The Zerg Drama Thread (formerly "how to fight ball groups")

Prince_of_all_Pugs

Can you please rename this post , HOW TO ZERG?

Crown

@Prince_of_all_Pugs Good idea. Done!

AnonUnk

I've never seen Drac begging zone chat for guild members, but I've seen VE do it.

Satiar

Since day 1. Built a machine out of zone pugs and proud of it.

Xsorus

How to beat a zerg ball group

Step 1. Be in a bigger zerg ball group.

zyk

I loved to hate VE, but I also had a lot of respect for them because they were very good, but also showed their faction respect by playing the map quite a lot and were very inclusive. Where other guilds purged members and reformed under different banners, they stuck together for years, which I admire. The game is worse without them.

Minnesinger

AnonUnk wrote: »

I've never seen Drac begging zone chat for guild members, but I've seen VE do it.

I have never played in VE but these attempts to tarnish their effort in this game looks sillier by every attempt. My respect for them grows the more I read the Forums.

maxjapank

Minnesinger wrote: »

AnonUnk wrote: »

I've never seen Drac begging zone chat for guild members, but I've seen VE do it.

I have never played in VE but these attempts to tarnish their effort in this game looks sillier by every attempt. My respect for them grows the more I read the Forums.

Agree.

CyrusArya

AnonUnk wrote: »

I've never seen Drac begging zone chat for guild members, but I've seen VE do it.

Being inclusive and open to fostering community engagement hardly constitutes ‘begging’. VE hasn’t had a need to ‘beg’ for guild members ever I don’t think. You’ll find that it’s just a difference in philosophy.

Minnesinger wrote: »

I have never played in VE but these attempts to tarnish their effort in this game looks sillier by every attempt. My respect for them grows the more I read the Forums.

Yup. I have never been affiliated with VE either, but have played with and am pretty close with some of their core members. Really cool people who are also great players. Their ranks do have more players who are carried, but at the same time I don’t think they want or feel the need to carry themselves as God’s gift to cyrodiil for being able to stack 30 k health and spam destro ultis. Elitism among zerg players just seems like such an oxymoron to me.

Amusing thread.

Kilandros

AnonUnk wrote: »

I've never seen Drac begging zone chat for guild members, but I've seen VE do it.

Pretty sure the fact that VE was able to take zone pugs and turn them into good PvPers is what they're most proud of. I know I would be.

Prince_of_all_Pugs

You included a lot of Zerg surfing tactics but you did t even talk about VD,VD is the BEST ANTI ZERG SET EVER! when VD was released, it changed the face of warfare in cyrodiil. When used correctly it DESTROYS stacks and causes chain reaction damage/kills. This set is so powerful, it is one of the main reasons why organized groups dont let squishy players into there groups because they know the squishies will be walking VD proc's.

Glory

I'm impressed that Dracarys has been able to maintain a roster strong enough to both maintain their group size (6-16? idk) to work the salt mines on the forums

With the state of the game being so miserable (gameplay is meh, lag is king, sometimes I like my audio but whatever), most of my friends barely find any interest in playing anymore. We have to drink heavily and play during off-peak to get anything remotely resembling a good time lately...

usmcjdking

i'm not a fan of joy division's typical thesis posts but joy is handling business right now

Vilestride

CyrusArya wrote: »

AnonUnk wrote: »

I've never seen Drac begging zone chat for guild members, but I've seen VE do it.

Being inclusive and open to fostering community engagement hardly constitutes ‘begging’. VE hasn’t had a need to ‘beg’ for guild members ever I don’t think. You’ll find that it’s just a difference in philosophy.

Minnesinger wrote: »

I have never played in VE but these attempts to tarnish their effort in this game looks sillier by every attempt. My respect for them grows the more I read the Forums.

Yup. I have never been affiliated with VE either, but have played with and am pretty close with some of their core members. Really cool people who are also great players. Their ranks do have more players who are carried, but at the same time I don’t think they want or feel the need to carry themselves as God’s gift to cyrodiil for being able to stack 30 k health and spam destro ultis. Elitism among zerg players just seems like such an oxymoron to me.

Amusing thread.

There's a difference between isolating your guild from the community and not putting anything back into it, and elitism.

Elitism is fantastic for the health of a game, and is required as much as mentors and teachers are. There is nothing wrong with expecting your members to be at the level of play you need them to be. Some teaching is always required, but this is why guilds trial members.

A standard of elitism generates a motive for improvement, all other competitive games have this and it fosters a community that strives to get better rather than become complacent with their current abilities. if you think this is bad for the game we have hugely varying ideals on what gaming, or generally speaking, life is about.

Sure for some they just want to come online and take it easy, relax a bit, and that's great, that hasn't gone away. What has disappeared, to the detriment of the games health, is elitism.

I have had discussions with many group leaders currently active in cyrodil and all of them have the same issue regarding recruitment. It is nearly impossible to find players willing to accept that they can do better and want to do whatever it takes to do so. Players won't try new builds, they expect that guilds will recruit them on the basis of need rather than making themselves needed.

Anyone who was actually in No Mercy can correct me here if I am wrong, but this guild had a separate waiting list guild for trials. It had some 60 members in it, all of whom waiting in here for MONTHS while trialling to join this guild because they wanted to prove themselves and play with the best. Not only did this improve the guild itself, but it improved the way of thinking for an entire faction who all admired this guild. The trial guild had a ranking system on it that if I recall had ranks from 'initiate', 'keep an eye on', 'needs to improve', 'ready for trial' and a few others. The point is, and maybe I'm just too being nostalgic here, the general disposition of players (obviously with exceptions) back then was dramatically different to how it is now.

Then, players didn't blame metas, their first reaction to a loss was not that the opponent was using cheese and some exploit or hack. They looked up to the players and guilds who were beating them on a day to day basis and sought their advice or made every effort to improve themselves to join another top tier rival guild to compete against them.

Why? because there was a standard of elitism, there was a prestige that people were attracted by. The health of the game depends on the balance of casual to hardcore players. right now, it's tilted far too heavily towards the latter.

So maybe let's rethink the negative connotation behind the word elitism.

HoloYoitsu

@Vilestride
Indeed, even now BBQ keeps reminiscing on the good ol days "when Tim the Enchanter led NM to glory by inventing the Purgepocalypse meta."

It's a good thing BBQ never made it out of the barracks guild, or he'd of been overqualified for VE.

Satiar

I think our legacy would have been vastly different if we’d capped at sixteen and run with only our core. We ended up with quite a mix, including players from Havoc, No Mercy, Deci, Khole, TM, etc, a really beastly selection! Ultimately that’s not how we decided to run. We constantly recruited and trained, pretty much anyone. There was a certain lead who called us trash because we took players from guilds like Pride and SWP, and continued to call us that up until his win rate went rock bottom.

Ultimately who was best depends on your personal criteria. Bulb was laser focused on campaigns, score, dethrones, etc. and that’s how he judged his success, and I can comfortably say we were the best at that. We spearheaded countless prime time dethrones, which led to the hardest fights we ever had as a guild: Dethroning GoS and Haxus on their home servers.

Other people could give a *** about that and have their own criterion. And that’s fair, and VE was decidedly not the best in all aspects.

HoloYoitsu

....And Steve meanwhile judged success as a ratio of how many times he could cast ambush to how many loops around the map he made us ride per night.

His only regret in life was that someone already took the name George W Ambush.

PenguinInACan

Vilestride wrote: »

CyrusArya wrote: »

AnonUnk wrote: »

I've never seen Drac begging zone chat for guild members, but I've seen VE do it.

Being inclusive and open to fostering community engagement hardly constitutes ‘begging’. VE hasn’t had a need to ‘beg’ for guild members ever I don’t think. You’ll find that it’s just a difference in philosophy.

Minnesinger wrote: »

I have never played in VE but these attempts to tarnish their effort in this game looks sillier by every attempt. My respect for them grows the more I read the Forums.

Yup. I have never been affiliated with VE either, but have played with and am pretty close with some of their core members. Really cool people who are also great players. Their ranks do have more players who are carried, but at the same time I don’t think they want or feel the need to carry themselves as God’s gift to cyrodiil for being able to stack 30 k health and spam destro ultis. Elitism among zerg players just seems like such an oxymoron to me.

Amusing thread.

There's a difference between isolating your guild from the community and not putting anything back into it, and elitism.

Elitism is fantastic for the health of a game, and is required as much as mentors and teachers are. There is nothing wrong with expecting your members to be at the level of play you need them to be. Some teaching is always required, but this is why guilds trial members.

A standard of elitism generates a motive for improvement, all other competitive games have this and it fosters a community that strives to get better rather than become complacent with their current abilities. if you think this is bad for the game we have hugely varying ideals on what gaming, or generally speaking, life is about.

Sure for some they just want to come online and take it easy, relax a bit, and that's great, that hasn't gone away. What has disappeared, to the detriment of the games health, is elitism.

I have had discussions with many group leaders currently active in cyrodil and all of them have the same issue regarding recruitment. It is nearly impossible to find players willing to accept that they can do better and want to do whatever it takes to do so. Players won't try new builds, they expect that guilds will recruit them on the basis of need rather than making themselves needed.

Anyone who was actually in No Mercy can correct me here if I am wrong, but this guild had a separate waiting list guild for trials. It had some 60 members in it, all of whom waiting in here for MONTHS while trialling to join this guild because they wanted to prove themselves and play with the best. Not only did this improve the guild itself, but it improved the way of thinking for an entire faction who all admired this guild. The trial guild had a ranking system on it that if I recall had ranks from 'initiate', 'keep an eye on', 'needs to improve', 'ready for trial' and a few others. The point is, and maybe I'm just too being nostalgic here, the general disposition of players (obviously with exceptions) back then was dramatically different to how it is now.

Then, players didn't blame metas, their first reaction to a loss was not that the opponent was using cheese and some exploit or hack. They looked up to the players and guilds who were beating them on a day to day basis and sought their advice or made every effort to improve themselves to join another top tier rival guild to compete against them.

Why? because there was a standard of elitism, there was a prestige that people were attracted by. The health of the game depends on the balance of casual to hardcore players. right now, it's tilted far too heavily towards the latter.

So maybe let's rethink the negative connotation behind the word elitism.

The negative connotation is earned by players resorting to name-calling and pointless trash talking. Anyone can respect the skill of a player and define them as "elite", but it does nothing for the community when that player is completely lacking in humility, respectfulness and empathy.

You can't just superimpose the definition of a healthy competitive atmosphere over a word that defines so much of the toxic PvP community. I have seen more "elite" guilds fall apart because of ego's and in-fighting due to "eliteism" than are actually PvP-ing right now.

Maybe its the "elite" that need to rethink how they define themselves rather than everyone else re-establish a connotation earned.

Elong

[quote="Satiar;c-4620029"

Ultimately who was best depends on your personal criteria. Bulb was laser focused on campaigns, score, dethrones, etc. and that’s how he judged his success, and I can comfortably say we were the best at that. We spearheaded countless prime time dethrones, which led to the hardest fights we ever had as a guild: Dethroning GoS and Haxus on their home servers.


[/quote]

I think how a guild utilises its time in a campaign should be one of the more important aspects in discussing what constitutes a great guild. AP farmers who don't care for the result other than their personal gain fall down the list imo. There's still guilds out there today who claim to be one of the best but openly admit to caring less about how the faction fares. That's poor.

zyk

Satiar wrote: »

Ultimately who was best depends on your personal criteria. Bulb was laser focused on campaigns, score, dethrones, etc.

To me, AvA was at its best when each faction had multiple competent guilds pushing hard to win the campaign. I know some will disagree, but to me it's pretty obvious the core game in Cyrodiil is about map control. AvA is at its worst when no one really cares.

But I get that it's a broken game largely abandoned by ZOS and players have to sometimes have fun where they can find it too.

Vilestride

PenguinInACan wrote: »

Vilestride wrote: »

CyrusArya wrote: »

AnonUnk wrote: »

I've never seen Drac begging zone chat for guild members, but I've seen VE do it.

Being inclusive and open to fostering community engagement hardly constitutes ‘begging’. VE hasn’t had a need to ‘beg’ for guild members ever I don’t think. You’ll find that it’s just a difference in philosophy.

Minnesinger wrote: »

I have never played in VE but these attempts to tarnish their effort in this game looks sillier by every attempt. My respect for them grows the more I read the Forums.

Yup. I have never been affiliated with VE either, but have played with and am pretty close with some of their core members. Really cool people who are also great players. Their ranks do have more players who are carried, but at the same time I don’t think they want or feel the need to carry themselves as God’s gift to cyrodiil for being able to stack 30 k health and spam destro ultis. Elitism among zerg players just seems like such an oxymoron to me.

Amusing thread.

There's a difference between isolating your guild from the community and not putting anything back into it, and elitism.

Elitism is fantastic for the health of a game, and is required as much as mentors and teachers are. There is nothing wrong with expecting your members to be at the level of play you need them to be. Some teaching is always required, but this is why guilds trial members.

A standard of elitism generates a motive for improvement, all other competitive games have this and it fosters a community that strives to get better rather than become complacent with their current abilities. if you think this is bad for the game we have hugely varying ideals on what gaming, or generally speaking, life is about.

Sure for some they just want to come online and take it easy, relax a bit, and that's great, that hasn't gone away. What has disappeared, to the detriment of the games health, is elitism.

I have had discussions with many group leaders currently active in cyrodil and all of them have the same issue regarding recruitment. It is nearly impossible to find players willing to accept that they can do better and want to do whatever it takes to do so. Players won't try new builds, they expect that guilds will recruit them on the basis of need rather than making themselves needed.

Anyone who was actually in No Mercy can correct me here if I am wrong, but this guild had a separate waiting list guild for trials. It had some 60 members in it, all of whom waiting in here for MONTHS while trialling to join this guild because they wanted to prove themselves and play with the best. Not only did this improve the guild itself, but it improved the way of thinking for an entire faction who all admired this guild. The trial guild had a ranking system on it that if I recall had ranks from 'initiate', 'keep an eye on', 'needs to improve', 'ready for trial' and a few others. The point is, and maybe I'm just too being nostalgic here, the general disposition of players (obviously with exceptions) back then was dramatically different to how it is now.

Then, players didn't blame metas, their first reaction to a loss was not that the opponent was using cheese and some exploit or hack. They looked up to the players and guilds who were beating them on a day to day basis and sought their advice or made every effort to improve themselves to join another top tier rival guild to compete against them.

Why? because there was a standard of elitism, there was a prestige that people were attracted by. The health of the game depends on the balance of casual to hardcore players. right now, it's tilted far too heavily towards the latter.

So maybe let's rethink the negative connotation behind the word elitism.

The negative connotation is earned by players resorting to name-calling and pointless trash talking. Anyone can respect the skill of a player and define them as "elite", but it does nothing for the community when that player is completely lacking in humility, respectfulness and empathy.

You can't just superimpose the definition of a healthy competitive atmosphere over a word that defines so much of the toxic PvP community. I have seen more "elite" guilds fall apart because of ego's and in-fighting due to "eliteism" than are actually PvP-ing right now.

Maybe its the "elite" that need to rethink how they define themselves rather than everyone else re-establish a connotation earned.

This is true, and I agree elitism should not inherently entail arrogance, nor should it warrant any disrespect towards those who have no desire to be competitive. People play for all different reasons and none of those are any more or less well founded than the others, no one is suggesting otherwise.

All I am doing is speaking for the rational portion of elitism that can be healthy, simply pointing out the other side of the coin that Cyrus has spoken of. I feel like you are implying there currently is a standard of elitism that is negatively effecting the game and to put it plainly, I don't see it. I don't see any active guilds displaying this sort of behaviour.

Between all the active guilds currently running on NA (TM/DK/DiG/Fantasia/Artem/BoD/CN/LoM/PM to name a few) I don't think there is much negativity at all, and I think they are all doing what they can to help one another grow, recruit and learn. Speaking personally I have discussions with raid leads from rival guilds every day we are out there about tactics, meta, recruitment and so on and to be honest, though maybe I am being hopeful, cyrodil from a guild stand point is much more enjoyable than it was this time even 6 months ago. Obviously I can only account for my own experience with these guilds so don't hold me to that as some universal ruling.

The other thing worth noting is that sometimes guilds falling apart is a good thing whether it be because of elitism or any other factor.
I simply don't see longevity as a criteria for success, happiness in that longevity yes, but longevity for the sake of longevity absolutely not. If a group of people do not share the same common goals there is absolutely nothing unhealthy about dividing those people so that they can each pursue their separate goals more effectively.

So again. I definitely don't think elitism is predisposed to being a bad thing.

PenguinInACan

Vilestride wrote: »

PenguinInACan wrote: »

Vilestride wrote: »

CyrusArya wrote: »

AnonUnk wrote: »

I've never seen Drac begging zone chat for guild members, but I've seen VE do it.

Being inclusive and open to fostering community engagement hardly constitutes ‘begging’. VE hasn’t had a need to ‘beg’ for guild members ever I don’t think. You’ll find that it’s just a difference in philosophy.

Minnesinger wrote: »

I have never played in VE but these attempts to tarnish their effort in this game looks sillier by every attempt. My respect for them grows the more I read the Forums.

Yup. I have never been affiliated with VE either, but have played with and am pretty close with some of their core members. Really cool people who are also great players. Their ranks do have more players who are carried, but at the same time I don’t think they want or feel the need to carry themselves as God’s gift to cyrodiil for being able to stack 30 k health and spam destro ultis. Elitism among zerg players just seems like such an oxymoron to me.

Amusing thread.

There's a difference between isolating your guild from the community and not putting anything back into it, and elitism.

Elitism is fantastic for the health of a game, and is required as much as mentors and teachers are. There is nothing wrong with expecting your members to be at the level of play you need them to be. Some teaching is always required, but this is why guilds trial members.

A standard of elitism generates a motive for improvement, all other competitive games have this and it fosters a community that strives to get better rather than become complacent with their current abilities. if you think this is bad for the game we have hugely varying ideals on what gaming, or generally speaking, life is about.

Sure for some they just want to come online and take it easy, relax a bit, and that's great, that hasn't gone away. What has disappeared, to the detriment of the games health, is elitism.

I have had discussions with many group leaders currently active in cyrodil and all of them have the same issue regarding recruitment. It is nearly impossible to find players willing to accept that they can do better and want to do whatever it takes to do so. Players won't try new builds, they expect that guilds will recruit them on the basis of need rather than making themselves needed.

Anyone who was actually in No Mercy can correct me here if I am wrong, but this guild had a separate waiting list guild for trials. It had some 60 members in it, all of whom waiting in here for MONTHS while trialling to join this guild because they wanted to prove themselves and play with the best. Not only did this improve the guild itself, but it improved the way of thinking for an entire faction who all admired this guild. The trial guild had a ranking system on it that if I recall had ranks from 'initiate', 'keep an eye on', 'needs to improve', 'ready for trial' and a few others. The point is, and maybe I'm just too being nostalgic here, the general disposition of players (obviously with exceptions) back then was dramatically different to how it is now.

Then, players didn't blame metas, their first reaction to a loss was not that the opponent was using cheese and some exploit or hack. They looked up to the players and guilds who were beating them on a day to day basis and sought their advice or made every effort to improve themselves to join another top tier rival guild to compete against them.

Why? because there was a standard of elitism, there was a prestige that people were attracted by. The health of the game depends on the balance of casual to hardcore players. right now, it's tilted far too heavily towards the latter.

So maybe let's rethink the negative connotation behind the word elitism.

The negative connotation is earned by players resorting to name-calling and pointless trash talking. Anyone can respect the skill of a player and define them as "elite", but it does nothing for the community when that player is completely lacking in humility, respectfulness and empathy.

You can't just superimpose the definition of a healthy competitive atmosphere over a word that defines so much of the toxic PvP community. I have seen more "elite" guilds fall apart because of ego's and in-fighting due to "eliteism" than are actually PvP-ing right now.

Maybe its the "elite" that need to rethink how they define themselves rather than everyone else re-establish a connotation earned.

This is true, and I agree elitism should not inherently entail arrogance, nor should it warrant any disrespect towards those who have no desire to be competitive. People play for all different reasons and none of those are any more or less well founded than the others, no one is suggesting otherwise.

All I am doing is speaking for the rational portion of elitism that can be healthy, simply pointing out the other side of the coin that Cyrus has spoken of. I feel like you are implying there currently is a standard of elitism that is negatively effecting the game and to put it plainly, I don't see it. I don't see any active guilds displaying this sort of behaviour.

Between all the active guilds currently running on NA (TM/DK/DiG/Fantasia/Artem/BoD/CN/LoM/PM to name a few) I don't think there is much negativity at all, and I think they are all doing what they can to help one another grow, recruit and learn. Speaking personally I have discussions with raid leads from rival guilds every day we are out there about tactics, meta, recruitment and so on and to be honest, though maybe I am being hopeful, cyrodil from a guild stand point is much more enjoyable than it was this time even 6 months ago. Obviously I can only account for my own experience with these guilds so don't hold me to that as some universal ruling.

The other thing worth noting is that sometimes guilds falling apart is a good thing whether it be because of elitism or any other factor.
I simply don't see longevity as a criteria for success, happiness in that longevity yes, but longevity for the sake of longevity absolutely not. If a group of people do not share the same common goals there is absolutely nothing unhealthy about dividing those people so that they can each pursue their separate goals more effectively.

So again. I definitely don't think elitism is predisposed to being a bad thing.

A guild is only as respectable and positive as its members. This thread is a great example of eliteism casting a negative shadow. Your own guildmates talking about boring competition and lack of skill is completely contradictory to what you are trying to build on here.

Out of all of the guilds you have mentioned there, how many of them actually cause an issue to Drac when you come across them? I can tell you its none of the DC guilds (which is nothing against them, but if we dont have any issues with them, neither should you). And we've only been tailoring ourselves to more coordinated/tight group play for a month now. If VE was the only guild that caused enough drama to leak into the forums after they left then I would say you have been without "competition" for a while now...so why hasn't the PvP guild community grown to supply non-boring competition?

Out of the handful of us left who have stuck it out through all of the comings and goings of the "elite" PvP guilds, I can tell you that longevity isn't a criteria for a successful "competitive" PvP guild, but one for just a successful guild. We've stuck around for almost 4 years now. And its not because of our love for ESO...if you get caught up in trying to be elite, you end up competing with your own guildmates one way or another, and then what are you left with?

maxjapank

Bit off subject, but AD is sorely in need of guilds during NA prime time. I'm sure there are many good players, just no one to lead them.

Qbiken

@Vilestride

I have had discussions with many group leaders currently active in cyrodil and all of them have the same issue regarding recruitment. It is nearly impossible to find players willing to accept that they can do better and want to do whatever it takes to do so. Players won't try new builds, they expect that guilds will recruit them on the basis of need rather than making themselves needed.

I feel like most PvP-players (just my experience) keep most stuff a secret to them self instead of sharing things with the community regarding builds and group-setups. I´ve tried to apply a few times to some more serious PvP-Guilds on the PC/EU server, and a lot of times (more than I expected) I get rejected because I lack time in PvP (Highest AR rank I´ve is 16) and doesn´t have any proper build for group-play (In 7/10 cases I can´t join due to raid-time doesn´t fit my IRL-stuff). I often proceed to ask other people who are more experienced in PvP what to run for more serious group-play in Cyrodil but it´s very rare to get any serious answer due to the PvP-community being so "secret" about their playstyle. I mainly PvE, and in the PvE community people are a lot more willing to share knowledge compared to PvP players (This is very generally speaking, and people like Crown should have a reward for making threads/websites like this).

Vilestride

maxjapank wrote: »

Bit off subject, but AD is sorely in need of guilds during NA prime time. I'm sure there are many good players, just no one to lead them.

Venatus was running a strong group yesterday. AD has a lot of guilds. They just need consistency. AD regularly have Dominion knights, Fantasia, DiG, Dom Dom, and tertiary Meat. Artem as well, though not sure what itme they play.

I mean, that's pretty comparable to the other faction no?

Vilestride

PenguinInACan wrote: »

Vilestride wrote: »

PenguinInACan wrote: »

Vilestride wrote: »

CyrusArya wrote: »

AnonUnk wrote: »

I've never seen Drac begging zone chat for guild members, but I've seen VE do it.

Being inclusive and open to fostering community engagement hardly constitutes ‘begging’. VE hasn’t had a need to ‘beg’ for guild members ever I don’t think. You’ll find that it’s just a difference in philosophy.

Minnesinger wrote: »

I have never played in VE but these attempts to tarnish their effort in this game looks sillier by every attempt. My respect for them grows the more I read the Forums.

Yup. I have never been affiliated with VE either, but have played with and am pretty close with some of their core members. Really cool people who are also great players. Their ranks do have more players who are carried, but at the same time I don’t think they want or feel the need to carry themselves as God’s gift to cyrodiil for being able to stack 30 k health and spam destro ultis. Elitism among zerg players just seems like such an oxymoron to me.

Amusing thread.

There's a difference between isolating your guild from the community and not putting anything back into it, and elitism.

Elitism is fantastic for the health of a game, and is required as much as mentors and teachers are. There is nothing wrong with expecting your members to be at the level of play you need them to be. Some teaching is always required, but this is why guilds trial members.

A standard of elitism generates a motive for improvement, all other competitive games have this and it fosters a community that strives to get better rather than become complacent with their current abilities. if you think this is bad for the game we have hugely varying ideals on what gaming, or generally speaking, life is about.

Sure for some they just want to come online and take it easy, relax a bit, and that's great, that hasn't gone away. What has disappeared, to the detriment of the games health, is elitism.

I have had discussions with many group leaders currently active in cyrodil and all of them have the same issue regarding recruitment. It is nearly impossible to find players willing to accept that they can do better and want to do whatever it takes to do so. Players won't try new builds, they expect that guilds will recruit them on the basis of need rather than making themselves needed.

Anyone who was actually in No Mercy can correct me here if I am wrong, but this guild had a separate waiting list guild for trials. It had some 60 members in it, all of whom waiting in here for MONTHS while trialling to join this guild because they wanted to prove themselves and play with the best. Not only did this improve the guild itself, but it improved the way of thinking for an entire faction who all admired this guild. The trial guild had a ranking system on it that if I recall had ranks from 'initiate', 'keep an eye on', 'needs to improve', 'ready for trial' and a few others. The point is, and maybe I'm just too being nostalgic here, the general disposition of players (obviously with exceptions) back then was dramatically different to how it is now.

Then, players didn't blame metas, their first reaction to a loss was not that the opponent was using cheese and some exploit or hack. They looked up to the players and guilds who were beating them on a day to day basis and sought their advice or made every effort to improve themselves to join another top tier rival guild to compete against them.

Why? because there was a standard of elitism, there was a prestige that people were attracted by. The health of the game depends on the balance of casual to hardcore players. right now, it's tilted far too heavily towards the latter.

So maybe let's rethink the negative connotation behind the word elitism.

The negative connotation is earned by players resorting to name-calling and pointless trash talking. Anyone can respect the skill of a player and define them as "elite", but it does nothing for the community when that player is completely lacking in humility, respectfulness and empathy.

You can't just superimpose the definition of a healthy competitive atmosphere over a word that defines so much of the toxic PvP community. I have seen more "elite" guilds fall apart because of ego's and in-fighting due to "eliteism" than are actually PvP-ing right now.

Maybe its the "elite" that need to rethink how they define themselves rather than everyone else re-establish a connotation earned.

This is true, and I agree elitism should not inherently entail arrogance, nor should it warrant any disrespect towards those who have no desire to be competitive. People play for all different reasons and none of those are any more or less well founded than the others, no one is suggesting otherwise.

All I am doing is speaking for the rational portion of elitism that can be healthy, simply pointing out the other side of the coin that Cyrus has spoken of. I feel like you are implying there currently is a standard of elitism that is negatively effecting the game and to put it plainly, I don't see it. I don't see any active guilds displaying this sort of behaviour.

Between all the active guilds currently running on NA (TM/DK/DiG/Fantasia/Artem/BoD/CN/LoM/PM to name a few) I don't think there is much negativity at all, and I think they are all doing what they can to help one another grow, recruit and learn. Speaking personally I have discussions with raid leads from rival guilds every day we are out there about tactics, meta, recruitment and so on and to be honest, though maybe I am being hopeful, cyrodil from a guild stand point is much more enjoyable than it was this time even 6 months ago. Obviously I can only account for my own experience with these guilds so don't hold me to that as some universal ruling.

The other thing worth noting is that sometimes guilds falling apart is a good thing whether it be because of elitism or any other factor.
I simply don't see longevity as a criteria for success, happiness in that longevity yes, but longevity for the sake of longevity absolutely not. If a group of people do not share the same common goals there is absolutely nothing unhealthy about dividing those people so that they can each pursue their separate goals more effectively.

So again. I definitely don't think elitism is predisposed to being a bad thing.

A guild is only as respectable and positive as its members. This thread is a great example of eliteism casting a negative shadow. Your own guildmates talking about boring competition and lack of skill is completely contradictory to what you are trying to build on here.

Out of all of the guilds you have mentioned there, how many of them actually cause an issue to Drac when you come across them? I can tell you its none of the DC guilds (which is nothing against them, but if we dont have any issues with them, neither should you). And we've only been tailoring ourselves to more coordinated/tight group play for a month now. If VE was the only guild that caused enough drama to leak into the forums after they left then I would say you have been without "competition" for a while now...so why hasn't the PvP guild community grown to supply non-boring competition?

I don't see how my guildmates pointing out that they'd like the game to be more competitive is somehow negative? and I have no doubt we do more than most to help improve other guilds. Many have asked for advice on builds, group composition and just general strategy and we are yet to turn any of them away. Helping people doesn't necessarily mean recruiting people. But anyways...

Forgive my ignorance but I'm not actually familiar with which guild you represent so fill me in.

Moving on to you second point I can say without a doubt that even before VE quit, fighting fantasia was always the most worthwhile fight on the map. Simply because they play much more like us in their objectives as a guild. VE was always more objectively driven so they were more often supported in what they contest compared to other guilds we'd engage with regularly. So to respond directly, I would say the competition is the same as it has been for the last few months regardless, as long as guilds like this are still around to have amazing fights against.

This past weekend we fought a bigger variety of guilds than we have in the last 6 months and it was fantastic. The most notable were Crowns guild, Fantasia and Even some Venatus fights, so fingers crossed things are looking good.

maxjapank

Vilestride wrote: »

maxjapank wrote: »

Bit off subject, but AD is sorely in need of guilds during NA prime time. I'm sure there are many good players, just no one to lead them.

Venatus was running a strong group yesterday. AD has a lot of guilds. They just need consistency. AD regularly have Dominion knights, Fantasia, DiG, Dom Dom, and tertiary Meat. Artem as well, though not sure what itme they play.

I mean, that's pretty comparable to the other faction no?

Perhaps. I usually play Oceanic. But what I've witnessed on weekends during NA is a lack of something.

Feanor

The NA drama is always the best. On EU there are no guilds left that would allow drama...

GrimJaw

Feanor wrote: »

The NA drama is always the best. On EU there are no guilds left that would allow drama...

2 words. Murica.

Vilestride

GrimJaw wrote: »

Feanor wrote: »

The NA drama is always the best. On EU there are no guilds left that would allow drama...

2 words. Murica.

This is perfect.

I gotta add that the best part about getting to playing with so many EU re-rolls is truly getting to see the cultural differences, and I must emphasise that they are substantial.