Are raids becoming less popular?

[Elbob]

they should have never scrapped 10man raiding

you can still 10 man raid

[Lolites]

In Classic its still very popular. In retail its just not fun doing due to an overload of mechanics and it isn’t rewarding enough.

might be something to do with the fact theres nothing else to do in classic...

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This

Raiding would be super duper popular if it weren't so obnoxiously difficult

1. there are 4 difficulties, starting with LFR which is brain-dead easy, only mythic (and occasionaly some HC bosses) are difficult, and yet raiding is not "super duper popular"...
2. before LFR, specialy in vanila times, raiding wasnt difficult, and yet LFR was intoruduced as raiding was not popular enough to "pay for itself" so to speak...

so you are simply incorrect

[Very Tired]

The problem with these big raids has always been that the difficulty is based on everything else besides actual gameplay. Syncing up a bunch of raiders schedule, finding a bunch of semi-competent raiders, getting them all to coordinate over hours of wipes. Your actual individual challenge itself in a raid encounter is pretty freaking easy, because it kind of has to be.

Mythic+ flips all of this to be the opposite, removing the artificial challenges and lets an individual have more control over if they win or lose.

[BeepBoo]

Yes, that is correct. If you compare the difficulty of the content, mythic raid rewards are way undertuned.

I'm fine with a difficulty that exists purely for the challenge aspect of it (and not the power rewards) where they don't care what the participation rates are. They only need to care about total participation rates of all difficulties combined (as in how many players are engaging with ANY form of the raid content).

[Thirtyrock]

The simple fact that this question, or one very much like it, gets asked again and again and again and again shows that raids are still popular. No one wonders if irrelevant content is becoming irrelevant, they only ask about content that is relevant that they don't like...

[hzjf]

you can still 10 man raid

no you cant. mythic is 20man

[Elbob]

You can, but it's not the hardest difficulty. And it's less loot/more difficult to 10m, than it is to just fill the group.

the loot is in ratio in current year, and 10man HC back in the day was easier for the majority of bosses only a few standouts like Garrosh were really hard on 10man. I raided and progged both for multiple tiers and nothing shined light on the discrepancy more then my 10man (which had weaker players overall) killing heroic rag in 1/4th the pull count as the 25man guild I was in. Lei shen was the same feel and felt like a meme on 10man after doing it on 25m.

I highly doubt this trend would change because raids have to be balanced around having an average comp being able to kill the boss. Once you are able to class/spec optimize even a little in 10m a mechanic that might be hard for an average comp quickly becomes trivial. A notably good example is short lived adds or shields that need to be killed/broken. Having strong damage profiles for the fight vs average ones has such a huge impact. I believe this is why they didn't want to bothering trying to manage both 10 and 25 man sizes despite 10mans being more popular back in mop.

I think M+ serves as a really good alternative to high end difficult content for smaller group sizes. It stresses the things 10man advocates often champion, high individual responsibility, communication, tighter social circles, low room for error.

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no you cant. mythic is 20man

he said raid not mythic raid

[Biomega]

In Classic its still very popular. In retail its just not fun doing due to an overload of mechanics and it isn’t rewarding enough.

This

Raiding would be super duper popular if it weren't so obnoxiously difficult

You guys know LFR and normal mode exist, right?

If easy raids are what you're looking for, you HAVE that. If all you want is to plow through some simple encounters with little need to think or play well - they got your back.

But I suspect that what you REALLY want is raid GEAR, and because LFR and normal don't award the best gear and Classic raids do, you think Classic is what raiding should be like: maximum gear for less-than-maximum effort.

If all you genuinely cared about was a raiding experience appropriate to your preferred level of difficulty, this wouldn't be a problem. Heck LFR doesn't even need time OR scheduling, you can just do it whenever. Problem solved!

...RIGHT?

[Pakheth]

I prefer raids over dungeons, but raiding as an adult with responsibilities and varying schedules can be absolutely awful. Especially when you need 20 peeps for Mythic. 10 was bad enough. And no M+ is not something I want to do. The obnoxious stressful timer and strategy bloat just tires me out. One fuck up and the entire run is screwed. No thanks.
Raiding allows for more mistakes but has the issue that you can be stuck on the same boss for hours. Coordination is a huge issue as well, and making sure everyone shows up on raid time is a total nightmare as a guild leader, one of the reasons I don't guild lead anymore.

So no, I don't raid anymore. Don't have time nor energy for it. Just can't be arsed, and I bet a lot of other people have the same issue.

[Loveliest]

Yes, defo. We kill the end boss once or twice then done. Too many ppl yelling for alternate path. Soon gonna get all gear from questing and raids and dungeons will be a thing of the past. Yes I'm bitter, thanks for asking.

[hzjf]

This is why I'm enjoying ff14 raiding, 8 man is just more wieldy, approachable and intimate as a social engagement. Cleared TOP, DSR, p1-8 with the same roster and we're doing 9-12 when it lands. I miss raiding cutting edge with 9 other dudes, trying to get back into it in BFA was just too painful an experience for me.

sure. but FF raiding is total different to WoW. I enjoy wow more because you dont get bombarded with Mechanic after Mechanic

[czarek]

Raids are definetly better to get gear early in the season and because of that more popular. As time goes by m+ becomes more popular because less players are willing to spend several hours in a raid for gear they already have.
It also gets really easy to outgear heroic raids with uncapped valor and fullgeared people handing you loot in a +20 left and right because they are already bis geared.
From experience its when valor is uncapped you can really feel a dropoff in raid participation. But i don't think thats necessarily bad. Most are just burnt out and want to chill if they still play at all till the new raid comes out.

Actually i dropped off M+ when valor get uncapped Why? because i was fully geared few weeks before it came live. I dont need to gear up my toon more. Just chillin low keys to push enormous dps and just enjoy to burn enemys like a flyes. Gearin alts now in raids because its much faster. Anyway 10.0.7 waiting room before 10.1. Easy 400+ ilvl right now. Like few hours play time.

[jeezusisacasual]

You guys know LFR and normal mode exist, right?

If easy raids are what you're looking for, you HAVE that. If all you want is to plow through some simple encounters with little need to think or play well - they got your back.

But I suspect that what you REALLY want is raid GEAR, and because LFR and normal don't award the best gear and Classic raids do, you think Classic is what raiding should be like: maximum gear for less-than-maximum effort.

If all you genuinely cared about was a raiding experience appropriate to your preferred level of difficulty, this wouldn't be a problem. Heck LFR doesn't even need time OR scheduling, you can just do it whenever. Problem solved!

...RIGHT?

That point is largely irrelevant since that incentive is not strong enough to bring in the numbers compared to a pick up and play game mode. Scheduling is such a big issue and since i refuse to play anything but a tank guilds do not like it for me to show up when i want to or they get pissy that i open my vault as a Brewmaster but raided as WW.

Even easier raids are losing popularity and hopefully as more and more people stop caring about gear the better the game will be since it allows people to just use a MMO as a short term gaming event instead of some long form gaming commitment. But again i will be back next month for 2 - 3 weeks ( Get KSM/KSH ) then piss off until the next DLC comes.

[Loveliest]

The simple fact that this question, or one very much like it, gets asked again and again and again and again shows that raids are still popular. No one wonders if irrelevant content is becoming irrelevant, they only ask about content that is relevant that they don't like...

You know, things don't get from popular to irrelevant in a heartbeat. They slowly lose popularity. And that's something that IS happening, not sure a single player can deny it.

[ONCHEhap]

The problem with these big raids has always been that the difficulty is based on everything else besides actual gameplay. Syncing up a bunch of raiders schedule, finding a bunch of semi-competent raiders, getting them all to coordinate over hours of wipes. Your actual individual challenge itself in a raid encounter is pretty freaking easy, because it kind of has to be.

That's the point of a MMO. Coordination has always been the main difficulty factor in MMOs, as the way they're played doesn't really give room for individual skill expression, especially in a tab target MMO. WoW isn't Ultrakill, mastering the gameplay is easy to achieve and not really much to ask, that's why difficulty is always put on making people work with each other, both in raids and m+

[Kralljin]

Raiding would be super duper popular if it weren't so obnoxiously difficult

Personally, i think a big reason is also that the rewards from raiding just aren't worth it.

People really care about Loot in Classic, which may lead to drama, but also is the reason why people log in every week to clear and hopefully get that specific piece.

[Trumpcat]

The logistics in organizing and maintaining a raid team on a schedule are insane, especially today when you notice all over the place a great hesitancy to "commit to a schedule". Man plays 6 hours per day, but the idea that he may have 3 hours twice a week booked is horrifying. On top of that people taking breaks or quitting the game altogether, guilds need to constantly be recruiting. There are some big solid teams, but that's nice exceptions, not the norm.

On top of that, when you do have the team, there's the actual difficulty of 20 people playing perfectly and having their characters in top shape, which does require plenty of extra dedication outside raids including researching your class optimizations, running M+ for gear and to keep your skills honed, even if you're not interested in M+ rating (raid loggers never perform as well as people who play regularly, excluding poor skilled players).

The whole "meta" of raids is just very old school and players nowadays are not as keen to dedicate time for it as players 13 years ago and Blizzard offer little to make it worth it.

[exsanguinate]

my whole gear, except for two trinkets and a ring, is from mythic plus. wiping countless of hours for litteraly no upgrade, just to say "I killed it, I'm cool" is simply dead for a long time.

[Biomega]

First raid I ever really did was ICC, which I cleared on the second highest difficulty.

You mean normal mode. You cleared normal mode.

But now I'm significantly, significantly better, and the best I can do is... still the second highest difficulty

Which is heroic mode.

You keep phrasing it as "second-highest difficulty", almost conspicuously so. This is highly misleading because the difficulty differentiation has significantly changed over the years, and it's GROSSLY fallacious to try and match it.

The most egregious example would be someone who's cleared Molten Core complaining that "they used to do raiding at the highest difficulty level" (true - one raid difficulty was all there was, so it was also the highest) but can't raid "at the highest difficulty level" now (which is mythic). And however technically correct that kind of labeling may be, it's just, you know, TWO COMPLETELY DIFFERENT THINGS which are brought into ostensible equivocation purely by an intentional obscuring of differentiation.

You get better and it feels like it doesn't matter.

Because you intentionally set yourself up to feel that way. You've moved from normal to heroic raiding. That is a step up. Present-day heroic is not the same as WotLK-era normal. Not even close. It's much more difficult. AND YOU MADE IT THERE.

Lamenting that you're still "at the second-highest difficulty" instead of celebrating that you're now a heroic raider is a choice you are making for yourself.

I'm always going to be encountering mythic players moonlighting in heroic, casually doing more dps/hps/etc than me because they commit to a schedule that most humans would find very extreme.

I think we've identified the crux of the issue here.

You're not sad you're "only" doing heroic - you're mad there's people doing bigger numbers than you.

And here's something to ponder: if you had the gear they do, you'd STILL find people doing bigger numbers than you. Because there's always someone. Someone with more time, more experience, more skill, a better PC, less familial obligations, a bigger bank account, a longer penis and probably a dog that loves them more, too.

That is a you problem - you're having trouble looking at your own performance in your own context, and are instead compelled to measure up against others. That's always going to cause issues, no matter how the raids are designed. You want to artificially level a playing field that is never going to be level, in order to bring other people down closer to your own personal level because you can't handle that someone is doing something better or more than you.

Get over it. That's the only way to solve this - not through design, but through attitude.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I have never liked doing the same raid over and over again for months on end. Never will. I tour the raids once and then never do them again unless it was to progress the MoP or WoD legendary questlines, or if I want a transmog. I don't do mythic dungeons either. Again, I tour the dungeon once. No intention of doing the same half dozen dungeons over and over again for two years.

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Raids have never been popular. They introduced LFR to justify continuing to spend money on making cool raids because such a small percentage of the population does them.

LFR is a casebook example of bolshevik marketing. You have a stark division between what people like, and what the devs push for. Rather than producing more of what people wanted (outdoor content and questlines), Blizzard instead poured their efforts into developing raids and trying to get non-raiders to raid. The culmination of this being "it would cost us a raid tier", as if raid tiers was the most desired content WoW players wanted.