Bucket Guild | FUBU BH Forums

I am not sure I agree with this analysis.
Obviously your opinion of the fun of the game is yours alone, who am I to put that down.

More of the same is not always a bad thing though. People like routine.

But as far as the only people who still play are those who have formed relationships in the game...aren't there more memberships now than there have been in the past? I thought I read somewhere around 14 million subscribers. Wouldn't the increasing subscriber base contradict the theory that only a fraction of people still play?

A lot of people still pay their $15/month and log in short periods of time just to chat or see if anything new happened. The only thing that kept me going in LK was ungodly haste with pve gear when doing BGs. A raid week turned into a single 3-4 hour day with nothing to fill the void. Set my alarm on Tuesday so I could wake up on time then ignore the game until next week. I think the only thing that could get my attention back is finding a TBC Pserver just so I could go lolkin again and not rage.

Druid: Meowth
« Steam »« Xfire »
Glorious Death Metal Music

Basically what Meowth said. I realized personally...I just don't like giving 3 hours of my time to progression...when all that effort is just useless when a new xpac comes out. Wasting time while wasting time is lame.

However, I think Blizzard quite frankly lies about the amount of subscribers because it makes it seem more popular and helps attract more people ("oh wow, everyone is playing!"). Considering the amount of people who have multiple accounts, people who are paying their monthly fee but barely ever log on, etc...all that counts towards blizzards "14 million" figure.

Perhaps I should clarify, there are many people who still enjoy playing...but I see more and more "old timers" who have left as each expansion comes out. The people who are left are those who really enjoy their guilds, and those who have formed relationships/friendships. For example, if not for the people in FUBU, and some other friends of mine in-game...I wouldn't really bother logging on at all.

Also, I'm sure new players are coming in...but it's clearly not at the same levels as it used to be...the game is entering its mature phase (and probably has been in it for quite some time). Think about all the things blizz is doing basically...BEGGING people to join: making all the previous expansions dirt cheap, recruit-a-friend (which btw, a lot of people just purchase new accounts because they want the mounts, blizz knows this...but again it counts towards their figure).

I just think TB's demise is a perfect example of the trend in WoW. It's a maturing user base, and I don't see much more life in it. One more expansion, for sure, but it's not going to be long until it goes the way of EQ and just becomes free to play, with the only community remaining of nostalgic bros.

Personally, the only reason I play Cataclysm is because of my self-perceived obligation to the guild I chose to form thie expansion. That, and a CivIII-like sense of "one more turn" - not particularly enjoying the game, but "I started this, I might as well finish".

Cataclysm is a well-designed game. The problem is not the quality of the design nor the mechanics, but the excessive emphasis on utility and intrinsic reward. Very few mobs, objects or activities in Cataclysm don't "have a point", in the sense they don't award loot or an achievement or a novelty item or something; the emphasis on intrinsic reward and not exploration or free-form play diminishes enjoyment and ultimately burns players out, ironically because when they say the game "doesn't have a point", what they really means is it lacks extrinsic rewards in the form of community and enjoyment. Basically, World of Warcraft's paradigm shift since the vanilla/TBC dev team left is a a failure; it is philosophically bankrupt.



14M figure is misleading. Actually the official figure is 12M. More than half of that is C-WoW accounts which barely turn a profit because their sub fee is a fraction of what it is for Westerners. Out of the remainder, there's bloat in the form of RAF, second accounts, and accounts that exist only for shady activities such as laundering and botting. Then there's the marginally subscribed - those who have active subs they've nearly forgotten about and basically never log in.

The actual number of active, Western subscribers is probably around 500,000. Not 12 million. 500,000. This is my own personal estimate, but it's consistent with the available information.

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

Fermi estimates ftw. Also it wouldn't be the first time that a business inflates their numbers by ignoring variables. They could easily produce the data to make a census that reflects real figures but it wouldn't be as appealing as 12 million. I'd think of it as a basic publicity trick.

I saw a video of the Nefarion fight, looked interesting. If that's any indication I'd say the bosses are at least novel enough to keep playing if you still enjoy the game itself.

Also, slapping dicks with bros.

Akina: bitch I will stab you in the face

I'd like to think I have a much more indepth understanding of exactly what went on than the rest of you.. and the insinuation that TB was a guild comprised of skilled players withut any regard for personality is bogus. We didn't take many skilled players because they wouldn't fit with the atmosphere of the guild. I've bene in a few different top end raiding guilds in my time, and TB was completely unique in every regard. Really I've never been with such an awesome group of people, and we had a LOT of fun just chilling in vent, and we all were very good friends. Theres a good reason why a lot of us stuck with the guild and didn't just transfer out until the end.

Our mistake was this:
We had a solid raiding roster of 28 at the end of WOTLK. If that raiding roster had stayed, we would have been fine. We lost 8 or so of those people before/right after cata hit to RL issue and other things. We were unable to fil raids and had to desperately recruit. We took some.. not so skilled people.. which obviously didn't help. We still progressed due to the majority of the players still having a very high level of skill, but it was going downhill. This caused many long term members to become fed up with the game.. and we lost a few more old time players, most to just quitting. Some of the people who had been around for only 5 months or so server xferred, leaving us in a worse position. We would raid and attempt hardmodes with 20 ish people in raid.. which was no fun at all. Finally it just got to be too much and we threw in the towel.

The recruitment issue is a very real thing at the top tier of raiding right now. With 10 man content offering the exact same rewards as 25, people are more apt to form up in 10 man guilds locally, rather than server transfer/faction change to take a shot being an app at a major guild like ours. Again, we would have been fine if we didnt lose so many people. I realize a lot of your guilds are getting apps, but please don't take this as an arrogant jab or anything like that, but I would assume most of those players weren't capable, or skilled enough to raid on a US/World competative level for whatever reason. Its a bit different when you're a hardcore progression guild; the skill level required for recruits is much much higher.

A lot of people hated us on this server, and are glad to see us gone.. and I personally don't care. Sure, some TB players were arrogant fucks, and dicks a lot of the time, but not all of us were. I dunno, I may be pretty mean sometimes but if any resto druid messaged me asking for gemming/gearing/spec advice, I'd gladly give it. Either way, the few of you I've had the pleasure of interacting with, its been fun.

TL;DR
Peace.

Blizzard may be a bit generous in how they count subscribers, but I doubt they are actually making the numbers up. They are a publicly traded company and would get in real trouble if they were fraudulently inflating the number of subscribers (not that corporations never break the rules, but it's not the most parsimonious explanation). Cataclysm apparently sold 4.7 million copies in the first month of release, and it's not available in mainland China, so that's probably a decent estimate of the number of active subscribers outside China.

Laelia Komi Anomalocaris

They are probably entirely accurate in the number of subscriptions they have, which is what matters from a business standpoint. From a gameplay standpoint, it's not.

Akina: bitch I will stab you in the face

Maybe, but then you start to get in differing definitions of what an "active" player is. For the purposes of this thread, we're probably only looking at people who play regularly and are interested in raiding (and thus are in or applying to raid guilds). That's only one chunk of the playerbase, and the people who don't fall under that definition may be very active by other standards.

Laelia Komi Anomalocaris

You're not talking to scrubs or people who have never been in high end raid guilds and that you speak as if we have no frame of reference for this discussion is telling. As is your apparent conviction that because some people are chummy with each other they are therefore special or awesome.

Coco leaving did not break TB.

TB wasn't "desperately recruiting" - and yes I am thinking in significant part of my app being rejected at a time they supposedly badly needed skilled raiders. By the same token, making the choice to integrate seriously unreliable people like Whael and Dagr into the guild was a serious mistake, misjudging the character of people like Grognan, as was the choice to make the public face of the guild people like Iapeto and Sarcasm who were universally despised.

It's worth noting that DU has a long WL every night and competes at TB's level. The spigot was no drier than TB chose to make it for themselves. I know several individuals by name who chose TB over DU for no reason than how bad TB's rep was.

Having played with a good number of TB members, my experience has been that although some are quality players, a good many more are elitists who, although competent, are not exceptional on the level they believe themselves to be. And those individuals in question aren't the recent applicants.

What Boredalt said is right on. If a guild seems to be crumbling one raider at a time there is a reason why. Something is lacking. Progression alone won't keep a team together for long.

I don't buy this "but we were so special" BS. Some guilds ARE special. TB wasn't. The very fact that you think TB was "special" hints at the deeper attitudes that I can guarantee you are what really killed the guild - "we are so special/awesome/whatever". Yes, that attitude is lethal to guilds. It drives new players away and leads to hubris and complacency. Long before it became generally known that TB was in trouble, I always noticed Kerym, for example, was never in the company of other TB members.

You take the good with the bad. You can't call people your friends or take pride in their strengths and accomplishments then disassociate yourself from their negative behavior. If you sleep with dogs you will smell like shit.

EDIT: It's also worth noting that the LK lockout reset may, in the long run, have been what ultimately killed TB - the influence on morale, the internal drama associated with the move resulting in Monique/Beaten/Lubricate leaving, and above all else the ridicule it inspired that even WoWProgress made a callout article on and turned potential recruits away.

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

The shareholders care to know about the amount of money-generating subscriptions. Aestu used some variables to demonstrate that the number of actual active players is probably much less and give an estimation.

As an analogy, just like you can demonstrate that "we're most likely not alone in the universe" using a similar process.

If Blizzard's intent in marketing RAF was for any purpose other than inflating sub numbers, the accelerated levelling and two-passenger mount would have been offered as standalone items in the Blizzard Store, and the rocket mount would merely have been offered free with RAF and not as an exclusive benefit.

From a narrow accounting perspective, yes it's all the same whether an active account is logged into more than once a year or not, or whether it belongs to an individual player or a china farmer or altoholic. From a business perspective, managing the game as a going concern, the distinction is hugely important in ensuring the viability of the game community. Those millions of ghost accounts will vaporize if issues in the game reach critical mass.

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

Aestu may be right for a given definition of "active", but Azelma said that he thought Blizzard was lying about the number of subscriptions. It's unlikely that they're overstating the number of subscriptions for the reasons I mentioned, although it's certainly possible that some of them don't represent actual players (eg. Chinese farmer accounts, second accounts, etc.), and not all of them may be active depending on how you define activity.

Laelia Komi Anomalocaris

The LK lockout thing had absolutely nothing to do with it. Our morale was just fine all the way through wrath and into cata. Monique left months before cata even launched. Beaten left because he got an E-girlfriend and moved to live with her when we refused to recruit her because she was bad. Lubricate left because beaten was a douche and convinced him to quit, hoping that if he left, his E-GF would get the raid spot.

Yeah, TB surely had some douches in it, but most guilds to. Sarcasm was never an officer of the guild, though Iapeto was. ANd yea, peto can be a HUGE dick. Thats just the kind of guy he is.
I could buy your argument that TB was a victim of some "bad image", but its not just us. Deus Vox crumbled. Phoenix crumbled. FL is gone. Many many top tier guilds are falling by the wayside. And when I said TB was special, I didn't mean that we had the most skilled players in the world. I ment that our core was really good friends, and it was a unique guild environment. Dagr was a mistake, but he did decent damage.. he was removed from guild before TB crumbled though. Whael also turned out to be a flake... that happens. I have no reason to lie about this stuff, and I'm telling you what happened with the guild that led up to its demise.