Raiding Poll

[OcellotJenkins]

BTW just wanted to add, our new "super guild" after the merge got to rag in 2h 30m and killed him with 10 seconds to go before sons. We sharded 2 of the 3 drops, but never the less it was actually a fun run, with an exciting finish.

Your guild is apparently outfitted with gear that my guild doesn't have yet.

[Morfiend]

Pretty much everyone in my guild has MC+ gear. As in they have every thing they need from MC, and are mostly upgraded with BWL and AQ40 loot. They have been clearning BWL for around 4+ months now.

[OcellotJenkins]

I'm just trying to wrap my mind around the 2 and a half hour time frame.  I'm accustomed to everyone smoking cigarettes after each boss, taking a piss, grabbing beers, etc. 

[bhodi]

2h 30m? ... that seems too fast to be believed. maybe you mean 3h 30m? To get below 3h you have to split your raid to kill sulf/mag while clearing to the rest.

[Threash]

2h 30m? ... that seems too fast to be believed. maybe you mean 3h 30m? To get below 3h you have to split your raid to kill sulf/mag while clearing to the rest.

Actually some of the super high end guild have it down to under 2 hours now.  Im sure it involves non stop chain pulling including all bosses and possibly splitting your raid to clear towars gehennas while one half takes care of luci/mag.

[Zetor]

There's a video of some Norwegian guild clearing MC in 1h10mins or so. Of course they used flasks and a ton of consumables, but there you go.


-- Z.

[Sogrinaugh]

1: yes
2: yes

Though currently, we accomplish #2 poorly.  More and more players quit due to burnout, or real-life situations (some kids have really chaotic homes, etc).  In particular, the priest class in my guild was  hit fiercely.  ALL FOUR of our 8/8 trans priests quit 2 from burnout and 2 from things they had no control over.  Another quit due to guild drama... these were our most active, and one of whom was almost indisputably the most skilled priest (horde-side) on the server.  So yea... we hurtin.

We had been making C'thun attempts faithfully, getting to stage 2 reliably... and then the formost alliance guild (Unforgiven) beat us to a server-1st, which pretty much sapped all the drive and motivation that had us really pushing to get c'thun down.  Since then more people quit, people started bitching about the loot system, which was funny considering none of the officers left in the guild cared enough to even update the dkp site anymore.

So we are currently in a very fragile state.  We can still kill Nef, and Twin emps, even with a sub-optimal mix of players, but it doesn't always happen.  As we have to re-equip and re-train a bunch of initiates, we are currently on a "casual-mode" 3 days per week of raiding, not even bothering with attempting new content (aside from visc, when we have the proper group composition).

As to those who skip raiding entirely as the realm of the lifeless catass, i can only say that yes, it does require alot of time, but all the really fun stuff in the game is raidcentric.  You will never find a 10man bossfight like Viscidious or C'thun.  All of the later bosses in aq40 have really awesome design, and require tremendous skill and coordination on part of the player.  Gear, as ever, is a factor, but no amount of gear will let you beat C'Thun without the surgical execution that draws on the awarness and alterness of each and every single person in your raid.

Most every goddamn fight in this game, previous to aq, has boiled town to tank n spank, and their is so much raid design room open that has yet to be explored.  aq is just the tip of the iceberge.

[Zane0]

Sucks to hear that about your guild.  I've heard a lot of bad stories about guild reformations upon hitting C'thun; it's quite simply a fight that requires good players in every raid slot, something that no previous boss has truly stressed before with exception to the twin emps perhaps.  Many guilds simply aren't built for the type of challenge that C'thun presents.

That said, it is an incredible reward to conquer your guild's problems and get that eye down.  Mine was fortunate to have enough enthusiastic players to switch out those who couldn't pay attention, and still be good on numbers.

[bhodi]

We aren't built to beat c'thun; We have some very weak caster classes, specifically healers, and we've always been very bad at positioning and situational awareness. This will be our third full week trying to down c'thun, and we haven't even made it to stage 2 yet.

[Xanthippe]

As to those who skip raiding entirely as the realm of the lifeless catass, i can only say that yes, it does require alot of time, but all the really fun stuff in the game is raidcentric.  You will never find a 10man bossfight like Viscidious or C'thun. 

All the really fun stuff in the game is raidcentric?  Only for raiders, I'm afraid.

There are many people who play the game whose idea of hell is going on a raid with 40 of their closest "friends." 
A lot of people get to 60 and leave because they don't particularly enjoy raiding or they don't have the time or the lifestyle to devote to raiding.  A lot of people get to 60 and find other fun things to do that don't involve raiding at all.

An exit poll from Blizzard would be interesting.  I forgot if they have one or not, the last time I quit the game was a year ago (I'm currently subbed again).

This poll will certainly be skewed.  As will any poll of the current players, since many if not most of the non-raiders have already left the building.

[Merusk]

You don't need to do 40-person raids. The 20-person raids are plenty challenging in their own right, and provide some nice gear. 

 Now, if you're going to put 'friends' in quotes for 20-people I'll have to assign you as one of the unsociable and just unwilling to raid at all.  Sure, I'm not 'close friends' with all 40 people in our MC raids, but I genuinely liked all but one or two folks in the 20-man encounters. Then again, I'm not 'close friends' with folks I work with either, but we work together just fine to get our goals done there.

Yes, I made an analogy between raiding and work.  Yes, it's work because it takes effort and coordination.  If all you want is to entertain yourself, then you don't care if you're wearing purple, blue, or green gear. There's plenty to do up to 60, at 60 reroll or stop playing.

I've seen a lot of people complain that 'there's nothing to do' at 60. (There is, they just don't like the choices.) None of them have given alternatives in a GAME-environment.  WoW isn't a world, it shouldn't be one, so there's not going to be the myriad amount of UO/ SWG-pre-fuckup stuff to do.

[stray]

You don't need to do 40-person raids. The 20-person raids are plenty challenging in their own right, and provide some nice gear.

You can get purps in smaller dungeons now, right? How much instance farming would that take anyways? And how many different dungeons have to be farmed in order to get the best of this non raid gear? Is it really that much less of a headache than just joining a raid guild?

[Merusk]

No, they're equal headaches.  One just takes smaller chunks of time and fewer people than the other. I never said it was less of a headache, just that you didn't need 40 folks to do it.

[Threash]

The only difference between 20 and 40 person raids is the amount of people you need to bring and the amount of people that can slack.  Doing MC really only takes about 10-15 people to really pay attention and 25-30 sheep to basically not do anything terribly retarded, zg and aq on the other hand require almost everyone to be on the ball at all times.

[Calantus]

We do it in 2.5 hours, it's actually pretty easy. You just make sure that you are always fighting trash, nobody ever dies to trash, and you never wipe to bosses. The extra half hour is generally from sorting out loot, going over boss strats quickly, and switching people in and out for certain bosses.

[tkinnun0]

I've seen a lot of people complain that 'there's nothing to do' at 60. (There is, they just don't like the choices.) None of them have given alternatives in a GAME-environment.

I'd like to see lite-versions of raid dungeons for casuals in PUGs. Here's how:

• DPS against players halved, DPS against mobs doubled (or whatever values allow a PUG to clear a dungeon in less than three hours).
• Linear progression: can't do lite-BWL before completing 80% of lite-MC and lite-ZG.
• Private loot: the loot you receive depends on your personal lite-raiding progression.
• Use rest exp to increase drop chance, 1 level of rest exp is say 100% drop chance, so that loot received/days subscribed is about the same as in normal raiding.
• Have the lite-drops be equal to normal epics, except make them soulbound, not disenchantable and their title grey so that those filthy lite-raiders know they are second-class customers.

[Calantus]

Or we could be little less of a whiny little bitch and realise that the only reason casuals could legitimately want raiding gear is because of PVP and perhaps put in a palatable PVP solution instead of trying to ruin the raiding experience out of envy and petty spite. Or we could realise we're just as vain and shallow as those filthy raiders we try to blame all the game's woes on and really want gear we don't need so as to /flex our epeen while also being able to flaunt how alternative and special we are with our raid-lite gear. We could even take a giant step forward and realise that WoW is a varied game hoping to pander to multiple playstyles and that not 100% of the game can be for our specific tastes unless our tastes happen to cover a wide range.

Oh yes, I went there.

[stray]

We could even take a giant step forward and realise that WoW is a varied game hoping to pander to multiple playstyles and that not 100% of the game can be for our specific tastes unless our tastes happen to cover a wide range.

Oh yes, I went there.

No, you're right. It's a big reason why I don't play it (and took that giant step). I can tolerate *a little* catassing if that's what it takes to maintain competitiveness in a PvP game, but unfortunately, I'm not Blizzard's kind of PvP'er. It's why I hate DAoC so much as well.

[tkinnun0]

Or we could be little less of a whiny little bitch and realise that the only reason casuals could legitimately want raiding gear is because of PVP

Bah! I wanted it because I had paid for it.

[Jayce]

Or we could be little less of a whiny little bitch and realise that the only reason casuals could legitimately want raiding gear is because of PVP

Bah! I wanted it because I had paid for it.

That way lies madness.

You pay to play the game, not to win it.

[Sogrinaugh]

Or we could be little less of a whiny little bitch and realise that the only reason casuals could legitimately want raiding gear is because of PVP

Bah! I wanted it because I had paid for it.

That way lies madness.

You pay to play the game, not to win it.

Thank you for giving the best sig line for the WoW R&D forum, ever.

[stray]

Unfortunately, there is no game to "play" other than the one to win. It's achiever oriented. Wtf else are you supposed to do in it?

[Righ]

I'm sure Brock Pierce, Ceciliantis, Fansy or Baka could think of something.

[Zane0]

It isn't possible to "win", per se, as I see it.  Content is there that appeals to some and not to others- it's part of the model.  Even the ProgressQuest raiding aspect isn't possible to win.  You can earn a respite, but it is a hollow victory if you count it as such; it's a never ending battle.

That said, if one does try to "win" regardless, it should be based on what is essentially personally satisfying to some extent.  I do not try to reach Grand Marshal, even if it is a goal, because I would not enjoy the procedure.  I'm not perhaps as great as I could be in PvP; I shrug it off, I do different things or I live with it if it's satisfying enough.

People are probably too clingy.  If they stuck up for what they strictly enjoyed there would be a much more developed range of MMOs today.

[Paelos]

Well we did Rags in one try tonight. So that puts things in their place for MC. Yet, I'm running the BWL raid and I'm still having trouble filling up the ranks when MC is getting 15 man standby lists. I'm not stupid, I know the reason is that people are lootwhoring cockmonkeys and want a sure thing more than that frat guy with the roofies, but it still pisses me off.

I'm looking for ways to draw in the on the fence crowd so we can get the wipes out of the way and start getting successful. What do other guilds do when they get to new instances? Do they offer early bonuses? Do they offer extra dkp to early adopters? Do they give primary invites to people in the early game? I need some more ideas if yall got any.

[Merusk]

Depends on your DKP system, but I know several guilds give points only for the first boss kill.  Any time after that boss is killed the first time, no points.   If you're doing one of the zero-sum distributed point systems, though, this won't work.

[Calantus]

Well if you have loot whores (which is very very common) then the best way to deal with it is to appeal to their lootwhore tendancies. The best ways are:

- Raid slot pressure. Have the MC invites be based on who attended BWL last week. If you don't go to BWL you don't get into the money raid.
- Extra DKP for attempts and first kills.
- Random raids. They have to come if they want to hit the money raid 'cause they don't know when it's going to be.

Personally I like the first 1 the most, the 2nd one the least.

[Threash]

Well we did Rags in one try tonight. So that puts things in their place for MC. Yet, I'm running the BWL raid and I'm still having trouble filling up the ranks when MC is getting 15 man standby lists. I'm not stupid, I know the reason is that people are lootwhoring cockmonkeys and want a sure thing more than that frat guy with the roofies, but it still pisses me off.

I'm looking for ways to draw in the on the fence crowd so we can get the wipes out of the way and start getting successful. What do other guilds do when they get to new instances? Do they offer early bonuses? Do they offer extra dkp to early adopters? Do they give primary invites to people in the early game? I need some more ideas if yall got any.

What we did is to start recruiting more people until those bwl raids where filled, even if meant a 20 person waiting list for mc.  Tell your members the recruiting will continue until people start showing up for bwl, make sure to point how theres 50 guilds out there that can run MC while only a handfull can do BWL.  Base mc raids of bwl attendance.

[Tebonas]

People blackmailing each other and people only doing things for their guildies if thery are blackmailed. Nice setup there, Kudos!

[Calantus]

Naturally in the long term you will ideally be kicking the people who have a pattern of only doing things when blackmailed/bribed, but in the short term that does nothing to help the situation. So yea, you take steps to make sure that people come because that's your obligation to the guildies that do want to progress more than get ezi epix.

[Righ]

Now, if more of your guild would rather get easy epics than progress, you'd be doing them a disservice rather than fulfilling an obligation. Of course, guild leaders never get that out of touch with their ordinary members. 

[Jayce]

Now, if more of your guild would rather get easy epics than progress, you'd be doing them a disservice rather than fulfilling an obligation. Of course, guild leaders never get that out of touch with their ordinary members. 

Having gone through this myself, the issue is a little different than what the guild wants.

What the kind of people he's describing want is for someone to go ahead of them, figure out the strats, take the wipes and repair costs, get the mobs on farm status, then afk along with the raid and mute the TV just long enough to pickup their phat loot.  Then later quit out of boredom because "this game is too easy".

Those types don't show up to the early BWLs.  Those are the ones you want to identify and gkick.

[Righ]

Yep, those are the nutsacks you don't even want in the guild. Dicking around to try and use them as filler while learning a new raid dungeon will only lead to tears, drama and a number of your better and more responsible raiders leaving in disgust. I know, because those are the idiots that made early BWL miserable when we "forced" them to attend using techniques similar to the ones suggested. Even if I'm not counted as one of the better raiders, I did watch a lot of our better players give up in disgust before I did, and it was a shame.

[CassandraR]

I'd have to say 5 myself. I'd like to try raiding once but I imagine I would get pretty bored with it pretty quickly. I'd have more fun with it if I could solo raiding instances instead of having to have huge groups.

[Calantus]

Oh I agree with you there Righ. I've quit a guild because I figured that the majority of the guild wanted to be more laid back than I did. I've also quit a guild where the leadership was ineffective in solving the leech problem when there was enough people with the desire to progress, but were being held back. The problem of course is you can't just cut people and not raid while you get replacements. You need to be raiding or people will jump ship (and not just flaky people, a lot of a guild's membership will not yet have secure ties with the guild yet unless you are very old), and not many driven people will want to join a raiding guild that cannot raid. So you have to fill raids with the leechers you have as best you can and try to replace them along the way. Then there is the "take the best and merge" solution that a lot of guilds turn to. That's a recipe for drama though and a bit of a copout. It can work quite well, and is probably the only way if your server's pool of raiders is small, so I'm not dismissing it necessarily.

EDIT: Also, I speak only from my own experiences and the other hardcore raiders I know when I say this so I don't know how widely this applies, but... it's not so much having leeches holding you back that makes you want to leave. It's more about not seeing any solution being put forward to solve it in the long term. The guild solves it for BWL, great, but then AQ rides around and boom same problem. Same kind of people, same "solutions" thrown about. It's gonna happen in Naxx. It's gonna happen in w/e the expansion raids are. You look around and you can't respect many of the members of the guild. Once you lose respect for your guildies, and the only people you DO respect are also bitching, the will to keep trying saps away. And the lack of seeing the light at the end of the tunnel is why you leave, if you could see things being done to change it for the good, then you can take standing around in CH for hours only to have no raid come about (with your HEARTH in CH so you're stranded in buttfuck nowhere) because in the end you'll hopefully have the guild you want. Working for your reward is not a foreign concept to raiders, just the reward has to be visible.

So I raved on there... but wth I'll leave it as is. :P