I've analyzed player rotations for TOP4000 US/EU guilds during period June 10 - July 10.
Lets look at guilds that were quite successful in raiding until they lost most of their members (guild size became less than 25).
This graph shows how many guilds unable to raid anymore, depending on the World Rank. We see that there is a big peak at rank 3300-3500. They are unable to do further progress almost in 30% of cases.
What's with the 3300 number?
The thing is that there is about 3300 guilds that have done
Heartbreaker (H) for the moment and the guild rank range 3300-3500 consists guilds that killed 25-man Yogg-Saron but didn't defeat Heartbreaker (H) yet.
I think there can be different reasons:
- They are unable to do Heartbreaker as it is the first serious performance check. (Doubt it though - if a guild killed Yogg-Saron they most probably should be able to defeat hardmode XT-002).
- They aren't going to do the hard modes as they already saw the whole Ulduar content.
- They are raiding for items and they are okay with farming T8.5 content and don't want ilvl 239 items because "they just a few stats better". (They didn't read Item Level Mechanics for sure)
In short, there is a border between easy mode and hard mode and there is the glitch because of that.
On the one hand it's a good thing since it prevents burn-out of most of the people (they don't have to "bash heads" for the hard modes). On the other hand it's not so smooth barrier due to conflict of interests of different people inside guild. And it may lead to a guild disband.
(to be continued)
Shârp
but i think you miss an implication:
The peak around the 3300 is propably because the time frame between XT nerf and their Yogg kill was so big.
They just disbanded before the nerf and after Yogg but not disbanded because of the XT Hardmode
So actually XT Hardmode was the cause and it was nerfed by a reason.
Also not there is no disbands right pre-3300. If a guild have killed XT in Hardmode, the guild will be ok.
I think that the Heartbreaker reason could be right - guilds tear themselves apart because they can't progress.
Sure, many guilds live with it, but the risk is higher.
Tona
1. they were unable to do the hardmodes, but a lot of players were unsatisfied with easymode.
2. they disbanded, because of inactivity. naxxramas (80) was the poorest raiding instance ever and many players just left for other mmogs or real life.
Kounamouta
Specially about medium to low populated servers disbanding/merging incidents, after june and till middle of August, are common ones.
Ofc hard modes play they role too, since within guild there r various types of raiders, meaning some can accept the summer slack progress and some cant. Though long term Blizzard did a good job, with implementing hard modes, cuz more and more ppl have the chance to clear an instance and gear up sufficiently so general server progress to be kept on high standards.
Theristia
We disabandoned after our guildmaster saying it wasnt fun anymore that people didnt show up for 25-man Hard Mode progress (lots of people on holliday).
We were doing prety well on hardmodes, we might have only done 2, but the others were very close to being "completed". Its a shame when fine guilds disabandon over these kind of stuff...
Willygoodmlk4 months ago
(I saw such arguments even in old Molten Core/BWL times).
It's about how player's burn-out depends on guild progress.
As you see other guilds don't suffer so much from it as 3300-3600 guilds do.
Dúnadan
Sad but times are changing and old guilds that happend to exist since deep classic are slowly dying :/
but at the same time, that's pissing them off, and they are unable even to farm 'ez mode' content.
Well most average/hardcore guilds are in that phase between defeating yogg-easy to starting hard modes. Since its summer, less people show up and they cant even reach yogg anymore, not only that but they feel unmotivated because its either waste time on hard modes or actually reach Yogg.
And only 1 guild in my server has disbanded.
So you question yourself what's worse instances that offer generic experience of the instance with a chance to increase the level of difficulty? or Instances that are designed to be an epic test from the first trash pull like AQ40, Naxx60, BT, and SW. They bother over blocks and can cause burn out.
I still think the "experience" is key, WotLK was removed the epic experience that most people didn't get to see.
Also Mimiron hard mode is by far one of the most epic fights Ive ever done. Please dont say that they removed the epicness out of many of these fights because that is not true.
But its understandable that guilds start disbanding now that were back to tough instances. Remember BC? Guilds disbanded all the time.
Fizzbomb