Stop Rewarding Zerg Guilds

[Mippo]

This is a part of the WoW end-game that kind of annoys me. Not many games prevent guilds from mass-recruitment but typically the design of the game doesn't reward and encourage a guild to become massive in size like WoW does. There are, in my opinion, two main problems.

1) There is no cap on how many members of a certain class you can bring to a raid.

2) If you can run multiple 40 man raids, you will progress through zones faster then guilds that can only field one 40 man raid. The 40 man instances should be limited by guild, not per 40 characters.

The class cap for raids really should be implemented simply to protect the integrity of the encounters. It's really the next logical step after capping the number of players that you can bring on a raid. The amount of players you can bring was capped because guilds that couldn't beat encounters would simply zerg them by bringing way more players then the encounters were designed for. How do you make an encounter challenging for raids that are quite different in size? You can't, so logically you cap the number of players you can bring to maintain the difficulty of the encounter.

A lot of WoW encounters are designed around certain classes, and during the course of a zone they try to balance it out among all classes. In the past you could bring more people to a raid, and make the encounter significantly easier then intended which is why the number of players was capped. So, the logical question is, why allow guilds to make encounters significantly easier then intended by stacking certain classes?

It wouldn't be a problem if encounters were the same difficulty based on the number of players, 40. They aren't, period.

Killing Vael with 5 warriors and 5 rogues is significantly harder then killing him with 10 warriors and 10 rogues, assuming the same 40 man raid and equal equipment. A lot of encounters are significantly easier when you stack some classes. Why cap the number of players on a raid, but then allow guilds to trivialize content by stacking classes? It makes no sense and grants a huge advantage to larger zerg guilds when attempting new content, regardless of skill. If you have two equally skilled guilds and one guild could bring in 10 warriors and 10 rogues, and the other couldn't, the guild using 10 warriors/rogues would kill the encounter first and which guilds can stack 10 warriors and rogues, and which guilds can't?

Regardless of the skill of your 40 raiders, your guild is at a significant advantage if you simply have the ability to stack a class if needed.

Furthermore, another huge advantage granted to these zerg guilds is that they can run multiple raid instances. If you have 80 members and run BWL twice in one week, you get twice as much loot for the same time period. It means that a zerg guild, simply because they mass recruited and regardless of actual skill, can equip a full 40 man raid force for the next raid zone in the same time a typical guild can only equip half a raid.

You have to ask what exactly is the point of the raid lockouts, and specifically why is it important to prevent cascading?

Here's the funny part:

If a 40 man raid force runs an extra raid instance per week through cascading, they would equip themselves in the same amount of time as an 80 man guild running two instances per week. The same amount of equipment enters into the guild in the same amount of time, but cascading is an exploit, and letting a guild run 2 40 man's is not yet the result is the exact same in regards to a guild's progression in the end game.

My suggestions?

Limit the amount of people per class to 7 in a 40 man raid. It really won't affect guilds that maintain a balanced raid, as they should and prevents guilds from making encounters significantly easier then intended by stacking a certain class.

Make the 40 man instances save to the guild so that an 80 man guild can't run it twice.

[Soygen]

Is this a joke? Now that they cap raids(effectively negating the old EQ 'zerg' of days gone by), you are now complaining about 'class zerging'?

[Pilsbane]

Make the 40 man instances save to the guild so that an 80 man guild can't run it twice.

What would stop them from having 2 guilds? Knights of Generic Name A. Knights of Generic Name B. They could just pass the members back and forth between the 2 guilds as needed depending on the raid schedule.

[Cad]

I stopped doing BWL when I was asked to leave for Vael so they could stack the raid with (no shit) like 12 rogues and 10 warriors.

it flipped around to them wanting like 14 AOE classes for Nef phase 1. We couldn't do that shit without our large membership.. we're in effect taking 60+ to BWL since we swap in and out so much. We still get points for the encounters we have sit out on, but I agree with you 100% that this is some gay shit.

[Tabris]

Um, if you have 80+ players why shouldn't you be allowed to run another MC or BWL or AQT or Onyxia or whatever?

You're not cascading more gear on one player, you're putting it on a whole bunch of characters...

[Cybsled]

This is quite possibly one of the stupidest gripes I have ever heard.

[Praetor]

Originally Posted by Mippo

If a 40 man raid force runs an extra raid instance per week through cascading, they would equip themselves in the same amount of time as an 80 man guild running two instances per week. The same amount of equipment enters into the guild in the same amount of time, but cascading is an exploit, and letting a guild run 2 40 man's is not yet the result is the exact same in regards to a guild's progression in the end game.

Uh, you're kind of assuming that 40 of those 80 players exist solely to serve the needs of the other 40. Otherwise, twice as many loot for twice as many players is... concentrate hard and do the math now... exactly the same. And in between the "learning" phase and the "farming" phase, before you have a full 80+ that can do the zone in parallel, you're diluting your loot much more than any smaller guild ever will.

A Horde guild on our server that's been killing Nef for 3-4 weeks less than we have has more people with full tier 2 sets and such than we do, for that reason.

In any event, if it's such an advantage, why doesn't it happen more, and why aren't these "zerg guilds" of which you speak more prominent? Besides my guild, name a single other guild that two-groups 40-man raids and is also in contention for gamewide firsts.

Size is an advantage on world bosses. It's pretty much a disadvantage in all other contexts, and it has its own share of administrative headaches that far outweigh any benefits. You think dealing with 45 people showing up for a raid sucks? Try dealing with 65.

[Soygen]

Furthermore, another huge advantage granted to these zerg guilds is that they can run multiple raid instances. If you have 80 members and run BWL twice in one week, you get twice as much loot for the same time period. It means that a zerg guild, simply because they mass recruited and regardless of actual skill, can equip a full 40 man raid force for the next raid zone in the same time a typical guild can only equip half a raid.

If they have 80 members and are running BWL twice a week, that's still the same member to loot ratio that the 40 member guild is getting? I don't raid in WoW, so maybe I'm missing your point? How is this affecting you or your guild?

[SceleriS]

IBTR ?

[Sylas]

I agree with class stacking sorta, but i'm sure you realize that your two points are mutually exclusive, and therefore, perfectly fine. right?

If a guild is running 2 40mans they get twice as much gear, but need to equip twice as much people since the the amount of desirable BOE stuff that could be traded between the two raiding crews is uh, lacking, to put it mildly.

If a guild has 80 to stack classes for the various encounters then those 80 are saved to the same raid ID and therefore the guys sitting on the bench aren't running a 2nd instance. They may beat individual encounters sooner but they also need to equip twice as many people with the same amount of loot as you do (1 raid per week), until the encounter is on farm status and they can run 2 raids per week equipping 2 raid crews, which is the same as what you're doing. And in all honesty you probably wouldn't have 80 for stacking, you'd probably aim for 60 or so players which means you're just fucking yourself in the long run anyway.

[Cad]

Yea, I'm only agreeing with the class stacking part of his argument. The other part he needs to go back to the drawing board on.

[oknedark]

A hardcode class cap is a bad idea and heres why. Theres a lot of guilds that aren't zerging or powering through the game unfairly with a lot of rogues / warriors / hunters, their members just happened to roll those classes and even after talent revamps they have only 4 druids. There is no good reason to penalize a squad for having X members of a class, even if it changes the difficulty of a single encounter.

Also, while what you say is very true about Vael, being a lopsided war/rogue raid is not tremendously helpful for a complete BWL clear; its not a perpetuated imbalance but rather a single encounter that has certain class preferences.

I fail to see what you were saying about 'zerg' guilds, a guild of 50 cascading will gear themselves up at the quickest possible rate.

Besides, who really cares about guilds making 'progess' in WoW? Whats the fucking point, everything is instanced, all the top encounters are server wide 'first'd' by ~10 guilds within days of each other, and two weeks later there are about 150 squads clearing the zone. And then even when they have all this gear, the top pvp squads afk in and out of the BG's till they get a steamroll fight they could have won in UBRS gear, and the next raid zone comes out at such a time that there are far more than 150 squads geared and ready to jump in the next tier of raiding.


Edit: I feel sorry for you if you are in a guild that asks you to sit out for a fight, and then asks those who went in to sit out for a later fight in the same zone. Thats fucking gimp, get a new guild.

[WarderX]

I hate to pull the everquest card these days...

But COME ON, that is NOT zerging.

[FuckYou]

this thread sucks.

lets not only cap the number you can bring, lets cap it by class too, even further limiting options in terms of getting raids off the ground.

limitations of any kind suck ass. at least in pre-pop EQ if some guild brought 120 people to AoW everyone knew they were gimps - we didnt need some artificial cap to help prove it. thing is, even though that 120-person raid was gimp, at least they didnt have people sitting out for no reason other than an artificial cap.

this thread still sucks btw.

edit: btw, who gives a flying fuck in instanced content if someone brings 80 people to MC and someone brings 40? oh holy christ you beat ragnaros... like that means anything. accomplishments in wow are such a watered down joke due to instancing that they might as well remove the 40 person limitation and relieve some of the frustration that raiding guilds deal with in terms of sit-outs.

[Dis]

While we are at it, can we go ahead and cap gender/race. Female gnomes are overpowered imo.