25 person max raid size for expansion

[Sword_of_Doom]

Your assumption is exactly that which I attempted to refute. Simply put, 40 -> 25 will behave as you describe if there were no difficulty mechanism in place. The introduction of a difficulty slider means that 25 pug can complete a lvl70 x 25 instance on 'Easy' mode. Thus more people have access to more content. The same difficulty slider will keep the gear differential between casuals and raiders by rewarding those that play on the higher difficulty settings.

Your argument is a straw-man:
A: The only people this change helps are hardcore players who cannot currently reach 40 players. (Fallacy)
B: Given 'A', the number of people this helps is small.

The argument is presented plausably but fails because the first statement is inaccurate, the difficulty slider enables a wider audience to be 'helped'. Additionally, the principle of constraints I outlined explains how forming a smaller group is also easier.

-Kershner

Well the reality is there will be no difficulty slider for 25 man raid content. There will be for 10 and 5 person dungeons. Therefore Blizzard has two options: 1. Appease the masses and make the 25 person raid dungeons fairly easy ala ZG20 or AQ20. or 2. Make it the same difficulty as Naxxramas. If the reduction of 40 person raids to 25 person raids was to make content more accessible my gut feeling is that they have no choice but to go with option 1. This move makes no other sense other than for technological reasons. Apparently 25 people stress the servers quite a bit less than 40 do. But again, there theoretically should be a lot more people raiding under a 25 person system than a 40 person system which should stress the servers more.

So i am still leaning towards Blizzard making easier raids simply for the fact that it appeals to the most people and will make them the most $$$ in the short term. Casuals will not stay in this game for a long period of time. The reason Everquest is still around 8 years later is not because of the casual its because of the hardcore. So i am very concerned about the direction of the game. I would hate to see a brain drain from this game (best players leaving for more of challenge) because players will move on if raids are easy.