Quote:Non-hardcore raiders got:
- 1 Three wing level 60 5-man dungeon.
- 3 Battlegrounds
- An entire zone (Silithus) and revamped two others (Hinterlands and Searing Gorde)
- Darkmoon Faire
- Lots of holiday events
- World events -- elemental invasions, the AQ Gate openning event, and the Scourge Invasion (wish the last one lasted longer)
- Tier 0.5 quests along with revamps of three existing level 60 dungeons
- Grindable quests and rewards in Silithus, EPL, and Furbolg country.
- New Bloodsail Buccaneer quests! Yarrr!
- The STV Fishing Extravaganza
- Two semi-casual 20-man instances.
Hard-core raiders got:
- 3 40-man instances
The reason why it feels like raiders have gotten all the new content is because it takes months to work one's way through the 40-man dungeons, so it feels like "Omg! The big raiding guilds always have new content each week!"
Your list has two problems. The first is that if it isn't a 40-man raid instance, you lump it into something specifically for 'non hardcore raiders'. Where are the world raid bosses? Where's the raid questline from the AQ opening? Why are things like the darkmoon faire and the bloodsail quests for 'non-hardcore raiders' only?
The second problem is that it assumes all content is equally enjoyable or progressive. Killing a bazillion furbolgs for a trinket doesn't even halfway compare to the Benediction questline.
However, before this dives back down into the endless (and often semantic) debate of raiding vs. casual, I'd like to ask a better question: What do you really want from the endgame? Because from my perspective as a former raider, this change resolves many issues:
1. The barrier to entry has been lowered; you now depend on 3/8s fewer people to *begin* raid content.
2. Neither 25 nor 10 easily divides by 9; Roles will now be cross-class, giving everyone more responsibility.
3. Blizzard can make roles more complex (and interesting) because they're adding 2 more tiers of talents.
4. Smaller raid size means more raiding guilds and more raid lockouts per week per server; this creates greater gear opportunity and flattens the gear curve in PvP.
My subscription is currently running out and I wasn't planning to play in TBC, but this change indicates that maybe Blizzard has more in store to convince me.
Edit: Revised point #2, changed to 'issues' from 'problems'.