I assume you meant Reckoning of 2010?
Ugh. Yep, Reckoning. Thank you for catching that.
We were able to start out with similar ideals in the first few months of 2011. That's why I, and others (Franchi, Oknob etc.) refuse to believe that we can't do it again. But we became complacent, and the immediate introduction of 5-6+ DetoX players queueing together in one week knocked us back onto our heels from which we could not recover.
With merged battlegroups, I believe it was a matter of time before a squad of well-geared 29s arrived/returned to PuGmade. I've always been firmly against PuGmades in the midbrackets for precisely the destruction it caused 29s, 39s, and 49s earlier this year. For all the benefits of merged battlegrounds, they lend themselves to PuGmades, which were destined to happen at some point. That's the nature of the beast. In a twisted way, it's a tribute to 29s that the bracket got large enough to attract two different PuGmades.
The problems with 29s started before PuGmades showed up. The forum trolling, endless QQ about lack of player skills, and so on, began to sour 29s before the PuGmades appeared.
While I appreciate your sincere and concise opinion, I thoroughly disagree. Given the high population of the 19, 24, 60, 70, and 80 brackets, as well as the ease of gear access and lack of OP grandfathering, we need an edge to get people willing to roll into our bracket. They will not join a Hunter infested and one faction dominant bracket that only gets games 3 nights a week. There are many others that exist nearby with much greater activity.
A social contract is really all we have to offer newcomers. Collectively, we promise to make games as enjoyable for everyone as possible.
If by social contract you mean sitting out players to even sides, encouraging rolling toons on both factions, and upholding a congenially competitive atmosphere, then yes, 29s can offer that (in spades, if we choose). And I think we'd find a lot of takers. But if you mean class and gear bans, I don't think those will fly. The community isn't tight enough to do it. That said, while new players will not join a faction-dominated bracket, I think some would gladly join a hunter-infested bracket if the standards of PuG play significantly surpassed what 19s and 20-24 offer. And frankly, that wouldn't be hard to achieve.
I think that your presence as a TI blogger could help in the next few months. You could do a brief expose on the 2010 and 2011 history of the 29 community, as well as our goals for 2012. With high readership volume, surely some will be interested in trying out a bracket that cares about the fun new players must enjoy in order to get them to come back.
I would love to leverage the front page to help 29s make a comeback, and I regularly think about ways to do it. But consider the following.
XP-off brackets bifurcate into high population and low population brackets. High population brackets take an "anything goes" approach, where programming is law, regardless of complaining. High population brackets carry enough momentum that they don't need much leadership. Every high-pop bracket has its stars, its drama queens, its trolls, and a vast swath of players who show up for games when they feel like it.
Low population brackets, by contrast, establish and uphold standards of play. Players get to know each other by name, on sight. Players are much less anonymous. The livelihood of every low-pop bracket depends on the sustained efforts of three or four leaders in the community who invest time and energy to help organize and manage community interests in the forums and in game. Unlike the high-population brackets, low-population brackets depend on strong leadership.
29s lost that leadership.
29s need leaders like Daydra to inspire vision and direction. 29s need lieutenants like Morten to tirelessly break down barriers to entry and help players to participate in the day-to-day life of the bracket. 29s need ambassadors like Meed to promote the bracket and grow relationships with other brackets. 29s need those kinds of leaders again. But until enough 29s can depolarize and reach a better consensus about what they want for the bracket, no leader can step up and help the bracket move in any particular direction.
Loss of leadership killed off (earlier or later) all but one of the midbrackets this year. The one midbracket that remains, not by coincidence, currently enjoys the leadership of a couple of players who stepped up and sustained their time and effort to help guide the bracket. But it started with a core group of players who first and foremost, wanted games.
That's what 29s need right now. When enough of a core group of players decide they unconditionally (for the most part) want games, leaders will step up to help organize the effort, the bracket will revive, and the bracket will grow. Then comes the front-page TwinkInfo posts, the inspiring stories of tenacity and perseverance, the stolen Arena Master trinkets on the way to finally landing an AGM and the random satchel loot that seems anything but random.
To provide a better and more specific answer to your original question, then: For 29s to interest me, I would need to see a consensus of 10 players who believe in and would be happy with getting games that simply abide by midbracket standards: sitting players out to balance sides and balancing factions to get games. That's it. If ten players would be happy with relatively unconstrained games like that, I think the momentum would snowball and gather at least ten more players into having a reunion night.
Maybe, in the future, 29s can play without hunters. Maybe they can shelve grandfathered gear. But to get games right now means putting that off to the future. And short of bizarrely miraculous growth, the 4.4/5.0/pre-expansion patch will bring tremendous changes that will give the midbrackets a fresh start, assuming WoW doesn't slip past the event horizon of declining population between now and then.
Edit: fixed botched formatting from the copy-paste of this novella.
megumi dont start a flamewar ignore it and move on.....we all know hypocrisy but his post is right in some aspects dont start a flame war, id perfer for kore not to come drop the hammer on this thread