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The latest patch 5.4 newsOfficers' Quarters: Firelands will not save your guild
by Scott Andrews 
May 23rd 2011 at 2:00PM
I try to be a glass-half-full sort of guy, especially when I write these columns. (I don't always succeed, but I try.) In my opinion, leaders should be optimists who prepare for the worst. Today, however, I have a rather pessimistic message for you: Firelands will not save your raiding guild.
What I'm seeing with my own guild and what I'm hearing from all of you, week after week, is that guilds are struggling right now. With Cataclysm offering no new way to advance characters, long-time players are tiring of WoW's endless gear treadmill. Slots are becoming tougher and tougher to fill as players grow bored or frustrated with tier 11. Officers are burning out at a blistering pace. The playerbase, in general, is poised for something truly new -- not just a rehash of old raids.
Firelands is our best hope -- but I'm sorry to say, it won't be enough.
Seven bosses (plus the obligatory one in Baradin Hold) is a rather paltry number. As has been noted, we haven't had so few bosses in a tier since the Coliseum days, generally regarded as the most disappointing tier in WoW history. The Firelands bosses that have been tested on the PTR all sound really interesting so far, and I'm looking forward to meeting them with weapons drawn. The fact is, though, seven bosses is seven bosses. Players are going to get bored of this tier faster than Tier 11.
Summer doldrums
Worst of all, summer is upon us. Traditionally, summer has not been kind to raiding guilds. Personal schedules change. Attendance plummets. Some players know their playtime is going to drop so drastically that they don't even bother subbing to the game during the summer months. Even the players who are extremely dedicated will be going on vacations, visiting friends, or enjoying outdoor activities that may cut into their raid time.
These are all important things to do in life, and we can't hold it against them. In fact, I hope that all the officers out there reading this will take advantage of the summer, too.
A case could be made that last summer was worse than this summer is going to be. After all, Icecrown Citadel was six months old when May rolled around, and Ruby Sanctum was all we got that season -- one new boss instead of Firelands' seven, plus an insane amount of trash. Players were fed up with Wrath, on the whole, and looking forward to Cataclysm.
However, ICC was gated, so some of the bosses hadn't been available as long as others. Blizzard also limited progression by restricting the number of possible attempts on end-of-wing bosses. Finally, the instance had a stacking buff that gradually made the content more and more accessible. Many guilds were just hitting their stride in ICC during the late spring -- and the buff didn't even cap out until July. Everyone was excited to face the Lich King in his citadel and defeat him at long last, so a lot of players stuck with it for much longer than they normally would.
Decent PUG players were much easier to come by back then than they will be this summer. The easy accessibility of Coliseum loot, combined with Frost emblems and epics from the three Icecrown heroics added in patch 3.3, made gearing up for ICC a breeze. The stacking buff and growing familiarity with Icecrown's bosses gradually made bringing puggers into your raids more and more viable to make up for poor attendance, if you were so inclined.
Gearing up for Firelands, on the other hand, will be a long, long road for someone who is fresh to 85. Skill is not gear, but even the most skilled player will have no business in Firelands wearing ilevel 333 rares.
The upcoming Cataclysm expansion, in some cases, also kept people playing last summer. Some players didn't want to jeopardize their raid slots for the expansion by taking a few months off. We didn't know then, after all, exactly when the expansion would launch. Other players were getting their characters prepared for the road to 85 or trying to finish up all the Wrath achievements while the content was still part of the endgame.
Now we've seen what Cataclysm has to offer, and to many players, the level 85 experience has been underwhelming. Overall, I don't sense anywhere near the same excitement that WoW had when we were all waiting for this expansion. The recent reduction in subs seems to support that hunch.
Why am I telling you this?
I'm hearing from too many people these days who are hoping that Firelands will fix everything that's wrong with their guilds. It happens just about every time a new raiding tier is added, and sometimes the raid is so compelling that it does ... at least until people get sick of it.
Firelands will be released sometime in the next few months. When it goes live, you're going to see a resurgence in attendance, and maybe some MIA raiders will start showing up online again.
It won't last. It won't sweep away longstanding recruiting issues. It won't solve your loot system woes. It won't permanently energize lethargic officers. And if you don't prepare for it now, the shortened tier and the summer months will absolutely crush your guild. You and your fellow officers need to look ahead and make some hard decisions.
I highly recommend reading this column from 2009 about surviving the summer months. Everything I say there is still relevant, sound advice. Unfortunately, it is doubly important this time around.
This is all just conjecture on my part. I could certainly be wrong about everything, but from what I can see, the summer of 2011 will be the toughest one yet for raiding guilds in WoW. Be optimistic if you choose, but also be proactive about solving your guild's problems now -- before you're left without options. Firelands alone doesn't have the legs to save your raids.
/salute
Recently, Officers' Quarters has examined how strong new leadership can create a guild turnaround, the pitfalls of promising more than you can deliver, and lessons learned from Scott's own guild demise. Send your own guild-related questions and suggestions to scott@wowinsider.com.
Filed under: Officers' Quarters (Guild Leadership)
Reader Comments (Page 3 of 6)
GhostWhoWalks May 23rd 2011 5:40PM
I often get the impression that Blizzard is moving towards a "do whatever you enjoy" design for the game.
Want to PvP with a 29 twink? There's a function for disabling experience gain.
Want to experience as many quests in the game as you can? Go pursue those Loremaster achievements.
Like having end-game PvE challenges but don't have the time or the group to set up raids? Their new tiered-heroics system might be right up your alley (once they apply some tweaks, of course).
Just want to explore, learn some history and find cool stuff? Bam, Archeology.
In fact, I think Blizz needs to take it a step further. How about allowing us to enter older raids without requiring us to be in an actual raid group? I used to solo the first section of Karazhan to try and get the Horseman's mount, and I always felt bad for the guildie I had to wrangle into forming a raid group with me because it meant he couldn't quest while I was off doing my own thing. How about adding old raids to the dungeon finder's functionality, allowing us to, say, que up for Ulduar with other people on other servers who also want to run Ulduar for the hell of it? There wouldn't necessarily be a need for rewards, just the ability to run the older content without having to sit in Trade chat for an hour advertising your PuG (or, alternatively, sitting in Guild chat for an hour advertising your PuG).
Power to the people, Blizzard.
DayDreamer May 24th 2011 1:07AM
Yeah. I'm starting to realize that I don't want to be a master at WoW. (My specialized skills will be useless; only the general skills will be transferable.)
After I get my violet proto-drake next month, I think I'm going to stop my subscription. Maybe after 2 or 3 more patches with nerfs, there will be enough for me to come back and do comfortably, both Cata and old WotLK content.
I hate the dailies. I hate the harder heroic dungeons. I hate how lag ruins so much.
We're even having trouble with ICC 10man. No progress in the last month. Orb Whisperer, Portal Jockey, and the heroic versions of those have eluded us. Seems to be glitches in selecting/clicking orbs/portals, so not even in our control.
and yet I PUGed Ulduar 25man, and we didn't screw up a single achievement.
Whatever. I don't care any more.
It's all about waiting.
(I never should have done archaeology. No one should touch it until they introduce the option to select dig site types. Every lesser update wastes more of the progress we made before it.)
Leviathon May 23rd 2011 2:30PM
But we don't know the difficulty of the Firelands bosses and it's more
the hard modes that count. I know a lot of the people who say they are
bored of T11 have not yet downed all the hard modes for example. Then
of course there is the massive timesink that is the daily area that
requires 695 total Marks of the World Tree to unlock everything so
that will keep people busy for a while. By that time we will probably
see 4.3 with the Silithus revamp that's been in the files and a return
of AQ as a 5 man with the Abyssal Maw 5 man (since the quests mention
the Abyssal Plane for the dailies at the Steam Pools).
Gearing characters will be even easier come 4.2 also. Even currently I
was able to get my fresh 85 Paladin to 341 ilvl by buying the cheap
ZG/ZA epics and making some crafted gear. And in 4.2 that will be even
easier when you can buy the current valor gear for justice points (I
can't wait for this for my alts) and then buy T12 equivalent gear with
valor. If anything 4.2 is going to make playing my alts even funner
since Justice points will actually be worth something for alts past
the normal heroics where you could only buy gear that was the same
ilvl as the gear you were getting.
Leviathon May 23rd 2011 2:38PM
Now don't get me wrong I FULLY understand being bored if you're not a raider and the new daily area will help with that a bit along with buying epics with Justice Points.
Jestin May 23rd 2011 2:55PM
"But we don't know the difficulty of the Firelands bosses and it's more the hard modes that count. I know a lot of the people who say they are bored of T11 have not yet downed all the hard modes for example"
In my opinion, I think that's because the hard modes just don't feel like they're worth it. Now, granted, my guild is only 2/4 heroic in BoT and 3/6 in BWD, but aside from very minor mechanic changes and everything hitting a LOT harder, it just doesn't feel like there's much reward in it. Now, I'm a big fan of achievements, so I'll keep doing them at least once so I can get it logged, but... what's the upside here? Slightly differently-colored gear that will be replaced in a couple weeks/months anyway?
My guild isn't in "trouble", but what I think will shake people out of their stupor is the chance for the legendary. That at least is something that a guild can really rally around, especially since - at the very least - you get a pet once it's completed.
Trisnic May 23rd 2011 2:36PM
I was disappointed in the Firelands raid only having 7 new bosses + one in BH. It's possible that we will even need to scale back to Tuesday & Wednesday raiding but we will see.
Thankfully I don't expect Firelands to save our guild but I don't expect it to kill it either.
We've recently had a decent amount of new apps to our guild again for raiding, just like we did when ICC was dying down in general. We recently formed a weekend 10 for trialing and people who just aren't all that geared yet but want to raid that we can pull from when we need to because the people involved are eager to get into our main raids but just aren't 359+ geared. On top of that we've had some long time members come back but mostly to play casually. It is great to see old faces around.
With that being said we also had a long time officer cancel his subscription this week to boredom, as two other officers have done since the Cata release. We lost almost half our raid group within 2 weeks after we cleared 12/12 and moved onto heroics. People have burned out and that's ok. Our roster looks a lot different than it did on January 4th, 2011. We had a tough month but we are still here and stronger than we were before.
We aren't bringing back people who have long since disappeared especially if an excuse was not given just because they renew their subscription. I'd rather bring in the people who are really excited to raid (yes they exist and they are thrilled to raid), and who may not disappear on us after we clear normal modes or those who have stuck with us for a LONG time. They may be able to work their way back into our raids, or they can move on to other guilds that need them.
In regards to the summer, this article is completely correct. We've over-recruited a bit in preparation and I am watching our calendar to see where the gaps need to be filled for recruitment purposes. I full expect people to have lower attendance during the summer months.
My message to guilds is to never stop recruiting and always keep your eye on where people will be two weeks in the future. People come and people go and that's ok, the most important thing is to prepare.
busuan May 23rd 2011 2:39PM
In reality, we currently don't even need character levels, because dungeon/raid bosses are always higher than us no matter what, and gears
busuan May 23rd 2011 2:40PM
In reality, we currently don't even need character levels, because dungeon/raid bosses are always higher than us no matter what, and gears
MisterMichaud May 23rd 2011 2:42PM
After three years of happily raiding weekly, Cataclysm has squashed my guild's will plunge into 10mans. Every time another member gets fed up and throws in the towel, the fabric of our guild weakens a bit more. It's very sad and frustrating, and I often worry that our five year old guild may be on the brink of dissolving. I feel like this is a truth that is being under-reported: it isn't just a series of individuals mass quitting, it's a slow collapse of the infrastructure that guilds and groups of friends are based on. And when even two or three hit their tolerance levels for Cata content, it's devastating to a small guild like mine.
The absolute tipping point for us was our first recent trip into ZG as a guild split into two 5mans (we had already been burning out on the first bosses of the available raids). I had already pugged it once myself and assured everyone that it could be done. We ended up wiping several times on the way to the first boss, and then again and again once we met him. Since then, we've lost three members. Welcome to ZG.
I commend Blizzard for their resolve to stick with their original design philosophy for Cataclysm, and I understand their development pipeline is long and many of these design decisions we endure were put into motion ages ago, but I really do wish they could swallow their pride, admit their mistakes and return the accessibility of Wrath.
I HAD been telling myself and guildies things would be better in 4.2, but this post has squashed that. I have been trying to actively recruit new members, but I'm probably getting their hopes up for nothing.
Thank you, you've given me plenty to think about.
Poltergeist May 23rd 2011 3:20PM
My guild is in a very similar situation.
Another aspect that's overlooked is the change to healing. With Blizzard intent on making a healer's job more stressful (Or challenging) than what we had in LK, I find healers to be the hardest commodity to come by in game. I know quite a few healers who have switched over to DPS characters since they don't want to be bothered with the responsibility.
Players don't like feeling like they're walking on eggshells when they play a game. It's ok to have those tense moments, but not all the time.
thepiratester May 23rd 2011 3:40PM
@ MisterMichaud
My guild did collapse for this reason. I could not get the bodies for my small guild to keep things alive. We all put up our hands and went our own ways. None of us want to be a part of a large guild just to have a shot at seeing the content that was paid for. Few of us just stopped playing wow and are trying out other games. I do remember ever feeling this way about wow. Its too bad, S**t happens I guess. EJ must be pleased anyway. GJ Blizz!
CodeMunki May 23rd 2011 4:40PM
I couldn't agree more. We had 20-30 regular raiders in Wrath and were able to get through all of the normal mode bosses except Yogg when they were current tier content. We were even able to do some hard mode achievements. So far in Cataclysm, we're 3/6 in BWD and only have Halfus down in BoT after 3 months of regular raiding.
As a result, we now struggle to put together a single 10-man group two nights/week because people are frustrated at wipe after wipe to insta-kill mechanics and healers that are helpless to do anything about it due to the drastically increased difficulty of healing.
My guild has been around for years and this is the first time I've felt like it is on the verge of crumbling. When people don't feel a sense of progress, they tend to lose interest quickly.
MisterMichaud May 23rd 2011 4:48PM
@CodeMunki
And this is why I had to laugh when Blizz attributed the 600k drop off due to players having worked through content too quickly mere months after release (not to mention it's also in conflict with what they stated as their reasoning for postponing Firelands, which was that players were not yet ready... make up your mind Blizz).
We ran Wrath raids literally up to the week before Cata came out. If Blizz honestly believes the PR spin they put out, then they are deeply deluded.
Maccabeus May 23rd 2011 7:23PM
if your guild has been having worse attempts than PuG groups at the Zandalari heroics, then you guys had better start learning how to play your classes. Not trying to be a dick here, but I am astonished that you guys made it past Magmaw, Omnotron, and Halfus, if those heroics are giving your main raid group troubles.
Adapt or die, man. Adapt or die.
busuan May 23rd 2011 2:41PM
(Didn't realize the comment system is so picky on special characters. Please delete the other incomplete ones.)
In reality, we currently don't even need character levels, because dungeon/raid bosses are always higher than us no matter what, and gears less-than-346 are NPC'ed/melted asap after raids start. Since there are also "reputation" to grind, the game would be about the same if all players (and all mobs) start at level 85. Instead of pushing us faster-than-ever to the max level and then sneaking in the gear-leveling to replace character-leveling, Blizz should adopt the idea of Diablo II endgame system. That is, to make max level/reputation less important and to make gears gained from leveling and profession more exciting in endgame content, by partitioning stats (strength, agility, stamina etc) and assigning/mingling them across different gears and gear levels, so that re-rolling would be always meaningful, important and fun, and endgame raids would be more tolerant (but not easy) and more accessible.
TonyKP May 23rd 2011 2:43PM
Thank you for your honesty - t'were brutal, but necessary to hear. For the sake of my old raiding buddies I hope that things don't progress that way, but I agree with you that they probably will.
Sergel May 23rd 2011 3:06PM
Ironically enough, summer is the one time of year I actually can play since I'm not swamped with school, homework, and work along with the usually chores and errands.
Jack Spicer May 23rd 2011 3:01PM
It would be interesting if Blizzard put in a buff for the early cata raids like they did for ICC. I'm sure being able to PuG those raids would keep the attention of more people.
Ashamanxx May 24th 2011 8:12AM
They don't need to implement a buff because the availability of current VP gear for JPs along with access to T12 gear will do that for them; the better geared people can be, especially those who pug or on alts, the easier the T11 content is.
Arrohon May 23rd 2011 3:11PM
Before Cataclysm's launch Blizzard said that they wanted to come out with multiple smaller raids instead of one enormous raid (ICC anyone) per raiding tier. We've had six months that were spent getting to 85, grinding rep, gearing up, and finally raiding 12 bosses (normal mode). Three months in they lost 5% of their playerbase with all of that. We're getting an awesome daily quest hub and a seven boss raid after Cata has been out for six months? I really hope that 4.3 is out only 2-3 months after 4.2 otherwise WoW is going to get hit pretty hard.