Hello Bioware,
this is some sort of open letter to you. Hopyfully I won't get flamed too much and hopefully there is a chance that you guys read it and welcome my feedback.
This letter is about raiding in Star Wars: The old Republic in 16 man operation groups.
We are a 4 years old raiding guild with our roots in a well-known MMO which suddenly has pandas
We converted to SW:ToR and love the game. We hope that raiding will bring more joy than other MMOs do, and we are willing to invest much time and many ressources into the guild organisation and putting up a decent raid pool.
Since the beginning of January, we have been running 8 man and 16 man operations. We think that the raid dungeons are fun and are very much looking forward to seeing the new content in March.
But what surprises us is that Bioware seems to have no interest in supporting guilds who run 16 man operation groups. The loot is the same, and it is more difficult to kill the encounters than in the 8ppl mode - although it is the same level of difficulty.
Since players see no advantage in going 16 man dungeons, they split up into many small guilds and go 8 man only. They clear the dungeons in hard and nightmare mode and are confident with the loot.
We, as one of the few 16 man raiding guilds on Darth Revan's Mask, now encounter huge problems because of this. It is very hard to find more players for our raids, and, in addition, our existing players move away to smaller guilds. Not because we are not good enough, but because they want to have nightmare raids, which are not possible in 16 ppl raids (at least not for us).
So, our dilemma... people leave because of various reasons, and others have no interesting in joining for 16 man raids.
In our opinion this situation destroys the efforts to establish a culture of raiding in larger group, and players are not rewarded for their efforts when joining 16 man raids.
This is an attempt to wake up Bioware and to make them think. Hopefully there is a chance that you hear us and that you begin to ask yourself if you want to let the larger raiding guilds die.
Maybe I am being to overdramatic, maybe I am even "whining" in your eyes. But still there is some truth in my report here.
Thanks for reading.
Best regards
Unix
PS: Constructive criticism is welcome.