So it's been a day or so since we first heard that Death and Taxes was disbanding, and since then, DnT member Xi- has posted a somewhat lengthy explanation as to why. In the end, the biggest reason Xi- gave is pride. Many people, he says, just stopped thinking about the raid and the guild as a whole, and were more focused on their own advancement and their own needs, and became impatient when a boss did not fall easily. When it was time to progress, many of them, even officers, would disappear and stop supporting them.
He also does get in a few Risen style digs about how none of the BC content was half as good as Naxxramas up until Sunwell Plateau, but he did manage to sound a lot more classy than Risen did.
But the point about pride, about guild members who disappear for a while and expect to pick back up where they left off when they return, and about people who never show up for progress kills, or show up and complain if the boss doesn't fall after one or two tries, that rings true with me, as I am sure it rings true with a lot of current and former MMO raiders, whether from WoW or other games.
When the bosses are falling easily and the loot is flowing, it's easy to stick with it. It's easy to come in, kill the farmed boss, get your shiny purples (or oranges), and call it a night. It's when you've wiped for the 5th time, when you're looking for that breakthrough, when everyone wants to go to bed, that you really have to learn to buckle down and break through. The guilds that can do that are the ones that get the world firsts.
But it's not easy. Generally how it happens is that you have a core of about 10, maybe 15 people who are that dedicated. Sometimes you're lucky to have more. But there's this small core of people who just keep trying, who keep focusing the goal, who don't mind having nothing to show for the night but 30 gold in repair costs and another 50 gold or so in wasted reagents, as long as everyone was focused, and as long as everyone felt connected. Once you lose that focus, it's hard for a raid guild to survive. It seems that, according to XI-, that is what happened. The dedicated core either left, or let pride get to their head, or stopped caring. Once that happened, Progression became impossible.
There's a delicate balance to be had, to be sure. This is, in the end, a game, and it's tough to expect people to keep on keeping on if they aren't having fun. But as not fun as it is to wipe, it wouldn't be much more fun if you could just steamroll new content without a fight. Beyond that, you have to remember that you are playing with 9-39 more people when you raid, people with real feeling and emotions, who dedicate themselves to each other and to taking down that boss. If you break that bond, they feel it. If you come back later and try to take advantage of a bond that you abandoned, they feel it. There's a very satisfying rush from taking down a boss that's been a pain with a group of people who have stood beside you in thick and thin, attacking again and again, working at getting better in order to bring it down. If you try to wander in and out of that fellowship, people will notice, and they won't appreciate it if you act entitled to it.
Is this type of loss really unavoidable? Sometimes I wonder if it is. For me, I've been lucky to be in some very close knit guilds, where people are as close as real-life friends -- and often actually are real life friends, having flown or driven hundreds of miles to spend time together outside the computer screen. It seems like those guilds should last forever -- the friendships from them do last a long time, and I am still friends with some I have left behind from those guilds. But even those guilds, as DnT did, fall apart. Maybe it's letting World Firsts go to your head, maybe it's losing interest in the game and moving on. Maybe it's the ennui that comes when an old expansion is conquered and a new one is some time off. Maybe it's just pride.
Is it any of these? None of these? Is the way DnT collapsed avoidable, or are raiding guilds doomed to take the fall of Pride, either from lack of progression causing people to fall away, or from pride making people arrogant, or even both at once?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
5-17-2008 @ 8:09AM
Gror said...
The guild I am in at the moment will go the same way as DaT. We have many problems that was listed above, plus we have many class leaders that are demanding respect because the are a CL despite the fact that they are only CL because they are real life friends of the GM not because they have the skill to do it. I give my guild about a month before a split.
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5-17-2008 @ 8:25AM
jumb said...
Most guild splits around now are because of the imminent feel of WotLK. Everyone is getting to the end of BC, looking back on the last 1.5 years and thinking "I don't want to spend another 1+ year with these wankers." This late in the game, it's hard to find another guild, but with the prospect of an absolute gear-reset, escaping biased officers and hopeless "rl friends" seems like a real possibility.
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5-17-2008 @ 9:38AM
Alchemistmerlin said...
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Why do you say "rl friends" as though they're a myth?
5-17-2008 @ 1:45PM
Matt said...
gear reset? they have already said that your shiny purples will last you until late into your 70's...sometime around 77, you may be giving up the epics for a damn good green, or a blue, but thats why we play mmo's to build the character to its best. If we stayed with that same gear, and just new bosses, this game would have died long ago...bring on wotlk, but please make the dungeons into 2 wings, a 10 man with different bosses than the 25!! then i will be way happy...
5-17-2008 @ 8:48AM
Medievaldragon said...
I agree with what got stated in this article. I am in a guild that was usually casual. I still remember the days we were stuck in Karazhan. Everyone was dedicated and we even got /gquits. But we kept being dedicated and commited to working as a team.
Nowadays I look back seeing all our achievements. We conquered Gruul and Magtheridon. Then Kael and Vashj. Now we have killed Archimonde around 4 times, and finally faced Illidan for first time two weeks ago. Got him to 55% on the first try.
Suddenly, Blizzard hotfixes Archimonde and he is still buggy with some nasty doomfires crossing paths and going out kinda more often than before. We wiped like 6 times. The raid was called after two people started unleashing their anger on ventrilo with yelling. I think we need to focus more and let the frustration aside. Even if we don't kill a boss within the first three attempts, what matters is to push the players that lack to get better. In fact there were some factors that made us wipe:
Archimonde getting changed in patch 2.4.2, then a hotfix that didn't really help much, not all the 5-groups had a shaman to void fear, and the fact we had just invited new people to the guild.
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5-17-2008 @ 9:16AM
Theserene said...
Are there ways to stop it? No, if people lose interest in parts of the game or the game itself you can't stop it
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5-17-2008 @ 9:24AM
crsh said...
The server I played on for over 2 years has seen many of its leading guilds fold since BC came out; they're not as famous as D&T or Risen, you'd never know who they are unless you played on that realm (US-Kael'thas, in case you're wondering). Be it because of guild drama where a good chunk of core raiders leave for another guild, or a guild shutting down its raid schedule due to lack of people signing on, lack of interest, recruitment issues, etc, it happens all the time.
WoW is in a weird spot right now, people are either tired of TBC content and impatiently awaiting WotLK, thus don't see a point in hardcore raiding (akin to pre-TBC months where many were temporarily suspending their subscription) or just plain tired of this game and looking forward to big names coming out like AoE and WH:O (regardless whether they're valid competitors to WoW, time will tell).
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5-17-2008 @ 9:43AM
Calybos said...
One thing to remember is that whenever words like "commitment" and "dedication" come up, you're no longer talking about a game. You're talking about a SPORT, where dedicated time and effort to teamwork is what matters.
There's an overwhelming number of casual players here, who are only interested in having fun and chatting with friends. If you ask them for time investment and commitment, you're simply not going to get a response from them.
The smart thing to do is ask yourself: "Will this guild EVER be doing ANY raiding of ANY sort?" If yes, it's a hardcore guild and it needs to advertise and recruit as such. Suddenly announcing that your "casual, friendly, leveling guild" now demands dedication and commitment is a surefire formula for disappointment.
5-17-2008 @ 9:38AM
Rich said...
When your guild is built on anything other than having fun, this is inevitable.
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5-17-2008 @ 1:53PM
Shrike said...
Exactly. I can't feel any sympathy for people who complain about other people's gain. As for Xi-'s comments... I don't see how "the theme of TBC is sacrificing everything that was good about raiding on the altar of accessibility" is anything but snarky epeen-stroking elitism.
Nothing anyone else gains diminishes anyone's accomplishments, unless the actual purpose was to have it when others *didn't*... Which just makes a person petty and childish.
5-17-2008 @ 9:39AM
Semmira said...
The same thing started happening pre-BC when we started getting a lot of Burning Crusade information. People were like, well damn, it's getting close to the xpac, I can take a little break now, focus on alts, go out with my friends, see my family again, and stopped raiding. It seems pointless to a lot of people to keep grinding out the effort to get those epics that will get replaced quickly when we get our XP bars back.
It's bound to happen. DnT isn't the first guild to fall apart because people stopped caring and it certainly won't be the last.
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5-17-2008 @ 10:22AM
Dead said...
From the way I've read the post, I thought that Xi- was emphasising on the fact that there is not much incentive to conduct raids any longer. This could predominantly be due to the fact that Blizzard had made the game a tad too casual then before - People stuck around even though they didn't want to only so that they may be rewarded more generously with either gear, reputation or lore - this is especially the theme pre-BC. To quote him:
"I'd love to be able to sit here and tell you this was a result of the casualization of the game, of feeding us easy encounters for mediocre rewards, while at the same time undercutting these meagre accomplishments and upgrades with welfare epics obtainable by anyone who has a large quantity of time, regardless of their skill or lack thereof. Let's be honest the theme of TBC is sacrificing everything that was good about raiding on the altar of accessibility"
And perhaps this statement has some merit to it and may be true in lieu of WoW becoming a more casual accessible game - there are less challenges around, even so less rewards to be meted out for those players who overcome the high odds of the challenge itself: the "epic Welfare scenario" and BoJ implementation, the removal of atonements, the nerfing of bosses (i do agree to bug fixes to remove impracticalities, but never nerfing it to the point of making it easier).
The mentality of Blizzard in setting the stage for "overly casual" play is either that of being extremely short-sighted or maybe it is their intended target after all?. I say "short-sighted" because I strongly believe that a game with no challenges insurmountable to that of a single person or a group of ordinary people will, inevitably, fade off. Why would a game fade off in popularity by merely being less challenging or time consuming, you might ask? Well, for most of us, we semi-consciously stick around the world of Azeroth/Outlands with hopes and aspirations of becoming THE best equipped, best geared, the highest ranked pixel ... there is a humanly sub-conscious need for us to prove ourselves better than other people for various reasons. After all, if this were not the case the arguments and demands from casuals to entitle them to equal purple loot (on the basis that they pay the equal money for the game) will fall flat and they would hard pressed to counter-argue this should I bring up the subject of playing Single player games (especially in the no rewards genre like FPS – excluding BF2 and the post-patch TF2). If one is not fussed about merely retaining blues or greens on their character, then I sincerely concede my argument on this point. But then again, I assume this stance only because I dare not imagine anyone could find running around Azeroth/Outlands on a daily basis, completing repetitive chores such as dailies, fishing or killing the same old pixelated mobs to be sustainably interesting - the point being, doing away with challenges and its severely ridiculous yet highly important time-drain factor, and WoW and any other successful MMO will no longer be an appealing game, based on my earlier arguments.
As for those folks who meekly declare that their money's worth is that of Lore, I find this proposition to be unconvincing. Why would one attempt to waste their time playing a game just to entitle them to capture the lore of Warcraft? There are tonnes of Warcraft laden lore books on the market at the moment and my presumption, though biased but true, would be that at least half of such people demanding to see/feel/hear the lore through the computer screen, have yet to pick up one of these Warcraft written books (which i highly recommend). Coming back to my point, it is inevitable that one is only human, and their sub-conscious need to prove oneself better then others is both permissible and far from immoral. After all, what use is there for grinding mobs or running daily quests day-in day-out if it were not for “real-life worthless” Gold (with the exception for Gold Farmers), for running the same old instances again and again (even though with intolerable pick ups) with fingers-crossed that a statistical probability (of gaining specific loot) will occur? It all sensibly leads to my previous argument that WoW should be (yet it is direly subverting from it) based on the fundamental aspects of any traditional MMOs – to satisfy this “e-peen”, or ego or what not, be it sub-conscious or not.
To conclude, I have a strong feeling, seeing how things are going, that WotLK will be the final episode to this fantastic chapter of Warcraft history, its swan song being a deception to the people to go will and buy it. 10 million subscribers in the end of the day will find the exact emptiness I felt, a void that was once filled with a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment – after all, sustaining a game on merely dailies, and short instances with push over raids, will lose its general appeal in a slow but steady fashion.
(P.S before one goes on to dismiss this opinion as being hypocritical and elitist, I can assure you that despite having downed Illidan 4 months back, with my Haomorush EU guild, I have put my mouth where my money is and have stopped playing WoW since then due to the prescribed reasoning above. In addition, I DO NOT consider myself hardcore as I only spent 3 raiding days a week (mindful of my law degree in tow) and pre-BC was only a ZG raider only. I have played with my 3/8 T6 Warlock main and a Warrior alt, since Early Nov 2005.)
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5-17-2008 @ 11:22AM
Zarzuur said...
As the devs have not included any competitive PvE structures in the mechanics of the game, ultimately this is all QQ.
5-17-2008 @ 2:00PM
Matt said...
its not QQ, its the truth my guild is just now finishing SSC and TK, we worked our asses off to find 25 competent players that can work as a team to down these bosses and that is what deserves to see the lore. the big guilds will tape it, and those who dont want to work hard enough or put enough effort in to be good at their class, or build thier small guild up dont deserve the same things that those who dedicate LARGE ammounts of time to this game do.
I switched from a guild that was doing SSC content to a kara guild, and i helped them recruit some strong members and we are now doing the end game content ourselves, with people we like. so there is no need to join a elist group of pricks to get where you want, but if you dont know how to heal/tank/dps and you spend maybe 2-4 hours a week in this game, dont expect to see illidan, you should be playing a more instant gratification game like a FPS. mmo's are not for those with little to no time to play. they just arent.
5-17-2008 @ 2:11PM
Rich said...
Nice long-winded post, but since the vast majority of players are non or non-hardcore raiders, it's really pointless.
5-19-2008 @ 5:13AM
Eh? said...
While the "MMORPG" genre may have once existed purely to "stroke the epeen," it is becoming more mainstream by the day. With this comes the fact that more and more people approach the game and genre in the spirit that it was originally designed to be: a social game. People play the game to have fun with other people in an imaginative and fantastic setting. Hence, the "multiplayer" part of MMORPG.
Blizzard recognizes this and is reacting accordingly, and kudos to them. Online gaming is not static, it is dynamic and rapidly changing. It's good to wax nostalgic and remember how things used to be as a context for future endeavors, but to stubbornly cling to the past to the exclusion of the here-and-now is very short-sighted at best.
If the game is no longer a good fit to you and how you like to play, that's fine, it happens, it's life. Find something else, no one will fault you for it.
Most of all though, people...please stop getting your knickers in a bind over stuff that is not known yet and is not set in concrete.
5-17-2008 @ 10:26AM
Raven said...
I find large guilds hard to deal with, I was in a guild with alittle over 200+ memebrs, very diverse group, but within that number there was cliques.. I ran with a clique, we, 7 of us, did the mandatory raid things. Cause it had to be done, at the same time trying to enjoy the game and friends.. In time the monster we created, massive guild with mc, naxx, baron runs etc and the new world content, kara.. We began a shift from the guild till it collapsed.. we drifted to the winds.. what was we were once proud of was ashes... and echo of what was. The 7 that I knew held togther and drifted . new guilds attempted nothing solidified.. so we made our own thing again.. and this time are keeping the numbers low.. around 35-40 members... and horde now. we are happy, we assist and work with each other.. I still login into my old allie toons.. yet, looking at my gear and coming across my old leader and officers is odd.. It is not the same to me.. maybe it is why I switched sides. The hope to make the game a game again...
To the people of DaT.. here is a fna and salute to the guild...
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5-17-2008 @ 10:27AM
Melenor said...
So death and taxes aren't constant after all.
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5-17-2008 @ 12:02PM
kabshiel said...
Zing!
5-17-2008 @ 10:43AM
Mera_LaCroisadeEcarlate said...
the truth is that WoW isn't so PVE exiting has before, reducing raid from 40 man to 25 is a big mistake and that's not going to change in WOTLK, the best part of WoW is dead and I understand DnT disband.
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