Originally Posted by
Valicard
I don't know how it is for Euro players(u.s. morning times) but for U.S. players; Raiding. Is. Dead. There is only 1 maybe 2 Guilds that is active to any degree in the U.S. that can clear T3 and T4 with a reasonable chance of success (greater then 50%). The rest of the U.S. time guilds in Crom(very few remaining) have been doing T3 and T4 for ages and ages and are still nowhere close to even forming half an in-guild raid If these guilds do manage to spend the next hour trying to fill in global the raids have maybe a ~25% chance to full clear...and that's with several wipes and hours of hours wasted time. These "other" guilds are slowly fading away, mainly because people who do come on for raids wipe and wipe and wipe for 3 1/2 hours and have nothing to show for it in the end. 1 or 2 smart guys go "why the &#!$ am I wasting my time on this ?!" quit and don't show up for the next raid. In turn, raidleaders are forced to go to global where it could take up to another 1~2 hours to fill and/or not fill at all and just disband. This further debilitates the guild/raiding and the whole thing just ends up in a endless spiral of death until the guild and a whole bunch of players folds.
Now we are down to one server.
I know what you're thinking, "Well, I don't think there's anything wrong!...." You know because I belong to this one guild that can assemble the same 24 people again and again every week and eventually put things on farm until it gets "boring". Especially, for Americans, it's very hard to feel anything outside their "bubble". I'm not saying this is all Americans but in general due to the very independent and even entrepreneurial mentality of Americans, they have this "Well, as long as I'm having fun.I don't care". But how long before the game stops development altogether for lack of revenue? I'm sure it'll still be hosted by FC (note Anarchy Online) but do you really want to play in a ghost town of a game?
Your own property is concerned when your neighbor's house is on fire. ~ Horace
Some suggestions:
+Focus on 6 man dungeons more and/or make T6 a 12 man raid only.
+Dungeons drop tokens for raid loot. 99% of your customers have access to *most* dungeons(some have steep learning curves compared to rewards and hence a coin-toss if you can form a group for one.) Only 1% have access to raids. Raiding is a test of can you call up 24 other guys to meet at XYZ time and then herd these sheep through ABC holes. Especially, in the ultra low u.s. pop this is just impossible.
+Setup, a built-in raid scheduler with reminders and "mini-game" teleport feature.
+No locks on raids, but loot drops on first kill of the week only.