Copernicus

I'm sure it's the same for many servers. On Tichondrius at least, around half the guilds that made any progress into SWP stopped raiding at some point. One of the odder things about it was that recruitment from guilds that stopped raiding was relatively light. It wasn't just burnout from a few members that killed the group, but it seemed to be burnout for the entire guild or raid. Our guild did have a brief time where it felt close to being over. We managed to get through by picking up a few people from another guild that had just died a week earlier, then getting over the hump of the boss we were working on.

Now, I can't say if that was true for other servers. But from the cross-server applications we did receive, it did appear that very few people felt motivated enough to apply to another guild to keep going through SWP. And recruitment in general was difficult even with cross-server applications and a high-profile server name.

---

So what was it that was killing guilds and morale so heavily, on so many server, with SWP? The obvious culprits probably share some blame (raid stacking, the long wait and farm before it came out, and the usual summer dropoff) and that might be all of it. But what would be needed to avoid that in the future as well? If your guild died in SWP, what would you say the key reasons were?* And if your guild got through the instance with no real problems, what were the reasons for that?

I'm mainly trying to avoid the mistakes of SWP in the future with WotLK. I enjoy high-end raiding, but I also want to make sure it's enjoyable for the guild and myself. And at certain points during the SWP clear, it simply wasn't fun.


* Please try to avoid bringing up random drama to keep the thread useful. Morale or recruitment would be good examples, Soandso was a bad player would not.

 

Caligula

Within the past 3 weeks, 2 guilds on our server have completed SWP. We also have been recruiting many people from other servers who have dropped from their guilds that decided to stop raiding.

It's all in the attitude. I feel that a lot of people really do raid for loot and when they see an expansion imminent they ask why they're fighting for that loot since it's going to be replaced so soon. Some people enjoy the game as a game and play it to play it, not for shiny pixels.

That's the difference.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...s/Caligula.png

 

MatthewDB

I'm sure Lich King being very close had a lot to do with your guild's burnout. Why work so hard for gear upgrades when you will get better gear in the expansion, which arrives shortly. I realize this is circular logic, for instance: What constitutes "shortly" in regards to time when that will vary from person to person. I currently have a hard time logging in now, I would rather just wait for Lich King.

 

Duilliath

When would you say those guilds stopped raiding ? "Some point" isn't very definitive.

My own guild barely got started in SWP, but what killed raiding for us wasn't SWP. The imminent patch killed most of the interest, much like the lull before TBC.

Every single post I've read on Sunwell was full of either two things
1) They're the hardest encounters ever
2) They're exceptionally well designed and fun

I'm quite sure that wiping on Kil'Jaeden for a month or two gets old pretty damn fast. But, in all honesty, for my own guild, most of the fights were just pretty straight forward. There were two challenging fights in all of TBC - Vashj and Kael'thas. Even Illidan was a pushover compared to those (case in point, we killed him on the first serious nights of attempts, second pull, 24man).

I'd wager that, much like the old cockblocks in BWL, people are simply not used to any serious challenge and TBC hasn't exactly been training people to expect anything other than bosses dying on the first or second night of attempts.

An thenn tehy wuz al ded. Srsly. (Exodus 1)

 

Abnell

It's just because it's the last instance of the expansion. Sunwell itself is much less of a guild killer than Naxx was.

 

Lyer

For mine, it was morale. We had come to the raid game somewhat late and never did experience the 6+ months of BT/Hyjal farm fest. We stepped into SW without facing a major boss roadblock. It's not like we killed a new boss every week, but at the same time we never spent more than 1 week's worth of raid time on a boss. Kalecgos was the toughest challenge that my guild had ever faced and I think the guildies simply weren't used to seeing us have a hard time with something. (A ton of our players never raided in pre BC, if they did, it wasn't past MC). So in the end instead of working for it, a lot of them just gave up and either stopped trying or stopped showing up. I think a part of the problem was that the progression from SSC/TK > BT/Hyjal wasn't steep enough. I think the initial bosses in BT/Hyjal were TOO easy and the expectation that SW would be more of the same (at least for some guilds) came crashing down.

 

Copernicus

Our guild's biggest problem was during the Felmyst -> Twins period, where we just had very few Resto Shaman available. We did manage to get all the way through the instance after getting over that hump.

Speaking for Alliance on Tichondrius, an SWP guild died just about once a month from May onwards. It wasn't a big drama-filled affair, just the guild would stop raiding.

 

◊ EllTrain

For us, Sunwell represented the single best period of recruitment ever. We had more quality apps on a daily basis than any other time. It was quite pleasant and the zone treated us well. Maybe because we were slightly ahead of the curve and were picking up the raiders from these failing guilds.

 

• Caladiera

I think each guild had its own blend of struggles but below is a list of some of the broader problems:

1) The start of school

2) Relative difficulty vs. reward - Sunwell is brutal by design, which is both awesome and a problem when there are now many ways to get amazing gear (pvp, badge, no keys for BT/Hyjal). A number of people didn't want the stress of it.

3) Raid comp swings - 10 Healers/3 tanks for Kal, 6 healers/2 tanks for Brut, 25 priests for Fel (joke), 11 healers/3 tanks for Twins, 6 healers/4 tanks for M'uru. It's either a lot of sitting or respeccing for people.

4) Expense - Haste & Destruction Pots are required in mass quantities. The price of herbs on servers with multiple SWP raid guilds also rose with demand. Additionally, ilvl150 gear is not gear to repair ~ 5g a wipe. With dailies its not hard to get money, but its still money not spent on alts.

5) Wrath - As soon as it was announced a number of people lost interest in current stuff.

6) Raid Comp (or the shaman employment patch) - SWP favors shaman unfortunately. Shaman is one of the least played classes producing hardship for a lot of guilds. This is particularly true alliance side where the totemic way is much less traveled.

Does that help?

 

baghwan2

I'm more inclined to look abroad.

WotLK is probably another large contributing factor, I know we lost all the people who gained beta keys. The other external factor I've noticed, myself contributing to this, is the release of Warhammer, around 80% of my current WAR guild came from progressing SWP guilds.

My server has 10 guilds with registered kills, 9 of them are still progressing, only 1 guild has completely stopped raiding, and that was a few months ago. I'd predict that the 3.01 patch nerfs will shine some light on some of these progressing guilds, I know I was contemplating an earlier return back to WoW to finish off the content with the pending changes.

 

Khassandra

I've heard this excuse and it is retarded. Sunwell gear will last well into 25man Naxx. Its not like people are going to be replacing their Sunwell stuff within a month of the expansion release.

http://fdwde.wordpress.com/

"I've always wondered what it'd be like to have a prehensile penis, but you don't see me shitting up this thread with my idea." - Kaubel

 

Raiste

Outside of the typical summer vacation and impending expansion release the main problem for me in SWP as a raid leader was just constant 100% focus. In previous instances (even Naxx) once you had done some of the earlier fights a few times you had margin of error where small screw ups didn't cause instant wipes / near wipes. Especially as you got geared up in the instance, you had time to relax and socialize / fool around during the earlier parts of the instance. Sunwell is not at all like this. Every fight (even after months of farming) has a razor thin margin of failure vs success. There just isn't enough laid back relaxing fun time in raids. For a lot of people who come home from work / school and log on to raid this easily leads to burnout in my view. The upgrades are too marginal especially in the earlier parts of the instance such that even repeated farming of the first three bosses doesn't really result in significant decrease in difficulty when farming these fights in the future.

 

Ralnar

As far as raiding servers go, Earthen Ring has rather slim pickings, even fewer horde side. (No K'J kills so far on either side)

Sunwell raiding for us has been a blessing and a curse. We found Hyjal and Black Temple to be rather disappointing as far as being a challenge for raiding after the struggle Vashj and Kael were (talk about guild killers). Right now doing Sunwell content is by far the most compelling reason for raiders to log in. The fights offer a good challenge and solid rewards. Black Temple is the filler raid with a possible cherry at the end if Illidan drops anything valuable, but every other boss to that point is a waste of time.

This isn't to say that Sunwell has always been greeted with raids overfull on people, but recruitment is a bit thin on ER at times, especially this late in the TBC life span. Our biggest issues are the hard number requirements to pass certain bosses. We're currently on Felmyst and if we don't have 3 or more priests it's pretty pointless to go. Same thing happened with Brute and rarely having more than one warlock.

I think one of the biggest advantages we gained during the TBC lifespan and will be improved upon in the raiding game come WotLK is the value of alt characters. The addition of high level badge loot and token based drops made it possible for a Healer alt of a DPSer to quickly reach 4+ pieces of t6 and fill in the rest with iLvL141 items.

There has been a huge influx of new alts in my guild with the recently added Recruit A Friend service, that only added to the alts people naturally leveled in the two years of TBC. The addition of 10m raid content to follow along with 25m content, have a pool of alts to fill in with will only be more viable.

I raid on a DPSer so I don't know a great deal about the healing arts, but I do know that all of our healers greatly enjoy the opportunities to bring a DPS alt or come as a DPS spec on farm bosses, along with our tanks. It happens to a lesser extent for DPS that bring their healer alts.

Looking at the big picture, it really comes down the goals your guild has set. We left WoW vanilla as the ~12th rank guild on the server (~5th horde side) and we're not sitting ~5th server (2nd horde side). We didn't finish AQ40 and only killed one boss in Naxx. The general concensous of the guild right now is that killing Brute before the 3.0 patch (w/o glaives) is what everyone was hoping for. It's likely we'll get a boss or two more post 3.02 but that's just icing.

Planning towards WotLK, we still don't plan on fighting for the #1 spot on the server (with <12h raid time) but a reasonable goal is to finish all the content that is provided before blizzard releases the third expansion "World of Warcraft: Moar Pew Pew"

 

• Snowy

Couldn't disagree more. You'll be replacing every single Sunwell epic with either heroic epics or the first epics you find in either Naxx-10 or 25. Have you even looked at the stats? Sunwell gear will last you to 80 and into your first heroics/Naxx-10 and that's about the right design.

Regarding the first post: Sunwell was the first truly hard raid zone of TBC, sadly enough. Hyjal/BT had no fights anywhere near the level of Sunwell. The closest thing to Sunwell was Kael'Thas. When people and guilds run into difficult challenges, it's not surprising that the average internet gamer gives up, given their makeup.

Paladin: Pyla
Mage: Pylah

 

Dollar

For us (we are 5/6) the thing that killed the most is lack of recruitment. We have a very small raiding pool, no more than 28 or 29 people altogether so if we get a night where a couple people can't be there (like 5 people live in Houston so we didn't do any progression for about a week when that hurricane hit) we are screwed. The other thing is, M'uru is right next to KJ. It's one very hard fight after another. After spending a month and half working on a boss to have to spend a similar amount of time on the next one, it's hard for some people that don't really want to see him dead. We have pretty much concluded all raiding pre 3.0 simply because there are enough people not caring about killing KJ to fuck us. I think actively recruiting and looking for more quality players would have helped. Our server is fairly desolate though (we are the only alliance guild in SW, one other has killed Illidan and there is one horde guild that has killed Kalecgos and no other one thats has even downed Illidan.

"Oh he's a sad little man? He's thrown a kettle over a pub, what have you done?"

 

Jebraltar

All of your tanks will be, except for possibly your Druids, and heroic loot (even blues) is extremely close to, when not superior to, Sunwell gear.

 

sovelis41

The raid comps got us. Our turnover just went through the roof the more we attempted to progress in Sunwell. The amount of attempts:kill ratio was about average or better than average compared to other guilds on our server, but it was spread out from June->Now. Warlocks, shamans, tanking, all of these were things we could just not keep in our roster to feed progression, and often we would down some of the bosses we had killed, but then be stone-walled due to the logistical check. Every week there seemed to be new people that for various reasons (school, burnout, work schedule changes, etc) could no longer raid.

You could say it is our fault that we didn't recruit enough, but from the middle of BT until the present I could probably list a roster and a half of turnover. The content presented was certainly the most difficult in the expansion, but it wasn't from a strategic point of view. It was a focus and raid composition check.

In the end I think SW made our guild stronger. The less resilient raiders of the guild that were fine in tier 6 stood out and went away (one way or another), and our standards were inherently raised. I'm proud of what we did, and I know there are better things to come in WotLK. We know what we need to do, proactively as the expansion goes on, to avoid the same situation.

Edit: We're 3/6 (1% wipe on twins ;/)

You pay for the whole chair, but you only need the edge.

 

• Ungeir

Recruitment is a big factor. It was a major part in killing the Sunwell guild I was in shortly after we downed Brutallus - the classic cycle of underskilled/geared people joining and then causing frustration among veterans/skilled players, leading to gquits and a bigger need for recruitment Summer vacations hurt a lot as well. Alliance PvE recruitment during the summer was very hard, indeed.

Another factor I think contributed to a lot of guild deaths was the difficulty jump between MH/BT and SWP. A lot of guilds had the T6 instances on farm and had cleared them quite rapidly. They had a self-image of being top guilds (and players). Then they hit SWP and get stuck on Kalecgos. Morale plummets. People find that they recruited subpar people during the long wait for SWP - who weren't exposed due to the nature of farming an easy instances. Other people find they don't have the heart for real progression raiding. Then Brutallus - who is merciless on guilds who were having bad people carried by a solid core. It just doesn't work there. A couple of subpar people can be carried along by the rest, but not as many as in MH/BT. And it just gets worse from there with M'uru. A lot of guilds who thought themselves more awesome than they were died in the realization that they weren't.

Also the synergies being perfected meant the instance was tuned for a perfectly composited raid, which made recruitment even harder. We lost our Enhancement Shaman after Brutallus. He was fully kitted out with pretty much best in slot for everything up to and including Brutallus, and was a very good player. Replacing him was hell, and we never managed to do so properly before the guild died. Having a single player who is essential to the raid - and of a spec/class you don't really want to stack up on because it's awful to bring 0, but also awful to bring 2, is a really terrible thing. I hope the new buff system and dps balance removes that problem, because that really was a guild killer.

 

Bulgarth

Personally, I'm sick and tired of Blood Elves. I've seen enough Blood Elf nonsense to last a life-time. To make an entire instance other then TK based on them kind of gave me a headache.

What better way to introduce a new instance by making the clear to the first boss have more trash then the rest of the instances trash combined? Poor design philosophy in my opinion. What instance in this games history other then MC has had such a horrendous first boss trash clear? None!

Constant raid composition changes also threw me through a loop. It's stupid that just because you are said class that you can't be in this raid for this boss yadda yadda yadda. Thank God they are fixing that problem with Wrath. Never in this games history have I seen such an instance with such nit-picky requirements that are solely based on what class you are and not how good you are, and as a Mage that has been more then prevalent.

 

GSH

I think that server transfers became more common/accepted too, and that seemed to hurt guilds. I know a fair number of people in the high end guilds on Skywall ended up transferring or rerolling on places like Mal'Ganis. And it seemed to be "core" people that jumped, not as much hangers-on or more transient players.

I think the "core" players gave up on working with players that may have been a little less skilled, preferring to go to guilds that were more skilled.

 

dakalro

Unless they actually act on their words (can get all raid buff from almost any composition and the rest is whoever you want in, no matter what class) Wrath won't be much of an improvement. You still need your buffers (a lot more choices here but you still need them) and you still want your best dps, which at the moment isn't exactly any class, it's not 100% differences anymore but not far either. Otherwise something as hard as Sunwell will never be done, and that would be a shame.

As far as destroyer of guilds, my own experience says recruitment was a pain, and majority of new recruits were either too unskilled or had absolutely no idea what raiding means (commitment in time, effort, gold). When you're blocked by a boss and alts do better than recruits and there's nobody else you can replace them with or your new recruits think over 90% attendance means 3-4 days our of 5/week I wouldn't blame anyone for bailing. Just sorry for the high amount of extremely good raiders that just lost the drive to move server/guild and start over.

I haven't seen too many players actually burning out, out of the people that made it through the BT year farm but the need for massive amounts of healers, shamans especially was something hard to recover from, given the usual recruitment pool, the lack of understanding of what actual raiding means, not the 1 day clear 2 instances fest many joined in on.

So you lose some older players (that came in during BT farm) that never played 5 days/week, you lose many new people on the same reason, you get to recruit whatever you can then, with some gear standards and they turn out not so good but you need them, and more until something better shows up. So you get blocked, and amazed at the ways you fail in. And then the real bad part begins or doesn't. The real good players start getting sick of it and leave and the guild is as good as gone. Or you give up the race, settle down and keep everyone in, stabilize what you can farm and start a long wait to find real raiders, and restart.

 

Efreet

Korgath has been obliterated by Sunwell, both Alliance and Horde.
Lets look at WoWProgress:
Gentlemens Club and Drama - Sunwell cleared, also substantial PvP development in Drama oddly enough
Not too sure if 3 and 4 are correct, pretty sure at least one of them stopped raiding
Overrated - Dead
Dread - Dead
FSB - Dead
Unequivocal - Surging with all the new recruits! Yay death
Death and Taxes - Well documented dead/rerolled
Abananax - Dead
Afterlife - Stopped Raiding
Venerate - Dead (Stopped Raiding)
Phantom Brethren - Dead

That's US server number 4 I believe. As far as horde pvp servers go the only ones that seem mildly stable are Blackrock, Illidan, and Mal'ganis, the giants. Korgath did very well all things considered, its population not being nearly as high as those 3 at least not in my experience, not having much server lag either. As far as cause goes its the huge gap between 2.1 and 2.4 to go with WotLK burnout and nearly trivial difficulty escalating to very difficult fights between BT and Sunwell. I do think Sunwell is slightly overrated but I'm sure this server has never lost as many relatively high-end guilds to one instance so it has to garner at least some respect. Or hatred.

 

Bulgarth

'

That's what happened to my old server. Top guild leaves, then everyone magically stops raiding, even the SWP guilds who were working on Brut. Hopefully 3.0 will sway the minds of the people who gave up, but for some, it might be a lost cause.

 

Khassandra

I haven't seen any 10man or heroic gear that I'd consider replacing my Sunwell gear for (aside from which many guilds, ours included, don't plan on doing 10mans or heroics, we're pushing straight into 25man Naxx). In addition, how long do you think it will be before everyone is able to replace all of their stuff with 25man Naxx gear? Again, it will take months. Its not like everything we want/need is going to drop the first week And to get to that point, we're going to need the best of what is available and for the most part, that means Sunwell gear.

http://fdwde.wordpress.com/

"I've always wondered what it'd be like to have a prehensile penis, but you don't see me shitting up this thread with my idea." - Kaubel

 

Dynalisia

We haven't died, but we missed our target of beating KJ before the be-all end-all of nerfs that's incoming. The reason we had trouble was raid composition difficulties day after day after day. We tried our best and we are a fairly well outfitted and flexible guild, but when each encounter basically requires you to stack a completely different class or spec, you're going to be pressed into respecs every raid to begin with, never mind when a few people are afk, or a few people retire entirely.

And both of those were bound to happen with raiding SWP for months being quite exhausting. This stuff changes for each guild type though, I'm sure. We have mostly older folks with dayjobs and such, and slugging away at M'uru until midnight every day doesn't make for energetic raiders the next. The summer didn't help an awful lot either, since for us as a non-hardcore upper-end raiding guild it cut right into the middle of our M'uru progression and completely upset everything on an already tense encounter.

Anyway, this is still fairly crudely put, theres a lot to say about this if I had time to write an essay about it