18/04/2011

Recruitment is frustrating

I still enjoy raiding and my guild is progressing well enough on principle, but we keep having to cancel raids due to not having enough players. We're advertising on the official forums and via in-game chat, but it's been nearly two months since we had any kind of application at all. It's immensely frustrating. When I ask around I get told that it's the same for all guilds, but that still doesn't answer the question of why.

Many people say that the raids are too difficult and that this has killed the player base's interest in raiding, but I don't really buy that. Or rather, I can believe that this is true for many but I don't see how it explains such a massive dearth of recruits. Raids in Burning Crusade weren't exactly faceroll either, but I don't remember there ever being such a lack of interest in them. Not to mention, to come to the conclusion that raids are too hard or not fun for you or whatever, you'd at least have to give them a try - where are all the new players trying to break into raiding? My guild is pretty casual these days, so it's not as if we have huge expectations and are only open to the most experienced, but still we don't see any of them.

I wonder how much the fragmentation of the server community plays a role. It feels like you have little reason to interact with people outside your guild anymore, maybe the occasional Baradin Hold pug and that's it. I used to have plenty of contacts outside our guild, but they have mostly dried up. Five-mans used to be the big thing to do with people outside your guild occasionally, but the dungeon finder has mostly killed that off too. So it's not until you're short on raiders that you realise that you've got nowhere to turn. I keep thinking that I should make a point of running the daily heroic again and ask in general chat whether anyone wants to join to get to know people, but seeing how I'm a healer and healers are exactly what we're missing, that strategy wouldn't really achieve much.

Strangely enough, the whole guild levelling system doesn't seem to help either. You can question whether the guild perks are really all that, but it's an additional mental barrier to prevent you from leaving your old guild for sure. I actually hit exalted with Onslaught only yesterday, almost four months after expansion release, and most people in my guild still have a fair way to go. I doubt this kind of thing is keeping anyone in a guild that they hate, but if you're just considering leaving to join a raid guild for example, it's one more thing you risk to lose if things don't work out. Not to mention the issue of whether your raids count as guild groups in the eyes of the in-game system, something that has effectively killed off multi-guild raid forces and discourages filling holes with the occasional pugger.

And then... there is the issue of ten-man raiding. So many people thought that ten-man raiding becoming the new focus would make everyone happier, but I'm not sure it's working out that way. People thought that fewer people would mean less organisational effort, and in many ways it does, but maintaining a balanced roster with neither too few nor too many raiders is harder than ever, and multiple smaller raid groups means that more people have to take on the burden of being raid leaders than before.

Also, the whole "raiding with my friends only" thing has turned out to be a double-edged sword in my opinion. How many people cheered that they would now finally be able to focus on raiding with the nine players they liked best, without having to "carry" the chaff of fifteen others? (I wasn't one of them, but there were many.) However in the end, if one or two of your friends leave the game and you need replacements, who do you turn to? What are the chances that you always have a close friend at hand who can provide just what you need? In the end most guilds need people who are willing to be raiders first and friends second (at least initially). But if everyone else is already friends, who wants to be the one guy who has to struggle to fit in? Since you only need ten people, you're probably better off trying to make your own raid group with players that are already your friends. Except that you're probably one or two slots short in the end as well... And so it continues as everyone just sticks to their little cliques, which are too large to be absorbed into another ten-man but too small to be stable on their own.

This is all just rambly theorising of course, as I don't have any proof of these things beyond my own impressions and the occasional chat with other players. But I do feel that something is off, and I still don't think that it's the raid content itself. I'd be happy to hear other people's thoughts on the subject, and suggestions for solutions if you've got any.

Oh, and Onslaught on Earthen Ring-EU Horde side is recruiting. Of course. /cough

16 comments:

  1. That's kind of strange. I've seen a slow but steady influx of people to both my Ally and Horde guilds. I'm involved with the app process Hordeside, and what I see for the most part are people whose current guild has either gone more hardcore or is too juvenile for their taste. The biggest word of mouth is through the posting on the forums, so maybe if you post there you'll get some takers.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The pleasant anticipation of a dungeon run was content in TBC. This content was scrapped with the LFD. Add a non-existence of useful grinds.

    Players have nothing to do outside of raids. Therefore, they don't play unless they raid. And therefore it is harder to replace somebody who stopped raiding.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I don't think Guild rewards are the block. I recently (due to one of my regular erratic phases) reset my Guild rep to zero and it hasn't bothered me in the slightest. I like grinding dailies for cash and raiding with my Guildies so the rep soon accumulates.

    Let's assume (reasonably) that the majority of Guild apps are people from existing Guilds (or recently disbanded Guilds). There aren't so many *totally new* people out there. So, the lack of applications could have three causes.

    [1] People are sticky to their current Guilds irrespective of success or failure, and just don't leave, therefore there is no supply of new apps. But eventually that should break down, unless people are infinitely patient.

    [2] An alternative explanation is that people leaving Guilds in the Cataclysm era are also leaving the game. In WotLK, if you were unhappy with your Guild, you might well app to another to kill more bosses, and this happened frequently. If in Cata, perhaps more people are simply saying "My current Guild isn't working out, but after six years, I really can't be arsed to leave my friends and start again. Rather than leave my current Guild and make an app, I will simply leave the game." That would kill off the new app flow.

    [3] Those that leave existing Guilds are trying to recreate Guilds in the new 10 man structure. The 10 man format makes this "apparently" easier than it used to be, although most of these fledgling guilds are kidding themselves, most likely.

    I'm sure that there are elements of all three in the current dearth of recruitment. Where we used to see lots of apps from other guilds, now those "potential applicants" are either sticking it out, leaving the game entirely, or churning a subculture of rapidly forming and dissolving casual 10 mans.

    What is the correct strategy in the face of such difficulty? It can only be to out-last the opposition. Eventually, in the next tier, people in the weaker raid forces will hit level 25, get their scorpions or lions, and will have nothing they can get from their current Guild any more. Churn will rise. People will stop just leaving the game when the content gets nerfed (Kara was nerfed all the way through TBC, Blizz doesn't mind starting brutally hard then nerfing, anyone remember original Shade of Aran?). The Guilds that held firm during that period will be the ones that are around to reap the benefits.

    Well, that's what I hope, anyway.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Fully agree with everything you wrote.


    Their concept of "guild equals raid" was the second biggest failures of WoW (biggest would be the cold anonymous LFD) because of the reason mentioned by the BoxerDogs.

    Guild and guild achievements should not matter for raids. No advantage for raids. No raid achievements. It should be your "container" for you and your friends with "fun" achievements.

    And there should be a new concept of a "raid container" which is like a guild and it has a raid bank and raid achievements and you get the advantages from for raiding from these achievements but no fun/trade advantages.


    And I still think that 10 man raiding cannot exist as it is to inflexible. It would need a too big bench to always be able to raid which people wouldn't appreciate because they would sit too often.

    I think Cata is the end of raiding. They can't go back to 25/40 man because I doubt those raids would form again. They can't stay with 10 man raids because raids are dying right and left at the moment. Most 10 man raids wont survive the summer.

    All they can do is drop the concept of raiding for the next add-on or make raiding puggable again, like Naxxramas was.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I agree with most things you said Shinny. All guilds i know of are having the same problem. In my guild we are starting to explore new options and are ofc hoping that works out.

    Kring Quote: And I still think that 10 man raiding cannot exist as it is to inflexible. It would need a too big bench to always be able to raid which people wouldn't appreciate because they would sit too often.
    Quote end.

    I fully agree with this part of your text. And i strongly belive that the sooner they go go back to the TBC style of raiding(That being mostly 25 man raids and a select few 10 man raids) The sooner these issues will go away.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I couldn't disagree more. We have ZERO bench. We're 4/13 Heroic, and raid (well plan to raid) 3 days a week and 3 hours a day. If someone has to miss a day, we either reschedule or just accept that we're only going to get 2 days in that week.

    Now, will it suck (like it did a few weeks ago) when someone announces that they're done raiding with us? Sure. It's tough to fill that 10th slot, especially when you're looking for say - a mage specifically, not just any ranged DPS you can get your hands on.

    I think the biggest reason we see less applicants now is that there are more guilds getting into the raid scene period, and we're seeing fewer folks willing to jump ship. I personally think guild rep and rewards aren't worth sticking around if I'm not getting what I want, but some people place value on that.

    ReplyDelete
  7. (Warning: This comment ended up being really long)

    I still think raid difficulty plays a major role. I started playing in 2008 and hit 70 like a month before WotLK. I was comfortable doing 5 mans but I was scared of raiding. One of my RL friends was in a raiding guild and kept suggesting I go to Naxx 10 runs. Finally one day in April 2009 (so like 5 months after WotLK launch) I relented and he put together a total PUG (8 random people from Trade Chat) and we cleared Naxx 10 and I had a great time making jokes on vent and I got a few pieces of loot and I fell in love with raiding.

    I was a pretty mediocre player back then. Half my stuff was ungemmed or unenchanted, I was using default raid frames to heal, I had no macros, cooldowns like Hand of Sacrifice weren't even on my action bar... and yet someone like me was still good enough to make progress in Naxx 10. If Naxx 10 was anything like BWD or BoT now, we would have completely failed, I would have concluded that raiding wasn't ever going to be for me, and I probably would have stopped playing entirely. Instead the initial success I had with raiding made me want to get better at it and keep playing.

    We had another RL friend start playing WoW and he hit 80 in like March 2010. I remember bringing him into ToC. As a whole content tier, ToC was terrible. But for "intro to raiding," it was great. All you needed was 1 hour and you could kill some bosses and get some epics and whet your appetite for some real challenges and improvement. Two months later we all killed the Lich King together in ICC 10.

    There is no equivalent in Cataclysm. There is no (post-nerf) Karazhan or Naxx 10. There's nothing that's considered substantial content that would be forgiving for sub-optimal players. There's nothing to encourage participating in any content outside of your guild. The 5 man heroics were entertaining for a bit, but now they're mostly just a grind to get some VP.

    So we all play with the same 9 buddies we met in WotLK, until 1 of them has to go, and there's no one we've met to even consider replacing them with.

    ReplyDelete
  8. I agree with Justisraiser.

    Yes, raiding through vanilla and BC was not easy. But it was also relatively inaccessible. Then we got Wrath's raiding, which was easy to get into and easy to complete. I think this is where a LOT of people got into raiding. I know that's where I did.

    Then Cata's raiding was "hard" again, no harder than BC maybe but certainly harder than it was in Wrath. And this has left some players unable to adjust to the changes.

    I've even seen it within my own guild. We have certain members who hit level 85, got enough gear to do heroics, and thought they're ready for raiding. They have no gems, no enchants, no reforges, and most importantly, they do not have the skills necessary to be contributing members of the team. In Wrath, these things could be compensated for. In Cata, we can't do that and those people who have been left out in order for the rest of us to progress are actually causing some drama within the guild.

    *sighs* So yeah, I do think that it's an issue.

    ReplyDelete
  9. @Redbeard: Well, I guess if lots of guilds are falling apart, the ones that are left behind and don't want to quit have to go somewhere... though it could also simply be different on different realms. I know on our realm forum there's an entire thread dedicated to moaning about the lack of recruits, but that's probably not the case everywhere.

    @Adgamorix: What exactly are you disagreeing with? :) Maybe I'm misreading you but you don't sound happy about having no backups either...

    @Justisraiser & Faeldray: You are making valid points and I have no doubt that there are fewer people interested in raiding now than there were in WOTLK, for the reasons you cited. What gets me is that there seem to be fewer people interested in raiding than even pre-WOTLK (from my point of view anyway). Like Faedray said, back then raiding was even less accessible initially, but people still lined up to join raiding guilds. Why not now?

    ReplyDelete
  10. > And i strongly belive that the sooner they go go
    > back to the TBC style of raiding(That being mostly
    > 25 man raids and a select few 10 man raids) The
    > sooner these issues will go away.

    Do you think they can do that? I have some doubt that the player would accept the exclusion from content again. TBC excluded a huge percentage.

    > I couldn't disagree more. We have ZERO bench. We're 4/13 Heroic

    That doesn't matter in the big picture. You're in a focussed raid with 9 other people which all put their raid first irl. There's nothing wrong with that. But the majority doesn't take WoW as serious as you and their raid does have major problems. (Just to emphasize: That was NO offense.)

    > I think the biggest reason we see less applicants
    > now is that there are more guilds getting into
    > the raid scene period,

    I think the reason is "WoW is dead". In the evening there are 5 people in the AH. I still remember the time when you couldn't move in the AH because of terrible lag. At least on my server, there are less people playing WoW.

    > So we all play with the same 9 buddies we met
    > in WotLK, until 1 of them has to go, and there's
    > no one we've met to even consider replacing
    > them with.

    In vanilla you've met new people while questing (group quests were hard...) or running dungeons.
    In TBC you've met new people while running heroics.
    In WotLK the LFD prevented you from meeting people in heroics but you've met people in /trade PuG raids (unless you had a real raid).
    In Cata you... wait... In Cata you meet people while complaing on blog comments.

    > Then Cata's raiding was "hard" again, no harder
    > than BC maybe but certainly harder than it was
    > in Wrath. And this has left some players unable
    > to adjust to the changes.

    There's another possibility. People raided for shinies during WotLK. They've noticed that they don't like raiding but they liked the shinies. At the end of WotLK with the ID patch their raid broke up. Maybe they've searched a new raid to wipe a few days on some early boss and have then decided to just move on. Maybe they didn't even bother.

    There is a big chance that people who played WoW for 4 years without raiding just don't like raiding. Why would they've kept their subscription for 4 yours otherwise?

    The problem is not that raiding is to hard, the problem is that a big part of the player base got the memo from Blizzard that they are now again second class citizen and wont get loot or anything to do.

    ReplyDelete
  11. The saddest thing to me pointed out in this post is how lifeless 5 man dungeons have become thanks to the dungeon finder. It is super convenient, I cannot knock that, but it somehow sucks all of the human interaction out of 5mans.

    ReplyDelete
  12. @Kring:
    "The problem is not that raiding is to hard, the problem is that a big part of the player base got the memo from Blizzard that they are now again second class citizen and wont get loot or anything to do."

    I think this is very, very accurate. In Vanilla I tolerated being excluded because frankly I was new to MMOs. In TBC I was excluded because the content was too hard for me and my Guild (I was not, and am not now, good enough to be a Sunwell raider or kill Kael pre-nerfs). I remember trying WotLK tentatively, and stepping up my commitment, and killing Arthas and getting GotIR10. It was great. But if WotLK had been exclusionist, I absolutely would have quit the game at that point. It even says so in my diary (along the lines of "if I can't see the content this flipping expac then I am done with this goshdarned game"). There is a market for a tolerably easy dungeon crawler MMO with a "hardcore" difficulty level for those that want it (Algalon, YS+0), and WotLK served that market perfectly. So far, Cata does not.

    So yes, I just totally failed to add anything new to the discussion except a big rehash, but I was compelled to quote Kring, because it rang so true. And I would quote Justisraiser too, except then I'd be even more meandering.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Kring: Honestly i don't think Blizzard can bring back that way of raidign anymore. Its just to late for that im afraid but i cant help my self.. Im still hoping that they will do it and that by chance its not to late...

    ReplyDelete
  14. You say that healers are what you are missing. Do you think this is a shortage of raiders, or a shortage of healers?

    I scanned a few server boards and the majority of raid guilds I saw recruiting were all looking for healers. In many ways this shows how hard it'll be to get back into raiding if you take a break and come back if you play anything other than a healer. (Which is actually bad for WoW in the longterm because it means returnees are more likely to say 'meh' and leave than slot into an existing raid group.)

    ReplyDelete
  15. @Spinks: I do think it's raiders in general, because while healers are what we need the most, we've also been trying to recruit a hunter for several months without even getting a single application.

    ReplyDelete
  16. BoxerDogs: I had exactly the same reaction coming in to WotLK: "if this is like BC, I'm done." Fortunately, Naxx was quite easy, so I kept sending Blizzard my money for another two years.

    Cataclysm, alas, made me pull the trigger. I'm now enjoying RIFT. Oddly, I'm enjoying it even if it's in some ways not as good as WoW. It's the lack of betrayal, I guess.

    ReplyDelete