Where have all the Raiders Gone?

[Ragedaug]

Good news! No fight in LFR has a boss with 15 minutes worth of DPS health. Lets not make excuses, you just don't find enjoyment in playing the game anymore. There is literally no reason why playing the game in a raid scenario would make you want to stop playing if your goal is to play the same way in a organized group. Either way you are going to have to spam your single target rotation and your aoe rotation at some point.

Nope, but that was at least a half decent attempt.

I enjoyed struggling in Karazhan for many, many, months before finally beating Prince. I enjoyed wiping to LK normal for 8 weeks. I enjoyed getting our butts handed to us in T11 AND in T14. For me the fun was overcoming the challenge with real life friends that I started the game with. When I see them leave it makes me sad. They are the biggest reason I play WoW. We only killed 4 bosses in T14 since October, but I had fun every single night we were able to scrounge 10 players together to give it our best shot.

In contrast, LFR feels very similar to fighting a target dummy for 15 minutes. It has very little to no resemblance to progression raiding. The groups I've been in don't wipe much, but that still doesn't help it from being more boring than crap. Granted, that's just my opinion, but I can't stand it. I still enjoy a couple other aspects of the game and I still have a few non-raiding friends that play. When they leave, or if/when these last couple things I enjoy aren't fun I'll leave as well. No hyperbole, no big forums "I'm quitting!!" posts...I'll just find a new game to play and play that instead.

[Tomana]

You see, Trion's philosophy, is that you make the player happy, and they will give you money.

And as the result, Rift cannot make it past 500K subs, clearly successful XDDDDDD

---------- Post added 2013-04-11 at 07:50 AM ----------

@Osmeric Are all guilds really listed on websites you watching? Accurate data?

WoWprogress scans WoW armory so it's about as accurate as you can get.

---------- Post added 2013-04-11 at 07:52 AM ----------

You're talking to a Wow fanboy.

And I'm talking to a guy having a WoW human female on an avatar, therefore your argument is invalid. See what I did there?

Game design and player happiness are completely dead last in their method of arguing. He'll scream "9 million" until his mouth foams and his eyes bulge.

The thing is, you can't please anyone and happiness is difficult to measure. Consequently, you replace it with a more objective factor: the numbers of the playerbase. If players are not happy, they leave and it shows. And if you don't trust Blizzard on that, ask Bioware, they can confirm this hypothesis

---------- Post added 2013-04-11 at 07:54 AM ----------

I don't doubt it, my point is that Blizzard hasn't been doing so well lately either.

It's been almost two expansions, and they can't seem to plug this subscriber leak of theirs, no matter what they do.

That's because the MMO market itself is not only saturated, but also leaking in favor of F2P/MOBA and mobile games. Less and less people want to commit a lot of their time to an MMO. Playing LOL or angry birds is less time consuming and more fun.

[rhorle]

CRZ is a symptom, not a cure. CRZ solves nothing, just emphasizes the problem. It gives you all the drawbacks of heavy server without any of the advantages. And when I talk about server tech, I don't mean hardware. I'm sure their hardware is top of the line, but their code just doesn't support flexible server system. Ancient server system is exactly why they still can't figure out how to make "account-bound" heirlooms ACTUALLY account-bound.

CRZ is very "modern" server tech. The lack of account bound heirlooms have nothing to do with their server technology because you know storing information about an heirloom is little different then storing information about a mount or pet. The only difference is the system designed to create that data for the player. They can do it they just haven't done it. Cross realm zones, Cross realm groups, Battle tag and Real ID grouping, account wide achievement and pets and mounts all point to very capable and non archaic sever systems. Your argument might have some merit before Mist of Pandaria but it is hard to take seriously given everything that is possible in Mist of Pandaria.

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...2093?page=3#52
http://blue.mmo-champion.com/topic/201728-heirlooms/

It just isn't a high priority and not something that don't know how to do. They just want to do it right and a way that works with their goals and design intent. You may be fine with a quick and dirty method but your philosophies for the game might not be great for the over all game. You can easily see how damaging some design choices are for the game. That doesn't mean Heirlooms in a quick and dirty cross realm method would be damaging but things can have unintended consequences.

[Glorious Leader]

And what did we get today? Hotfix nerfs for the first 4 bosses. It's nice but it's not enough in my opinion. The nerfs to Horridon are good though. Now people can get past that and then get stuck on tortos for another week or two.

[ray314]

I think the raids are getting completed too quickly and buffs on player and nerf on bosses is making progression much faster.

[Pua]

Good news! No fight in LFR has a boss with 15 minutes worth of DPS health. Lets not make excuses, you just don't find enjoyment in playing the game anymore. There is literally no reason why playing the game in a raid scenario would make you want to stop playing if your goal is to play the same way in a organized group. Either way you are going to have to spam your single target rotation and your aoe rotation at some point.

That reads like you're implying those who don't enjoy LFR don't enjoy raiding, period. I sincerely hope I'm misunderstanding you, because it'd be the most asinine post in the thread.

Back on topic:

I think a pretty key contributor to this is the problem of time expectation. Many here will recall the commentary from the horrible Draztal on the EU forums when the daily quest requirement debate was going on. The largest part of his argument was that dailies weren’t mandatory because you could get better gear in normal raids, particularly from Heart of Fear and the Terrace of Endless Spring. He also kept going on about how, if you were hardcore, why would you want that lower item level gear?

This was where he showed his ignorance.

With the normal T14 designed the way it was, particularly the Heart of Fear, normal raiders weren’t clearing it out. Most were stuck on Garalon, some before that, and the slightly better players were duking it out with An’sok. LFR and dailies were mandatory for normal raiders because they had no other option to defeat normal encounters. Their gearing options were limited to LFR and Valor upgrades when they weren’t killing bosses, which is what made the grind both mandatory and interminable.

That soon became a significant time investment that, I’m assuming, was unintended. Heroic raiders and the ultra casuals might well have been able to dodge LFR and dailies without much ill-effect, but normal raiders couldn’t – it was the only means to a progression end when they got stuck.

Given that fact, is it really that surprising that the number of raiders nosedived?

[Deleted]

And what did we get today? Hotfix nerfs for the first 4 bosses. It's nice but it's not enough in my opinion. The nerfs to Horridon are good though. Now people can get past that and then get stuck on tortos for another week or two.

These won't help?

• Whirl Turtles now have a reduced base movement speed in 10-player Normal difficulty.
• Vampiric Cave Bats now deal less damage in 10-player Normal difficulty.

[Glorious Leader]

These won't help?

• Whirl Turtles now have a reduced base movement speed in 10-player Normal difficulty.
• Vampiric Cave Bats now deal less damage in 10-player Normal difficulty.

It's helpful but that fight has other problems beyond raw numbers. That fight is just to busy i don't know. Trying to heal it as a holy paladin is a fucking nightmare. Constant overload of information, constant split second decision making, constant running around and never having time to actually do my job. I'm used to being able to keep track of a bunch of things, i've done it for years and I'm used to making snap decisions on who to heal and when but combined with the constant running around and constant snap focus on what to dodge and where it's to much.

It's good though I guess. The cave bats shouldn't crack the tank as hard anymore and well I guess if you had trouble dealing with turtles you should be fine. We didn't have trouble with turtles though.

[Vaelorian]

Well let us look at it this way:

I've seen discussions in this thread about why normal is so hard. I've seen 1 post by someone who said: normal is now more catered towards people who are at the very least an organised guild. Because PUG's are effectively been pushed to LFR aswell as any other player who has no time to commit to the game on a scheduled base.

Normals therefor could be made harder and actually provide a challenge for guilds whom normal was always a goal to complete.

Heroics are for the true commited raiders.

----------------
I think there is much wisdom inhere. I do think that the way raids are currently tuned (the 2nd boss of a raid is the hardest instead of the last boss) is a bit daft. Still remember that during TBC (yes TBC) people progressed throughout "old" content. I see people in this thread only doing current content and not being able to defeat the new while they weren't done with the "old" content.

How daft is that? If you don't care about your progress other then "fun" which many of you claim. What makes you think you can go "undergeared" and this "unprepared" into a new higher instance? You think you can down that? Is that the WOTLK/Cata mindset speaking here? Because since those expansion, you could just waltz right into the new content because there was a 5 man dungeon dropping gear that made skipping content that wasn't current anymore, possible.

Now you don't really have that. Yes you get a few upgrades but it is not enough. As in TBC you couldn't go from Karazhan straight into Black Temple or even Sunwell. You would have your ass handed to you. And rightly so because that content wasn't designed for you.

----------------
Now I see people saying that: "but I pay for entertainment and this is not entertainment it is torture!"

Well then I guess LFR is now your domain isn't it? Appearantly your guildlevel of skill wasn't much better then the level of a PUG. Because normal was (during WOTLK/Cata) catered so that PUGS could clear it. Not anymore.

----------------

So is this really the case? Is the guildskilllevel really your issue? Or is the difficulty of normal just too damn high at the moment? I can't answer that. While I only have done 1 PUG (yes I pugged) on normal and came to Horridon as a dps warrior (while I have always have played a holy paladin) I can say that our skilllevel in that PUG was pretty horrid. People were healing really poor and the dps was around 60/120k difference from the lowest to the highest. It wasn't a fun fight. I think we came to the 3rd door and wiped everytime. Tanks were pretty non-experienced as they were newly created alts with sufficient gear, just like my dpswarrior was. So with our 10 man PUG on our first evening we came to door number 3. Whilst I am sure that if I everyone that was there was on their main, we might have downed it on the first evening. And while me about 6 of our group came from guilds that formerly always raided heroic raids... I don't think Horridon could be that devastating unless you are not willing to bash your head against it for while. I am not saying it is easy. Because it clearly isn't easy. But I think Blizzard tuned the fights pretty decent at the moment.

To come back to the topic where the raiders have gone:
They have gone to LFR. They haven't quit they just quit organised raiding. And that hurts the raiding community for fresh recruits. So should be done? Yes indeed, set the difficulty level a bit lower on normal. Not much ofcourse, don't make it a LFR - but a bit less hard wouldn't hurt much I think.

Then again I only do LFR at the moment and probably won't raid in organised for ever again.

[Deleted]

Or is the difficulty of normal just too damn high at the moment? I can't answer that.

Yes, but Blizzard can. Based on the hotfixes they made they think that 10m Normals were too difficult. (This might be a small victory to those who say that 25m is easier.)

Council of Elders

• Decreased the power gain rate of possessed council members in 10-player Normal difficulty.
• Frost King Malakk now deals less damage with each stack of Frostbite in 10-player Normal difficulty.
• Sul the Sandcrawler now deals less damage with Sandbolt in 10-player Normal difficulty.

Durumu the Forgotten

• Disintegration Beam now dissipates sooner before reaching the end of the maze.

Horridon

• Reduced the health of Farraki Wastewalkers, Gurubashi Venom priests, Drakkari Frozen Warlords, and Amani Warbears in the Horridon encounter by 15% in 10-player Normal difficulty.
• Drakkari Frozen Warlord now deals less damage with Mortal Strike in 10-player Normal difficulty.
• Risen Drakkari Champions and Warriors now deals less damage with Deadly Plague in 10-player Normal difficulty.

Tortos

• Whirl Turtles now have a reduced base movement speed in 10-player Normal difficulty.
• Vampiric Cave Bats now deal less damage in 10-player Normal difficulty.

[Vaelorian]

But skill level is most probably NOT the reason they didnt complete it.

Its more likely a logistical problem of not being able to find a leader or reliable raiders to maintain a proper guild.

Lowering raid difficulties doesn't address this problem.

yes there is much truth in this I think

---------- Post added 2013-04-11 at 10:07 AM ----------

Yes, but Blizzard can. Based on the hotfixes they made they think that 10m Normals were too difficult. (This might be a small victory to those who say that 25m is easier.)

Council of Elders

• Decreased the power gain rate of possessed council members in 10-player Normal difficulty.
• Frost King Malakk now deals less damage with each stack of Frostbite in 10-player Normal difficulty.
• Sul the Sandcrawler now deals less damage with Sandbolt in 10-player Normal difficulty.

Durumu the Forgotten

• Disintegration Beam now dissipates sooner before reaching the end of the maze.

Horridon

• Reduced the health of Farraki Wastewalkers, Gurubashi Venom priests, Drakkari Frozen Warlords, and Amani Warbears in the Horridon encounter by 15% in 10-player Normal difficulty.
• Drakkari Frozen Warlord now deals less damage with Mortal Strike in 10-player Normal difficulty.
• Risen Drakkari Champions and Warriors now deals less damage with Deadly Plague in 10-player Normal difficulty.

Tortos

• Whirl Turtles now have a reduced base movement speed in 10-player Normal difficulty.
• Vampiric Cave Bats now deal less damage in 10-player Normal difficulty.

I think this is good news for a lot of people. I doubt tho that there will be more raiders (again) due to this.

[Drekmar]

Well let us look at it this way:

I've seen discussions in this thread about why normal is so hard. I've seen 1 post by someone who said: normal is now more catered towards people who are at the very least an organised guild. Because PUG's are effectively been pushed to LFR aswell as any other player who has no time to commit to the game on a scheduled base.

Normals therefor could be made harder and actually provide a challenge for guilds whom normal was always a goal to complete.

Heroics are for the true commited raiders.

----------------
I think there is much wisdom inhere. I do think that the way raids are currently tuned (the 2nd boss of a raid is the hardest instead of the last boss) is a bit daft. Still remember that during TBC (yes TBC) people progressed throughout "old" content. I see people in this thread only doing current content and not being able to defeat the new while they weren't done with the "old" content.

How daft is that? If you don't care about your progress other then "fun" which many of you claim. What makes you think you can go "undergeared" and this "unprepared" into a new higher instance? You think you can down that? Is that the WOTLK/Cata mindset speaking here? Because since those expansion, you could just waltz right into the new content because there was a 5 man dungeon dropping gear that made skipping content that wasn't current anymore, possible.

Now you don't really have that. Yes you get a few upgrades but it is not enough. As in TBC you couldn't go from Karazhan straight into Black Temple or even Sunwell. You would have your ass handed to you. And rightly so because that content wasn't designed for you.

----------------
Now I see people saying that: "but I pay for entertainment and this is not entertainment it is torture!"

Well then I guess LFR is now your domain isn't it? Appearantly your guildlevel of skill wasn't much better then the level of a PUG. Because normal was (during WOTLK/Cata) catered so that PUGS could clear it. Not anymore.

----------------

So is this really the case? Is the guildskilllevel really your issue? Or is the difficulty of normal just too damn high at the moment? I can't answer that. While I only have done 1 PUG (yes I pugged) on normal and came to Horridon as a dps warrior (while I have always have played a holy paladin) I can say that our skilllevel in that PUG was pretty horrid. People were healing really poor and the dps was around 60/120k difference from the lowest to the highest. It wasn't a fun fight. I think we came to the 3rd door and wiped everytime. Tanks were pretty non-experienced as they were newly created alts with sufficient gear, just like my dpswarrior was. So with our 10 man PUG on our first evening we came to door number 3. Whilst I am sure that if I everyone that was there was on their main, we might have downed it on the first evening. And while me about 6 of our group came from guilds that formerly always raided heroic raids... I don't think Horridon could be that devastating unless you are not willing to bash your head against it for while. I am not saying it is easy. Because it clearly isn't easy. But I think Blizzard tuned the fights pretty decent at the moment.

To come back to the topic where the raiders have gone:
They have gone to LFR. They haven't quit they just quit organised raiding. And that hurts the raiding community for fresh recruits. So should be done? Yes indeed, set the difficulty level a bit lower on normal. Not much ofcourse, don't make it a LFR - but a bit less hard wouldn't hurt much I think.

Then again I only do LFR at the moment and probably won't raid in organised for ever again.

Best. Post. Ever.
Its not possible to disagree with you.

[NeverStop]

Yes, but Blizzard can. Based on the hotfixes they made they think that 10m Normals were too difficult. (This might be a small victory to those who say that 25m is easier.)

Council of Elders

• Decreased the power gain rate of possessed council members in 10-player Normal difficulty.
• Frost King Malakk now deals less damage with each stack of Frostbite in 10-player Normal difficulty.
• Sul the Sandcrawler now deals less damage with Sandbolt in 10-player Normal difficulty.

Durumu the Forgotten

• Disintegration Beam now dissipates sooner before reaching the end of the maze.

Horridon

• Reduced the health of Farraki Wastewalkers, Gurubashi Venom priests, Drakkari Frozen Warlords, and Amani Warbears in the Horridon encounter by 15% in 10-player Normal difficulty.
• Drakkari Frozen Warlord now deals less damage with Mortal Strike in 10-player Normal difficulty.
• Risen Drakkari Champions and Warriors now deals less damage with Deadly Plague in 10-player Normal difficulty.

Tortos

• Whirl Turtles now have a reduced base movement speed in 10-player Normal difficulty.
• Vampiric Cave Bats now deal less damage in 10-player Normal difficulty.

Expect lots of guilds going 6/12 this week.

[PrairieChicken]

Well let us look at it this way:

I've seen discussions in this thread about why normal is so hard. I've seen 1 post by someone who said: normal is now more catered towards people who are at the very least an organised guild. Because PUG's are effectively been pushed to LFR aswell as any other player who has no time to commit to the game on a scheduled base.

Normals therefor could be made harder and actually provide a challenge for guilds whom normal was always a goal to complete.

Heroics are for the true commited raiders.

----------------
I think there is much wisdom inhere. I do think that the way raids are currently tuned (the 2nd boss of a raid is the hardest instead of the last boss) is a bit daft. Still remember that during TBC (yes TBC) people progressed throughout "old" content. I see people in this thread only doing current content and not being able to defeat the new while they weren't done with the "old" content.

How daft is that? If you don't care about your progress other then "fun" which many of you claim. What makes you think you can go "undergeared" and this "unprepared" into a new higher instance? You think you can down that? Is that the WOTLK/Cata mindset speaking here? Because since those expansion, you could just waltz right into the new content because there was a 5 man dungeon dropping gear that made skipping content that wasn't current anymore, possible.

Now you don't really have that. Yes you get a few upgrades but it is not enough. As in TBC you couldn't go from Karazhan straight into Black Temple or even Sunwell. You would have your ass handed to you. And rightly so because that content wasn't designed for you.

----------------
Now I see people saying that: "but I pay for entertainment and this is not entertainment it is torture!"

Well then I guess LFR is now your domain isn't it? Appearantly your guildlevel of skill wasn't much better then the level of a PUG. Because normal was (during WOTLK/Cata) catered so that PUGS could clear it. Not anymore.

----------------

So is this really the case? Is the guildskilllevel really your issue? Or is the difficulty of normal just too damn high at the moment? I can't answer that. While I only have done 1 PUG (yes I pugged) on normal and came to Horridon as a dps warrior (while I have always have played a holy paladin) I can say that our skilllevel in that PUG was pretty horrid. People were healing really poor and the dps was around 60/120k difference from the lowest to the highest. It wasn't a fun fight. I think we came to the 3rd door and wiped everytime. Tanks were pretty non-experienced as they were newly created alts with sufficient gear, just like my dpswarrior was. So with our 10 man PUG on our first evening we came to door number 3. Whilst I am sure that if I everyone that was there was on their main, we might have downed it on the first evening. And while me about 6 of our group came from guilds that formerly always raided heroic raids... I don't think Horridon could be that devastating unless you are not willing to bash your head against it for while. I am not saying it is easy. Because it clearly isn't easy. But I think Blizzard tuned the fights pretty decent at the moment.

To come back to the topic where the raiders have gone:
They have gone to LFR. They haven't quit they just quit organised raiding. And that hurts the raiding community for fresh recruits. So should be done? Yes indeed, set the difficulty level a bit lower on normal. Not much ofcourse, don't make it a LFR - but a bit less hard wouldn't hurt much I think.

Then again I only do LFR at the moment and probably won't raid in organised for ever again.

Gating raids by grinding really has nothing to with skill.

It killed participation for many casual raiders (Who were competent enough to down normals and few heroics, but with panda they just didn't want all the grind fuss and stuck to LFR or quit)

[Glorious Leader]

Gating raids by grinding really has nothing to with skill.

It killed participation for many casual raiders (Who were competent enough to down normals and few heroics, but with panda they just didn't want all the grind fuss and stuck to LFR or quit)

And is only exacerbated by "slow" catch up. What a massive cock up. They fouled this up so much I'm not sure it can be fixed.

[Crashdummy]

Why not clear now? Nerf 10% + overgearing works wonderful. It's different today then in Wrath. Hof and Toes are not worthless content like Ulduar was when ToC came out. There is more content then ever. If you have troubles killing Horridon work harder or finish T14 bosses. Remember, they are still new until you kill them. Finally, tier before last isn't obsolete. If you can't tackle something go try HC MSV, should be ok.
@Osmeric Are all guilds really listed on websites you watching? Accurate data?

*edit I bet same amount of people bitched in Wrath that normals are too hard. Today we have LFR. It wouldn't be sane to have easier and easy difficulty and then super hard.

Who told you they are not trying to clear it now?

The 10% nerf is a joke anyway, because its not a problem of a 5 or 10% nerf. Also, some have cleared them after, the point is, why should you, as a NORMAL PLAYER, have to wait untill the content is old to clear the NORMAL MODE of it?

And no, they arent new untill you killl them, someone just joining WoW doesnt make Molten Core new.

The thing is, Normal raiding should be aimed to NORMAL players, not to heroic ones.

---------- Post added 2013-04-11 at 07:44 AM ----------

But skill level is most probably NOT the reason they didnt complete it.

Its more likely a logistical problem of not being able to find a leader or reliable raiders to maintain a proper guild.

Lowering raid difficulties doesn't address this problem.

Over 70% of raid groups fail because of logistical problems? Are you guys reading the number?

In my opinion, lowering the difficulty does adress the problem, since when the game had lower difficulties the completion rate for normal raids was higher.

[Glorious Leader]

Like it isn't a matter of 5% or 10% for alot of fights. LIke on Tortos, It's just so god damn difficult to ever get a hardcast in as a holy paladin. It honestly feels like some of the fights especially in 10 man just aren't fair for certain comps and punish you for taking them.

[Crashdummy]

I think this is good news for a lot of people. I doubt tho that there will be more raiders (again) due to this.

Not really, because what they need to do is a change in the design philosophy back to the one of the most successful expansion, Wrath, were Normal raids were designed for NORMAL players, not a hotfix a couple of bosses after 6 weeks of them being stupidly overtuned.

It will help to stop some people that were close to leaving though.

[PrairieChicken]

And is only exacerbated by "slow" catch up. What a massive cock up. They fouled this up so much I'm not sure it can be fixed.

I'm sure that without the honor PVP gear(the 'only' realistic catchup method - elder charm of 28.50 gold is not a catchup) the ToT participation would have dropped even more.

Back to TBC days where people pvpd to pve


Oh plus massive iLvl requirements(500~515), which is quite time consuming to achieve without any catchups

[Deleted]

Main reason is LFR, other is raids are getting harder when it comes to tactics. People who were top raiders in Classic and TBC WoW are not necessarily able to be like that anymore so they quit.

There are more and more fights where you have to be on your toes the whole fight now, that wasn't the case with TBC and the original where raids were mostly piss easy when it comes to individual performance.