25 person max raid size for expansion

[Raelynn]

Well, I can indeed understand that people who have devoted so much time to WoW may have an issue with that; and as I said it's really not my place to comment, since I was frankly relieved to quit the game. But, for myself anyway, any game that requires building yourself around 40 (or 25) other players in order to play it is not the kind of game I want to play. (Again, no knock on any of the 6 million people for whom it apparently is.;))

It's a shame, though, because if Bliz would have been willing to be more creative, I don't think the WoW endgame had to devolve into what I see as an unrewarding, time-consuming, and elitist treadmill.

Time isn't the issue here.

I agree with Quark in that from a game perspective this is a good change. However, from a guild leadership position it's a nightmare. The guilds built themselves around 40 men. When the change comes, the time you put into getting 40 people and using them isn't the issue. The issue is the people themselves. You basically have 3 choices: drop 15 people, let 15 people sit aside, or grab 10 and raid 2 groups.

For the first two suggestions, you have people getting angry. The people in the guild are friends generally. No one wants to be left out and if the GM is good, he doesn't want to leave anyone behind.

For the last suggestion, you're getting into more complicated grounds. In a pure gameplay perspective, you risk hugely different progressions, if you do a static split that never changes, or slower progression, if you constantly change the raid groups. Additionally, due to the lockouts, you lose the flexibility of the extra people, as people from one raid can't join the other if there's a bad class balance night.

Going even further, you risk alienating people by basically telling them which of their friends they get to raid with. In my guild, my girlfriend is the second tank, and it very good friends with the main tank. If we do 2 raid groups, they'd be forced into separate groups regardless of their wishes, which would likely make the game less enjoyable to both.

All in all, it's the people that matter. Guilds have invested 2 years in 40 people, not 40 people investing 2 year.