Vyndree, Guilds, and Content

[kllrwlf]

I wonder if sales would have been different if on the TBC trailer when Illidan comes out they put up a subtitle that says, "Note: 98% of you will never actually see this guy in game"

An outstanding point!

Quite sad really... for the old-world content, the only raid I've been in was UBRS, and maybe 2 bosses of ZG. No MC, BWL, and whatever else I missed.

For the level 70 content, haven't seen any of the raid content. When I go on mmo-champion and read about all the new content that's coming out that most won't see, it's pretty lame. (Yeah, QQ.)

My current goals are just a little bit more Arena (just for the Mage's staffs), a little more BGs (for a couple of armor pieces), a couple of the remaining 5-mans (just to finally see it), and I'm shelfing this until the next expansion.

Multiboxing definitely gave life back to WoW for me, otherwise, I would've shelfed it 2-3 months ago.

[Mak]

Wall of text has been said enough, but more to the point of your comments.

I can't possibly agree with you more. I'm so sick of guilds, and 5 boxing really saved WoW for me. I surely would have quit without it. Anytime a guild tries to tell me how I should spec, how I should gear, what I should do when, I know that it's time for me to move on.

The point about cliques forming is another thing that causes problems for me as well. Unless you form at the start of a guild, it just seems too difficult to become anything more then just another player in it. I can't stand that "big guild" feeling, where you're just one other person swimming in a lake of other players, completely meaningless and just another filler for a group/raid. The only guild I ever enjoyed was my very first guild I was in back on my home server, and it's because we were all the ones that formed it. I guess this goes back to the clique thing, except this time around I was part of it, instead of one of the other members that were just there.

At any rate, I'm done with guilds aside from having one for my own little group. I have very little interest in anything that requires more then 5 man, and that has been the case since long before I started multi-boxing. Multi-boxing just enhances that further.

Wow, I couldn't agree with you more. 5-boxing definitely saved WoW for me because I most definitely wasn't ready to quit. After experiencing some WoW drama that went into RL, I had to get away. I still wanted to experience five man content and when I found this place and found out that people were "soloing" heroics, I was sold. Gearing my toons up myself on my own time without ever having to PUG it with rejects who complain and whine is one of the best things about multiboxing imo. I've never run a 25 man but I've run a 20. I've been to Kara multiple times on my old, now-retired mains. I've seen it. Now I want to do things my way. I can't wait to hit 70 =P

I just like the traditional dungeons & dragons inspired fantasy and Blizzard's playstyle is unmatched from what I've seen. From level 1 to pre-raid geared WoW is just awesome and I love playing it, but then it just dies for 98% of us.

I completely agree with this. I have a 70 hunter in T5 in a bigger raid guild. We are on Hyj/BT and quite honestly, I'm getting bored with it. 4 hours or wipes, bitching, pointing finger, etc. and for what? 6g repair every time I die? I would almost prefer to roll a toon to 70, get some decent gear and then re-roll something else just for the hell of it. I also have a 70 dwarf war in decent 70 blues

Then I found you guys! I have about 4 or 5 different 2 man teams. I'm trying to figure out what works best for the way I play. So far I like my dual hunters or dual mages for pvp, and my mage/shaman for pve. None of them are past 30 so I REALLY can't say yet, but meh.

I wish I could afford the 5 man teams, but 2 accounts is about it for me for now.

Yup, I roll another toon just for the heck of it. I love the old school dungeons and doing them again is always exciting to me for some reason. I love getting loot that didn't drop the other times I went through.

One day, when you can afford it, you'll five box =P I'm still not sure I can really afford it either but I figured, my sister spends probably close to $75 a month on clothes, makeup and other girlie stuff. I'm not such a girlie girl so spending $75 on this is my entertainment. She enjoys that, I enjoy my geekiness.

Answer? Multi-boxing. Bringing the fun back into wow. Limitless amounts of class combinations and tactics. Micro management through the roof, and you can only blame yourself when it all goes pear shaped. Although I wouldn't totally rule out raiding. You can still take a member of two of your team to a raid once in a while. Kara is a perfect multibox friendly instance, just have to find a guild with way too many tanks and healers, hehe.

Yup, having no one to blame you is awesome and another very appealing thing to multiboxing for me. And yeah, I do the same thing. I'm planning on subbing in my friend's priest for my healer when he's on. He's slowed his playtime to a crawl so I'm left to play by myself. At least with 5 acc'ts I can progress on my own and with him when he's around. And our dream of "duoing" 5-mans can officially come true.

[Dor]

I personally enjoy the 25 man content along with the rest. I just raid 2 or 3 days a week mainly and mess around multiboxing the rest of the time. I agree that. without multiboxing, I'd have quit WoW by now, but I'd def miss large scale raiding if it was gone. There is a diff feel learning the higher end content (yeh I know it ggts boring after youve learned it and do it ad nauseum). I think the main thing is to find a mid range guild -- not hardcore racing thru content or dedicated 5 man artists. Just raiding 2 days a week allows me plenty of time to do whatever else I want in game ( and out for that matter). Maybe I just got lucky that I landed with a huge guild that has all lvls of play in it. Surely there are other guilds out there like it?

I guess the main thing is figure out what you want from the game and find a guild to fit that.

[Jaws5]

I started to pvp because of raid and quild issues. If not for pvp and 5 boxing I would have ended wow play long ago. PVP (rank14) used to be on par with best raid gear about 2 years ago. I grinded for 5 months got it and show the dumb quild leader what I thought of the DKP system and most of stuff going to his alts.

[aetherg]

I spent quite a while as the main officer/raid leader of the top raiding guild on our server. Raiding can be a lot of fun. It's not a better or worse experience than soloing; there are different frustrations, but also different rewards. The problem is that, with a raiding guild, you are managing a large team of volunteers with no physical connection. It's an incredibly complicated situation. In order to raid, you need 25 people. Honestly it wouldn't matter if it was 20, or 15, or even 10. Anything with about 10 or more people will run into issues of logistics.

This is because most people take offense to having to sit out (not a reference to Vyndree by the way; that was a specific situation). Personally I think it's immature to refuse to sit out one night a week, but I can sort of see the point that, as a person paying to play a game, you deserve to get what you want out of it. Whether I like it or not, I can say from a lot of experience that at least 99% of skilled WoW players will refuse to sit out more than once a month or so.

Unfortunately, virtually nobody has a schedule so stable that they can raid 5 nights per week, every week, all year long, with no vacations. That sets up a huge conflict. If you have precisely 25 raiders, you will never raid, because someone will always be missing. But if you recruit more than 25, on some nights they will have to sit out, and as a result they will become angry and quit.

Attempts to deal with this are mostly futile. Attempts to recruit 'backup raiders' never work. Nobody likes being a second-class citizen, even if they agreed to it upfront. Getting friends or recruits to fill the extra spots is unreliable, and usually results in a couple of spots filled by subpar people who don't come prepared and need all the strats explained to them for every fight.

A raiding guild is like a sports team, except none of the players are bound by contracts, and there are tons of other teams that they can switch to in seconds. Imagine the chaos if basketball or baseball players could switch teams in seconds, on a whim.

So this is not really about WoW; this is something that comes up everywhere. I've spent a lot of time thinking about the problem, and I don't think there is a solution. You just have to pray that you get lucky and find 30 people who are skilled, mature, always volunteering to be the first to sit out, always wanting loot to go to someone else, and have fairly stable schedules. The chances of that happening are next to none.

[Bollwerk]

Didn't read all the replies, but I just wanted to say that I've been raiding in WoW and EQ since they were each released. I enjoy it quite a bit and I've been fortunate to usually be in guilds that treat people well (for the most part). Some guilds are bad, some are good. It may just take some trial and error (or research) to find one that isn't filled with jerks. (ironically, I'm in a guild called Tabula Rasa on Dragonblight-US)

[Kyudo]

Whilst I agree with many of the points made by the OP and other posters, I feel I also need to play devil's advocate to a certain extent.

I love boxing, although my current frustrations are around my hardware... 8800 GFX incoming, hope it sorts the issues.

However, nothing can really compare to those server first, guild first, greater than the sum of their parts feeling of 40 man raiding back in the day. I've never been a loot whore, but 1 shotting Onyxia 2 days after hitting 60 and downing Nefariran 3 weeks after we started BWL was SUCH a buzz to me. I screamed how much Ioved my guild on vent.

Things have changed since then and I'm more of a Wow cynic... I never really did it for the loot, but I did love that feeling of a group of people gelling and excelling at their classes

I quit raiding due to 1) burnout and 2) personal circumstances and there are days that I miss it.

I believe overall that Blizzard do a good job of balancing the amount of "hardcore" content with other 5 and 10 man stuff. And have improved drastically in this area with Heroics, and general TBC content. I also believe this is set to continue, so despite some minor frustrations, I'd give Blizzard props for that. The game needs "Bleeding Edge" content to attract a certain type of player, and for lower geared players to aspire to, but there is also plenty out there to do for more "casual" players.

On the theme of guilds, yes it's a pretty hard balance to strike, but tbh I make my selections carefully, and have yet to get what I didn't expect out of a guild. My hardcore raid guild pre TBC was exactly that, and set it's rules accordingly, but Vent chat was super funny, and people helped eachother out, my PvP guild did loads of Pvp and wiped continuously in the few raids we attempted (par for the course). My casual/semi-casual guilds have also been that, and pretty much what I expected them to be. Wow's player base is virtually as diverse as the people you might walk past every day in a major city, fit 25 or 40 of them in the same room and there is bound to be some conflict and personality clash/divergence of goals, that's people, that's life.

Just my 2c

[Silly Gooooose]

Is the big V back? Y@Y!

[Nitro]

WTB Vyndree[/url] as well about the circumstances of my being benched for raids. :P

I'm curious, did your guild leader/raid leader ask you to respec enchancement or was that something you decided on yourself? (didnt seem clear in your blog)

[Achor84]

The hardest part is finding a guild that aligns with your goals and is going to stick to those goals, whether it be pve, raiding, pvp, leveling, or whatnot.

Thats now my current problem.....
I'm in a very nice guild but my goals are little different than the guilds one.
I love PvE and the Guild also love it, but they love it too much.

PvE is for me Leveling, Crafting, Dungeons (and Raiding).
For the guild it seems Raiding and Item-hunting is numero uno - Ok, I won't say Progressing in Content is bad but Item-hunting is it.
(I also know in the Game Equip is very important - but I think it couldn't be >all)

At the Beginning (when we were ~10 member) we said that we want to see Content (for the BC-Starters also PreBC content - which I'm really in love with) but now all Members now only know heroic und Kara...
And so I farm solo Scholo, Strath with my Mage after wipeing/raiding in the Raid and I have more fun .......
Because of the size (and the equip and expirience in raids) we could only do Kara and there is no alternation.
No Zul gurub - No Ony - No Mc - No Bwl, Naxx- No old 5er
"Because there is no Item, which is needed on 70."

I think the problem with raiding and guild is that people who played PreBc know that Equip and Progress is drifting away everyday a little more because of the new addon and so
""99% of skilled WoW players will refuse to sit out"" and so they will become Itemhunters and Egoists.

I know that only Chars, Gold and Craftingskill is not fading.......
But no one, who I have spoken, think about it.
So, I don't know what do to..

So for me the answer is simple stop putting the emphasis on 25 man content. Start developing more 5 and 10 man content.

No, I dont think this could be an answer.
The Problem is the Size itself.
two 10er Raids = 20 People but you need 25 to raid "Highcontent".
--> 5 people, which are pissed...

If you have a lot of 10er, you would create a lot of little-sized Guilds (which would have only 10-15 Members) and so for me it wouldn't be a MMO (more a game with a hugh Coop-Mode :S ).

I understand the need to have someone geared out for tanking, but if the damn thing is a minor upgrade for you, but a huge upgrade for another tank, for gods sake upgrade the other guy so that you don't have to have the raid rely on ONE FREAKING PERSON because hes the only one geared out.

Unfortunately, A LOT of guilds don't think this way. They simply follow some sort of DKP system, and if you're ahead, you're ahead. It would help progression alot if people were smart about upgrades.

/signed.
Its really sad.