tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6556575758010903163.post1572666638483095475..comments2024-03-26T09:53:50.263-06:00Comments on Eight Years in Azeroth: 4.59. High Time for HeroicsShawn Holmeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05110605868875966328noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6556575758010903163.post-57764758610768269742016-03-13T18:24:27.817-06:002016-03-13T18:24:27.817-06:00Shawn has it essentially right. Additionally, from...Shawn has it essentially right. Additionally, from my understanding of my guild's history and progress, corroborated with other evidence, Wrath's change in philosophy paralleled the gradual advancement of many players who started in 2004 and 2005. <br /><br />In Vanilla, these players ran dungeons and saw a few raid bosses. In Burning Crusade, they slowly progressed in lower raid tiers. And in Wrath, five years after entering Azeroth, they used Strength of Wrynn/Hellscream's Warsong to finally defeat Blizzard's biggest villain since 2002. <br /><br />They had arrived!<br /><br />And then Cataclysm launched. They were going OOM in 5-mans. They were wiping for two weeks without a single raid boss kill. <br /><br />Whether it was right or wrong, it was a total obliteration of expectations. What I saw, personally, were players 35 and older look at themselves — their job, their children now old enough to interact — and to whatever degree they had to, distance themselves from the game. And I think they did it by the millions.Aedilhildnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6556575758010903163.post-26118318238018204452016-02-18T10:59:48.282-07:002016-02-18T10:59:48.282-07:00@Angelo,
My own theory is that:
1. WotLK set the...@Angelo,<br /><br />My own theory is that:<br /><br />1. WotLK set the stage for a standard easy-to-difficult curve on raid content (it was not this way in TBC or Vanilla),<br />2. WotLK grew its customer base, adding another 7.5m subscribers who only knew this easy-to-hard curve (they were never exposed to TBC or Vanilla),<br />3. Cata doubled down on difficulty, returning to TBC-era style raids, which dissatisfied the new base.<br /><br />Those subs either left, or dumped out of raiding guilds in lieu of LFR (and then dumped out, after they got what they needed, then grew bored of the game/didn't care about the social aspects).Shawn Holmeshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05110605868875966328noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6556575758010903163.post-24672050142817698502016-02-17T12:38:43.473-07:002016-02-17T12:38:43.473-07:00What happened in Cata/MoP? Seems like this was th...What happened in Cata/MoP? Seems like this was the period in which people just didn't want to wipe anymore. I think that has a contributing factor in the loss of subs. Angelohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14182140977599936231noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6556575758010903163.post-37160235551990791692016-02-16T09:33:33.221-07:002016-02-16T09:33:33.221-07:00Cata and MoP were strange experiences for me. As I...Cata and MoP were strange experiences for me. As I moved some toons to a PvE server to maximize my diminished playing time. Finding anything that even resembled DoD was impossible, it was helped by raid finder. Though raid finder made it so I didn't want to play tank anymore.<br /><br />WoD made it easier for the solo existence but I still miss DoD. Let my sub lapse until legion. I preorderered so looking forward to demon hunter.Kizmetnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6556575758010903163.post-7419234053912227702016-02-12T14:19:07.624-07:002016-02-12T14:19:07.624-07:00I don’t know if you ran into this during Cata, but...I don’t know if you ran into this during Cata, but my feelings on Wod are somewhere along the lines of the following: Around 8 of us made just about every raid during MoP, so we figured we’d need to recruit a roster of around 30 people. It was not easy by any means. At times it was a revolving door. We’d have 5 that would server transfer and a few weeks later we might have one that stayed. We made it clear, that the majority of us are 32-40 and will not be on every night and we raid two nights a week. You will need to entertain yourself at times. If someone was kind enough to notify us they were leaving and why it was usually along the lines of nobody is ever online but raid night or you aren’t progressing fast enough, you need to add another raid night……you knew that we had 2 nights coming in?! It also seemed that “everyone gets a trophy” played into it at times. The amount of complaining that the boss wasn’t dead after 20 pulls was astounding. Mythic Tectus took us 83 pulls. I’ve slept someone in between Wrath and WoD, but I want to say it was somewhere around 150+ pulls to take down Heroic LK…Heroic Garrosh took us 94. Maybe it’s me, I’ll be 37 in June and have low tolerance for BS now! Strategosnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6556575758010903163.post-84276984131326283542016-02-12T12:34:18.806-07:002016-02-12T12:34:18.806-07:00@Strategos,
Good on you and your old-schoolers fo...@Strategos,<br /><br />Good on you and your old-schoolers for at least giving it a shot! 2 nights/7 hrs per week is nearly on par with what we ran for almost eight years. It'll never be world-first/server-first, but with discipline, can be very competitive. We stayed ahead of many fly-by-night guilds with that schedule.Shawn Holmeshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05110605868875966328noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6556575758010903163.post-86045099631394849212016-02-12T08:10:05.338-07:002016-02-12T08:10:05.338-07:00@Shawn Holmes
Just wanted to say I’m still checki...@Shawn Holmes<br /><br />Just wanted to say I’m still checking on your blog weekly. I wasn’t around for Cata and never had to deal with being in a constant state of recruitment. Maintaining a 25 man roster seems like a steep uphill climb…I can somewhat relate. When we came back for MoP our small guild had around 15 raiders, long story short we didn’t have to recruit. WoD has been a completely different animal. At first we were going to continue what worked for us. Maintaining our small roster and just running heroics. But the mythic bug ended up biting us. I mainly had the GM in title and lead our raids. I was no longer the person that did it all; responsibilities had been doled out well beforehand. I will say managing the roster during Sunwell (when I took over) and Wrath was so easier. It seemed that our biggest problem was that we raiding two nights a week, 7 hours total. So while we got things done, it was never cutting edge. We ended up 6/7 mythic Highmaul and 7/10 mythic Blackrock Foundry. Those of us that played together Vanilla through Wrath made a decision to call mythic progress the end of May. By the end of that summer, having cleared heroic Hellfire Citadel we decided to call raiding as well. I don’t know if we will give legion a try or not. I personally let my sub lapse in Sept. Back to the wait and see holding pattern!!!Strategosnoreply@blogger.com