Lack of Progression of Mid Teir Guilds

This needs to be addressed by the devs. Even if there make a statement saying they are looking in to tuning of EOK raids.

Raids have gotten harder as the expansion has gone on. Mid teir guilds have stopped progressing have even regressed. I have talked to players in a number of guilds in the same situation. This has led to players quitting. Not a signal guild on my server has beaten this expansion.

If this continues more players will quit, guilds will collapse and DBG is going to lose money.

21% less gulids have beaten the expansion compared to last expansion. I feel this number is going to get worse as the months pass. In any other business 20% is huge. A profit drop of 20% ! A town loses 20% of its population. A hospital has 20% more deaths.

For those on there high horse that like it the way it is. If it keeps up DBG won't bother with expansions and will just worry about there Progressions servers. Why spend money developing a game for 20 guilds. Which translates to about 1400 people.

I think the opposite. It's summer. Raiding is always slower during the summer months.

I was not talking about total guild who have beating the expansion. That will go up.

I am talking about the % difference.
19 have beaten it vs 24 last year ( which is the 21%)
i think the 24 will have grown faster from last year then the 19 will this year

The number of guilds beating expansions goes down every expansion. The game is losing guilds every year. Is that DBGs fault? Or is it just natural attrition of an aging game? Probably a combination.

I think the big difference this year is the Kar'Zok aura. That is a mechanic that really hits lower tier guilds harder than has been seen in past years. It can be a huge detriment until you get a couple wins and something that can push people to quit if they're stuck and not making progress.

Bit disappointing to have a second post by the same person on essentially the same topic.

With that said...

That first win is phenomenal - if you plan the right six people to get the blocker. And to the OP's issue - that first win is even MORE important the lower your numbers as the % increase in DPS is even greater.

For that reason - joining forces with another guild for just one or two wins - split the blockers between you. Should be all it takes. I would imagine for a raid force of 40 that's been close, unlocking 3-6 people would be all it takes to give you a shot.

Thats not true

GOD to oow. we all know what a disaster that was

These could be a possibilities . not sure how you could track the stats

TBS to SOF to SOF to SOD underfoot to HOT

The combination of nerfs to player strength, summer attendance lulls and the fixes that are going in on some of these raids do indeed result in more difficulty in beating the events. This is not at all the first time this has happened. It does nearly every summer, even if its an easy expansion.

I suggest you do like Catty mentioned. Open up your raid to guests from within the server, (bonus of possible recruits) or try to do a few alliance raids to get passed Atrebes Vault and Karzok. Once each of the alliance guilds had a couple of groups worth of folks flagged for Essence of the Dragon 2, it will get dramatically easier and you all could decide to continue the alliance or split back into your perspective guild only raids, or maybe even merge. (Bonus tip - use your EOTD2 selections on DPS and healer classes that will get the best bang for the buck, dont waste them on tanks or adps until your dps and healers are mostly flagged up).

When my guild beat the Karzok the first time the EOTD2 process was broken. I think we had 3 weeks of beating it hard style before the fix was patched in. It is not impossible, you just have to stay positive and find ways to get your numbers up despite the summer time blues.

The other problem with the auras is that it forces every raid member to do the whole EoK group progression. This basically removes anyone waiting to raid who doesn't do massive amount of grouping.

Right now my guild is going through the, "Hey, every raiding member has to do all the EoK group progression or you die in T3 raids". Really creates issues for the more "casual" raider who just doesn't have the time to do all that progression.

The progression isn't that difficult. It doesn't help that the Lcea and SW progression is overly tedious, but once past those zones, it goes quick.

And, honestly, if people haven't bothered 9 months in to the expansion to do something required for raids, they're really not all that motivated to raid. The difference between a top tier and mid tier in this regard should be that the top tiers require the progression in the first week or so while the lower tiers give people a month or two. No different than getting required levels and AA.

THIS

Mid tier guild progression stalling is due in large part to dwindling server populations in general. With a lack of people to recruit, and just a couple of end game guilds on your server this will happen. Server mergers to create larger populations for mid tier guilds to recruit from is what is needed to help with the OP's problem.

There is no solution to this problem. The process of depopulation has been underway for a decade now. I had really thought they would find a way to migrate us to EQ3 but then Trump got elected. Let's just die now in a blaze of glory. (PS, the point I'm trying to make is that you can beat your head against a concrete wall but the wall is always going to win!)

But who is paying for it? Thats the importent part

Lack of progression among mid tier players is not the fault of EQ developers. It is the fault of mid tier players unwilling to (a) recruit and/or join forces/alliances to field a 54 player raid force, and (b) unwilling to put forth enough effort in game to be in a position to achieve success, such as EOTD1 in the group game.

On my magician, I am willing to put forth the effort to achieve such things as 20/20 Tears, Shawl 2.0, EOK hunter, etc. On my box bard, I am missing about 15 slot 5 augments and 14 slot 7/8 augments. I am so lazy on my bard that I have yet to run to Tranquility to buy Dicho.

Just because you want something doesn't mean you are going to get it. No one is entitled to anything. You have to put forth the effort, the work, and make the right decisions (alliances, recruiting, new server/guild) if you want to achieve what you want to do. I had to leave my old guild several years ago, as well as my old server, to join a top 5 guild in order to meet my in game needs. And as hard of a decision as that was, I have been able to meet all of my in game goals on my magician because of it...

A major point of the op post here is EFFORT. Seriously.....at the very least if your guild does not have the essence progression done by now....well thats just seriously slack and lack of effort which imo reflects upon the whole of your issue right there. No reason what so ever to not at the very least to have that done.

Just a friendly reminder, you do NOT need to have Essence of the Dragon 1 complete on any toons whatsoever to beat the Karzok or An Ancient Dragon.
It does not become a liability until Garsillor* spawns after you kill the first hauler(golem) on the Atrebe Sathir raid. At that point all your mana users that aren't finished with EOTD1 will go OOM very quickly and you wipe.
You do NOT have to complete EOTD1 before you break open a box on the Karzok raid and stand in front of Reaper or Snowblaze. You will NOT gain EOTD2 after you beat Karzok at that time, however you will gain it at what ever point you compete EOTD1, you then get both.
You're welcome.

It's true that in low / mid tier raiding guilds you have a lot of mains that don't look to max their main, and start to play alts after having put the minimum required for their main.

being a player who was in a mid tier guild that left for a top tier guild i can attest that the issue with mid tier guilds is effort (at least on my server). despite that guild having a 2-3 other guilds in a raiding alliance and fielding full raids only a handful of those players were min/max players (less than 10 percent or so) and the rest would just show up to raids, auto attack on and afk through an event (obviously caught by the lack of moving for emotes/triggers telling them to get away) which quite frankly wont get you very far in this expansion (or the last one for that matter)

simply put people need to know their class and know it fairly well. to progress you need to bring your A games (or at least a solid B game). raiding isnt a time to just show up and expect to get phat lewts just for zoning into current content. some of these events require focus, dedication, and people who can play their characters to the best of that classes ability. summertime puts a bit of a hindrance on the player base which further emphasizes the point of those who do show up need to be more min/max type players in order to achieve victories.

It's not a question of blame.

It's a question of what is healthy for the game. If raid content becomes the province of only a shrinking percentage of the players, where does that put the game?

Daybreak should have the numbers on who is winning raids. They also have number on total players, amount of play time, etc., etc.

From my point of view, the number of raiding guilds on my server has dropped from 10 in House of Thule, to 7 in Veil of Alaris, to 5 in The Broken Mirror to 2 1/2 (two guilds joint raid) in Empires of Kunark.

If we want the game to survive, we need an inclusive raiding structure. Saving raids for only "those that deserve it" means that you are excluding more and more players. Yes, the "elite" should get more than the more "casual" raiders, but that can be handled by giving out items and other rewards for raid Achievements, not preventing people from participating in the raid at all.

I believe this is part of why there are tiers? (other than to block guilds from beating the expansion 3 hours after it comes out). you can get all of the visibles from Lce no? That raid is a snooze fest