Are raids becoming less popular?

[Itori]

Raids in WoW retail feel like they’re in the process of being phased out, but other games they still thrive. I log on weekly in ffxiv, lotro, gw2, and classic vanilla/wotlk to do raids.

[Arai]

Raiding needs 10m Mythic and day 1 crossrealm. That would already fix a ton of issues and I would actually come back to the game. Also remove the specific lockout for Mythic so people cant actually progress instead of ending up in a dead ID after the 1st or 2nd boss.

[Soon-TM]

Raids in WoW retail feel like they’re in the process of being phased out, but other games they still thrive. I log on weekly in ffxiv, lotro, gw2, and classic vanilla/wotlk to do raids.

If WoW raids become even half of accessible as those in FF14, they might have a chance. But with the way they are being handled atm (and have for quite some time) they will become a relic of the past more sooner than later.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

Raiding started to shallow breathe since they clipped out 10 man heroic (mythic of today). It's only continued to get worse. I get that maybe they can make better encounters or it feels more epic lines of thinking when they bumped it to 20, and I generally agree with these points, but the truth is 10 man raids let a lot more groups form and feel like they are engaging in the higher content. In general, with an activity in a game the more groups rolling in the highest difficulty the more successful it becomes. It's easier for more people to be social and looser amongst fewer people as well. Plus we saw it play out live, 25 man's collapsed fairly quickly once 10s hit the streets. That didn't just happen for no reason. It's what people wanted and enjoyed.

It's another example of them tunnel visioning on a very small sliver of the playerbases needs and trying to force the majority others to conform to it instead of the other way around which would have keeps the game mode way more popular.

It's a shame really. But they wanted WoW to become some esports machine and it isolated a huge part of its fanbase away from it. Now with esports in the grips of a downgrade the ones left attached to that style of game scoot along to more promising ventures.

[jeezusisacasual]

I tend to think that they are aiming for a portion of the gaming community that is shrinking more so then growing. This expansion has been fantastic in the raiding sense since it became more drop in and drop out but no one really plays WoW as a long term game anymore and this is just the way gaming has happened for a large period of time. Look at the seasonal drop offs for other active online games to see the trends which is why i assume people get angry at the Diabloifcation of WoW but if it went back to prior to catch up mechanics we would see even less recoup once new DLC / Season comes out this is why i say they are not just competing against other MMOs but every single online game is competing with one another regardless of genre.

The encounters up until recently have been requiring to much procession and felt like herding cats which the smaller raid groups a leg up. When you require specific buffs and debuffs it does not seem as a perk instead of makes them feel bad when they do not have them since we already know what a world with none of that shit is like. The proliferation of buffs has not brought the community together like it was supposed to but instead create more division since its a tangible gain. They could fix this by making a hunter bring every single raid buff or debuff based on a pet ( or a pet sac like for the marksmen out there ) but they still can not explain how they expect those classes to be brought in a heavily min/maxed game like WoW.

Also raids are not repeatable and require to much effort in organizing and maintaining but lets look past that when compared to modern life, kids, pets, sporting events, childrens sporting events, overtime commitments, a raiding schedule kind of falls by the wayside and its no mistake why bother with it since most of the people who are dealing with those things i listed above are pushing cutting edge content either m+ or raiding. Balance should be for the everyman not the top.

- - - Updated - - -

can we like... make raid..... like............

Raid heroic+ or raid mythic+ something? Something something u know and yah rewarding

raiding is already the quickest way to gear with the best weapons and trinkets yet no one still gives a shit so idk.

[NineSpine]

I've been playing on and off for almost 19 years now and I'm fairly convinced they've arbitrarily rigged it and made it a hassle to let people that are willing to push past all the bullshit feel superior. It maybe sounds weird, but I really do think it's catered toward the superiority complex demographic. Just be willing to waste a lot of your time and you'll get past the arbitrary bullshit that filters out most people and you get to feel superior to them and get your fix.

It's painfully obvious how correct you are.

[Itisamuh]

I've been playing on and off for almost 19 years now and I'm fairly convinced they've arbitrarily rigged it and made it a hassle to let people that are willing to push past all the bullshit feel superior. It maybe sounds weird, but I really do think it's catered toward the superiority complex demographic. Just be willing to waste a lot of your time and you'll get past the arbitrary bullshit that filters out most people and you get to feel superior to them and get your fix.

I doubt they consciously think of it in such terms but this is very likely true. No different than some jobs requiring a college degree when someone off the street could do the job just as well with the same amount of on the job training that the degree holder would need anyway. Going through arbitrary and often irrelevant nonsense to prove yourself worthy of deserving the reward seems to be a thing for some reason.

[Donkeywing]

Raiding started to shallow breathe since they clipped out 10 man heroic (mythic of today). It's only continued to get worse. I get that maybe they can make better encounters or it feels more epic lines of thinking when they bumped it to 20, and I generally agree with these points, but the truth is 10 man raids let a lot more groups form and feel like they are engaging in the higher content. In general, with an activity in a game the more groups rolling in the highest difficulty the more successful it becomes. It's easier for more people to be social and looser amongst fewer people as well. Plus we saw it play out live, 25 man's collapsed fairly quickly once 10s hit the streets. That didn't just happen for no reason. It's what people wanted and enjoyed.

It's another example of them tunnel visioning on a very small sliver of the playerbases needs and trying to force the majority others to conform to it instead of the other way around which would have keeps the game mode way more popular.

It's a shame really. But they wanted WoW to become some esports machine and it isolated a huge part of its fanbase away from it. Now with esports in the grips of a downgrade the ones left attached to that style of game scoot along to more promising ventures.

You're making half a dozen wild assumptions you cannot prove and are far-fetched at best, you sound like a crazy conspiracy theorist if you think 20m was done for 'esport' reasons. Accusing blizzard of tunnel vision is absurd when they made a compromise down to 20. Hc and normal are flex (10) and there's hardcore small group content in the form of m+ (5).

You're conveniently only considerate of the immediate casual effects without being willing to look further down the line. As you pointed out, larger guilds died (and this was mostly because it's much easier to organise a smaller group, but w/e). So obviously 10m mythic would become the dominant mode sooner or later. This wouldn't be a radical assumption.

As 10m becomes the dominant mode, and with intense meta slaving prevalent amongst the entire wow community, many people will actually be left out. It was hard to get into a 10m guild (because spots are very limited, obviously), but with the modern meta slaving going on you absolutely need to either play the correct class or be a multiclasser raider. The 10m mythic mode would, in effect, isolate a huge chunck of players, because they litteraly won't be able to get into 10m guilds considering the current environment. Just like they can't get into weekly 16s easily which have lfr difficulty. If you would be willing to look a bit further along the casual chain and the current context, then you should see why bringing back 10m mythic brings more trouble than its worth. M+ is litteraly demontrating and proving undeniably that people get left out for playing the wrong class etc, and the pressure in m+ is significantly lower.

The only one with tunnel vision is you. You have an obvious bias and accusing others of suffering your syndrome is degenerate.

[jeezusisacasual]

You're making half a dozen wild assumptions you cannot prove and are far-fetched at best, you sound like a crazy conspiracy theorist if you think 20m was done for 'esport' reasons. Accusing blizzard of tunnel vision is absurd when they made a compromise down to 20. Hc and normal are flex (10) and there's hardcore small group content in the form of m+ (5).

You're conveniently only considerate of the immediate casual effects without being willing to look further down the line. As you pointed out, larger guilds died (and this was mostly because it's much easier to organise a smaller group, but w/e). So obviously 10m mythic would become the dominant mode sooner or later. This wouldn't be a radical assumption.

As 10m becomes the dominant mode, and with intense meta slaving prevalent amongst the entire wow community, many people will actually be left out. It was hard to get into a 10m guild (because spots are very limited, obviously), but with the modern meta slaving going on you absolutely need to either play the correct class or be a multiclasser raider. The 10m mythic mode would, in effect, isolate a huge chunck of players, because they litteraly won't be able to get into 10m guilds considering the current environment. Just like they can't get into weekly 16s easily which have lfr difficulty. If you would be willing to look a bit further along the casual chain and the current context, then you should see why bringing back 10m mythic brings more trouble than its worth. M+ is litteraly demontrating and proving undeniably that people get left out for playing the wrong class etc, and the pressure in m+ is significantly lower.

The only one with tunnel vision is you. You have an obvious bias and accusing others of suffering your syndrome is degenerate.

As someone who has never played the Meta tank this expansion i have not had a single issue at all for mythic plus and if you are going to say that a tank and healer are meta-less it would be wise to include that in your language. I will be coming back to the game next week to make it piss easy to be the same gear level as the more try hard or dedicated and will see first hand altho i did get KSH in june. Also where is the data to showcase that 16's are as easy as LFR? I mean if its so obvious and concrete you can clearly and easily showcase that right? Now i am not being a smug brit but honestly i think you are incorrect.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

You're making half a dozen wild assumptions you cannot prove and are far-fetched at best, you sound like a crazy conspiracy theorist if you think 20m was done for 'esport' reasons. Accusing blizzard of tunnel vision is absurd when they made a compromise down to 20. Hc and normal are flex (10) and there's hardcore small group content in the form of m+ (5).

You're conveniently only considerate of the immediate casual effects without being willing to look further down the line. As you pointed out, larger guilds died (and this was mostly because it's much easier to organise a smaller group, but w/e). So obviously 10m mythic would become the dominant mode sooner or later. This wouldn't be a radical assumption.

As 10m becomes the dominant mode, and with intense meta slaving prevalent amongst the entire wow community, many people will actually be left out. It was hard to get into a 10m guild (because spots are very limited, obviously), but with the modern meta slaving going on you absolutely need to either play the correct class or be a multiclasser raider. The 10m mythic mode would, in effect, isolate a huge chunck of players, because they litteraly won't be able to get into 10m guilds considering the current environment. Just like they can't get into weekly 16s easily which have lfr difficulty. If you would be willing to look a bit further along the casual chain and the current context, then you should see why bringing back 10m mythic brings more trouble than its worth. M+ is litteraly demontrating and proving undeniably that people get left out for playing the wrong class etc, and the pressure in m+ is significantly lower.

The only one with tunnel vision is you. You have an obvious bias and accusing others of suffering your syndrome is degenerate.

I'm sorry your upset and your feelings are valid. If the meta is so dominate its a class balance issue and not a raid size one. I see Max make videos were he says you can't bring a hunter to raid for this and that even with 20. So that problem isn't solved by it being 20 or 10 but by making sure class design is correct. Of course you can argue world first problem here but the same thing can be said about its a 30 key problem.

Then you bring up the only reason larger guilds died because it's easier to organize. This sounds like people liked easier to organize? So.. people liked it more? The case you you to why it wasn't good is.. the reason they liked it more wasn't a good reason. But... they liked it more still. Interesting.

Then you capping it off with an insult was sweet. Probably reached the point of realizing you dropped a wall of text saying:

-current raid size solves meta slave (doesnt)
-people liked it better but they liked it for this reason (lol)
-you have syndrome cap stone (the reach)

[Soon-TM]

I've been playing on and off for almost 19 years now and I'm fairly convinced they've arbitrarily rigged it and made it a hassle to let people that are willing to push past all the bullshit feel superior. It maybe sounds weird, but I really do think it's catered toward the superiority complex demographic. Just be willing to waste a lot of your time and you'll get past the arbitrary bullshit that filters out most people and you get to feel superior to them and get your fix.

I don't think it's necessarily something they are aiming for, but rather a consequence of Ion (and probably other high level devs as well) being a very "settled in his ways" kind of guy, who tends to repeat a lot of mistakes from the past just because "it has always been like that". He and his team evidently don't realise that the core playerbase of WoW is more than 30, maybe even 40 years old, so the majority of them just doesn't have the time or patience to put up with all the bullshit attached to raiding. Despite the claim of " raiding being more accessible than ever", the amount of unfun things required for raiding has stayed more or less the same since @#%&ing Vanilla. Even for LFR, aka the "tourist mode", you need to spend nearly an hour in queue - and you get nothing but WQ lvls of gear for your troubles. Top engaging content, you see.

It also doesn't help that Ion started as a raid designer himself. And as the saying goes, "when the only tool you know well is a hammer, all the problems start to look like nails".

[Loveliest]

Meta slaving in 10m mythic raiding will be much more severe. The spots are very restricted and there's much more pressure in a mythic guild than a m+ team. It will not be any easier, m+ already demonstrated that hardcore meta slaving isn't a positive.

The 10m you lot are remembering will not be the same 10m today considering the current state of the community.

What do you prefer? Not raiding at all mythic because you don't have 20 ppl or the issue of meta slaving as you call it (that tbh will only happen for wannabe guilds).

[Donkeywing]

I'm sorry your upset and your feelings are valid. If the meta is so dominate its a class balance issue and not a raid size one. I see Max make videos were he says you can't bring a hunter to raid for this and that even with 20. So that problem isn't solved by it being 20 or 10 but by making sure class design is correct. Of course you can argue world first problem here but the same thing can be said about its a 30 key problem.

No amount of class balance can solve meta dominance when the spots are that tight. The entire class design structure would need to be revamped. Not just raid buffs, but also things like gateway and healthstones need to be reviewed if 10m mythic becomes the dominant mode (unless you're fine with warlock being an auto pick with 6 dps slots at best). While restructering class design is not impossible, it would be a huge undertaking just to accommodate a smaller raid size for only mythic raiding. Is that really worth it?

These are not just world first or 30 key problems. The smaller the size gets the more important and impactful your raid composition becomes as each individual carries greater weight. Having an off-meta class in such a comp will relatively weigh you down a lot more. Considering the pressure in mythic raiding to perform (and this pressure exceeds far beyond world first) meta selections will be a major issue, far worse than in m+ currently because that mode has relatively lenient group bonding and there isn't as much on the line in comparison.

The m+ meta situation is demonstrating how big of a problem it can be in smaller group content. You cannot ignore that. These issues will be even greater in organised mythic raiding if the mode is brought down to 10. This is in fact the best argument against 10m mythic right now. The game & community changed. Arguing in favour of 10m along the lines of outdated parameters is foolish.

[Relapses]

What do you prefer? Not raiding at all mythic because you don't have 20 ppl or the issue of meta slaving as you call it (that tbh will only happen for wannabe guilds).

This is just patently false. Meta-slaving will absolutely happen. It happened when 10M Heroic was a thing and there's absolutely no reason to believe it won't happen again. The main difference between the game now and when 10M Heroic raiding was a thing is that the game has moved away from homogenization. This means it'll be even worse this time around.

If you want 10M Heroic raiding just wait a few months for Cataclysm Classic.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

No amount of class balance can solve meta dominance when the spots are that tight. The entire class design structure would need to be revamped. Not just raid buffs, but also things like gateway and healthstones need to be reviewed if 10m mythic becomes the dominant mode (unless you're fine with warlock being an auto pick with 6 dps slots at best). While restructering class design is not impossible, it would be a huge undertaking just to accommodate a smaller raid size for only mythic raiding. Is that really worth it?

These are not just world first or 30 key problems. The smaller the size gets the more important and impactful your raid composition becomes as each individual carries greater weight. Having an off-meta class in such a comp will relatively weigh you down a lot more. Considering the pressure in mythic raiding to perform (and this pressure exceeds far beyond world first) meta selections will be a major issue, far worse than in m+ currently because that mode has relatively lenient group bonding and there isn't as much on the line in comparison.

The m+ meta situation is demonstrating how big of a problem it can be in smaller group content. You cannot ignore that. These issues will be even greater in organised mythic raiding if the mode is brought down to 10. This is in fact the best argument against 10m mythic right now. The game & community changed. Arguing in favour of 10m along the lines of outdated parameters is foolish.

That was a lot of words to say something against something that actually already worked in the past. Its not some what if here, it worked, it worked well, and when it went away the raiding scene just slowly started to doddle down as they focused on trying to make raids great for like 5 guilds in a world race situation and then like another 100 in the whole of the game.

[Donkeywing]

That was a lot of words to say something against something that actually already worked in the past. Its not some what if here, it worked, it worked well, and when it went away the raiding scene just slowly started to doddle down as they focused on trying to make raids great for like 5 guilds in a world race situation and then like another 100 in the whole of the game.

Accusing blizzard and then writing this is quite something. You are selectively leaving out the overall modern context, causality, a fuckload of other factors and you clearly have no respect for larger guils either. You focus exclusively on the past with a half-baked conspiracy theory, while having no serious regard for the modern situation. Your bias blinds you, your accusations of tunnel vision are no more than a reflection of yourself, as you are refusing to underline the consequences.

[Thraenduil]

These are just some thoughts I had while reading posts on this thread. If you think them just nonsense a player who doesn't raid coughed up, feel free to say so.

Main problem all seem to agree with is that Mythic raiding takes too long and matching schedules is a hassle. Thus, simple solution would be to make more time for raiding.
But, where do we get that time then? There is only so many hours in a week. IN a week. See where i'm going with this?

Why not just extend raid lockout to two weeks? Then a 6-hour period someone mentioned on this thread is easier to divide so every family man can devote at least one night a week for gaming. RWF could also be easier to manage if it takes more than one week for top guilds. The dreaded reset- boss wouldn't mess competition.

Now you start to shout: "But ma geahh!" , to which i answer with new upgrade system. Players also will have more time to grind crests and flightstones without losing progression if they have trouble with certain raid bosses. Well, Blizz could help us a little and increase drops from Mythic bosses to compensate for longer lockout.
Though I'm not sure if Heroic should also have same lockout, or Normal. But definitely not LFR.

And hey! I know there will still be people who clear raid in one day and don't show up until next lockout. But so what?! Those people whine about it now, and some people who see it and don't like it also whine about it. I just hope that longer lockouts could make it easier for people to raid, play without constant rush to clear whole raid in under a week. Especially if they don't care about RWF.

[Elbob]

-snip-.

guilds can already extend if they want to and take 2 weeks per reset if they want. All you do here is hurt the people who do want to raid every week. Also id go as far as saying a majority of mythic guilds begin extending their lock out once they hit ~halfway through the raid making this idea have almost no impact on anyone.

[unbound]

I think the primary problem with raids is that they are repetitive.

Even if you never bother with LFR, you go into the current raid (because why bother with the previous raid since catch up gear makes the previous raid(s) irrelevant) on Normal, wipe a few times, eventually get through all the bosses...then do it all over again on heroic (which is the same raid with an extra mechanic...ooohhh, so exciting(/s)), wipe a few times, eventually get through all the bosses...then do it all over again on mythic (which is the same raid with an extra mechanic...ooohhh, so exciting(/s)).

It feels like you are practicing something over and over and over again. That's fine when you are honing skills for something better, but it's annoying in raiding because all that practicing *was* the raid. It's a treadmill to nothing other than the same gear you got way back on normal, but slightly better stats. And, like NFTs, you have a receipt that says you did something special (i.e. something worthless except to very, very few).

Sorry, but that isn't going to be exciting to most people. If you like that, great! More power to you. But if you want more people playing your video game, it needs to a game (i.e. fun), not a continuous chore. The current raid approach is anti-engaging. The game was more popular when not so many people were raiding...and that was fine because there was plenty to do. Right now, either you raid continuously or do the same 2 handfuls of dungeons as fast as possible continuously. Both of these things are boring to most people.

[Thraenduil]

guilds can already extend if they want to and take 2 weeks per reset if they want. All you do here is hurt the people who do want to raid every week. Also id go as far as saying a majority of mythic guilds begin extending their lock out once they hit ~halfway through the raid making this idea have almost no impact on anyone.

But isn't that extension just a trick, a loophole in lockout system and not officially supported by Blizzard? And if guilds really do that already, then why not cut the middleman and make lockout two weeks? If you still want lockouts to be one week long, what else than more loot are you after?