Welfare Epics and Raiding
Does Blizzard hate raiders?
I am really tempted to answer this question with: yes. Now a lot of people out there will say that this is not true and that Blizzard puts way too much time/effort into making raid instances that will only be seen by raiders, and they are a small portion of the total amount of people playing WoW. So raiders should be the last ones to complain; but casuals and PVP players, those are the ones that need more content! Now I agree that everyone should have content, and this is not about the amount of content offered, it's about how Blizzard seems to be aiming at the structural destruction of raiding guilds.
I've made several posts about the problems I see and foresee for raiding guilds, but Blizzard's view on this matter seems to be the complete opposite. I had just finished my previous column, The devaluation of purple, when I was shocked and amazed again by Blizzard as the 2.4 details unfolded. New epic items through Badges, with a lot of high quality items, some even better then T6 items from BT/MH. Now think about this, The Black Temple, a 25 man raid instance that's considered the hardest instance 'till Sunwell comes and then think about heroics and Karazan. I simply can't comprehend this, I can't, it just doesn't make any sense at all, none.
And this isn't the first time that Blizzard tried to take away any reason for raiding guilds to exist, they've done so from the start of TBC, but this certainly is another big big blow for raiding guilds. A lot of people will say that this is a good change, people can get gear, and what am I complaining about? But those people fail to understand the impact all the changes that Blizz made in TBC have on raiding guilds and the consequences of those changes that the raiding guilds have to deal with. A lot of people think that easy to obtain good gear will make it easier for people to kill bosses, now in theory this of course is true, but in practice it’s not that simple. Players that really want to kill a boss usually have already done so, those that haven’t killed it so far are lacking something, usually the problem is a lack of dedication amongst it’s raiders and not the gear they have, gear is too easy to be the problem and bosses aren’t tuned that well in TBC. Now what happens to a guild that struggles to kill bosses atm when new easy to obtain gear is thrown at them ? Yes, some of their members will do as they should and improve their gear where possible, but at the same time they lose members again who simply stop raiding 'cause they can actually get better gear without raiding and it's even way easier to get ! And as all raiding guilds know, raid members are priceless, each one you loose will hurt you for a long time.
I still see raiding guilds as the backbone of WoW, they are the social communities where the more serious players of WoW come together to unite and achieve goals they couldn't achieve if they were alone. Now I agree that in vanilla-WoW the raiding scene was a bit too forced on people, there were no other options, but it did create a very healthy environment for raiding guilds. In TBC Blizzard absolutely destroyed this environment, they gave people so many options on how to get gear, and raiding guilds were the worst option all of a sudden. People were better off doing PvP, heroics, Karazan, ZA - not that doing all this is bad, but they don't require the kind of guilds that raiding requires. People can basically play TBC solo, guildless and get the same rewards as being in a raiding guild. So what do raiding guilds have to offer to their members in TBC? Well eh, companionship, but that’s about it. They can't offer people gear, that's for sure, offering gear that people can get with 20% of the work through solo play isn't really competitive. Offering people the opportunity to see content is also not a valid reason, it would mean that everyone that saw the content would stop raiding as seeing the same encounter for the 2nd time isn't really that exciting. Now we as Nihilum offer our people world firsts, or at least the chance of them, but there are only a few guilds in the world that can offer this to their members.
I would say that this is the main reason why so many guilds are struggling or disbanding, they simply do not have a reason to exist anymore, and without that, guilds are doomed. An other problem is that every guild that disbands hurts the whole PvE scene, as all PvE guilds are connected. Or did you really think all the raiders that play in Nihilum started playing here? Of course not, most of us started in other guilds, normal casual guilds usually, but they did exist because they had something to offer to their members, gear and companionship. From there we all slowly moved up, joining better guilds till we ended up in Nihilum. Now what if our first, or 2nd guild had disbanded 'cause they lacked players that wanted to raid? I doubt we would be here today. And that is how it works for all guilds, it's like with any RL sports, people move up the chain, either as their team gets a promotion or cause they switch teams. Now what would happen to the professional top teams if all the teams with amateurs would quit? They'd die - no chance to get new players anymore. And this is what is happening in WoW atm. Guilds that can't offer their people enough anymore, make it worth spending their in-game time raiding, are forced to disband, and this usually concerns the struggling guilds.
Guilds that are on TK/SSC atm are already obsolete, with patch 2.4 anyone raiding TK/SSC is out of their mind, and that is the majority of the (25man) raiding guilds out there, according to wowjutsu. 48% Of the raiding guilds started in SSC/TK, only 8,5% of the raiding guilds managed to get into BT, that’s not a lot. And now any 25 man raiding guild not in Bt/MH is basically outdated…. Even guilds offering BT/MH items to their members will now feel the heat, people will choose to get the easy S3 epics, ZA or badge items, they'll get gear of the same item level with hardly any work, can you blame them for leaving? I can't.
Edit: It's seems Blizzard is adding badges to SSC/TK, would make it almost as good as Karazan at least.
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