BfA: it feels like we're at the end of an expansion cycle and experience the usual content drought. The only difference here is that BfA is not at its end but at its beginning which is a horrible sign for the longevity of this expansion. We have to deal with this mess for 1.5 years. 8.1 doesn't change anything, at best 8.2 can make it better (which is highly unlikely though).

This is exactly how it feels IMO. For me, at the end of every expansion (except TBC) I've felt like there isn't a lot to do. I turn to leveling alts, farming mog/mounts (since Cata), etc. I've already started doing that in this one (plus I just finished getting the void set). I really like the zones (especially Drustvar), but I'm bored to death in this game.

[Nyel]

This is exactly how it feels IMO. For me, at the end of every expansion (except TBC) I've felt like there isn't a lot to do. I turn to leveling alts, farming mog/mounts (since Cata), etc. I've already started doing that in this one (plus I just finished getting the void set). I really like the zones (especially Drustvar), but I'm bored to death in this game.

The question is, how could Blizzard f* up this much when they did almost everything right with Legion. It's like they went from 100% to 10% within an expansion cycle. Why? Nobody knows. Cost savings?

How is it possible that a 4 month old expansion feels like we're in the content drought after its last content patch. Honestly. And nothing really changes until the raid opens which is another 5-8 weeks away.

[Aftermathhqt]

My guild has been essentially dead since mid-October, and is pretty much completely dead now.

8.1 isn't generating much excitement by itself, and the next raid not coming out until January or February is way too long.

For context:

Legion Launch Date - 8/30/16
Legion First Raid Launch Date - 9/20/16 (3 weeks post launch)
Legion First Major Patch Date - 10/25/16 (8 weeks post launch)
Legion Second Raid Launch Date - 11/8/16 (7 weeks post first raid)

BfA Launch Date - 8/14/18 (nearly 3 months more time to build than Legion)
BfA First Raid Launch Date - 9/4/18 (3 weeks post launch)
BfA First Major Patch Date - 12/11/18 (17 weeks post launch - aka more than twice as long as Legion)
BfA Second Raid Launch Date - 1/22/19 (Estimated) (20 weeks post first raid - aka nearly 3 times as long as Legion)

So, not only did Blizz kick out an objectively lesser expansion compared to Legion, they are incredibly slow in continuing with the expansion. Blizz themselves are what is killing the guilds and this game.

Cause Trial of Valor was such Major Raid Tier yeah, no not really, that meant there was 34 WEEKS before Nighthold was out.