Carnage Gaming Looking To Combine Forces

[Nibbon]

Consider this my open letter to the server. TLDR at the bottom.

 

Carnage Gaming has been one of the top raiding guilds, not only on The Shadowlands (and formerly Krayt Dragon), but server-wide among the 16 man raiding community. Maintaining any raiding guild in this game seems to be a particular challenge, but it is especially challenging to find 16 truly great players and keep them in one guild, let alone interested in this game. Carnage has successfully been able to put together such a group numerous times - most notably on our world first kill of DreadTooth 10 stack before the level cap raise and our progression raids into NiM EC and at the beginning of NiM S+V (HM aren't even worth talking about, but we certainly have most of server firsts there). I've had the pleasure of leading the guild through most of our accomplishments and also our hardships. To be honest, and to summarize the point of this letter, we have hit our latest rough patch.

 

You may have noticed our progression stalled when we got to NiM Styrak. While it certainly is a challenging fight, it is not even really on the same level of NiM Thrasher (pre-changes, at the least) which we successfully downed world 4th (and ops chief world third). Our difficulties are mostly in part due to losing some core members of our raid team. We lost these members due to various reasons, mostly disinterest in the game, final fantasy 14 relaunch (among other anticipated launches), and of course the dreaded domino effect (lose a few, lose a few more). We are not the guild we were when we killed DreadTooth and we are not even the guild we were when we downed Thrasher. We are, in fact, probably weaker than we have ever been.

 

Now, to speak about our server as a whole, it has always had a major problem. The best raiders on this server have always been spread through many guilds. 16 man vs 8 aside, even just looking at 16 man raids, this is true. Not too long ago you had Stoic, Undercon, Carnage, and The Gray Order. 4 guilds that were doing 16 man on just the republic side really spreads the talent thin. I like to think that all progression based guilds were able to accomplish what they did despite this challenge of fragmentation. To be short about the current condition of those listed guilds, they are all basically in shambles (stoic is completely gone and none of these guilds are doing 16 man currently, at least seriously - Carnage was unable to do 16 man this week for the first time since our creation, with the exception of one or two nights).

 

We have been looking and speaking with many guilds and individuals about joining us, but I think there is a much bigger and better opportunity here. I truly think it is time to tackle the fragmentation of the raiding guilds on this server and create one truly talented guild that can compete on the global scale. In order to do this, Carnage Gaming is completely ready to reform, change our name, or be the placeholder guild. We are willing to give up what is the furthest 16 man raiding progression on the server in order to try to create something much better. So now for the TLDR part ...

____________________________________

TLDR;

 

We are looking to combine/merge/be absorbed/absorb other guilds that are interested in creating a new top of the line raiding guild. While we desire the core focus to be on a 16 man raiding team, by combining many great guilds, it would foster a much larger community that could do 8 man raids on the side, at any time - and allow people more flexibility to step in and out of the 16 man raid as their schedule sees fit. It would also create a great pool of players for the upcoming arena warzones.

 

To highlight a few things:

-We have no qualms about squashing the Carnage name, if there is heavy interest, we think a new name should be in order. My personal favorite name is Shadow Republic (not necessary just a suggestion :-D )

-I have no interest in leading this guild, I'd be happy to be an officer as a representative as Carnage if desired by the other contributing guilds

-If you are interested, feel free to reply here, PM me, or email me: nibbon (at) gmail (dot) com

-If guilds/leaders want to participate in a discussion we can schedule something for Monday night/sometime next week

 

 

Best,

Nibbon

[AscendentReality]

My god, that's truly unfortunate. I feel your pain since in my guild we also suffered similar problems , and dropped to a 8 man group since. Best of luck to you and your guild man.

[Frequencyz]

you guys should just do ranked pvp....

[Nibbon]

you guys should just do ranked pvp....

 

We did on Tuesday - we won our three matches wearing mostly PvE gear - it was fun but, as a whole, we all enjoy the raiding in this game quite a bit more.

[Frequencyz]

neat, well do it on saturdays....when teams actually que

[deneric]

Haha Nibbon, I was with that group you were beating on Tuesday. As much as I wanna blame connection issues (ughhh that night), I was really impressed by how you guys performed! Especially for a group in PvE gear! I really hope you're able to find the people you need, I hate to see a good guild fall on hard times like you guys have

 

Cooper

Edited August 22, 2013 by deneric
Made a grammar mistake and couldn't stop thinking about it.

[MasterFryman]

Good luck man!! truly.. know the feeling!!

[FlavaBizkit]

As an officer of Stoic and the GM of Modus Operandi and been part of both that crumbled do to people leaving game / server. I did talk to Nibben about this subject a few months ago.

 

I was very uneasy about it because personally i love raiding with my group and if i do raid i want to be raiding with them. if this super guild happened. i know for sure i wouldn't be able to raid with the people I've been raiding with for over a year.

 

This is my personal opinion and in NO WAY bashing Nibben for what he is trying to do. I think its a great idea in theory. but as for reality, I feel alot of people will be aggravated that they will not be able to run with the core 16. Because if all the top 16 man rep guilds combined there is way more than 16 really good players.

 

Once again personal opinion and not trying to start a flame war.

[Reducio]

Good Luck Guys! We feel your pain as well with our guild as well!

[Frequencyz]

I don't know any of this pain any of you speak of...

[SturmUndSterne]

This isn't limited to Shadowlands, btw. My guild on Harbinger just fell apart, and I'll be transferring over this direction hoping to link up with you guys. Send me a PM here and we can discuss. I've got 55s on both factions and raid mostly pubside, but will make changes as necessary.

[Loftys]

Hello Shadowlands and all my in game friends. I'm Loftus, a sage healer since launch. Nibbs has stated my concerns about the current end game raiding environment on our server very well. I think it is time for those who are interested in consistently raiding nightmare content to unite. I know so many good raiders who are in the same situation Carnage is in - great people, ready and willing to raid, but facing night after night of insufficient numbers to accomplish what we joined our guilds, and this game, to do in the first place.

 

Competition among raiding guilds is healthy, but I think the situation on our server has become extreme. I've been in two very successful 16 man raiding guilds since the launch of this game and have become good friends with people in both. I've also done alot of raiding as a guest healer with so many awesome guilds filled with great people from around our server. Unfortunately, many view the top progression raiding guilds on this server with suspicion and distrust, perhaps thinking that those groups must be filled with egotistical jerks who sit around stroking each others' egos.

 

I can say with certainty that is simply not the case. The main thing that has kept me playing this game is the community of raiders. Overall, they are mature, funny, laid back and a pleasure to spend the evening wiping on a boss with (or killing said boss!). This community is vastly superior to the one I experienced in my days of WOW raiding.

 

However, the key word is raiding. If the people who are serious about kicking the end game bosses in the rear would just cooperate, compromise and form a single group with a sufficient pool of available raiders, we could first and foremost have alot of fun. And in the process challenge those current top progression guilds on other servers. Sounds fun to me.

 

Lofty

[Classicks]

I truly hope the competitive PvE players of The Shadowlands take serious consideration of this offer.

I have always appreciated your investment in the 16-player scene Nibbon. Best of luck, I know the feeling all too well.

Edited August 23, 2013 by Classicks

[Perfectten]

I honestly think there are or would hope there are alot of players on the server that would love nothing more to be apart of a progression guild. I get it that people get disinterested and leave the game. Alot of us has been there. My old guild had the members run out one by one when guild wars came out and just never recovered. Which left 3 of us that plays together everynight on the republic. But like everything else your kinda stuck pugging unless your in a guild, but unfortuanely the guilds my friends and i get ninja invited to usually only have 3-5 players online. which by all means i'm not disrepecting that. There are a ton of small guilds with friends in them. But it's not what my friends and i have been looking for. I would love to personally progress in this game as a player. My hats off to nibbon for trying what he wants to do and hope you guys the best.

[Tealik]

I truly hope the competitive PvE players of The Shadowlands take serious consideration of this offer.

I have always appreciated your investment in the 16-player scene Nibbon. Best of luck, I know the feeling all too well.

 

I couldn't agree more. Thanks for your input Fuse, it's great to see the care you still have for the community. There isn't really anything else that needs to be said on the subject after the posts from Nibbon and Loftus, but here's my input:

 

If you are giving any thought into what Nibbin has laid out, I highly recommend taking the step into trying it. I speak from experience. I notice talk of concerns regarding how this will affect the player base you raid with, the raid times, the guild conduct, and overall just the comfort level as a whole. You are used to certain players, certain raid synergy, etc....

 

I started raiding with Carnage about 2 months ago, after transferring from The Bastion. I didn't have a clue who these people were, how they handled things, nothing. I spoke with Nibbin briefly about having a trial run. After transferring, trying out, being accepted (not only being accepted, but being a part of the healing core for 16 man) I realized how good the decision I made was. It revitalized my want to PvE. These people in Carnage are amazing, funny, caring, competent players. They are pretty much the single reason why I have not quit this game.

 

I apologize for the wall of text. I'll refrain from continuing. My point is... don't let being uncomfortable/uncertain about this idea stop you from trying. Lets give it a shot, lets all have some fun with PvE again.

 

 

-T

Edited August 23, 2013 by Tealik

[LordKantner]

Me and Chestibor were officers from a guild called Messores Republicae, you may have heard of us. We did 16m progression on Pot5 and got up to World 5th in 2.0. Due to our GM quitting, we eventually fell apart and Nibbon took us into Carnage. Despite arriving later than expected due to late server transfers, we all had a chance to prove ourselves and a majority of the 10 members we brought into Carnage got raid spots, and a pretty kick *** raid team was reforged.

 

This new team got Carnage gaming 6/7 Nim SnV and each one was probably server first 16m Nim on each kill.

 

Now we (Carnage) plan to do the same thing again. If only 2 guilds forming got us as close as World 3rd, imagine what a super-guild, consisting of many guilds could accomplish.

[Chesty_Jake]

We have like 1 or 2 active Meatbags these days lol. Most of us went MIA till 2.4 due to lack of content & schedules / life happening with people but I'd be interested in a Combo guild.

 

Hell if anyone wanted to use The Meatbags banner i'd even be up for it. I would not want to lead the guild though, I'm past my prime with this game. I'll probably never be as active as I once was, TBH when you look at the last 6 months of content it's easy to see that bioware would rather put resources into the nickle & diming via cartel market than actually keeping things fresh for end gamers & pvpers alike.

 

And yah i'm pretty excited for FF 14 relaunch. Will be on the Ultros server!

Edited August 23, 2013 by Chesty_Jake

[SteveANGER]

While I may not be a respected voice in the Shadowlands community, I agree with Nibbon here.

 

Unfortunately, our server is in a state of disarray. The recent server transfers have left most of our guilds without the player base required to accomplish what most of us would like to accomplish.

 

While I understand the want to play with friends as well as not allowing strangers into your raiding environment, it's hard to accomplish anything when you are consistently short members every raid day. It's time for us to unite, instead of bickering and trolling each other since this has accomplished nothing.

 

Its time to let the bad blood be settled, whatever your issues may be with each guild or player, grow up and get over it. Don't let your arrogance and stubbornness keep you from potentially accomplishing something great. Sometimes a leap of faith is in order.

[ArchangelLBC]

It's a nice thought, but you'll immediately run into major problems the minute you actually try to start scheduling raids. Pretty much any group out there is carrying a few people who may not be the most skilled but are good people and good friends.

 

Is this new super guild totally performance based, only the best go, world first progression? That's gonna fragment a lot of raid groups, which is gonna cause a lot of friction. First between the slotted and the non-slotted, then among the actual raid teams because people feel like they have to choose between their friends who aren't slotted and progression. You say you'll put together multiple 8 man (and I'd suppose 16 man) teams, but once you're taking the best players for NiM progression it's gonna cause friction between that top progression team and all the lower teams. Most of those spread out teams now would almost prefer to just progress with the teams they have, even if it means progressing slower.

 

The reason it's hard to keep 16 man guilds together is you need enough people to make sure you raid every week even if a few people can't come, but if you have enough more than you need the people who are constantly sat will get fed up and go somewhere where they WILL get to raid. Meanwhile the super good people will burn through the content, get burnt out because there's not enough content, and then quietly quit the game, and next thing you know, you can't get a raid going.

 

Beyond those abstractions, I know the leadership in my current guild has spent too much time this year being part of idiotic guild drama (I'm looking at YOU RotJ and Stoic), and are just sick of it and refuse to put their destiny in other people's hands again. The more people you get, the more drama, especially if you're talking of gathering people in everything from casual and slow progression guilds to competitive "hard core" progression guilds, and that's a mix that's, again, guaranteed to generate friction and drama. Heck we got enough drama with everyone in separate guilds.

 

I appreciate where you're coming from Nibbon, and I have nothing but respect for you, but I'm just super leery of the law of unintended consequences.

[malenurserd]

Ok so as someone who has played several mmo's and been in large raiding guilds the problem I see is that guilds stick with just 8 or 16 core raiders in swtor whereas other games and guilds tend to have more and use a signup system and took turns having players raid that way when someone left or had rl stuff there were peeps who could step in and didn't have to be trained. The other problem I see is that in other games you recruit and teach the newbies(like the minors or nba developmental league), in swtor we seem to balk at that and only want peeps that are fully geared. So maybe we need to look at history and try something new,otherwise were going to continually be trying to poach from each other. Just the humble opinion of a life long gamer.

[Chesty_Jake]

Is this new super guild totally performance based, only the best go, world first progression? That's gonna fragment a lot of raid groups, which is gonna cause a lot of friction. First between the slotted and the non-slotted, then among the actual raid teams because people feel like they have to choose between their friends who aren't slotted and progression. You say you'll put together multiple 8 man (and I'd suppose 16 man) teams, but once you're taking the best players for NiM progression it's gonna cause friction between that top progression team and all the lower teams. Most of those spread out teams now would almost prefer to just progress with the teams they have, even if it means progressing slower.

 

Spot on IMO, I actually contacted Nibbon about a month ago or so about combining as our Guild has always been smaller by design and we had issues keeping a static group together for NiM prog which isn't healthy for group composition & considering how tight these fights are.

 

Problem is at that time they only needed 2 or 3 dps and they'd have to hit a dummy for X #s to be considered. Leaving the other 5 of us twiddling our thumbs on prog nights which is basically at that time tues, wed, and thursday.

 

So how do you solve that? Compromise I suppose, i'm not sure I have a good answer but it's certainly a problem. The only reason why I still play this game is because I like my Guildies and enjoy playing with them (past 3 week hiatus aside). When raiding becomes more of a job opposed to a talented social gathering you start to lose me personally.

[Nibbon]

I'll be on the road for the weekend so I won't be able to respond much and I'll be kind of short here.

 

This won't work with every guild, I think that is a given. I think that this is for the guilds who already are doing progression raiding but can't any longer (at least in 16).

 

However, I also like to think there is a chance here to really create so much of a total raiding environment that there would be an opportunity for more raiding for every individual.

 

I also think people are using previous conversations with me as an indication of how this might work. I cannot stress enough that I won't be leading this. There are a lot of details to hash out here and I'm happy to work with everyone to figure it out, beyond that my involvement would probably be minimal.

 

I'm doing this for the people in my guild who deserve better than we can currently provide them. I want them to have to never face this same situation ever again and I think this setup is the best way to accomplish that.

Edited August 23, 2013 by Nibbon

[MasterFryman]

We have been focusing on merging with other guilds recently for this specific problem. We changed our name a couple of months ago so we could expand into a multi gaming community and have been working on mergers since. Our PvP base is very active and has been a lot better as of late because of the merger.

However, PvE players (like myself who turned to PvP for the reason we have all run into) tend to be more dedicated to their groups that they already have. I understand this, these players know what their team is going to do before they do it, and thats how they became as good as they are in PvE. There is a level of cohesion in that group that is very hard to replace or walk away from. Most prefer to stop playing vs. move to another guild or group.

WIth all that being said, I know nibbon is the Republic side, and their focus is on forming that side. On the imperial side if there are PvE players who are losing groups and active members, feel free to send me a PM here or on on my website. I think that this game is going to see a lot guilds who want to run this content merging together. I by no means want to undermine anyone or use this thread as a recruiting thread, I just feel the same as the OP, we have some really good PvE players that are PvPing because thats all they can do, and that seems to be game wide. If there are imp guilds that have the same thought process that the OP has, lets get together and see what we can work out.

 

I will use my TeamSpeak server as a meeting place for the GMs of other PvE guilds to come together and work out a plan to get our player bases playing the content they want to play.

 

Things we can do:

- Form a server wide co-op between guilds that want to run content

- Merge and bring the bases together

 

Just a thought. If the OP wants to spearhead the republic side, I will spearhead the Imperial side. I think its time as GMs we figure out a way to get our members doing what they want to do, and get them the tools to do it, otherwise, those who love to play the game will be fewer and fewer.

 

PM we can talk.

[Civilie]

Hey Nibbon.. was good raiding with you and Loftus the other night. My guild has been thinking the same thing for quite a while - lots of talent on the server, just spread too thin. I'd like to talk with you (or any other GM's reading this in the same boat) in-game. Our 8-man NiM crew consists of about 10-12 solid players rotating in and out... all of us would love to go to 16m. We could also benefit from a larger pool of skilled players. The guild's (Redemption, btw) progress in NiM is Dash, Horror, Op9, and Keph. Almost DG. Talk to you soon... my toons all start with "Civ," btw.

[Loftys]

Hi Civ! Yeah, it was fun running with you guys the other night. I’m sure Nibbon will be in touch when he returns.

 

Now for my wall of text:

 

I’ve read through the concerns some of the respondents voiced several times. These concerns seemed to fall into three main categories:

1. Exclusion from “core” progression raiding team and the resulting frustration/dissatisfaction

2. Loss of current raiding team and the cohesion/teamwork that has been developed

3. Newer players being ignored or left out – no formal development plan for newer/undergeared players

 

I understand the first concern – I’ve been in guilds that run multiple groups and it can be frustrating to sit on the bench waiting for that spot. But let’s get real; most people aren’t in 16 man nightmare raiding groups right now – or 8 man for that matter. We have so many good players sitting in guilds that can’t fill those last few spots. So because we are afraid of being excluded from that main group, we’d rather sit around in our guilds and not raid at all because we can’t get the bodies. Bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy it seems. Personally, I'd rather just raid - core group or not.

 

I definitely understand the second concern. I miss my old Stoic (and you too Exiles) raiders more than they probably know – I spent over a year there building an incredible team of players who intuitively knew what each person was going to do next. However, all the cohesion and teamwork in the world doesn’t do you much good as you sit around on the fleet. Guess you can do synchronized speeder formations around the Supplies section…

 

As for newer/undergeared player development, that is precisely the kind of formalized program that could be accommodated with more people in a group. If you have a guild with barely enough people to fill the core team, it doesn’t leave much capacity for that sort of activity.

 

I think what Nibbon is proposing here is something new, something different. He’s already said he’s willing to throw the traditional rules and practices out the window – even the Carnage name. If there is a core raid team that is determined to stay together, I think that could be accommodated – but wouldn’t it be nice to have access to a larger group of raiders? Maybe even make some new friends?

 

If there are problems, let’s talk about practical ways to solve them. Concerns? Bring them on – let’s figure out how to make this work. Otherwise, I think a lot of the dedicated raiders on this server will finally wander on out of sheer frustration and boredom.

 

Lofty