25 person max raid size for expansion

[Sword_of_Doom]

I grant that it is not true for everyone. I said as much. But I am in one of these guilds, and surely you don't intend to dictate to me what I do or do not feel? It is true for some of these guilds, and, as I originally stated, it is true for more of them than most people think.

I play for the people not the game anymore. The high end guilds are tight knit groups of people. Spending 4+hours a raid night with the same people develops close bonds between people. Those that think otherwise or experiencing different must be in really anti-social guilds. I am not looking forward to the X-pac now because we will be forced to say goodbye to 15+ people. It is not practical or worthwhile to make 2 teams of 25. The headaches that derive from that are NOT WORTH IT. I will admit though that getting 25 dedicated people is simply going to be easier than 40. But i truly wish Blizzard had implemented this a lot earlier than the X pac so guilds could have done things differently. My guild plans to raid Naxx right up to the X-pac. That leaves a month probably of levelling then the gross task of cutting people.

[Jester]

You seem to be conflating "less people" and "less difficult". While there might be an overall reduction of difficulty (I certainly hope not), that would be an entirely different issue.

The way I see it, they could just as easily make the encounters harder, with more onus on each individual to do his or her job right, something which they have to go easy on at least a little bit with 40 man encounters.

I would be quite disappointed if the game got overall easier, and I've never beated Ragnaros, let alone Nefarian or C'thun. (Been to rags, though. Go go Lurkers/Keepers on Terenas!)

But I think blizzard has been doing a good job of introducing harder and more interesting endgame content so far, and I doubt they're going to stop just because they're dealing with smaller groups.

Or, at least, I think we can safely hope.

-Jester

[Kevin]

You seem to be conflating "less people" and "less difficult". While there might be an overall reduction of difficulty (I certainly hope not), that would be an entirely different issue.

The way I see it, they could just as easily make the encounters harder, with more onus on each individual to do his or her job right, something which they have to go easy on at least a little bit with 40 man encounters.

I would be quite disappointed if the game got overall easier, and I've never beated Ragnaros, let alone Nefarian or C'thun. (Been to rags, though. Go go Lurkers/Keepers on Terenas!)

But I think blizzard has been doing a good job of introducing harder and more interesting endgame content so far, and I doubt they're going to stop just because they're dealing with smaller groups.

Or, at least, I think we can safely hope.

-Jester

Yeah I remember when people thought Ony and MC were hard or impossible. (Even MJ, go read some of his write ups). Now those places are jokes. ZG and AQ20 are both harder than anything in MC, the enounters are more complex and require people to play better than anything in MC does. Heck if you are in ZG and AQ20 level gear I think both of them take more skill than most everything in BWL for that matter.

So yeah, small can be hard, if not harder. 45 minute Baron run in appropriate gear (i.e. no ZG or AQ20 gear even) is hard and a lot of fun and take more skill than most anything in MC as well. So I agree wholeheartedly that just because it says 40 man doesn't mean it's harder.

[Icebird]

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

[Mirajj]

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.

Raiding is a team sport. What you do in raids, you do for the 'team' you are with. There are no "heros" in endgame raiding, but there are a ton of team accomplishements...

[fractaled]

Raiding is a team sport. What you do in raids, you do for the 'team' you are with. There are no "heros" in endgame raiding, but there are a ton of team accomplishements...

Whenever I think that a 40-man raid is a team sport, I try to compare it to a real-world sport -- and I fail. Basketball, hockey, football, and baseball have at most 11 people (per team) on the field at once (and they often have dedicated *teams* of coaches/managers). Maybe it can be compared to a symphony -- where it's hard to pinpoint indivual players, but the success of the whole is identifiable.

[Thecla]

I know some people won't like it, but for me personally this is about as good as WoW related news gets, period.

Well, it's surely not for me --- as a relatively anti-social, non-WoW player --- to interject here, and I apologize in advance for it.;)

I don't knock anyone who does enjoy playing WoW --- it's undeniably done really well --- but for myself, I'm just thankful not to play anymore a game where there can be a discussion about whether or not 25 people (or 10 people, for that matter) is too small a number for the end-game content, nevermind what you have to go through to get to that point.

[Icebird]

Raiding is a team sport. What you do in raids, you do for the 'team' you are with. There are no "heros" in endgame raiding, but there are a ton of team accomplishements...

I think you missed my point. There are people playing World of Warcraft who prefer small group runs (eg 5-10 people) to 40 person raids. One of the members of our guild stopped playing for essentially that reason (we're hoping he returns for the expansion).

In a small group, you carry far more responsibility for the success or failure of a run than in a 40 person army where you have 39 other people to pick up the slack if you're having a bad day. Lets face it: its easy enough to get by in MC by following instructions, and mashing the right 2 or 3 buttons at the right times. The dungeons have got progressively more complex since then, but it's only probably only the last half of AQ40 and Naxx which require the entire raid without exception to be on top of their games. (The Four Horseman fight for instance appears as if it requires 4 teams of 10 to work pretty much autonomously from one another).

I personally enjoy the large raids. I think the highlight of the game so far was when our guild beat Ragnaros for the first time (back when Rag was a big deal, and not merely a stepping stone to more complicate encounters). But as someone who devoted huge chunks of time developing partnerships with other guilds when we didn't have the numbers, and building up our guild when we decided we did - 40 man raids are a heavy workload to organize.

Chris

[Quark]

I don't knock anyone who does enjoy playing WoW --- it's undeniably done really well --- but for myself, I'm just thankful not to play anymore a game where there can be a discussion about whether or not 25 people (or 10 people, for that matter) is too small a number for the end-game content, nevermind what you have to go through to get to that point.

I know this isn't really your point, but there's few people that have an issue with 25 as being too small. It's that it came too late, because everyone built themselves around 40.

[Ashock]

I like how everyone forgets the Dire Maul being 3 wings (2 instances), or the sheer EXISTENCE of Mauradon. Not to mention the Faire and other additions listed above to give the non-raidnig community their crack at shiny CRAPPY purple stuff.

Fixed.


-A

[lfd]

Fixed.
-A

Where "crappy" is, presumably, defined to be "not as good as raiders can get, in my personal opinion".

Surely that's as it should be?

They're still upgrades from blues.

[chippydip]

I guess I'm not seeing what everyone else is seeing, because I frankly cannot find much upside in this change. I can see that a lot of people are enthusiastic about it. I imagine responses like these are what prompted them to make it in the first place.

...

The prime beneficiaries are small hardcore guilds that are limited by numbers - like groups of RL friends. I emphasize small hardcore guilds because they must want to progress, and be willing to spend hours wiping, farming repair money, farming consumables. They must be all those things and yet be unable to add people in any way.

...

To increase raid availability by less than one percent, Blizzard has instituted a change that is certain to be hugely negative to existing raid guilds. Yes, 40 man raiders are a minority of active players. But screwing them to improve the lot of an even smaller minority is poor judgment.

This is what nobody seems to be talking about. If the new 25-man raids truely are as difficult as current 40-man content, then no PUG will ever be able to do them. Period. To beat that sort of content, you need a group that will come back the next week to learn from their wipes. This requires a de-facto guild with enough organization to raid at least semi-regularly.

Casual guilds would be able to field a team, but would they have the dedication to last through multiple wipes per weak, spend time thinking, reading strats, watching videos, etc. and come back next week to learn from their mistakes and try again? Maybe for a couple weeks, but for the months required to master a single instance? I'm not so sure. My guess is that most will give up after a couple weeks of little or no loot and large repair bills/consumable expenditures and go 25-man BWL or run one of the easier instances in the expansion.

If people have enough motivation and persistence to work through the wipes and learn the instance, then I would consider them hard-core players by definition. This change basically just reduces the size requirement of a hard-core guild, it doesn't lessen any of the requirements for success.

People have also sighted organizational problems with 40-mans and stated that 25-mans would be easier to manage. I would argue that this is backwards. As stated, guilds are sized to be as close as possible to having 40 people on for raids without going under. If there are any more than 40, people get left out and play alts for the night or just /gquit if it happens with any regularity. With less than 40, encounters that have already been mastered can probably still be done and new encounters can still be attempted for the learning value, but the chance of actually progressing starts to go way down. In a 25-man raid, however, being down a man hurts much more. This will make attendance and attrician even bigger problems with 25-man content where all-hands-on-deck is required for progress. If people are having problems filling a 40-man to progress now, I don't see how they will fill a 25-man consistantly to progress at all in BC. Being down a man or two will become an even bigger problem than it is now.

Overall, it just seems like the small hard-core groups that have raid content opened up to them will be more than offset by the downsizing of current raid guilds. Sure, some will form new guilds, but some will probably just quit. Of the new set of guilds, those who's leadership and members had problems filling a 40-man, but were able to progress with 38 or 39 will find it twice as hard to progress with 23 or 24. It just seems like a net loss no matter how you slice it, but perhaps I'm missing something. Anyone care to enlighten me?

[Ashock]

Where "crappy" is, presumably, defined to be "not as good as raiders can get, in my personal opinion".

Surely that's as it should be?

They're still upgrades from blues.

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

[lfd]

Try - not even close. Try - no good weapons for a lvl 60, except basically unattainable GM weapons. Shall I continue?

Well, you could do, since you haven't really started. What are you going to do with these non-existent as-good-as-raid-quality weapons? Solo things quicker?

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.

What makes me think that is the sheer effort I've put in with my guild to learn encounters and defeat bosses, which amounts to considerably more than pressing two buttons and following directions. If you really think that's what's involved, I can only conclude that you haven't done much beyond BWL, or that you're a really crap addition to a raiding team.

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.

Still not seeing your point, here. If it's so easy to find a guild that is running ZG, then join it, run ZG, and upgrade your stuff. There has to be SOME measure by which achieving goals with multiple players is rewarded over soloing in a massively multiplayer game, otherwise there would be absolutely no point in it being multiplayer.

[Ashock]

Well, you could do, since you haven't really started. What are you going to do with these non-existent as-good-as-raid-quality weapons? Solo things quicker?
What makes me think that is the sheer effort I've put in with my guild to learn encounters and defeat bosses, which amounts to considerably more than pressing two buttons and following directions. If you really think that's what's involved, I can only conclude that you haven't done much beyond BWL, or that you're a really crap addition to a raiding team.
Still not seeing your point, here. If it's so easy to find a guild that is running ZG, then join it, run ZG, and upgrade your stuff. There has to be SOME measure by which achieving goals with multiple players is rewarded over soloing in a massively multiplayer game, otherwise there would be absolutely no point in it being multiplayer.

You know what? There is no point in continuing this. I've seen and been involved in too many threads exactly on this topic on Blizz's forums. Your epeen is bigger than mine. Whatever.


-A

[Quark]

You know what? There is no point in continuing this. I've seen and been involved in too many threads exactly on this topic on Blizz's forums. Your epeen is bigger than mine. Whatever.
-A

So convenient. You debase everything raiders do, but when faced with a retort in kind it's all one-sided.

I just have one question: why is it that, for raiding, it's always just "two button" "three buttons", or whatever, and "follows directions"? It never matters what you're actually doing, everyone always just says it's "follows directions". Amazing what a catch-all it's been made out to be.

Also? Don't base all raiding on early raiding experiences. What a player does during raiding is a much different beast than it used to be.

[oldmandennis]

You know what? There is no point in continuing this.

Yes, please both of you thread crap somplace else. We have done this before. There is actually new info to discuss.

I am actually modestly excited about this change for the first time in a while. As well as the "hybrids will be hybrids" change.

As far as the wailing and gnashing of teeth... I believe Tigole when he says that most guilds are going to be in flux anyways. There may be a few guilds that really have 45-55 solid players, none of them use the expansion as a chance to bail, they all level up togeather, and all want to raid togeather. I'd be suprised if that's more then a fraction of a fraction.

And it's still an open question if 25 man will even be where the challenges are. From the sounds of it, the Hellfire Citidel and Coilfang Resevoir 25 man wings may just be Onyxia style loot pinatas, with the Tempest Keep being the only real instance. I'm near positive about Hellfire, less so about Coilfang (ofcourse everything is subject to change). It could easily be that you will have a hard time getting 25 togeather because people like the 5/10 man stuff so much. Even if 25 mans have better loot/challenges, with at least one epic 10 man, you will be pretty close to the old 40 man size if you run those at the same time.

The one big dissapointment I have is that some stuff would just feel a lot better 40 man. Mainly Mt. Hyjal is what I'm thinking right now, but I'm sure there are other encounters that would be more epic with 40.

[Skandranon]

You seem to be conflating "less people" and "less difficult". While there might be an overall reduction of difficulty (I certainly hope not), that would be an entirely different issue.

They won't reduce the difficulty. While making everything easy results in a short-term surge (because easy content is accessible to everyone), it results in a long term drain across all segments of the population. Hardcore players leave because they're not getting challenged. Casual players leave because they're bored of it (they never like to run things more than a couple of times anyway). PvPers leave because everyone else is leaving. They need to keep the content hard.

That said, the dirty little secret that Blizzard refuses to acknowledge is that most people don't really want hard content. On the Raids and Dungeons board, which topics garner the most complaints? Number one is Lord Valthalak. Number two is the 45-minute Baron run. Neither of these are large raid content.

The casual player, and even some of the hardcore non-raider players, shy away from anything that's truly difficult. Daily there are posts about how Valthalak and the 45 minute Baron run are too hard, and the complaints centre around the fact that you can't walk in there and one-shot it blind. "I've tried it three times," the complaint goes, "Can't you all see that it's just too hard?" And raiders, who have experienced the only challenging content in this game so far (which is absolutely the fault of Blizzard, because even small groups should have hard content) say: "So?".

These threads aren't flamewars. Every time, helpful raiders provide constructive input. "Get a group of five people together and do some practice runs; it may take ten or twenty tries, but you'll get it." "Create some flasks - Supreme Power can increase your clearing speed." "Gather some more of your Dungeon 1 set and upgrade weak slots in your gear."

The response is horrified. "Ten times? I don't want to try anything that many times. Flasks? I shouldn't need to drink potions! Not everyone's an alchemist! What do you mean, I shouldn't be able to do it in random green items bought off the auction house?!"

Lowering the raid cap won't help these people. Far more stands in the way of their access to raid content than numbers.

[Monkey]

The one big dissapointment I have is that some stuff would just feel a lot better 40 man. Mainly Mt. Hyjal is what I'm thinking right now, but I'm sure there are other encounters that would be more epic with 40.

Just out of curiousity, do you mean "The Battle of Mt. Hyjal" (accessed via the Caverns of Time) or the present-day Mt. Hyjal? I think it would be pretty cool if your band of heroes had to work with another band of heroes. That has the makings of some really epic-feeling moments. For example, what if multiple 25-man raids get placed into the same Battle of Hyjal? What if there are equal numbers of both factions?

Also,

From the sounds of it, the Hellfire Citidel and Coilfang Resevoir 25 man wings may just be Onyxia style loot pinatas, with the Tempest Keep being the only real instance. I'm near positive about Hellfire, less so about Coilfang (ofcourse everything is subject to change).

Mmmm Pinatas. I love tasty Onyxia candy!

[Lissa]

Just out of curiousity, do you mean "The Battle of Mt. Hyjal" (accessed via the Caverns of Time) or the present-day Mt. Hyjal? I think it would be pretty cool if your band of heroes had to work with another band of heroes. That has the makings of some really epic-feeling moments. For example, what if multiple 25-man raids get placed into the same Battle of Hyjal? What if there are equal numbers of both factions?

Especially if this could be done with both a Horde guild and an Alliance guild working together much as Malfurion, Tyrande, Thrall, Jaina, and others did in the original battle.