Guilds falling apart left and right

I fear this is a turning point for wow classic, at least the wrath version.

I’m seeing guilds either go on raid hiatus or disband alltogether because people just outright quit playing.

I know, I know; in the past when raids were out a while the sub numbers always dip but it’s never been like this imo. People who were die-hards that even had multiple accounts just quit, guilds that have existed since 2019 disband or become empty shells.

11 Likes

The same thing is happening on my server. The rapid decline in population can be seen from ironforge’s raid population. Why is this happening?

  1. Non-social, raid logging: The truth is that Wrath has largely eliminated the social aspects of WoW. People just raid log. In an MMORPG, this creates the feeling of having a job/chore to do rather than gaming. So when this feeling builds up, people would rather do other things than play Wrath.

  2. Parsing culture: People who raid log also tend to be people who like to parse. This creates an adversarial feeling among the community which further hampers the social aspect of the mmorpg. Especially, when the tactics to parse include cheesing boss mechanics or forcing an entire raid to accommodate specific people. And worst of all, you can’t parse with a casual team.

  3. Difficulty: The difficulty curve for Wrath’s hard modes is simply too high for many guilds. Casual guilds can’t clear hard modes and the stagnation causes frustration and boredom. So points 1-3 synergize to work as a disincentive to play the game.

  4. Class balance. Wrath claims that it focuses on the player rather than the class but this is largely false. DKs, Rogues and Locks dominate the dps meters, Hpaladins and Disc Priests dominate the healing aspect. Blizzard has buffed feral dps and Retribution paladins but this is not enough. Warriors and many other specs of other classes are behind.

  5. Unfriendly to new players. You cannot gear up for raids without a guild. Alpha protocol dungeons are supposed to be catch-up contents but they fail spectacularly to do so. They are too difficult and require good gear to even enter. The new Beta protocol dungeons will worsen the case even more.

  6. Poor management by Blizzard. Bots running wild. Class issues addressed too late, too poorly or not at all. Servers with huge populations, and servers with too low populations. Transferring servers is restricted and behind a paywall.

When TOCG drops, people will be able to get the feeling of progress once more and the raid is easier, including hard modes, than Ulduar so the levels of frustration will drop. But TOCG is a one-night raid and the waiting room for ICC. People will have even fewer things to do in Wrath. Less engagement, fewer reasons to pay a subscription. The population will drop further.

And let’s face it. Better games are being released soon and summer is around the corner. Why play an antiquated game inside?

11 Likes

I will somewhat disagree with the argumentation you used. Yes the Balance is poor but it doesn’t mean that the “Bring Player not a class” is failure because the win condition isn’t topping the chart (that comes from parsing mentality) It’s clearing the content. And baseline content is pretty lax in this regard. Yes it will be harder and more time consuming to clear OS with less than stellar DPS, you might need to drop to single Drake instead of 2+ but you’ll clear the raid. More optimal doesn’t nake necessary here though again thanks to Parsing mentality good luck convining people otherwise.

This typical Wrath problem. WoW been made too easy from level 1. Then you reach raids, and you can not be good enough to make leader happy. I think because you till Raid had everything on a silver platter.
Also for this reason

No need for guilds or friends to level. Leads to boring leads empty guilds leads to people leaving.

In short: Too easy levelling is root of evil in Wrath.

1 Like

Leveling in WoW never was hard. Because it is given. Unlike MMORPGs from before it there’s no permanent penalty from failure. You die, you sprint to your body and get back in. Worst case you need to pay a bit to repair your gear. Without losing levels from death you’ll level up eventually. It won’t be fast but it’s not hard.

2 Likes

I agree with your points because my argument is based on the current parsing culture in WoW.

  1. Non-social, raid logging: The truth is that Wrath has largely eliminated the social aspects of WoW. People just raid log. In an MMORPG, this creates the feeling of having a job/chore to do rather than gaming. So when this feeling builds up, people would rather do other things than play Wrath.

How is that any different from tbc or even vanilla which even forced you to keep your character online to preserve world buffs?

  1. Parsing culture: People who raid log also tend to be people who like to parse. This creates an adversarial feeling among the community which further hampers the social aspect of the mmorpg. Especially, when the tactics to parse include cheesing boss mechanics or forcing an entire raid to accommodate specific people. And worst of all, you can’t parse with a casual team.

Some people like to push for better results in different ways. Does competitive eating ruin enjoying a meal for you? If yes, you really need some serious help.

  1. Difficulty: The difficulty curve for Wrath’s hard modes is simply too high for many guilds. Casual guilds can’t clear hard modes and the stagnation causes frustration and boredom. So points 1-3 synergize to work as a disincentive to play the game.

Hardmodes were never meant to be cleared by casual guilds, thats why we even got this division. Are gamers really that pathetic today? No one except the best players we had in 2009 cleared ulduar and everyone was perfectly fine with it.

  1. Class balance. Wrath claims that it focuses on the player rather than the class but this is largely false. DKs, Rogues and Locks dominate the dps meters, Hpaladins and Disc Priests dominate the healing aspect. Blizzard has buffed feral dps and Retribution paladins but this is not enough. Warriors and many other specs of other classes are behind.

Did you even play previous expansions? Wrath is waaaaaay more balanced than tbc or vanilla in that regard.

  1. Unfriendly to new players. You cannot gear up for raids without a guild. Alpha protocol dungeons are supposed to be catch-up contents but they fail spectacularly to do so. They are too difficult and require good gear to even enter. The new Beta protocol dungeons will worsen the case even more.

It’s absurdly easy to gear up right now. The AH provides you with 232 gear for pennies, hc+ is simply a waste of time for anyone. Grab AH-epic, go naxx 10 and 25 and boom, you are ready for Ulduar.

  1. Poor management by Blizzard. Bots running wild. Class issues addressed too late, too poorly or not at all. Servers with huge populations, and servers with too low populations. Transferring servers is restricted and behind a paywall.

Only valid point, but that doesn’t really hinder you from enjoying the game, except if you are some weirdo that actually enjoys farming herbs in the open world.

Activity is lower because we have had the same content for multiple months, just look how much of a drop it had at the end of naxx because people were bored of it, and thats it.

1 Like

This simply isn’t true.

The exact same scenario played out in the original. People simply don’t want to spend ages getting a group for a lil fun so they do something else for that fun instead.

I.e., play another game.

If you make people play other games for their fun for too long they quit.

WotLK had a fix for people being able to log in, have some fun and be in their merry way. This was the most predictable outcome when they forced people to use a bothersome LFG tool/chat.

1 Like

Maybe hard nor the rigth word. But before Wrath you had pay attention, not overpull Death runs tedious lose of time. Now Wrath you pull loads, no probs :wink:

One doesnt have to exclude the other. The rate and threshold of “fall off” is bound to be higher from Classic to Wrath as it really is a rinse and repeat core idea pushing the gameplay.

A player that would find alternative things to do, classes to play and so forth is much more likely to do so after 1-6 months of playing than 2-3 years. Not only do they run out of things to do, but with prior experience they see that it simply isnt enough to keep it intresting … Almost like dopamine has a part in this ^^

1 Like

But it isn’t higher, it’s playing out exactly like it did.

TBC had no world buffs. During Vanilla and TBC my guild would have many people online all the time doing various activities in the game. Now in Wrath, people log on almost exclusively for raids.

Not for me personally. No. But people raise it as an issue often. Parsing culture is toxic.

The argument was that hard modes are frustrating for guilds stuck in progression. No need to insult them as ‘pathetic’.

Yes I did. You are aware that Blizzard is making balancing changes to classes. They acknowledge the problem themselves.

Only if you are in a guild willing to boost you.

Why are you obsessed with insulting people? You also seem to ignore the effect of bots on the game’s economy.

People said that Naxx was too easy and so people got bored and quit. They also argued that once harder content is released, people will flock back. Then Ulduar was released. The peak raider population in Wrath was in Naxx with 626.000 logged raiders. The low point in phase 1 excluding the winter holidays was 470.000. During phase 2 when Ulduar was released it peaked at 515.000. It’s been decreasing since then. Now down to 350.000. That’s as low as the population dropped during the Christmas-New Year holidays, but now there are no holidays.

People are quitting the game for many reasons. I listed the most important I know of.

1 Like

During Wrath, the population of WoW plateaued and towards the end of the expansion it started falling.

We agree. People want to play another game because they point out to the many issues of Wrath.

1 Like

From Classic to Wrath, not from Original Wrath and Classic Wrath.
My point is that the tolerance level for whats boring in WoW is lower in Classic Wrath (2022) than in Classic (2019), which along with the factors mentioned could increase the number of people quitting the game.

Objectively there’s more things to do now between raids (and during raids, not to mention the number of variation of raids) than back in Classic, but when people play only for end-game and are tired or done with dailies, reputations, badges, alts and so forth, the chance of them quitting is much higher. Especially after 3 years of the same stuff. People are much less willing to level Alt number 10 than Alt 1 or 2, or play BG number 10 000 than BG number 5.

1 Like

Yes, but they all require you to spend a stupid amount of time to get into.

With how grindy activities such as badge farming is, having to spend that amount of time getting into getting a couple of badges wears thin real quick.

For classic this was more or less fine cause you only did instances for the item drop which meant you got that dopamine hit every time you did the boss you needed.

Not quite so for a badge economy. So people stop doing it cause they’re not being rewarded for the immense time investment.

So what? If the game wants to die, let it die.

guilds that were going strong is classic and tbc, have literally vanished,

i could name most of those guild of the top of my head i seen them around so much, and now theyre gone.

1 Like

TBC had no world buffs.

And where did I write that it did? Are you really not able to understand such a simple sentence?

During Vanilla and TBC my guild would have many people online all the time doing various activities in the game.

Thats your perception, nothing more, nothing less. Please elaborate what content tbc provided after the initial dungeon/attunement grind that isnt found in wrath.

Not for me personally. No. But people raise it as an issue often. Parsing culture is toxic.

It is, but not in the context you think it is. Parsing above 90 (which is more than enough to join any pug) is possible in every semi-decent pug. People use it as an excuse for their dog-tier performance. The actual toxic part only happens in the 99,X bracket which shouldnt matter for the average player anyway.

The argument was that hard modes are frustrating for guilds stuck in progression. No need to insult them as ‘pathetic’.

You are pointing that out as a reason why people are quitting, and quitting because of that simply is pathetic. Overcomming challenges is the thing that makes being alive interesting, ingame or irl.

Yes I did. You are aware that Blizzard is making balancing changes to classes. They acknowledge the problem themselves.

Yeah, Blizzard making changes to something that isnt a problem to begin with has been a thing since forever. You wont really bring the “you think you do but you don’t” guys into this, right?

Only if you are in a guild willing to boost you.

http s://classic.warcraftlogs.com/reports/aj74ktP3g6NfzFDX#type=healing&boss=-3&difficulty=0
The char got to lvl 80 the same day I cleared Ulduar including Algalon with a pug. Please explain to me how they boosted me.

Why are you obsessed with insulting people? You also seem to ignore the effect of bots on the game’s economy.

Weirdo is an insult to you? How did you survive being on the internet till now? Also, how does the economy being ruled by bots influence the gameplay of most players? Ofc its a joke that Blizzard doesnt do anything against them, but the average player is happy about cheap consumeables and crafting materials.

That’s as low as the population dropped during the Christmas-New Year holidays, but now there are no holidays.

And guess what, thats absolutely normal. The game is in a perpetual state of losing players until the next hype (like wrath release) brings them back. Always been like that.

People are quitting the game for many reasons. I listed the most important I know of.

And you got counter arguments why your reasons arent valid. That’s kinda the point of a forum, you know?

If you’re trying to argue against the fact that wrath is declining like a fish out of water, you’re delusional.

2 Likes

Imagine crying that a 15 year old game is to hard … At some point if you are inept you are inept there’s nothing Blizzard can do, all strategy and guides are available since 15 years. Even pugs are clearing Ulduar every week. Everyone do misstake and that doesn’t mean the raid can not be completed.

Ulduar is not hard if you compare with Retail current raids or even any Cataclysm raid.

The real issue with this game is the average player is old, often play badly because they don’t care that much, and at some point they realize they can’t get better without investing way more time into the game, so frustration arise and they quit. Gatekeeper add another layer of indirection with GDKP and Gearscore.

Add the fact that the game is alt unfriendly so there’s 0 incentive to reroll, and you have that. A steady decline in population.

It was already like that back in the day were people started to leave the game before Cataclysm. People often copium that Cataclysm is bad and they don’t want to play it, but the reality is most of the player base doesn’t have the guild to kill Ragnaros Heroic and the more you progress in expansion, the more advanced raid are.

You talk about class balance, next time learn your tier list. 15 years old game, again, everything is on the internet.

You can not parse 99 if you are playing in a casual guild with people that do trash DPS, like in all expansions. If you can’t handle that, change guild, or teach them how to play. If only you care about parse in your guild you are probably in a wrong place.

1 Like