So Method died on its ass then.
From Sco (who stays in charge of what remains of Method):
- World of Warcraft, and more specifically hardcore raiding is in decline. There is a lack of competition; 2 Horse race versus Paragon each tier. The effort required to raid at a hardcore level (locked away for 2-3 weeks) is not necessarily enjoyed as much as it previously was.
- People are motivated to play by different factors and at various levels, as always external factors like money are involved.
- Lack of leadership. To state it plainly; the member’s faith in the officer team’s ability to lead due to motivation and drive wasn’t at its strongest. Over time there has been a ‘transfer of power’ between the officer team and the members. For example raid leading was done by Kuznam and certain other activities was being organised by members.
- Different views on the Method expansion inside and outside WoW.
The other raiders, in fact the majority of the old Method world first team have moved on to form a new guild on the same server (awkward) named Serenity.
They’ve made a statement, including the following reasoning for the split:
- Lack of leadership within the Method guild
- Different opinions on the direction of the WoW PvE guild Method and the organisation Method
Ouch. So from that it looks as though the members that left didn’t like or believe in Sco’s leadership. Sco, who I needn’t remind you, just recently quit his job from what I’ve heard in order to manage Method, as a brand, full-time.
Double Ouch.
In terms of Sco’s statement, that means his first point is patently wrong. The majority, if not all of the players that have formed Serenity will still be pushing for world firsts, which means they’ll still be putting in the long ass hours in order to claim victory.
His second point? Directly related to his looking to make a living out of Method, always a risky move in an environment like WoW raiding, which at best has another 5-7 years left in it, certainly less at the very high-end.
As to the third point, isn’t he the GM and therefore leadership of Method?
But it sounds like the last point bears out what a lot of people think was the main factor behind the split. Players didn’t like Method becoming part of a “brand”, and it certainly gives the impression that a lot of them didn’t like Sco making money (or at least trying to make money) off of their hard work in achieving world first ranks. Ouch once more.
In related news, Slootbag and Furty from Midwinter have also decided to join Serenity. This is because Midwinter appears to have pulled a Blood Legion and decided to withdraw from the world first race. It seems that the membership there don’t have the drive to put in the hours any longer.
And that leaves us with Paragon, who I’m sure are both sad for Method & Midwinter, but as the eternal Bridesmaids to the Bridezilla of Method, I’m sure they’re thinking that this is potentially the time for them to shine. Maybe, maybe not.
Regardless, this just proves what I’ve been saying all expansion, that Mythic raiding is ironically both irrelevant and harmful to the raiding community as a whole. Mythic only serves to further the e-peen measuring contest for a rapidly dwindling percentage of players and the fact that it completely locks out all but the fortunate few guilds per server is proof enough of that. Sure, quite a few guilds per server may have one or two mythic kills per tier, but that’s like saying a guild that kills the easiest one or two bosses on heroic is a heroic raiding guild. Sorry bro, but no. That’s a normal mode guild with a few bonus heroic kills to help pad the old server ranking.
I’ve said this before and will likely say it many times hence, but is it really worth locking out the vast majority of the remaining raiding community just to “settle”, what is at its core, a two week long, two horse race in every tier?
Anyone that says yes to that question really needs to come up with a good basis for that claim. For the other 99.7% of the raiding community that doesn’t kill each tier-end boss on Mythic (mainly due to roster issues, not much else), the answer is obviously going to be a big fat no.
The chances are pretty high, that given the time that Serenity now have to settle in and get practised with their new members, that Paragon will again serve as the eternal bridesmaids, only this time to a new Bridezilla.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose…
