25 person max raid size for expansion

[Sword_of_Doom]

Try - not even close. Try - no good weapons for a lvl 60, except basically unattainable GM weapons. Shall I continue? Besides, what makes you think that raiders deserve items that are so much better than non-raiders? 3/4 of a 40 man raid presses 2 buttons and at best knows how to follow directions and NOTHING ELSE. If you join a guild that has even ZG on farming status (and that's basically all semi-established guilds on semi-established servers), you will get better gear in a week than someone who does not raid and who plays 24/7 for a year.
-A

I am going to attempt to describe to you a fight in Naxxramas, Maexxna, from a Mage and Priest perspective(i have the rare ability to play 2 characters in a Tier 3 zone. Its a long story so i won't get into if you are curious why)

Priest perspective
Maexxna is a large spider at the end of the Spider Wing in Naxxramas. There are multiple things going on in this fight that involve multiple groups. My role as a Priest is wall healing. One of the abilities of Maexxna is to randomly throw 3 people on her spider web (takes up about half the room) at set times. I say random because other than the MT, Maexxna can grab any of the other 39 and throw them on the wall. Now the placement on the wall can be anywhere you see web. Sometimes there are line of sight issues. So i have my game camera pulled as far out as possible to scan the wall. Generally we set it up so we have 4 healers on Wall duty so that there is no gap in coverage. The people on the wall are web wrapped and that web wrap does tick damage until they are dead. Usually you only have a short amount of time to kill the web wrap and get them off the wall. So we usually have Hunters and Warlocks with the healers taking people off the wall (i think the web wrap is about 6k or so of HP). My job is to try to get a PW: S on them as well as renews and Flash heals. If i have to heal 2 people or even 3 people on the wall then decisions have to made. Generally i heal cloth first and then leather, mail and Plate. I also have to move in range of my group because every 45 seconds (i could be wrong on the time) the whole raid gets web wrapped taking 2000 damage each. Its quite important i get a Prayer of Heal off before i go back on wall duty so everyone is healed up. If i miss somebody and they get tossed on the wall they DIE. This is one of the most fun and hectic fight i have experienced in WoW. There are multiple things going on with multiple choices. I am CLEARLY NOT JUST CLICKING TWO BUTTONS and calling it a day. My decisions are important and i take great pride in keeping everyone alive on the Web wall.

Mage Perspective
Being able to play a characters with offensive and defensive abilities has given me somewhat of a unique look at this game. I love playing a Mage on the Maexxna fight just as much as my Priest. Maexxna has many abilities with some described in the Priest summary. But my duty as a Mage is to DPS Maexxna as well as take care of spider adds. At set times from the belly of Maexxna a number of spider adds are dropped onto the raid. You only have about 5 or 6 seconds to kill them because after those 5 or 6 seconds the whole raid is web wrapped for 3 or 4 seconds and takes 2000 damage each. If there is a loose spider add they generally go to the healers and kill them. So generally i have my V button clicked to bring up name plates and i wait until the spider adds are dropped from Maexxna's belly. Once they are dropped i frost nova, Cone of Cold and then Arcane Explosion them. Sometimes i need to move around to catch one that has somehow managed to get outside of the AE. Then i go back to DPS'ing Maexxna. My Mage is definitely not as active as my Priest on this encounter but my job still is important and can be stressful.

Ashock, i don't mean to be mean but you have very little comprehension of what goes on in high level raid encounters. Yes Molten Bore you can auto follow someone and wake up 3 hours later at Ragnaros fire a couple of frost bolts and call it a day. But in AQ40, Twin Emps and beyond, and any encounter in Naxxramas you will kill your entire raid if you are not concentrating and participating.

I will agree with you that if Blizzard designed epic encounters like the Hunter quest or the Priest quest that involve epic items and can be soloed those would be great additions to the game. I am not opposed to casual players getting great gear for effort put in. What i am opposed to is someone who only wants to take 15 minutes to do a quest that involves getting an epic item. Raiding involves massive amounts of time, skill and consumables and should equal a massive reward. Of all the solo and 5 man quests i have done, only the Priest epic quest involved me getting consumables and such to beat it. Every other small group quest i have just had the basics.

Effort/Skill should equal quality reward.
No effort and no skill should equal crappy reward.

If Blizzard could somehow come up with quests that involved 1 person, 5 people, 10 people, 15 people, 25 people or 40 people that used the criteria above i think there would be very little complaining. I am not sure why they have only implemented Hunter and Priest epic quests. Those were fairly hard and involved time, effort, skill and consumables.