We've got roughly 125 people on Unrest in North America that are interested in raiding in eq2. This population is hardly viable to support the activity on the server. While I believe this server is the worst for NA raiding, I also believe several other servers are in similar situations. At this point, I believe the best solution lies with SoE taking some action to help facilitate gameplay. Be that server mergers, free moves, cross server raiding, whatever. Leaving players to resolve this issue only yields more attrition than anything else. We're waiting, but I'm not sure how much longer players are willing to wait...
Judging the viability of a server's population on your estimate of the numbers of players interested in one particular play style is hardly the best way of doing things. Also you always have the option of server transfers or rolling again on another server.
Why would the guild leader of the largest guild on Unrest server move or reroll? His guild has 3 different levels of raiding, as well as casual players who do not want to (or cannot) raid. The first time Unrest got merged, we picked up the Asian and Aussie/NZ server(s), which did the USA-based guilds no good in regards to recruiting. It's easy to log into any random server and say in channel "casual player looking for a casual guild" and they quickly get a home. Not so easy to do for the few raiding guilds that are still around. It's easy for a non-raider to find a home. It's not easy for raiding guilds to find reliable people who show up and find players who know what the heck they are doing on their toons.
The more relevant question is why is the raid leader of a guild capable of fielding 3 different raid teams complaining about the number of raiders? Yep, that is true on every server, including AB. So what has that to do with the viability of Unrest?
It is far worst on Storm, we were 4 going for HKC we never found the 2 missing dps and yesterday we had a group of 5 going. In the meanwhile someone was asking for a solo heal for the Domination. It lasted 20-30mn, finally we gave up and i joined the Domi group mentionning that i was back from a six months break and that i never did it solo. But all went well because the others were really good . I m not sure how would mix frenchs and anglo saxons, we have different culture, as example we never SLR things. If you wear some item you killed the mob, or some friends killed for you. People do sell Ethereal and chronos but that's on the broker. And I never ever crossed a gold seller, and i don't remember any ninja looter or bad attitude. Some people may play badly or very badly but they still behave nicely. I remember kicking someone out of the group but it was like 3 years ago .... When someone is really bad we give him/her clues and the worst we do is exchanging private jokes tell about him/her. I quite regularly group some notorious people who play quite badly (and know it and agree about it) because there are funny ..... And even heavy raiders are quite relaxed
If that number is true, then the best thing SOE can do is put their efforts into content OTHER THAN raiding, since it's pretty obvious most of the player base doesn't really want to raid (I'm assuming there's more than 400 NA players on Unrest, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong). I think putting that super-mount on steroids on the status broker, granted for an ungodly amount of status, is a sign in that direction. Of course, maybe the NZ time zone is just chock full of raids as well. The US is a big place with people on all types of time schedules. Some of them may prefer NZ or Newfie (one of the 1/2 hour TZ's) time. As for moving - seriously how long would it take a group of people working together with merc's helping to power-level each other to 95? Granted, you may lose some of your nice shiny things, but isn't a server with more people who want to play the same way you do worth that? If the shinies are too much to give up, that's what server transfers are for. Either that or promote the hell out of your guild and server and try to get people to move your way.
The number of people willing to raid isn't a reliable indication of server population. In other words, you also have to consider the possibility that a large part of the population either isn't capable of coping with the demands of raiding and or doesn't care for it due to "insert change of choice" made by SoE over the years. Also don't forget the new expac coming soon, plenty of players will return resulting in overloaded servers, then they will quit again during next year resulting in more Server Merges please threads.
Even I might consider getting back into raiding if the experience was like this. I'm not the best at my class - only fairly reasonable - but think that the game should be fun to play, not a chore or a job you have to work at. Raiding now is just work. I remember once a group of all healers got together (at fairly low level) and decided to take on the Windstalker Rumbler (or something like that - maybe it was Anguis? It was a long time ago) It was absolutely hilarious. We all had a great time, lots of laughing and dying and more laughing. And it took absolutely forever. If we succeeded. I can't remember if we did or not, but I DO remember the fun we had trying.
Actually the top ranked guild on the Unrest server is "Vini Vidi Vici" last time I looked it was an Australasian guild and ranked 13th world wide. I believe Atan's guild is "Inner Circle" and is ranked 67th world wide, two places behind "Symphony of the Night" and well ahead of "Uncreative Guild Name" at 83rd there also seems to be "Vox Dominatus" and "Southern Cross". Now by my count that is 200 raiders and well above Atan's estimate.
Yes, 3 different raid crews that are made up of 3 different types of players. Someone from IC would have to address this in further detail on the uniqueness that is the Inner Circle Raid Forces, Inc. My guess is that the 125 raiders he is counting are only from USA-based guilds, because VVV and Southern Cross are made up of people that raid on an Aussie/NZ time zone schedule. There could be 500 raiders that raid during non-USA time zones on Unrest, and those numbers wouldn't help USA-based guilds with filling their ranks. As far as I know, of the 8 "lower population" PvE USA-based servers, Unrest is the only one that is considered a "global server", because we are made up mostly of USA players and people from "down under". I'm going to assume that AB and LD servers have a larger population that have a wider range of players with different playtimes. IC's group of 3 raid crews (in theory) would come out to ~90 players, but I think there is some "crossover" between the 3 raid crews (as in, some people raid on their mains with one raid force, but then raid on alts in the other 2 raid forces). I'm in SotN, and we have 30 active raiders on our roster, and we raid 9 hours a week. Those 30 players are never online at the same time to raid, and we usually have 2-3 people "on the bench". Some people miss nights or are running late, and alts are being used if we're missing key classes. I never see Vox Dominatus recruiting in channel, so I would hope that they have ~30 raiders who raid 2x a week. Not counting the 2 raiding guilds from "down under", Unrest has 5 raiding groups (3 in IC, SotN, and VD). I can see the 125 number coming from those 5 raiding groups, especially if there is crossover happening in the 3 IC raid crews. UCN = will never be recruiting and do not count into Atan's 125 tally numbers. Let's just say they are a unique group of raiders, and leave it at that.
To be clear, I based the 125 number off the number of players wanting or willing to dedicate 1+ day / week to raiding in EQ2. Nothing extravegent or 'hardcore'. Cause I'm concerned with the viability of the activity. When the numbers are as low as they are, the activity is no longer viable. It is already at the point that I would say NA raiding on Unrest is on life support, within 6 months it will be virtually dead without any outside forces influencing the current trends and population. There are of course many different ways to solve the problem: 1) You could have raid focused servers and allow for people interested in that play-style move to them. 2) You could have better defined region servers and allow those in the same regions congregate together. 3) You could abandon this style of game-play and focus your limited resources in other areas. 4) Something else It comes down to if SoE wants to take steps to support this play-style or not.
You included bot guilds in your numbers. You also included some non-NA players via your selection criteria. Also, you didn't account for players raiding in multiple raid forces. The 125 number is pretty solid give or take at most 8 players. I'm talking actual players, not characters, not accounts, but actual players in NA on Unrest looking to raid regularly as defined by as little as 1 day a week.
My numbers included people that are raiding in multiple raid forces including people that raid both in IC and SotN, IC and VD, VD and SotN, including 'secret toons' that player think no one knows about. And yes, as you said, there is a significant number of cross-over between the 3 IC raid crews, more and more cross-over the past 3 months due to the attrition of raiders on the server. To be clear about attrition. Some players will move to another server either by leveling new characters or by paying for a move. However it has been my experience leading a large force of raiders that less than 10 percent of players will move servers when they reach the attrition point, they instead find new games to play instead. I've also noticed the same behavior related to guilds folding as well. Now that EQ2 is so long in the tooth, when guilds fold and those 18 or so players become 'available', the vast majority of them are electing to leave the game rather than start over with a new guild. A couple years ago you could expect 2/3rds of them to be looking for new homes, now it is more like 1/3rd will continue with the game. I believe this behavior trend to be universal and is another compelling reason to consolidate player populations into larger pools.
As a raider in the force that Atan is talking about, I am at the tipping point of stopping raiding also. While there are problems with the guild itself, and there are always those problems, not being able to recruit or find people is more the problem. When EQ2 in the past fell into the summer/pre-expansion down turn or burnouts, there was always the ability to recruit people into the spots lost, and most of those players came back after a short break. Now there is no US players to recruit to play the style that Atan is talking about, and people are not coming back. Unrest may be a viable server to play on, but it is not a viable Raiding server for those of us wanting that style of play.
Going from my personal experience over the past 7 years of raiding, when Paradigm on Unrest folded 7 years ago, only around 6-8 players merged into Dominatus and a few went to E Prep. When Dominatus folded 4 years ago, only a group of us joined SotN, and IMO, that saved SotN from folding. They were also struggling to get 24 players to show up to raid, too. Of those players that left Dom for SotN, all of us but 1-2 are still playing and raiding. Of those Paradigm players that are still playing, 2 are in SotN now and one of them is in IC. Another guy that used to be in Paradigm comes and goes, but he's not on much these days.
Unless there is a free move in there, I think its more likely you would find us in Wildstar than on AB.
And back in the day, raiding with more than one guild on the same server was highly frowned upon. I miss the days of announcements in chat saying GUILD X JUST KILLED MOB Y and it felt like you and your raid force actually did something great. Now it's like "eh, we're way behind the #1 guild on the server, but hey, we're #2 or #3! Go us!" (considering there are only 3-4 viable raid guilds on these low population servers, you're just not so pumped about it anymore like you were when there were 10 decent raid guilds on the server.)
While many players aren't interested in raiding, it is worth keeping in mind that those who do raid tend to represent a certain percentage of the whole, so a lack of high level raiders tends to mean there aren't as many high levels in general. And that means less people for heroic content as well. Not only that, but the more hardcore players, the type who are more prone to raid, also often tend to be the grease that keeps things moving. They are the ones more prone to forming the groups for heroics. They've got alts they can swap to when a particular role is needed and it can't be found. Their performance makes up for those that don't know the fights as well, that lack the gear, and so on. It is also a bit of domino effect. As people have to sit around longer to do things, they become more inclined to do something else, something non-EQ2 or maybe a transfer to another server. That in turn means even less people for the rest to group with.
