08-12-2006, 11:31 AM
Quote:I basically concur with Mongo on this.
Gameplay wise it is probably a good change. Less people make for less complications, less downtimes, less organization overhead etc. Blizzard has shown in ZG and AQ20 that raiding encounters on a smaller scale can be as challenging as the big ones. Jin'do is imho more difficult than anything you encounter in MC.
But the consequences for existing guilds can be devastating indeed. Managing a sufficient pool of people for 40 man content is like shepherding cats. We raiders are not exactly known for our humble egos. ;)This very annoucement alone is probably enough to stir guild drama on it's own. People will look at their fellow raiders and make mental lists with whom they would be willing to raid in a smaller raid environment if they had the choice. This could very much accelerate the unraveling of existing guilds, which would be a pity as most of them haven't probably even visited Naxx yet. The looming shadow of guild reorganization and a general feeling that the era of 40 mans will end anyway isn't exactly a motivation for progression in Naxx or AQ40.
In the end: yes, it's probably a good decision for more managable and accessable content, yet the adaption process will hurt. One can only hope that Burning Crusade will be released soon, so that the uncertainty will end.
On another note: I hope that this is not beginning of complete "casualization" of the game. There are already people whining that the current 20 mans are to much to ask for, and some are even not willing to do five content. A WoW where the most casual players set the standards is certainly not something I'm looking for.
As a raider (I guess) currently progressing through BWL, I love this change. I only raid 40-person dungeons because they're the only way to progress my character - I find them boring and tedious, and I really enjoy five-man, ten-man, and twenty-man groups a lot more (tending towards ten-man as an ideal size).
As far as having people excluded from content because a guild was designed to contain 40 people for raiding, I'm not too sympathetic. "Casuals" had to deal with the exact same issues raiders will go through when the player cap on Stratholme, Scholomance, Blackrock Spire, etc. was lowered. Yes, there are guilds of ten to fifteen people who enjoyed making guild runs through those instances. I'm in one of them. When the player cap was lowered, we lost our main guild events, which really allowed us to learn, bond, and work together.
Casualization is something that I predict WoW will tend toward. Everyone knows that casuals are the majority of players - Blizzard (and behind them, Vivendi) would be foolish to cater to the minority of hardcore raiders. It just doesn't make any business sense. Smaller-group content is just more inclusive. Raiders can still clear five, ten, and twenty-five man instances, but the shift towards smaller instances makes that newly-developed content more accessible to casuals as well. They cater to the majority and don't exclude the minority.