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A cautionary tale of lockouts and low-pop realms
Imagine if you will that you are in a raid guild that has enjoyed some small amount of success. You've quietly managed to successfully raid your way through each tier of content, and you've managed to snag every realm-first kill of an end boss along the way. Now imagine you are working on a realm-first kill of a boss, wiping endlessly and working on individual performance and tightening up the execution of the fight. Suddenly, another guild grabs that realm-first kill before you do. Frustrating? Yes -- but it's all part of progression raiding. Only this time, it's different. This time, the realm first was taken by a guild that wasn't really a raiding guild at all. The guild that nabbed the golden ring used a method that skipped all progression fights and instead plopped them at the feet of the final boss, the only one whose death counted for that realm first achievement. How would that make you feel? How would that make your guild feel? This isn't a far-fetched situation at all. It's already happened. And it spells a bleak future for low-pop realms and the raiders that diligently work at content -- only to have a realm first taken away due to the cross-realm raiding feature.
Does World of Warcraft need to be more difficult?
The above video is a bit lengthy, but it's well worth the watch simply because it does raise a few valid points along the line. And lest you think this is yet another player whining about the endless hardcore vs. casual debate, it's not -- this is simply a player who is incredibly passionate about the game we all play. In that passion, he's decided to talk about the direction that raiding in WoW has taken and how it has gone downhill, in his opinion. On the one hand, he has a point. There is a stark difference between the feel of raiding back in the days of vanilla, The Burning Crusade, and now. There's a stark difference in numbers, which any graph can illustrate. More and more people can complete raids now from one degree or another, which leaves people barreling through content at light speed and doesn't really give that same feeling that raiding had in years past. On the other, is changing the difficulty in WoW really the way to accomplish that goal? I don't think so.
GuildOx data shows 50% decline in raiding guild activity
This news probably shouldn't come as a huge shock to anyone who understands the ebb and flow of WoW expansions, but GuildOx, a site that collects all kinds of data from the WoW Armory, has discovered that raiding guild activity has fallen 50% since the beginning of 2012. GuildOx site runner Polar tells us that a raiding guild is defined as "a guild that has gained a boss kill or raid achievement within the past month or those guilds that have completed heroic Madness of Deathwing." Activity in this case is defined, obviously, as killing a boss that week. Again, not a huge shock; we're officially in Cataclysm's twilight (heh) years, and drop-off like this before an expansion is to be expected. It's worth noting in this case that the numbers for active raiders might be a little better than what's reflected here -- after all, plenty of guildless people have been able to raid thanks to Raid Finder, and that sort of activity wouldn't be tracked by this metric. One thing's definitely for sure, though -- the game needs a jump start in the form of Mists of Pandaria if Blizzard wants people to stick around. Thankfully, it's right around the corner, but one wonders just how long this cycle can perpetuate. The end of Wrath and the lifetime of Cataclysm showed us that diminishing returns are already in effect, Annual Pass or no, but MoP's endgame is decidedly different than what we've seen in the past. Perhaps things will be different this time.
"Inside Higher Ed" compares raiding and teaching
Inside Higher Ed was pretty much the last place I ever expected to see a serious article on World of Warcraft. The study of MMORPG's isn't really part of mainstream academia (...yet), so imagine my surprise at finding an article comparing effective raid leading to teaching. Alex Golub, an anthropology professor at the University of Hawaii, contributed an article on his guild's attempts to kill Kael'thas pre-patch.
Ready Check: End of the road?
Ready Check is a weekly column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, ZA or Sunwell Plateau, everyone can get in on the action and get mad purpz. Today, we look at the increasing numbers of player departures and wonder when enough is enough. In this column I've talked about what makes raid guilds as a whole break up, but not what makes individuals decide raiding isn't for them. Having seen multiple guilds go through this process en masse recently, and breaking up as a result, here's a point-of-view on raiding and when it's time to stop or move on, based on personal experience in a European PvE guild.
Ready Check: Death and Raid Guilds
Ready Check is a weekly column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, ZA or Sunwell Plateau, everyone can get in on the action and get mad purpz. Today, we take a look at why endgame guilds die. This week, world-first guild Death and Taxes made an announcement which floored most of the raiding community: The End. Death and Taxes is no more. For a long time, raiders and non-raiders alike have been following the adventures of those guilds with the time and dedication to be competing for firsts. Seeing a household name disband, and not for April Fool's, is particularly poignant because it brings the message home that even the loftiest raid guilds are human too, subject to the same problems and drama as any other guild out there. There have been multiple reasons given for the disbanding of D'n'T -- what's most interesting about these is that many people have commented on the same things happening in their guild, or in guilds they know about. Were the problems introduced by The Burning Crusade and other Blizzard-based changes, such as paid character transfer? Or are they fundamentally the result of high expectations, raiding downtime and the ensuing attrition over two years? Let's take a look at some of the problems facing endgame guilds' longevity, and perhaps an insight into how to avoid the same fate.
