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Posted: Thu May 15, 2008 11:19 pm Post subject: The Road To Success
Recently several people have voiced their concern that ah is slowly dying. It is true that our average raid numbers are currently lower now than they were this time last year. So yes, if we sit back and don't do anything about it then AH could disappear in 6 months or more.
On the other hand, that means we have 6 months to actually Do something about it! I don't know about you all, but I've been in eq for 7 years, and the guild I was in the longest (Heroes of the Static Realm) periodically had low and high numbers of players. Typically when numbers were low, people would get dispondent and leave, and then when the numbers rose again enthusiasm grew and players flocked back in. There is absolutely no reason for AH to be any different.
Okay, what's the problem? Well it looks like several of our key players are spending some time away in WoW, and others are busy with real life activities (work, moving house, sick etc). Consequently we have lower than normal attendance, which is starting to lower morale, and this can become a viscous cycle. When we turn this around and raise attendance, we will see people return from their WoW vacation, others will hear of AH and app themselves etc, etc.
So, we ALL need to work hard on recruiting. That means mentioning afterhours every time you're in a group, to your guild, and to friends. Other than afterhours I don't know of any other organization that allows players from different guilds to all raid together, and certainly not to the professional level of Afterhours. We are a unique niche entity, and that's our selling point. Let people know they don't need to leave their family guild to raid, and that raid guild players have a community to fall back on with AH.
We also need to raise attendance. This isn't just a matter of trying extra-specially hard to make it on time for raids. I want to hear (in this thread) what we can do to encourage you to attend. Are raids too late/early and clash with your timetable? Do some of the raids fail to interest you? Are there targets/ideas you want to suggest? This is your golden opportunity to voice your opinions and get us back on the road to success. _________________ http://www.spamhelp.org/harvesterkiller/
This doesn't seam to be restricted to AH. I have toons in 2 guild and both are suffering losses. I have also noticed several new guilds and toons without guilds. As most of you know new guilds are demanding and don't often last. While I am trying to recruit more to join I believe that the current members will rejoin when they either establish these new guilds or they disband.
I'd dearly love to be attending more than I am at the moment, but work has decreed that we'll all be working 10am->10pm Monday->Thursday, until the end of our current project, around the beginning of September.
Having said that, I've been doing that Monday->Friday, with an occaisional smattering of Saturday & Sunday's for a while now anyway.
D. _________________ --
Decimator Genome Reseekwensed , Warrior
Posted: Fri May 16, 2008 1:49 pm Post subject: Eq declining
Yeah Saidyene I think thats a big part of the problem. But the good news is that while some of the hardcore players have stopped playing EQ, genuine newbies and old players are returning to EQ. Both events are probably due to the shift in strategy Sony has adopted, by making EQ accessible to casual players (potions, allowing classes to solo again, maps, corpse summoners, unkeying/flagging most of the game, etc etc etc).
The thing is that those new comers and returnees are obviously low level. Unless you visit newb areas, farm, play lower level alts, you won't know this crowd exists. So while that doesn't help us right now, in a few months when this baby boom hits 75+, we should all start seeing new names.
Raid times are great. The only problem I have mainly is trying to get there when my guild raids. That normally takes up most of AH raid times. They raid on two of the 4 days AH raids then on another of those days I play with a friend since thats the only day he really gets to play leaving me only 1 day normally to raid with AH I love raiding with AH and love where we hit and what we hit. They're fun to do and challenging. Only place I hate hitting is that stupid sisters act in Demi! ITS SATAN _________________ Keeping you alive one death at a time
Imp: Yeah I have to say I often think about that myself. Aug runs in CoA have been groupable for quite a while now, and yet when we kill them on raids, those augs still go for mucho dkp-o. I can imagine the very same happening on 'group' mobs in SoF zones.
I suspect that their would be complaints from the uber among us who get to group those same targets all the time. Personally I feel that raid is about the loot, so if the loot comes from an easy mob, more the better. Others may feel bringing a raid to kill a group mob is frustrating. I'd love to hear other opinions on this.
Coming to think of it, we actually did a few exploratory raids in SoF, including a couple that dropped cores. At the time I laughed at the notion that they were supposed to be groupable, by time has changed a Lot since then! _________________ http://www.spamhelp.org/harvesterkiller/
Imp: Yeah I have to say I often think about that myself. Aug runs in CoA have been groupable for quite a while now, and yet when we kill them on raids, those augs still go for mucho dkp-o. I can imagine the very same happening on 'group' mobs in SoF zones.
I suspect that their would be complaints from the uber among us who get to group those same targets all the time. Personally I feel that raid is about the loot, so if the loot comes from an easy mob, more the better. Others may feel bringing a raid to kill a group mob is frustrating. I'd love to hear other opinions on this.
Coming to think of it, we actually did a few exploratory raids in SoF, including a couple that dropped cores. At the time I laughed at the notion that they were supposed to be groupable, by time has changed a Lot since then!
I don't wanna do mobs I can group for xp. K thx. ( I guess very occasionally would be ok)
=======================
Rants and stuff
As mentioned above, numbers will always rise and fall. Blame it on the weather OR just rl.
When this happened in my old guild, we did flagging and easy loots (like mentioned above). We also boosted the dkp per mob for low attendance. Giving people a reward for being such hardcore if you will. We used a system based on the number of people attending. So if we had 10 it was higher and if we had 50 it was normal.
We also did a complete raid bonus. For instance if we did 3 mobs and you stayed the whole time, then you receive a small reward. That one was very time consuming to do the math on though.
When the old dies, it is time for the new to shine. Raiding is all about working as a team and involving those who would like to evolve a more solid force. _________________
I already said it in my reply to your other thread, but I really think that people are getting discouraged by not completing boss mobs of expansions as well as not having a clear plan going forward. Not knowing where your going or how your getting there is a scary thing for most people. While AH has set some general goals in the past, I do not recall ever seeing any sort of roadmap to accomplish those goals. If the AH leadership could come up with that plan and lay it out for AH and any other prospective applicant, then all would see that AH is going somewhere.
Just brainstorming here, but wha about something like this...
Wed/Thur are short nights, so avoid long raids...
1. Vish
2. Last blood targets or a quick shyra to finish up the night
( i also think that most or at least some of the mobs that drop last blood are also mobs that are part of the progression for that expansion, yes?)
Fri/Sat can be reserved for longer raids.
1. CoA including at least 1 attempt on OMM
2. Demiplane
3. Deathknell
Whatever we do, we need to keep it simple, keep it consistent, and keep it focused. If we start floundering about and trying to branch into 15 different directions, we go nowhere.
Anyway, it's late and I am rambling.. that is all for now..
Joined: Aug 09, 2005 Posts: 684 Location: California
Posted: Sun May 18, 2008 9:16 am Post subject:
Shieara posted our general goals in an announcement in the Town Crier forum.
Anyway going forward as I and the other officers see it our main goals are:
We will schedule and do a CoA week to get OMM and gear up some of our members that still need stuff from there.
We will be mainly working on Demi to get our 2.5s and such and then PoR working thru ToB to Deathknell.
Flagging and easy targets will be used when we do not have the numbers or required classes to work on the main goals. It would be nice to not have to spend a lot of time flagging and getting faction when we are ready to move to TSS and TBS.
Anyway that is the short version - I'll try to post something with more information and stuff later unless Shieara beats me to it. _________________ Have Fun!Ardnasc
I'll post new goals sometime soonish. I was kinda waiting to see how the new flagging affected things (like whether we would see fewer raiders because more are focusing on their guilds and whatnot). Also I have been debating whether to tell demi to suck it and move on to DK/TSS or not. I know Demi is the casual killer, just simply due to the reason that it would take us an entire week to do the entire raid.
I would not want us to skip Demi completely/ I want to someday get my 2.5 if possible.
The other side of that though is that we have not had much luck there, and we might consider moving on the DK/TSS for now, and comming back to it when we get a bit more gear.
Nods I agree with selvan. Demi has no flags or factioning etc so there's no way we'll totally skip it. A worse case scenario for Demi-lovers woudl be us moving to other encounters for upgrades and then reattempting Demi. However that's all rhetorical now as we have Demi raids currently scheduled.
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