The brutal truth is, most guilds in WoW are dead on arrival. Good guilds are the lifeblood of the game, but for new players, finding one is almost impossible. You’ll hop from guild to guild, only to find they’re packed with cranky old players and messy drama. It's very difficult to find a group of cool headed players.
They always were, going all the way back to 2004 where the number of quality progression guilds on the server could be counted on one hand (or a few fingers). Just like real life, finding unselfish levelheaded people is a constant challenge and guilds with quality leadership and members not prone to drama, DKP controversy, ninja looting, or favoritism was even more difficult. We maintained a relatively stable core of 20-25 high performing players, but this frequently made it really hard to fill 40 person raids without going outside the guild to fill those slots. We were first to clear BWL on our server, which wasn't easy, but the ultimate boss to overcome was the IRL human element.
Just make one, and along the way you can pass the leadong to someone i did, and we were thriving there will be players who wanna lead but dont want to start
There are so many systems in the game you can engage with nowadays that "having fun" greatly depends on what you're looking for and how social you want to be.
Everything you said is absolutely correct, I just wish I could take the advice. My IRL schedule is too chaotic and not regular enough to join a regular group. I'm forced to LFG whenever I have time to game.
You’re absolutely right about the culture. People want stuff NOW. I take a different approach. For mythic plus seasons, I gradually build up my gear and rating and run with pugs. By the time I get to doing 8s and above, I have the experience, gear and overall knowledge so I can properly contribute and, by extension, respect the other players. Many do not do this. They like to jump up to difficulties they aren’t prepared for. Jump into dungeons they’ve never done before. No research and a novice grasp on the game in general. And this causes failure and the frustration we see time and time again. Pugging in concept is great to meet new people and to create more connections. But now, it’s a cesspool and running keys has become a chore that fewer and fewer are doing
Great video. Pugging is definitely a wild west. I want to find a CE guild as a returning player, trialed a few, but haven't found the right place just yet. I've gotten too hyperfocused on the outcome, thinking that I had to find something immediately. I need to reframe that and focus on the journey a bit more.
Great take on this debate, thanks for the video. This reminded me that I need to get back to the roots of the game, the way it used to be played. I don’t like Classic because it is too slow, but there are definitely some lessons to be learned there.
I tried to replay through classic, but at around L30 I had this realization in Hillsbrad that I'd basically been doing nothing but running (slowly) for nearly 15min from one side of the zone to the other for one damned quest... and I just couldn't do it anymore. That was my quit moment. I've also seen all of this content before countless times in the past and as an adult who can't play video games all day anymore, the game just doesn't respect my time. It doesn't help that I'm not a nostalgic person by nature, so reliving 2004 isn't warm and fuzzy for me... it just reminds me of how slow and grindy the game used to be. Time is more limited. I want new experiences, not constantly reliving old ones.
Not sure if I’ve just been unlucky, but I play classic WoW and I’ve been in 5 guilds just this year, all of which fizzled out after 2-3 months. I’ve found that for me at least guilds are a huge investment to find a good one that has good people and then there’s time invested into helping maintain that guild, and then you invest in building a reputation so you become a “main raider” to get preferred placement in the good group and consistent loot, but then they are gone a few months later and you have to start all over. I’ve gotten burned out with having to go through this process over and over. People end up with different life priorities, or they get burned out with leading the guild, or Blizzard releases a new version or new servers seemingly every month and people leave for that… it never ends.
That's how it was in 2004 too. Only a handful of guilds on each server had the leadership and core team of quality dedicated players willing to put in the work necessary to progress at a high level. Not everyone wants a game to feel like a job, but that's what was required; scheduled raid nights throughout the week, manually maintained DKP system for keeping track of attendance and points spent on loot rolls, and constant recruitment to try to fill the 40 person raids when players couldn't show up (which was frequent).
The whole perception for this game and the elitism has sucked the fun out of it. Its actually really easy to have fun in this game, there are so many things you can do, you want to fish , there are hundreds of cosmetics, achievements and mini games associated with it, you can be a collector, you can do secrets, you can literally do so many things. Its kinda sad seeing everyone ignore so many things in this game just to do one thing and then complain that there are no rpg elements
I officially quit WoW about a month ago due to the toxicity. I've played since Classic. Even in a guild, we had people who were impatient with others and couldn't wait to progress further and people ended up leaving. This new parsing meta is the worst I've ever witnessed. Everyone has to the best, for who knows what reason. So they can have "achievements" (that can be bought) or so their name goes on a chart where only a small niche community even cares about it. There isn't any more fun in WoW, it's all a job. I'm playing LotRO now and it's SOOOO much more laid-back. The community is nice, and there's so many more older and wiser people. It's such a breath of fresh air. I will miss WoW... but I will live without out. LotR is my favorite story anyhow!
I agree parsing is stupid. I am a veteran player and played on a wrath private server for years and when wrath came out on classic people mentioned it and I never heard of it before. I have been farming wrath for years and sometimes pugging with retail players was not fun.
My first raiding guild was like my first love lol. I think many feel the same way. It becomes harder to get back into the raiding scene after that. No other guild has felt quite the same ever since 🤣🤣
Maybe your realm is vastly different, but if I did that right now and didn't use wowhead for infos didn't use lfg for dungeons and used general or trade chat like I wanted, I would get either "just google it??? tf" or instructions to where lfg is in the UI. Nobody assumes I don't know about the elevator or that I'm stupid if I try to take the stairs, and stairs are something taken alone.
Hey man, like ur videos. I have spent most of the last 5+ years from Cata to now off and on playing. I almost exclusively pug. I have played since vanilla, raided hc in wotlk, cata, and mop in high school. I do not guild anymore because my experience with wow guilds is they are a massive social/time sink. You mention that hour of scheduled play in ur video. My experience is that being in a guild is a large commitment and one that entails a lot of stress and grinding for new bosses. In pugs, I can decide im done for the night regardless of anyone else. If I leave early in a guild run, I'll get benched. Pugging allows me to play the content I want to, with some limits like I wont be a mythic raider ever again, but on my time how I want it. If I want to spend 4 hrs on mythic+, I can. If I need to take a break midway through or my wife needs help, I can leave without worry.
I have played this game since 2007 when I was 19 the difference is the player base, the era we live in , the story, and the company. Wow was truly a one of a kind magical experience back in the day. PUGs and random meet ups were always a fun experience it slowly changed over the past 20 years the biggest being cata, then dranor and I have not been able to play since BFA with the exception of dragonflight for a few weeks. Having fun in retail is hard believe me especially if you have been around a long time. The game is a chore. Retail is bad , the story has been so watered down and retconned theres no epic adventure to be excited about anymore. They abandoned traditional RPG elements. They dont even have a gender selector its body type.... thats all you need to know about priorities. Players are also different in general. Theres GDKP and boosting, and streaming these were not a wide spread thing back then and streaming didnt exist until later in the games life. I enjoy classic and enjoy classic era. Looking forward to another go at BC and Mists. Then hopefully Wrath for a 3rd time. I find classic to be the closest thing to the original fun, retail will never see another dime from me. As far as guilds go I enjoy the casual guilds in classic.
"Is Blizzard so out of touch?... no... it's the community that is wrong..." In all seriousness though, I typically don't use LFG at all either, the only times I ever actually need to use it is during events, and while I would love to just wait around for a group to form outside the world boss and get invited, the truth is that's not going to happen, at least not on a regular enough basis for farming mounts and transmog... the event is limited time after all... everyone and their mom are using the LFG tool to group up quickly, down the boss, and move on... it's too convenient to ignore and it's presence leaves those of us who don't use the tool out of options. :/ Just last week, I got kicked from a group of 20 players because 1 of them made a big stink about how I had exp off, and all it took was 4 other random players to vote yes to kick before I could even notice the conversation and explain that I was in a party, effectively kicking me and my full party from the group, my party wasn't kicked, but they left because they aren't gonna abandon me, then that 1 player that got me kicked whispered me how pissed he was that he had to wait for more people because of me, saying that I deserved to get kicked, and I'm just like... what the hell does he expect me to do about it? I'm not gonna go all the way back to Orgrimmar just to turn on exp, come back, making everybody wait in the process of coming back, just to gain permanent exp for one boss on my main strictly no exp character as to not slightly inconvenience this 1 asshole player from leveling his 5th throwaway alt... I'd rather just get kicked... so I blocked him and grouped up with my party again and waited for the next group to form... and of course, the next group didn't give a shit, like the hundreds of other groups I've been in, none of them ever gave a shit or even noticed that I had exp off... the LFG tool gives the power to a minority of irritable players who will go out of your way to ruin your day for no reason at all other than because they wanted to ruin your day, and Blizzard's tool encourages that behavior, there's a reason most players will just dip when a group is unsuccessful 4 bosses in on a dungeon, it's because we've all been conditioned to not stick around to avoid drama... just queue up for the next group, drama free... Blizzard's game is entirely designed around encouraging you to use the LFG tool, there are so many things you can't even do without using it, the new event raid is LFG exclusive for example, and like I said before, the presence of the tool forces you to use it simply because everyone else is using it, there aren't enough people *not* using it to render it optional... I'm not saying to remove the tool entirely, but I am saying that would be better than what we have now... what I want is for them to *fix* it so that everybody can be happy with it, since they're so intent on keeping it around... might as well address the issues it has... :P
@@Gigglerue You said what I said somewhere here much more precisely, fully agree. One would be waiting for actual days and taking insults/spam reports because they're not doing it "right" if one were to try lfging without the tool.
I’ve had the most difficult time finding a guild. What is this discord recruitment you speak of? The last few times I’ve tried to find a guild is via Trade chat.
The main issue here is whatever solution you propose it will never satisfy more than just a part of the playerbase. The game is really BIG. So BIG that you can experience it in many many ways. You have to provide quality of life features so players can enjoy more of the game in less amount of time. And as stated LFG is just a quality of life tool, the problem is that people feel forced to use it when they don't have to. But then again everyone else does end up using it and old traditional way of making groups dies out. This is Player/Socially created issue which led to a drastic change that many people didn't like. Blizzard just added an additional way of grouping, they did not remove anything. Remove LFG? Now the game created the issue, it removed an option. Cause on the other hand a lot of people don't mind LFG and enjoy "pugging". If you don't like using LFG. As stated in the video; Find a community or a guild which will provide you with the content you wanna do. Or even better again make one yourself!? If you don't like using LFG and don't want to do any of that then simply play another game.
The thing you don't understand is there are alot of people in the world that are asocial/introverted, and they DON'T want to socialize, small talk, listen people talking about their lives and shit. They just want to play the game. For those people being in a guild won't be fun and won't be a good time. You just assume everyone is an extrovert like you.
I have not been truly dedicated to a group/guild since MoP. It's too hard to find the "right" people and way too easy for in-game or IRL factors to cause players to cut ties.
Yeah, im trying to do a keystone master for a mount, but i can only play when wife isn't looking) so it's pugs all the way... 1k rating so far, now gotta double it! If anyone wants to play at EU venings, I'm your man 😂
I’ve thought about starting a guild for the reasons you state. Number 1 problem is where to recruit? I’m an og player. The forums aren’t what they used to be. In game nobody gathers much. One thing devs could do is create a TownSquare type location for things like guild recruitment. The in game system is not good.
To add onto your elevator analogy, I think it's more that there are multiple stairs and multiple elevators out there vying for attention. The most popular ones that I've experienced so far are OSRS, FFXIV, and GW2. My own analogy would be, well, there are multiple shops in this mall now. WoW isn't the main shop anymore. Where there used to be one big, giant pyramid mall that only sold WoW products, now there's multiple shops selling very different experiences within that pyramid. Within these shops, you have you're make-a-bear workshops, right? Where you make your own guilds in this example. You have to ask yourself what incentivizes people to create their own guild? Or what presents the least obstacles to creating a guild. Well, I could go to the WoW shop but that shop has 5-6 different shop versions that all scream at eachother and debate over which shop is the "real" shop experience. Now, say I want to build a bear in the shop known as retail. First obstacle: toxicity. Second obstacle: extreme variation of mechanics. Third obstacle, which you could argue is a feature, is that everything revolves around getting a newer pieces for your bear. Everything revolves solely around loot so much so that no one's really making a guild that's incentivized around evergreen content. That's where I think the FFXIV shop dominates and surpasses the WoW shop in spades because it, very early on, filtered it's community. It gatekept it's community with mechanisms in place that incentivized good behavior, evergreen content, mentorship, and group activities that were never about number going up. Even if there actually is a lot of high-tier raids and toxicity in the upper-echelons of that scene, it's almost brushed aside to the point where newer players don't really see it or interact with it until far later in the game. It's to the point where some FFXIV players will come to me and tell me they don't even raid, they just use the sub for decorating their houses or gposing or playing music as a bard in starter cities. Or attend venues in other people's houses. Where the shop of WoW has always sort of been infamous for min/maxing, and that really leaks into the build-a-guild component, FFXIV is an example of an MMO where it's a lot easier to build-a-guild with less obstacles and more casual incentives baked into it's very welcoming community. The latter is core to the sustainability of that game and allows it to weather a lot of, let's say, subpar content that the WoW shop surpasses it in. It boils down to this: why would I build a guild at the shop infamous for prioritizing being selfish and greedy to maximize your numbers. Where the pugscene in M+ or raids reinforces these ideals and makes it look like that's what you should expect from the community at all times. It feels like its a waste of time when I can just travel to another shop 5ft away with far less obstacles in place, especially since most people nowadays travel between MMOs.
Guilds have option to monopolize on players and Dungons , i dont have that option. im a solo player because i get rejected when i try interact with people from other guilds
I've been a guild officer. I've been a raid leader, both of guildies and pugs. Being in a good guild is wonderful. But it's not always easy to find a good guild, or make one, and even in a guild you cannot always get a group to do the thing that you want to do right now. You blame WoW for the LFG/LFR system but there was always a need for it- OQueue and OpenRaid are both different examples of solutions showing that problem has always existed. The real solution is this- stop blaming the elevator. Just choose elevator or stairs whichever you prefer, without saying that stairs is the only good option. Maybe it's the only good option, FOR YOU. But the large amount of people using LFG/LFR show the elevator is a good option, FOR THEM. I'd say for most people, a combination of elevator vs stairs depending on the day or time or need is what's actually happening. And that's ok.
I couldn’t agree more. I hope my video didn’t make it sound like I personally want LFG or LFR to go away entirely. I was more trying to speak to people that use LFG and hate it but haven’t tried finding a guild or starting one. We will never make friends or build community by pugging dungeons and not even sticking around long enough after a key to say “gg”
I had a lot guilds that were great for the first 2 months, then I did mine, for like 2 years back in legion and keeping the guild burned me to my core. It's not worth it, imho. I managed to get a cool community, But one fight Killed us, and gutted us, Then I tried to rebuild, I did, it happened again, and now I prefer not to do it. Because It hurted lose so many friends over pety shit.
LFR has been mostly fine for me these days and the wait times have generally been pretty low. I've rarely encountered drama because people don't often chat in those raids. Occasionally people will quit after a boss fight wipe, but the slots tend to fill back up relatively quickly.
The brutal truth is, most guilds in WoW are dead on arrival. Good guilds are the lifeblood of the game, but for new players, finding one is almost impossible. You’ll hop from guild to guild, only to find they’re packed with cranky old players and messy drama. It's very difficult to find a group of cool headed players.
They always were, going all the way back to 2004 where the number of quality progression guilds on the server could be counted on one hand (or a few fingers). Just like real life, finding unselfish levelheaded people is a constant challenge and guilds with quality leadership and members not prone to drama, DKP controversy, ninja looting, or favoritism was even more difficult. We maintained a relatively stable core of 20-25 high performing players, but this frequently made it really hard to fill 40 person raids without going outside the guild to fill those slots. We were first to clear BWL on our server, which wasn't easy, but the ultimate boss to overcome was the IRL human element.
Just make one, and along the way you can pass the leadong to someone i did, and we were thriving there will be players who wanna lead but dont want to start
There are so many systems in the game you can engage with nowadays that "having fun" greatly depends on what you're looking for and how social you want to be.
Everything you said is absolutely correct, I just wish I could take the advice. My IRL schedule is too chaotic and not regular enough to join a regular group. I'm forced to LFG whenever I have time to game.
You’re absolutely right about the culture. People want stuff NOW. I take a different approach. For mythic plus seasons, I gradually build up my gear and rating and run with pugs. By the time I get to doing 8s and above, I have the experience, gear and overall knowledge so I can properly contribute and, by extension, respect the other players. Many do not do this. They like to jump up to difficulties they aren’t prepared for. Jump into dungeons they’ve never done before. No research and a novice grasp on the game in general. And this causes failure and the frustration we see time and time again. Pugging in concept is great to meet new people and to create more connections. But now, it’s a cesspool and running keys has become a chore that fewer and fewer are doing
Great video. Pugging is definitely a wild west. I want to find a CE guild as a returning player, trialed a few, but haven't found the right place just yet. I've gotten too hyperfocused on the outcome, thinking that I had to find something immediately. I need to reframe that and focus on the journey a bit more.
Great take on this debate, thanks for the video. This reminded me that I need to get back to the roots of the game, the way it used to be played. I don’t like Classic because it is too slow, but there are definitely some lessons to be learned there.
right? I wish we had the QOL from Retail but the genuine MMO experience of Classic
I tried to replay through classic, but at around L30 I had this realization in Hillsbrad that I'd basically been doing nothing but running (slowly) for nearly 15min from one side of the zone to the other for one damned quest... and I just couldn't do it anymore. That was my quit moment. I've also seen all of this content before countless times in the past and as an adult who can't play video games all day anymore, the game just doesn't respect my time. It doesn't help that I'm not a nostalgic person by nature, so reliving 2004 isn't warm and fuzzy for me... it just reminds me of how slow and grindy the game used to be. Time is more limited. I want new experiences, not constantly reliving old ones.
Not sure if I’ve just been unlucky, but I play classic WoW and I’ve been in 5 guilds just this year, all of which fizzled out after 2-3 months. I’ve found that for me at least guilds are a huge investment to find a good one that has good people and then there’s time invested into helping maintain that guild, and then you invest in building a reputation so you become a “main raider” to get preferred placement in the good group and consistent loot, but then they are gone a few months later and you have to start all over. I’ve gotten burned out with having to go through this process over and over. People end up with different life priorities, or they get burned out with leading the guild, or Blizzard releases a new version or new servers seemingly every month and people leave for that… it never ends.
That's how it was in 2004 too. Only a handful of guilds on each server had the leadership and core team of quality dedicated players willing to put in the work necessary to progress at a high level. Not everyone wants a game to feel like a job, but that's what was required; scheduled raid nights throughout the week, manually maintained DKP system for keeping track of attendance and points spent on loot rolls, and constant recruitment to try to fill the 40 person raids when players couldn't show up (which was frequent).
The whole perception for this game and the elitism has sucked the fun out of it. Its actually really easy to have fun in this game, there are so many things you can do, you want to fish , there are hundreds of cosmetics, achievements and mini games associated with it, you can be a collector, you can do secrets, you can literally do so many things. Its kinda sad seeing everyone ignore so many things in this game just to do one thing and then complain that there are no rpg elements
I like your brain, thank you for sharing your thoughts!
I officially quit WoW about a month ago due to the toxicity. I've played since Classic. Even in a guild, we had people who were impatient with others and couldn't wait to progress further and people ended up leaving. This new parsing meta is the worst I've ever witnessed. Everyone has to the best, for who knows what reason. So they can have "achievements" (that can be bought) or so their name goes on a chart where only a small niche community even cares about it. There isn't any more fun in WoW, it's all a job.
I'm playing LotRO now and it's SOOOO much more laid-back. The community is nice, and there's so many more older and wiser people. It's such a breath of fresh air.
I will miss WoW... but I will live without out. LotR is my favorite story anyhow!
I agree parsing is stupid. I am a veteran player and played on a wrath private server for years and when wrath came out on classic people mentioned it and I never heard of it before. I have been farming wrath for years and sometimes pugging with retail players was not fun.
My first raiding guild was like my first love lol. I think many feel the same way. It becomes harder to get back into the raiding scene after that. No other guild has felt quite the same ever since 🤣🤣
Maybe your realm is vastly different, but if I did that right now and didn't use wowhead for infos didn't use lfg for dungeons and used general or trade chat like I wanted, I would get either "just google it??? tf" or instructions to where lfg is in the UI. Nobody assumes I don't know about the elevator or that I'm stupid if I try to take the stairs, and stairs are something taken alone.
The Elevator/Stair Analogy is great
Hey man, like ur videos. I have spent most of the last 5+ years from Cata to now off and on playing. I almost exclusively pug. I have played since vanilla, raided hc in wotlk, cata, and mop in high school. I do not guild anymore because my experience with wow guilds is they are a massive social/time sink. You mention that hour of scheduled play in ur video. My experience is that being in a guild is a large commitment and one that entails a lot of stress and grinding for new bosses. In pugs, I can decide im done for the night regardless of anyone else. If I leave early in a guild run, I'll get benched. Pugging allows me to play the content I want to, with some limits like I wont be a mythic raider ever again, but on my time how I want it. If I want to spend 4 hrs on mythic+, I can. If I need to take a break midway through or my wife needs help, I can leave without worry.
I have played this game since 2007 when I was 19 the difference is the player base, the era we live in , the story, and the company. Wow was truly a one of a kind magical experience back in the day. PUGs and random meet ups were always a fun experience it slowly changed over the past 20 years the biggest being cata, then dranor and I have not been able to play since BFA with the exception of dragonflight for a few weeks. Having fun in retail is hard believe me especially if you have been around a long time. The game is a chore. Retail is bad , the story has been so watered down and retconned theres no epic adventure to be excited about anymore. They abandoned traditional RPG elements. They dont even have a gender selector its body type.... thats all you need to know about priorities. Players are also different in general. Theres GDKP and boosting, and streaming these were not a wide spread thing back then and streaming didnt exist until later in the games life.
I enjoy classic and enjoy classic era. Looking forward to another go at BC and Mists. Then hopefully Wrath for a 3rd time. I find classic to be the closest thing to the original fun, retail will never see another dime from me. As far as guilds go I enjoy the casual guilds in classic.
This is why I form my own groups for m+ AND get help from my guild
"Is Blizzard so out of touch?... no... it's the community that is wrong..."
In all seriousness though, I typically don't use LFG at all either, the only times I ever actually need to use it is during events, and while I would love to just wait around for a group to form outside the world boss and get invited, the truth is that's not going to happen, at least not on a regular enough basis for farming mounts and transmog... the event is limited time after all... everyone and their mom are using the LFG tool to group up quickly, down the boss, and move on... it's too convenient to ignore and it's presence leaves those of us who don't use the tool out of options. :/
Just last week, I got kicked from a group of 20 players because 1 of them made a big stink about how I had exp off, and all it took was 4 other random players to vote yes to kick before I could even notice the conversation and explain that I was in a party, effectively kicking me and my full party from the group, my party wasn't kicked, but they left because they aren't gonna abandon me, then that 1 player that got me kicked whispered me how pissed he was that he had to wait for more people because of me, saying that I deserved to get kicked, and I'm just like... what the hell does he expect me to do about it? I'm not gonna go all the way back to Orgrimmar just to turn on exp, come back, making everybody wait in the process of coming back, just to gain permanent exp for one boss on my main strictly no exp character as to not slightly inconvenience this 1 asshole player from leveling his 5th throwaway alt... I'd rather just get kicked... so I blocked him and grouped up with my party again and waited for the next group to form... and of course, the next group didn't give a shit, like the hundreds of other groups I've been in, none of them ever gave a shit or even noticed that I had exp off... the LFG tool gives the power to a minority of irritable players who will go out of your way to ruin your day for no reason at all other than because they wanted to ruin your day, and Blizzard's tool encourages that behavior, there's a reason most players will just dip when a group is unsuccessful 4 bosses in on a dungeon, it's because we've all been conditioned to not stick around to avoid drama... just queue up for the next group, drama free...
Blizzard's game is entirely designed around encouraging you to use the LFG tool, there are so many things you can't even do without using it, the new event raid is LFG exclusive for example, and like I said before, the presence of the tool forces you to use it simply because everyone else is using it, there aren't enough people *not* using it to render it optional... I'm not saying to remove the tool entirely, but I am saying that would be better than what we have now... what I want is for them to *fix* it so that everybody can be happy with it, since they're so intent on keeping it around... might as well address the issues it has... :P
@@Gigglerue You said what I said somewhere here much more precisely, fully agree. One would be waiting for actual days and taking insults/spam reports because they're not doing it "right" if one were to try lfging without the tool.
I’ve had the most difficult time finding a guild. What is this discord recruitment you speak of? The last few times I’ve tried to find a guild is via Trade chat.
I just added some links in the description of resources you can use for finding a guild.
I am afraid to say it is a lost battle,Tiktok virus goes hard. I'm just happy that there are ways to play vanilla WoW.
The main issue here is whatever solution you propose it will never satisfy more than just a part of the playerbase.
The game is really BIG.
So BIG that you can experience it in many many ways.
You have to provide quality of life features so players can enjoy more of the game in less amount of time.
And as stated LFG is just a quality of life tool, the problem is that people feel forced to use it when they don't have to. But then again everyone else does end up using it and old traditional way of making groups dies out. This is Player/Socially created issue which led to a drastic change that many people didn't like. Blizzard just added an additional way of grouping, they did not remove anything.
Remove LFG? Now the game created the issue, it removed an option. Cause on the other hand a lot of people don't mind LFG and enjoy "pugging".
If you don't like using LFG. As stated in the video; Find a community or a guild which will provide you with the content you wanna do. Or even better again make one yourself!?
If you don't like using LFG and don't want to do any of that then simply play another game.
The thing you don't understand is there are alot of people in the world that are asocial/introverted, and they DON'T want to socialize, small talk, listen people talking about their lives and shit. They just want to play the game.
For those people being in a guild won't be fun and won't be a good time.
You just assume everyone is an extrovert like you.
thats also the main reason why i fall out of wow so often.. the expansion holds me as long as i have "scenario" quests
I have not been truly dedicated to a group/guild since MoP. It's too hard to find the "right" people and way too easy for in-game or IRL factors to cause players to cut ties.
Where can i look for the groups/guilds you’re talking about?
There are a bunch of resources out there. I put a few links in the description of the video that you can check out.
@@acadiianwowThank you.
Yeah, im trying to do a keystone master for a mount, but i can only play when wife isn't looking) so it's pugs all the way... 1k rating so far, now gotta double it! If anyone wants to play at EU venings, I'm your man 😂
I’ve thought about starting a guild for the reasons you state. Number 1 problem is where to recruit? I’m an og player. The forums aren’t what they used to be. In game nobody gathers much. One thing devs could do is create a TownSquare type location for things like guild recruitment. The in game system is not good.
Its rough. Ive tried starting a guild myself in retail and finding players to actually commit csn be difficult.
Yes, there is no free lunch. Both methods of group content have their advantages and disadvantages.
classic classic leveling part 1 when?
To add onto your elevator analogy, I think it's more that there are multiple stairs and multiple elevators out there vying for attention. The most popular ones that I've experienced so far are OSRS, FFXIV, and GW2. My own analogy would be, well, there are multiple shops in this mall now. WoW isn't the main shop anymore. Where there used to be one big, giant pyramid mall that only sold WoW products, now there's multiple shops selling very different experiences within that pyramid. Within these shops, you have you're make-a-bear workshops, right? Where you make your own guilds in this example. You have to ask yourself what incentivizes people to create their own guild? Or what presents the least obstacles to creating a guild. Well, I could go to the WoW shop but that shop has 5-6 different shop versions that all scream at eachother and debate over which shop is the "real" shop experience. Now, say I want to build a bear in the shop known as retail. First obstacle: toxicity. Second obstacle: extreme variation of mechanics. Third obstacle, which you could argue is a feature, is that everything revolves around getting a newer pieces for your bear. Everything revolves solely around loot so much so that no one's really making a guild that's incentivized around evergreen content.
That's where I think the FFXIV shop dominates and surpasses the WoW shop in spades because it, very early on, filtered it's community. It gatekept it's community with mechanisms in place that incentivized good behavior, evergreen content, mentorship, and group activities that were never about number going up. Even if there actually is a lot of high-tier raids and toxicity in the upper-echelons of that scene, it's almost brushed aside to the point where newer players don't really see it or interact with it until far later in the game. It's to the point where some FFXIV players will come to me and tell me they don't even raid, they just use the sub for decorating their houses or gposing or playing music as a bard in starter cities. Or attend venues in other people's houses.
Where the shop of WoW has always sort of been infamous for min/maxing, and that really leaks into the build-a-guild component, FFXIV is an example of an MMO where it's a lot easier to build-a-guild with less obstacles and more casual incentives baked into it's very welcoming community. The latter is core to the sustainability of that game and allows it to weather a lot of, let's say, subpar content that the WoW shop surpasses it in. It boils down to this: why would I build a guild at the shop infamous for prioritizing being selfish and greedy to maximize your numbers. Where the pugscene in M+ or raids reinforces these ideals and makes it look like that's what you should expect from the community at all times. It feels like its a waste of time when I can just travel to another shop 5ft away with far less obstacles in place, especially since most people nowadays travel between MMOs.
I'm with the culture.
Guilds have option to monopolize on players and Dungons , i dont have that option. im a solo player because i get rejected when i try interact with people from other guilds
retail wow is absolutely awful for meeting people anymore
I've been a guild officer. I've been a raid leader, both of guildies and pugs. Being in a good guild is wonderful. But it's not always easy to find a good guild, or make one, and even in a guild you cannot always get a group to do the thing that you want to do right now. You blame WoW for the LFG/LFR system but there was always a need for it- OQueue and OpenRaid are both different examples of solutions showing that problem has always existed. The real solution is this- stop blaming the elevator. Just choose elevator or stairs whichever you prefer, without saying that stairs is the only good option. Maybe it's the only good option, FOR YOU. But the large amount of people using LFG/LFR show the elevator is a good option, FOR THEM. I'd say for most people, a combination of elevator vs stairs depending on the day or time or need is what's actually happening. And that's ok.
I couldn’t agree more. I hope my video didn’t make it sound like I personally want LFG or LFR to go away entirely. I was more trying to speak to people that use LFG and hate it but haven’t tried finding a guild or starting one. We will never make friends or build community by pugging dungeons and not even sticking around long enough after a key to say “gg”
I agree.
I had a lot guilds that were great for the first 2 months, then I did mine, for like 2 years back in legion and keeping the guild burned me to my core. It's not worth it, imho. I managed to get a cool community, But one fight Killed us, and gutted us, Then I tried to rebuild, I did, it happened again, and now I prefer not to do it. Because It hurted lose so many friends over pety shit.
Lmaooooo you are tripping
LFR is fine for most content. If there are aholes in the group, you can leave.
LFR has been mostly fine for me these days and the wait times have generally been pretty low. I've rarely encountered drama because people don't often chat in those raids. Occasionally people will quit after a boss fight wipe, but the slots tend to fill back up relatively quickly.