How Cataclysm killed WoW is how Heavensward will kill FFXIV.

[Saccharin]

This is said over and over, but it's wrong. I was in a raid guild that had leaders and members in their 30-50's, and many members in their 20s-30s. Sure there were younger people under 20 (me included at the time) but saying "oh it's cause people were in their teens" is blatantly false. Older people played MMOs back then just as younger did. Hell, the WoW dev team were high end EQ raiders and I don't think Blizzard would be hiring teens to game design their first MMO. It's as much a stereotype as the excuse that "people could raid because they didn't have time to play 12h a day" as if that was ever the case. It was all about time management, if you could set aside time to progress X amount, you'd be able to do it.

This was during Vanilla, when raids required 40 people to do. We had officers for every class type, a raid leader, and a guild leader (hence I say "leaders").

Did I say every player was in their teens or twenties no of course I didn't but even those 50 year olds got older!

Yes, and those one percent were much more dedicated so you could field a 40 man. I started just before Wrath but from what I've been told half of the team could AFK but that's not relevant. Today's MMO player isn't as dedicated, or if you like, hardcore so there's more raids groups and those Vanilla one percent are spread around the game so it makes it much harder to field 40 man teams.

A case in point, Blizzard changed their hardest mode from 10 and 25 man to just 20 man - it meant it was easier to tune for one difficulty than it was for 10 and 25 man. The majority of guilds were 10 man and they either merged or completely folded. Even now people struggle to fill a 20 man team because the players just aren't there, or concentrated in one place as they were in vanilla. This is a serious problem with current Mythic raiding in WoW.

[Magis]

Did I say every player was in their teens or twenties no of course I didn't but even those 50 year olds got older! Yes, and those one percent were much more dedicated so you could field a 40 man. I started just before Wrath but from what I've been told half of the team could AFK but that's not relevant. Today's MMO player isn't as dedicated, or if you like, hardcore so there's more raids groups and those Vanilla one percent are spread around the game so it makes it much harder to field 40 man teams.

A case in point, Blizzard changed their hardest mode from 10 and 25 man to just 20 man - it meant it was easier to tune for one difficulty than it was for 10 and 25 man. The majority of guilds were 10 man and they either merged or completely folded. Even now people struggle to fill a 20 man team because the players just aren't there, or concentrated in one place as they were in vanilla. This is a serious problem with current Mythic raiding in WoW.

Of course "not every", but we are talking about generalizations here and that is exactly what you are doing, you are generalizing it as "Molten Core people were in their teens and early twenties", when that wasn't the case. And so what if the 50 year olds got older? If a person can do high level raiding at 20, 30, 40, or 50 it doesn't matter what their age is. It just depends on their lifestyle and time. If anything, people end up with more free time as they get older cause the kids move out and they (like one FC mate who grinded three relics) retire.

Yes, and those one percent were much more dedicated so you could field a 40 man. I started just before Wrath but from what I've been told half of the team could AFK but that's not relevant. Today's MMO player isn't as dedicated, or if you like, hardcore so there's more raids groups and those Vanilla one percent are spread around the game so it makes it much harder to field 40 man teams.

It's hard to create 40 man teams when the game is redesigned to not support them. Before TBC people were still jumping into and/or creating raid guilds. You can't make the comparison after 40mans were phased out. Also, maybe afking happened in the first dungeon MC, but anything after would just mean you'd wipe the raid.

A case in point, Blizzard changed their hardest mode from 10 and 25 man to just 20 man - it meant it was easier to tune for one difficulty than it was for 10 and 25 man. The majority of guilds were 10 man and they either merged or completely folded. Even now people struggle to fill a 20 man team because the players just aren't there, or concentrated in one place as they were in vanilla. This is a serious problem with current Mythic raiding in WoW.

Changing the raids from 40 to 20 man had nothing to do with making it easier, in fact early Karazhan was quite difficult until people cried for nerfs (like people always do). It was to make the player count requirement easier to beat, but the content itself didn't become easier.