Dealing with burnout, boredom, end-of-expansion blues

[zaneosak]

So my guild is very small, 10 man heroic, been together since the end of TBC. We are casual as far as we arent a large group, we play pretty much only on raid nights when there isnt much going on in the game but when we raid (2 or 3 nights a week) we always try to make the best of it and be competitive.

Right now it seems like alot of people only log on because they feel like it's their responsibiltiy and they dont want to let each other down, myself included. We dropped to two nights a week raiding and usually fail to field 10 or people are super late, etc. etc. It's summer and end of the expansion, what do you expect.

How do you guys handle the burn out at the end of an expansion? Personally, I am the most bored I've ever been in WoW and never cancelled my subscription since 2004. A few people suggest we all stop until WoD And pick it back up. Seems scary since some may just fizzle out of interest and the rest will be hung out to dry. We've all raided so long we don't really consider moving to another guild besides maybe a few people.

Has anybody completely taken a break with their entire raid team during the downtime between expansions and actually come back with a fresh outlook on the game? Even worse we have to recruit 10 people for mythic(which we plan on doing during WoD heroic progression since its flexible)

Just curious if other people have gone through this kind of thing and how you handled it or what worked.

[Squirl]

Taking a break usually kills guilds. Just keep raiding. If you're still doing progression, you have something to work on. If you're 14/14H, it should only take 3-5 hours to full clear. That's not a huge commitment for 1-2 nights a week. If you plan on doing Mythic, you should be recruiting like crazy right now too.

Personally, I usually use this time to level and play alts, finish out achievements, or dabble in PvP. Right now, I'm gearing out an Ele Shaman for CMs, gearing a Prot Pally for CMs and Proven Tank, leveling a Druid for Proven Healer, and capping out my profession alts so I can max their tradeskills next expansion too (I assume it will require at least 90; unsure though).

There's a ton to do in this game. If none of that interests you, you can play another game with your guildies just to keep everyone together, like DotA, LoL, TF2, Minecraft... anything.

[Gliff]

I know this doesn't work for many guilds but it works for us:

We killed H Garrosh in the first week of December. We spent 5 months farming. We sold a ton of mounts and got everyone in the guild, including all of the new people, their own mount. Even though we were clearing in 3 hours in 1 night, the farm was just killing me and the rest of my guild.

In response to this, we just stopped raiding all together. We had an end-of-expansion guild meeting and basically outlined what the break would include. We were going to stop raiding until raid testing came out, or 6.0 if not enough of us got Beta invites. We got 2 months where 90% of us didnt even log on once. It was great and it recharged all of us to the point where most of us are actually excited to play again. We have not lost 1 player to another guild or quitting the game for good. Everyone has checked in and confirmed Beta access and 20+ showed up to Monday's raid testing even though it was nowhere near our raid times or days.

Edit: I guess I should also say that we stopped recruiting since our roster is already too big for Mythic raiding. If we had spots we had to fill we probably would have kept raiding just to trial people

Like I said, most guilds could not do this and not lose players. I get that.

[Deleted]

We've had that discussion in my guild as well. We too killed Heroic Garrosh first week of December and that's a long time ago, with no new content. We actually had the raiders vote and the vast majority wanted to raid one night a week - despite the fact some of them do QQ about it sometimes. But we're also still recruiting to fill the last spots, so we unless we trial people in 10 man, this is our only chance.

It's rough tbh. People are burned out and it's summer. Lots of other things to do outside the game. So what we do, is we try to arrange several alt runs, flex runs, CM's etc. Cause people like each other and it's a good way of keeping a good spirit, rather than people just logging on once a week to farm a raid they cleared 6 months ago.

That being said, I really look forward to 6.0 and WoD. It's already starting to feel like Dragon Soul to the point where you'd rather poke your eyes out than having to raid on your main.

But I agree that taking a break is very risky for most guilds. We've recruited players who's guilds took a break and other guilds being on a break, makes it easier for us to recruit tbh. So unless you're in a situation like Gliff, I'd advice against taking a break. We only considered it, cause we had issues with people being on vacation, needing to work a summer job or generally just wanting a break. Don't really know how we in the end had 99% who wished to raid lol.

[Frozendekay]

We tried alternating weeks (Raid one week, no raid the next) but attendance got a bit sketchy. So now we raid 1 day a week, even if for some reason we don't clear 14/14H. (although that hasn't happened yet, the raid goes by ridiculously fast).

We also bring in friends and people from guilds that have stopped raiding for now to fill out our raid. This helps in a few ways: New faces are good to have and makes raid more interesting, it allows people to sit for nights when they want to and it lets us keep our Mythic roster small while still having enough players to raid.

[announced]

better to just keep raiding, if u can clear 14/14 it gives u something to look forward to, getting the heroic garrosh mount. anyway if u do stop u wont start again unless u find another guild so its better just to keep going at it. our guild usually does 13/14 in one night then about an hour or less the 2nd night for garrosh. sometimes we full-clear in 1 night so it aint bad. we raid for 4 hours per night and lots of times people show up late and stuff so its generally a total of 4-5 hours for a full clear.

[-Raer-]

I'm not sure what my guild did from BC > Wrath and Wrath > Cata, as I wasn't with them then...but from Cata > Mists after H DW we took a break and it worked out quite well. We lost several players but that wasn't surprising. We did the same after H Garrosh, after we finished out mounts. I think some of them are doing a 10m every week now, but I'm honestly not sure (RL ramp up big time)...

We're set to start raiding again with 6.0, and several people are doing raid testing so it's safe to say that if you have a solid core of people/leadership taking a break is good idea. Granted we're all almost always communicating on our website/FB/other games.

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

You can also make the fights more interesting by pushing for ranks or speed kills (minimal time between one boss dying and the next one dying). Simply allowing somebody to come on their alt each week can be enough to keep them interested.

[Deleted]

Taking a break like that means people finally realize their life is perfectly fine without raiding every week. These people won't come back but that's not a bad thing, quite the opposite. Do the right thing and set them free, take that break now.

[Gliff]

Taking a break like that means people finally realize their life is perfectly fine without raiding every week. These people won't come back but that's not a bad thing, quite the opposite. Do the right thing and set them free, take that break now.

It has the complete opposite effect on me. Not raiding just gets me excited to play again when the new tier hits.

[theWocky]

When you're logging on just to not let other people down, then it's a chore, not a game.

Unsub - save some money in my opinion. If people don't come back, then so be it, deal with it then.

[L3fty]

Your guild sounds very similar to the one i'm in - small, tight nit, been around for over 7 years. So you have quite a lot going for you in terms of the WoW life, which is all the more reason to step back, take a break, in the knowledge that the place will still be there when you return.

I unsubbed nearly 2 months ago but have stayed in nearly daily contact via our guild forums, keeping up with any new recruits, joining in with the usual banter. The only thing it feels like i'm missing is the Vent funs, but all in all it's great not playing WoW for a bit. I was GM but had another 3 active officers to fall back on. Of us, there are currently 2 still playing semi actively. All main SoO raids have been cancelled since June, but the guys that are still around do HC achieves in ToT, MSV, HoF, and it sounds like they have a blast.

If you do feel like you have to continue to keep the place alive, think again, and give yourself some R+R. Don't let the game became completely stagnant for you, your guild will be fine, as long as you keep some form of contact. If not, just forget about HC SoO, do some old raids, run CM's, do some PvP, just don't beat yourself up. The game is simply not providing anything fresh, so it's natural to feel dead about it.

[kamuimac]

just take a break - we are looking at at last 4-5 months of this content way way too long to be acceptable

guilds are dying left and right cause of how many good players taking a break and they are forced to regress to gear up new people who quit game anyway after 1-2 months or just stop showing to raids cause they see that the guilds which didnt progress till now have 0 chance to kill any new boss without huge 15-20% nerf so why bother - they see they wont kill garosh hc so why even try

blizzard tried new approach of no nerf - well it failed horribly especially with combination of forcing guidls to go 25 man if they want to survive. the completion ratio in comparision to previous expansion looks utterly horrible (it would be more then ok for a tier which would last 6 months byt tier which will last more then a year ? well utterly bad choice which i suspect nobody of people who were so much against nerfs ever cinsidered that can happen) and is justified by blizzard by "we gave u flex so shut up" well guess what - people complete flex normal and just unsub cause why bother to continiue playing when they know now that no nerf will happen - its horrible for guild its killing guilds but hey - top 1000 guilds are so happy about it cause they are flooded by recruits from 2-5k mark cause most of guilds below 2k will be dead in next 2-3 months. such happy times :/

this aproach did kill my last guild which was 11/14 hc - after 2 months of failed recruitment some people quit game rest including me went straight to 14/14 hc guilds - i am 14/14 hc and i do not feel good about it - i feel like i cheated system and cuting edge feel much worse and totaly not rewarding in comaprison to hc ds which i got with 25 % nerf, yay i got chievo chore is over now i jsut wait for my sub to run out cause i cba to farm mount :/

[Tobedeleted123]

I know this doesn't work for many guilds but it works for us:

We killed H Garrosh in the first week of December. We spent 5 months farming. We sold a ton of mounts and got everyone in the guild, including all of the new people, their own mount. Even though we were clearing in 3 hours in 1 night, the farm was just killing me and the rest of my guild.

In response to this, we just stopped raiding all together. We had an end-of-expansion guild meeting and basically outlined what the break would include. We were going to stop raiding until raid testing came out, or 6.0 if not enough of us got Beta invites. We got 2 months where 90% of us didnt even log on once. It was great and it recharged all of us to the point where most of us are actually excited to play again. We have not lost 1 player to another guild or quitting the game for good. Everyone has checked in and confirmed Beta access and 20+ showed up to Monday's raid testing even though it was nowhere near our raid times or days.

Edit: I guess I should also say that we stopped recruiting since our roster is already too big for Mythic raiding. If we had spots we had to fill we probably would have kept raiding just to trial people

Like I said, most guilds could not do this and not lose players. I get that.

I envy you. Even though our guild was group of friends (we met each other several times in IRL, some were longtime IRL friends), it didn't pass the test of burnout. It was just too strong in MoP. Some members got bored and stopped raiding. Our progress pretty much deteriorated. Then, people either stopped playing altogether with no intention of coming back or simply left to another guilds. It's sad :/

[Gliff]

I envy you. Even though our guild was group of friends (we met each other several times in IRL, some were longtime IRL friends), it didn't pass the test of burnout. It was just too strong in MoP. Some members got bored and stopped raiding. Our progress pretty much deteriorated. Then, people either stopped playing altogether with no intention of coming back or simply left to another guilds. It's sad :/

Our burnout happened after we killed H Garrosh. We lost almost 10 raiders in the month between our first kill and after the holidays. It ended up being great timing because we didnt raid at all during the holidays so it allowed us to go hard in the paint recruiting and replace those people during our break. When we returned from the holidays we had like 13 trials lol.

[Darkfriend]

Taking a break depends HEAVILY on the why of why your group raids. Heavy progression groups are highly likely to come back. A huge part of why people raid at that level is the competitive aspect. As why you raid changes, so too does how you handle long stretches. If your group raids to play together, a break can sometimes be ok, and sometimes not. If people raid purely for the enjoyment, and don't care about BiS/Rankings/parsings/etc there is a good chance they find something else, and don't come back.

Personally, if I were that burned out there is almost 0 chance I wouldn't come back, unless I was quitting for good. I enjoy the competitive aspect. Some of my friends would probably just find different games or hobbies though. Other's would find somewhere else to raid until WoD.

It all depends. My 25m just does 1 day/week generally. Good to trial new people, sell mounts, etc.

[Itisamuh]

People are really suggesting that taking a break will kill the guild, and that you should keep grinding away in boredom instead? Really?

Taking a break is a great way to refresh your interest in the game for when you come back. Nobody will stay gone unless they wanted to anyway.

[Mosotti]

Why are people talking about "end of expansion"? There are still many months from this expansion, it's not an end at all. It's like talking about the end of the world, but the asteroid is in another fucking galaxy...

[Kniff808]

When you're logging on just to not let other people down, then it's a chore, not a game.
Unsub - save some money in my opinion. If people don't come back, then so be it, deal with it then.

This is exactly why I got out of hardcore raiding during the very end of wrath. I'd rush home after work to make raid times and feel bad when I was a tiny bit late. I realized then that It was my second job, not a fun game anymore.

[Deleted]

Our guild has seen it all, 40 mans in vanilla, 25man in tbc and wotlk. In cata we went 10 man and continued the 10 man in pandaria, but now it came to an end, few people quit and we have no interest in starting to recruit for a bigger 20 man raid, so we just stopped the raiding completely. 2005-2014 it lasted. Not sure what to do in WoD. For OP try to keep the raids going on, even if its 1 night a week, if you quit it you lose the contact in people and soon you are not gonna find em anywhere if they all go doing other things.