it is a strange thing, lots and lots of the very raid orientated guilds call it quits atm. on my server aswell, the best horde and the best alliance guild were disbanding this week.

i think it is a circle. people dont want to spend this huge effort on raiding for too long time. so raiding guilds always have to recruit new people. In times like the YEAR between Illidan firstkill and Sunwell opening, more people than usual leave the raiding because they are bored of farming old contend.

so the guild has to recruit more people which leads to a decreasing raiding quality for those who are with the guild for some time and allready fully used to the way the guild does things. On my realm forum you hear alot of complaints from the highend raid guilds that there are no realy usable players around, that you have to teach all recruits how to play and that you have to gear them all up.

The higher the horse and the longer you sat up there, the harder the fall. I expect that this will continue going downhill till Wotlk is released and we will have o see from there how fast blizzard releases new raid dungeons.

all in all, i think it fits into my perception that blizz does not like the hardcore raiders.

It's not that Blizzard doesn't like them, it's just that they are a very small section of the community, and they have to keep the majority happy I guess.

Meh, personally I find it ridiculous that a guild disbanding is "huge news". I've never even heard of these people til now. Guilds come and go, why don't we make news posts about every "top" guild across all the servers?

Cause most people don't care. Let's move on to something more important, shall we?

only because you dont care does not mean that one of the top 5 guilds worldwide disbanding is no news.

if you dont care, dont read it. now beat it. sorry, i mean now move along.

These are the types of guilds that GM's accompany during beta testing of bosses to refine their mechanics and other issues with instances.

If you haven't heard of these people, I find that ridiculous.

To the WoW world this is = to a sports world moment of someone like tiger woods retiring, jordon, or the like.

Huge news? Yes it is.

Worlds first illidan stormrage kill. 10 million subs, they had the first 25 people to beat the very last boss.

It is a big deal, and shows trends within the game.

And yet you read the news item and then spent the extra time discussing the value of it to you, which you felt was important enough to share with us all.

When a guild of significance disbands it's of interest to those who've ever been a member, those who've admired their achievements, those who run their own guilds and anyone interested in why a successful, accomplished guild would disband at this time. Clearly you fall into none of those categories but there are plenty in the community who do. The news item is for them.

If you care about special accomplishments: this guild used to be very good at them. I remember them for their Molten Core speed records and such, not their world first kills.

Newsworthy within the wow community? yes! no doubt about it!

At least they got some sense in their skulls and re-roll Horde

My perception from the same set of facts is that the horse is so high that there are so few high end guilds like this, that blizzard should not cater to them to the exclusion of things that might better benefit the larger population....

It is the larger population that provides the majority of the income for blizzard.

To your point though, perhaps blizz needs a new strategy. I see very few focused efforts (compared to the larger population) to move forward these days. Most of what I see is people just casually spending their time, not really doing much.

ROFL

You are quite humorous.

You've never heard of these people....Not meaning to be harsh, even though you were...Prior to this thread, had you heard of Illidan?

Out of curiosity, how long have you played? What motivates you to be in the game? Perhaps you don't raid, which is fine.

mesonm lets try to keep it down ;) I agree with you but lets not turn up the burner.

as said again and again, there is tons of stuff to do for the larger population. look at the BC expansion. battlegrounds, 5 man instances, tons of quests, leveling areas etc. and 5 high end raid instances. Five. that s all that the hardcore raiding people got in the last 1.5 years. no wonder they get bored.

That question probably goes a long way to explaining why this is "big news" to some and "who? what? news" to others. WoW offers a lot of different play styles, and with 10 million+ subscribers, the list of "What motivates me to play?" is probably very long.

On the one hand, the disbanding of a top 5 raiding guild is probably big news to people who like to raid and especially for the hard core raiders. And yet, it seems that guilds that are formed solely for the purpose of raiding, tend to fall apart quite often. Or at least the membership changes often. (Although that could just be my perception)

On the other hand (and perhaps this is where Chaos was headed) there are probably millions of players who will look at this news and think...."What about the top 5 PvP guilds? Or the top 5 RP guilds? How about longest lasting or oldest membership guilds?"

The thing is, there are so many different ways to play WoW, that what's important to the community is really just a matter of which part of the community you ask.

May 16, 2008 - 9:29 AM - by Xi-
The End. Sounds strange doesn't it? The ship went down faster than the Titanic, but the rats were bailing out before the iceberg was ever even in sight. 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 meager 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. Sunwell is an unmitigated success, but let's be honest here, it's taken us 18months to get back to a Naxx level of difficulty and encounter design and we got a meager 6 bosses, that's pretty pathetic.

In any case that's not why you're reading this, is it. So if it wasn't lousy encounter design, ****ty loot, cockblocks, etc, than what was it? The most fundamental currency there is in WoW. People. Somewhere along the line people got the idea that they were bigger than the guild. That what they wanted was more important than what was good for the guild. That somehow they deserved respect just for being around. And other people just stopped caring. Not only did they stop caring, but they didn't have the common decency to quit, they hung around for whatever reasons promising us they were going to be there, and we foolishly believed them out of loyalty for what we'd been through together. We had officers who couldn't take a stand any more and made decisions based on what was 'easy'. We had OFFICERS who disappeared with no notice, and would come and go as they pleased, yet still felt entitled to make decisions about where we were going. There is no 1 person's shoulder to place this on, it was a group effort.

Let's talk about a few important words here.

According to dictionary.com
Quote:
Progress - gradual improvement or growth or development

That's right GRADUAL. Progress doesn't happen all in 1 night, but apparently some people that we had here didn't understand that. They thought bosses just fell over the first night because of the tag over their head, and the most important thing was how much damage they could do at all times. Newsflash - it doesn't work like that. It's pretty ironic that the first people to jump ship when progress wasn't going fast enough, were the same ones jerking off in the 5man, and holding up the raid on the first day. Progress takes time, and world firsts don't fall from the sky, they're the result of a lot of hard work, and effort. The reputation of this guild was built on the backs of a lot of hard work and dedication from EVERYONE. The guild was bigger than any of us, and we knew it. Which leads into the second word.

Pride. Once upon a time we had pride. Pride in our guild, pride in ourselves, pride in what we'd done. Pride is showing up and giving your best effort, ESPECIALLY when you don't want to be there, because your guildmates deserve that. We didn't always get world firsts, it's impossible to always be first, that's just not how the game works, but we showed up every day, EARLY and busted our asses, and we were proud of what we accomplished, be it world first or world 1000th. We didn't whine or complain about our ****ing groups, or worry about loot. We killed bosses. Period. We gave our best effort because those around us deserved it, because the guild deserved it. We had pride about what we had done, not what those before us had done. But we also didn't have false pride. Once upon a time when people couldn't or didn't want to keep up the raiding schedule, they had the guts and decency to let the rest of us know. Now they slink off into the night without even a word.

Some people will say, they have no ill will towards those who neglected us during progress. Who stopped showing up once things got hard. Who left at the first opportunity. I'm not one of them. To anyone who jumped ship, I'm going to be honest. I have no respect for you. You all claimed you wanted to be members of this guild, you came here, we geared you, and that set an expectation down for you. That you were one of us, just like those who paved the way for you. You turned your back on that, and the last person is just as guilty as the first.

A lot of you might think Death and Taxes died this week, but for those of us who have been here for a long time we know that isn't true. Death and Taxes died a long time ago. We still killed bosses every week, but the spirit was long gone. The swagger you all came to know and love from us had evaporated. Some of us still carried it, and the guild, but the new people never quite got it. In the end Death and Taxes turned into any other guild, a job for the mercenaries who came here. They logged in at 7, picked up their epics, and logged off until the next raid, and that was never what we were about. We were about having fun, and being irreverent, and being honest with ourselves and each other.

What happens now? Well, that's not up to us, it's up to you. Those of us that have been here will always be members of DnT, our characters will disappear, but our memories will not. We didn't create our legend, we were just a group of friends who loved killing raid bosses. All the people who came to our website, and followed our progress, and cheered for our accomplishments, you created the legend, and ultimately you will have the last chapter in this story.


Sounds just as I expected.

Even to a non-raider like myself, this can be news.
If, you were to ask me to name two top raiding guilds, then Death and Taxes would be one of my answers, the other would be Nihilum. They're pretty much the big two afaik, I think they just about cover every raid boss between them in the entire game.

1st point i have to agree 100%. And it will be like that everytime, i guess. the last instance they release before the next expansion will be somewhat difficult, the rest just meh.

2nd point is exactly what i said in my first post in this thread. recrutees not living up to the expectations of the oldtimers. ( how could they, the oldtimers have been there and playing together for years... )

anyway, the first point is why i said that blizzard does not like the hardcore raiders. why should they. the HC raiders want hard contend, and blizzard wants the game to be accessable for everyone. just does not work together.

in the player guide that came with my battlechest... i see death and taxes guildies contributing to the book.

thats how i know them.


too bad they're gone. well... im sure many will rise up in their place.

It's probably not the last one to disband.

Honestly, before TBC, putting effort into raiding was rewarded. Now, you can find better gear just by running kara once a week, collect the 20 badges, and buy t6 equivalent gear.

If they could at LEAST figure a way to put a few types of badges in to make a different between t6 equivalent reward vs. t4 equivalent reward, that would be a nice step...

Somewhere where if you run Kara/gruul/Mag (all t4 equivalent), you get badges of Justice.

If you run ZA/SSC/TK/..., you could get Badges of Courage.

Then you could only trade your badge of courage to the t5-6 equivalent badge gear...

That would force People to go more to ZA and actually have to work for their t6 equivalent... instead of farming Kara for t6 equivalent gear.

So basically, if the instance drops T4 equivalent gear, well, you can't get t5-6 equivalent gear from it...

So in the expansion, since all raid dungeons will be doable 10 man, hopefully there will be something like that in place...

Where the first 2-3 raids that drops T200, get rewarded with token that you can buy T200 equivalent.

The next 2-3 dungeons that drops T201 equivalent get rewarded with t201 equivalent, etc.

This way, at least, it would get people to try out the harder thing in order to get gear of that level.

So while trying entry level raid, you could collect badge to get yourself geared toward the next level in case you're unlucky with loots distribution, and try to see the whole content in order to have gear equivalent to the hardest raids...

That's just my 2 cents...

Morrow

Nice step to accomplish what?

That nice step would not likely have kept D&T from disbanding.

My point was targeted to ALL the raiding guild that just don't find a reason why to continue to try HARD content when you can run kara weekly and get equivalent gear.

If WOW wasn't an epic loot fest, a lot more guild would've stayed. I know a guild on my server that disbanded because of that...

Why keep trying to get gear through hours of wipe on new content when we can get "almost" the same just by badges...

Back before TBC, raid was very popular even if it was 40 man and 20 mans.

Casual players were still trying to raid to get that piece of T1 or T2, because it was a lot better than the rest.

Until they started giving free PVP epic to everyone (a few months before TBC), which killed the whole PRE-TBC Raiding. Especially once you start to hear about greens being better than your t2 and almost equal to t3...

Don't get me wrong, this is the way to go when you want to keep 10 million casual playing.

And what's worse, is that since these BIG dominating guilds starts to fall one by one, we'll be left with guilds that takes 2-3 times longer to down bosses. What does this means : Blizzard are going to have a lot less dungeons to create, since people won't go through the new content as fast as they do now. Well.. actually, at the speed they give epix to evryone, maybe even huntard that doesn't know how to trap at lvl 70 will be able to clear Sunwell...

Less hardcore means less new content, means less work to be done by blizzard.

Without these guilds, we would probably still stuck with only SSC and TK up at the moment. But since hardcores were getting bored, they added BT, MH and now Sunwell.

If they cared so much about casual player for new content, they could've put a 5 man with all these new 25 mans like they did with MgT...

Now that even casual are getting annoyed without new content, they add a 5 mans in MgT.

Morrow

I too, have never heard of these people.

I would have to say that something like this doesn't mean anything or even imply anything about Blizzard, or what Blizzard is doing with WoW. It quite quite easily be explained by personality differences and conflicts within the guild, something I've seen happen a lot. And if not dealt with/resolved correctly, it will fragment and split the guild, potentially resulting in a disbanding. Yet again, no reflection on Blizzard at all.

@The High And Mighty Internet "Badasses"

I stated my opinion on the matter, nothing more. Your responses don't need to be all flaming bull****. Find a different site to take your frustrations out, cause no one is impressed nor intimidated by your "I'm an internet badass!" crap. Just reply appropriately and constructively and move on.

@twoflower

If you want me to beat it, please make a recommendation to one of the site admins to have me banned from the site. Until then, keep your yap shut unless it's something constructive.

@mesonm
1) Yes, I have played WC3 and Frozen Throne.
2) I've played for 3 years now. My apologies if it's a crime not to have been playing since beta.
3) No, I don't raid. I find it boring to constantly run the same instance, fighting the same mobs and bosses over and over and over again.

@Elly
"Clearly you fall into none of those categories..."

Wow, the admin of the forums taking personal shots? Now I see where people get their influence on "appropriate responses"...

@Everyone else who didn't reply like 12 yr. olds
Kudos.

Yes, I admit I'm being a prick in this response. I reply in the same manner as I'm replied to. I apologize for nothing.

Yup. Internal guild drama, people deciding that they were superior to the guild. This kind of thing happens to guilds all the time, and it definitely is not exclusive to WoW guilds either.

Hm..obviously you are not gonna please everyone....but Blizzard is constantly trying to change things. Why design a fantastic dungeon like Naxx that only ever a small fraction of players see and a small fraction of that fraction beats. So that we can look at them and say "My heroes"? I regretted that I never could see Naxx beyond the first trash or AQ beyond the first boss. Our server really only has one hardcore guild on each side and those raided 6 days a week.

You actually need to clear Kara for 5 weeks to get..say a good caster robe (below T6 quality actually..as a caster you either get a crit damage or hit and damage robe. In that respect even the T5 robes are "better" if you cannot get your other gear to support the lacking stats of the badge robe. Our healers sit on up to 400 badges and have nothing to spend it on. Their T4, T5, ZA gear outdoes the Badge rewards)
You need to run Kara again 5 weeks for pants
You need to run it again for 7 weeks for a caster sword
You need to run Kara 2 weeks for a badge trinket
You need to run Kara up to 1.5 weeks for a offhand
etc etc..you get my drift. Then you still don't have the gems to put in...at 15 badges per epic gem, do the maths yourself.

Now you have been running Kara for 20 weeks, almost half a year and that is only if your guild has the place on farm, meaning you put effort into gear to even get there.

Dunno about you..but in those half year I rather try to beat all new bosses in SSC, TK, etc and complement gear that I miss out on rolls with badge rewards.

They are a nice thing for people who cannot raid...and who says these people do not deserve rewards from the game as well? It is not like your stalwart gang of 10 who has cleared Kara for 6 months and now sports imba badge gear can walk up to Kil'Jaeden and push him over.

So what's it to me or you that players can chose another way to earn nice items? In the same way as the DnT guy talks about welfare badge items, I could moan about PvP welfare epics. But guess what...for everybody abusing the system and leeching his way to epics, there are people who take BGs and arena seriously and are rightfully proud to wear their gear.

@Chaosinc: Your response shouts "Slap me, mods" - on the other hand I don't really understand why everybody jumped down your throat? You do not care about the news items, so you should be allowed to criticise it IMHO. It is a forum after all, yes it is private, but did I miss the rule where it says "If you disagree, don't post?"

you may hide your ignorance behind fancy wording but it wont impress us :) i for one am done talking with you.

Agreed. Since when does a forum have to be made up of only people who agree on something, and no dissenters? I don't see why people jumped on him either, other than noticing that there seems to be a lot more people on edge these days...

Am I the only one who for five seconds thought the thread heading was "Death and Texas Disband"?

lol.

i keep saying in my head... Det and Taxes. Det and taxes.
well that's how it sounds phonetically anyway.

@twoflower

As am I. My apologies if my "fancy wording" was too much for you to understand. God forbid someone actually talks with some intelligence. Contrary to popular belief, there are those who take pride in not sounding like some little punk kid.

EDIT:
That's cause I don't sugar coat ****. If you're referring to the language choice, that's what the "*"s are for. :D

Ok, can we try and cool off and keep this civil? This is sliding into a level I do not think is appropriate, either in terms of thread topic or of attitude displayed. I think better can be done. I won't pose as if I am somehow better, but I will say that I am disheartened.

I have seen this happen to a lot of fun guilds i was in. Started raiding with the people who started up the guild, some people had RL stuff so we needed to recruit. New recruits only complained about loot ( lootmaster system ) and all the old timers got frustrated and left. Had this happen with the same chore group of about 5 good friends i made. Since then i go through my WoW career unguilded.

It is really a shame that it happened to a well organized really high end raiding guild. I hope the key people will get a new guild going and keep getting world firsts in WotLK.

there is nothing to understand.

there is just alot of hot air around nothing. and nothing intelligent to it either. you could delete your posts in this thread and it would loose zero contribution to the topic. i keep at least a 50% topic 50% flaming asshats ratio, which is still way over your head.

keep telling yourself that you are of oh so superior intelligence, maybe one day you will find someone who belives you ( besides yourself, of course... ). Not gonna happen today though.

Personal shots? Where was that then? I said you didn't fall into those categories of people who could find the news of interest because you said you didn't find the news of interest.

btw, elly is not an admin per se, she is the owner. as in you got owned.

Muhahahaa.!

..sorry...good one.

well, actualy it wasnt :) but i couldnt resist.

Some people in this topic are making it feel like I am reading the official forums. Most people raider or not do know who DnT and other top guilds are. Just because some of you haven't doesn't mean the guild falling apart isn't big news.

Raiding guilds are what help make MMO's a success and when they fall apart it does mean something. It's too bad that the guild fell apart since they were one of the better top guilds personality wise.

What hurt raiding so much with TBC was the long period of time between content patches. We got Black Temple at the end of May and then finally get the next instance in progression in March when many guilds killed Illidan in September/October. Going from October to March only being able to run the same content over and over was overkill on Blizzards part and I am glad they are planning out patches ahead of time with WotLK.

But it was that long period there where many people in the higher end guilds started to get burned out since once you have BT and Hyjal on farm you can clear both instances in about 5-6 hours in 2 days every week then have nothing to do the rest of the week. DnT lost most of their core players in that time and had to recruit to make up for them and then those people thought that just because they had a DnT tag that meant bosses were just going to fall over. And then members who disappear then re-appear and expect to be treated like they do everything.

Maybe in that way, the constant fluctuation that our raid guild has is a benefit. We are ofc much slower, haven't even killed Illidan (currently Mother S. is down) - but we also do not run the risk to burn out or disband through too many ppl leaving.

DnT, Nihilum et al is like the premier leaque in a game that we all play...but most of us play a couple of leagues down and still enjoy it.

@twoflower

Before you start tossing around contributions, let's review:

twoflower
Join Date: 22-05-2004
Total Posts: 3,846
Mods Authored: None

ChaosInc
Join Date: 30-08-2005
Total Posts: 236
Mods Authored: BMS, Dynamic Camera, FastTrack, Meanmage, MageTaxi

I think I've contributed a bit more than some forum troll as yourself. Thanks for playing!

EDIT:
@Elly

I apologize, I did misread that. :(

Well I guess it's not certain either.

seems we both have our way to contribute :) some write useless addons ( no offense, but i wouldnt install a single one of your addons, and i play a mage... ) and some write useless posts. like this one. or yours i quoted.

but who are you to judge which one is more valuable ?

I suppose this is the part where I'm supposed to ***** about you saying the mods are "useless"? Instead, I'll point out how you have proven yourself a hypocrite by calling them "useless" when you began this entire thing by *****ing me out for calling this news "unimportant". Same concept here. Kudos.

Take it to PMs already, children ^^

Replies with **** in them lose by default, because if you want to mock your opponent, you should do it in a cold and sarcastic way, not heated like a raging bull.

Really twoflower, trying to get a rise out of the guy by making fun of the addons he has contributed? How old are you, 10? Grow up please.

Before this thread is locked due to the behavior of a few children, I do want to say that Death and Taxes disbanding is newsworthy, regardless of whether you have heard about them or not. They have written many valuable raiding guides, helped Blizzard fine tune their instances, and been leaders for the American raiding guilds. It is a sad day when such a longstanding guild collapses.

And honestly, if you don't think its newsworthy, why even bother to post and let us know about it? That isn't a "dissenting opinion", thats just + 1.

Sorry, I just found this humourous....

Cause as someone else pointed out, there is no rule stating that you have to agree in order to post on a topic.

In any case, unless there is something else that someone feels is important enough to post in order to add more fuel to this, it has been asked that the off-topic "debates" to be moved to PMs, in which I'll gladly entertain.

This thread is locked.

Chaos Inc, you have disappointed me, both one warning by post and by PM have gone unheeded. Not ten minutes after your reply to my PM another defensive post was made in response. If appeals with words will not work, then I am left with little choice but to lock this topic and forcably end this chirade.