08-13-2006, 11:50 PM
My main is guild is one that progressed over time from the "casual" to the "raid" content. Because we are less demanding on attendance than more "focused" raid guilds, the pool of players we draw from is fairly large: we have a core of players who go to almost every raid they can, but also a large group who's attendance is limited by real life or interest.
From a management point of view, smaller raids are definitely a step in the right direction. Coordinating a group of 40 people is a lot of work; coordinating a guild large enough to field 40 people for every run is also a lot of work.
However most raiding guilds (from the most casual to the most intense) have shaped their numbers around what they need to field those 40 players. After the expansion I expect many guilds will shrink in size - instead of 60 or 70 people on the playing roster, they may have 40.
This adjustment might be sudden (guild splits) or gradual (not replacing members lost through attrition). It will probably depend on the guild.
However once that adjustment is complete I think you will see significantly more guilds on the hardest end-game encounters than now, because its a lot easier to find 10 or 25 people for a run than 40. Some people dislike the large raids because they find themselves "lost in the crowd" so to speak where their individual contribution is hard to identify. When there are only 2 or 3 of each class in a raid, your contribution becomes more important.
I assume Blizzard has pretty detailed statistics on who goes to what instances, and they probably know exactly how busy ZG and AQ20 are relative to the 40 person raids.
I predict some short-term upheavals, but in the long run I think people will appreciate the smaller raids.
Chris
From a management point of view, smaller raids are definitely a step in the right direction. Coordinating a group of 40 people is a lot of work; coordinating a guild large enough to field 40 people for every run is also a lot of work.
However most raiding guilds (from the most casual to the most intense) have shaped their numbers around what they need to field those 40 players. After the expansion I expect many guilds will shrink in size - instead of 60 or 70 people on the playing roster, they may have 40.
This adjustment might be sudden (guild splits) or gradual (not replacing members lost through attrition). It will probably depend on the guild.
However once that adjustment is complete I think you will see significantly more guilds on the hardest end-game encounters than now, because its a lot easier to find 10 or 25 people for a run than 40. Some people dislike the large raids because they find themselves "lost in the crowd" so to speak where their individual contribution is hard to identify. When there are only 2 or 3 of each class in a raid, your contribution becomes more important.
I assume Blizzard has pretty detailed statistics on who goes to what instances, and they probably know exactly how busy ZG and AQ20 are relative to the 40 person raids.
I predict some short-term upheavals, but in the long run I think people will appreciate the smaller raids.
Chris