I feel like Fitz is probably mostly right here, and the part he was missing--that there are about 4 guilds clearing 25s atm--shows that people talking about "dead server" might be sharing their perspective but server is more active than they think.
However, we should also be realistic about this path forward. I've looked into mergers, and in some cases the best option for a merger dies too fast and merges into a big guild before 2 cores can merge. The most likely scenario in many of these cases is a 25-man guild with only a few raid slots, so a few of the best players from a guild will leave and join this new guild and the rest will sit in a hollowed-out guild that will die, and dead guilds often get people to just leave.
This is especially true because, as was said, Kara can get tedious, especially with how long it takes to clear since boss HP is stupidly, unchallengingly, boringly, high (the same mechanic making Gruul take forever until a wipe).
So what we'll wind up with is some top-performers--probably hunters, etc--raiding 25s successfully and the rest may very well quit. But that's the way Primal is now, and as mentioned dead guilds often result in people leaving (Aa small guild core lugging around a semi-active half-geared guild through 25s won't last long), so might as well get working on salvaging what we can, although I imagine half of it will involve gquits and drama.
While I think the staff does a great job, I do insist that another issue in my perspective is the gameplay. Not just the HP, as mentioned, but also struggling specs. Perhaps in the successful guilds this isn't an issue, but elsewhere I see people dissatisfied with their spec, and they either quit or try to reroll, struggle getting RDF to pop, then quit.
So probably two-pronged path ahead here:
1) Make Guild forum here more active, with info and posts on raid times, needed roles, and available slots so people can see what fits and officers can see what's going on and start discussing things with each other ASAP (this isn't a clean solution, but I agree it probably offers best chance of a strong server).
2) More immersive gameplay to attract players and keep them playing, with an easier path to 70 or at least 60 (as jetterroo explained) and less luz HP-boosting and improvement for specs cursed by the patch and by Primal rules (ideally not through artificial multipliers and such, since this doesn't seem to have resulted in a ton of balance, but since staff puts a lot of effort into that, if it works why not)
Edit: just wanna make clear I'm not trying to nerf content or anything, just some fights are just unnecessarily long and it makes some encounters turn into a snoozefest
natnat123 wrote: ↑08 Sep 2017 19:59
they should be, but we cant stand at adal and do gear checks. the pop is so low atm that we dont have much choice in who we take because its eather take someone to fill a spot and start. or wait hours for someone decent to show up and by that time. others have left due to waiting.
Yep, that's basically the situation. I was heavily involved with pugging on Feenix TBC, and part of the difference is definitely server population. But another part is that raids on this server are different--half the specs are just too garbage to make the raid smooth, and even decent gear isn't enough due to boss HP boosting. The key to success for pugs there were good raid leading but also a strong core of experienced players, mostly lower-geared alts who knew what they were doing. Those alts are going to be too weak here, less common due to a slow leveling process, and then on top of it might be a bad spec. The people dedicated to having strong alts like jetteroo are the types of people who make this sort of thing work.
There were a few odds-and-ends, like rogues being able to cloak Mag cube debuff, but those are the main issues.