25 person max raid size for expansion

[Quark]

Or you could have 40 people, 10 with a level 70 alt, and raid on two different days/times. The blues you get while leveling should put you on equal footing with your mains, since they'll all be at tier 70+0.

No. This leads to quick burnout. Trust me, I've tried it myself.

[kershner]

An important counter argument to my statements above needs to be made.

For the hardcore raider, the content may appear less difficult even though such content is in fact equally challenging or even more challenging.

The cause of this is that in any group the players can be rank ordered by their level of contribution to the whole (a function of skill, gear, class, devotion, etc). Moving from a larger group (40) to a smaller group (25) *should* result in the elimination of those rank ordered as weakest. Thus in smaller raids the per-member contribution to the whole is larger because the remaining play group is stronger.

Imagine taking the best 20 from an MC/BWL guild into ZG. The zone is trivial. From the same take a random subset of 20. The zone is instead easy to medium difficulty.

In addition to the above argument, drama is less in smaller guilds. Not merely 'less', but exponentially less.

For example, let us apply group dynamic theory: Each person brings to the raid group 'n' constraints on the group's play. These include loot desires, personality, play style, time of play, parents, girlfriends, etc. Each of these constraints interacts with all of the other constraints (including their own) and must be sufficiently resolved for the raid group to function. Assume only binary interactions between constraints (personalities are usually tertiary or greater).

For a 40-man raid group with 'n' constraints each there are (40n * (40n - 1)) = 1600n*n - 40n interactions to be resolved. For n=4, 25,440 interactions.

For a 25-man raid group with 'n' constraints each there are (25n * (25n - 1)) = 625n*n - 25n interactions to be resolved. For n=4, 9,900 interactions.

Thus for n=4, 25man is 39% as much drama as 40man.
Changing n from 1 -> 20 moves the % less than 1.

As such it can be said that there is 60% less drama in a 25man group than in a 40man group.

-Kershner

Dehmien | 60 UD Priest | Stonemaul

[Quark]

The introduction of a difficulty slider for instances resolves most of the remaining issues. A pug should be able to run a lvl70 x 25man raid on easy mode and succeed. Whereas a hardcore raiding guild should be able to get significant challenge while running that same instance on Elite difficulty. The rewards will be comparitively better for the latter.

Only it's nothing like that from what I've seen. The difficulty is for the new lower level (60-64) instances and it's based on player level.

Blues have already established that a lvl60 instance on Elite difficulty should pose a reasonable challenge (and reward) for lvl70s geared out. As such the lvl70 instances should be nearly impossible at that difficulty.

Either I'm heavily confused or you are.

*snip*
The effect of the grind to 70 (from 60 or 1 in the case of new classes) will recreate the process by which guilds formed for end-game content at 60. The need for a guild to 'boot' half their members will be replaced by a first-come first-served mechanism.

... You must not know what most of us are like if you're actually saying this is a good thing. You want to start an arms race where the first to 70 win and get a raid spot? Can't log out ... Bolty is two bubbles ahead of me!. Right, that's exactly the atmosphere I want in my raid group.

Every "superguild" that formed on my server by the first group of 60s to start filling raids died. Every single one. It took the ones alliance side only a few months at most, and the only one horde side to last more than a year recently disbanded. Members > Loot, and I'm not going to partake in some stupid race that'll shatter friendships and abandon people who can only spend 10-15 hours a week on this game instead of 40 just to get an item a few months quicker then have it all fall apart.

[Ashock]

They most certainly did. You made the claim about pushing a couple buttons and then someone said that there was far more to the encounters than pushing a couple buttons. As soon as they proved you wrong, you basically said screw it, it's not worth arguing. The fact is, you made the comparison and you got called on it.

Listen, you know what I say is true. Raids up to and including MC are easy-mode for established guilds and that is all I was talking about. Noone proved me wrong, because they were talking about something I was not. Now, I know you enjoy trying to contradict me, just so you can prove me wrong since you do not like me and my points of view in general and not just this. That's ok, the feeling is mutual. Now that we've established that, and I think denying it on your part would be dishonest, why don't you stop. This is frankly getting annoying and I do not respond well to being annoyed continuously. In any case, call it whatever you want, you can have the last word. I'm done.

On a personal note, I think you've pretty much reached your limit with me. So from now on, I will ignore your posts and responses to me. You are of course free to contradict or taunt me in any way you want. Yeh, you can deny doing that too of course. Look at it this way, you join an elite company of people that I ignore here that includes Doc, Pete and several lesser personalities. I have enough aggravation in RL, why do I need to get aggravated here? Exactly.


So long and thanks for the fish.



-A

[Raelynn]

No. This leads to quick burnout. Trust me, I've tried it myself.

Additionally, people generally raid most of the week at a specific time. Asking 15 of them to change can lead to just as many if not more problems. Plus it doesn't help the problems I've mentioned concerning the splitting to two groups suggestion.

Sorry if I'm coming off as overbearing. I have to deal with this in my guild as one of the officers.

[Raelynn]

Raids up to and including MC are easy-mode for established guilds and that is all I was talking about.

Out of pure curiosity, what raids do you consider in this group besides MC? I'm not trying to pick an arguement about the ease of raids, just curious.

[Lissa]

Listen, you know what I say is true. Raids up to and including MC are easy-mode for established guilds and that is all I was talking about. Noone proved me wrong, because they were talking about something I was not. Now, I know you enjoy trying to contradict me, just so you can prove me wrong since you do not like me and my points of view in general and not just this. That's ok, the feeling is mutual. Now that we've established that, and I think denying it on your part would be dishonest, why don't you stop. This is frankly getting annoying and I do not respond well to being annoyed continuously. In any case, call it whatever you want, you can have the last word. I'm done.

You stated nothing about instance, you stated simply raiding. Here, let me quote you from your previous post:

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

The above bolded indicates you know nothing about what happens in raiding. What happens on a number of encounters requires a lot more than just simply "pressing two buttons and listening". Case in point, I've been through MC on three classes, Warlock, Warriors, and Hunter. Each one plays a vital role and is doing a lot more than just pressing one or two buttons.

The Warlock has to keep the Lava Elementals and Reavers under control while trying to do DPS, this means that not only are you having to watch the mob the raid is killing, you also have to watch your target that you've been banishing and be ready to switch to the lava elemental or reaver at a moments notice, cause banishes don't last their full 30 seconds. The same goes for the Warlock on the Garr fight, you have to be awake and keeping your Firesworn banished and potentially helping with DPS. You also have to banish the Lava Surgers when the raid is working on another mob that patrol the instance at high speed and respawn every 30 minutes until Garr is downed.

For the Hunter, you play a role of keep Magmadar tranqed so that he doesn't eat the Tank. You could also be called upon to pull various mobs in the zone to tanks to either be off tanked or for the raid to demolish.

As a Warrior, you could be called upon to DPS or Tank as there are plenty of times where you have to act as a buffer for the raid, such as trying to get some aggro on those lava elementals and reavers so that if they break banish prematurely they don't go and murder the healers of the banishing Warlock.

You also have to be ready to move in the Mags fight, the Gehennas fight, the Garr fight potentially, the Geddon fight, the Shazzrah fight, the Sulfuron fight, the Domo fight, and the Rags fight. You have to be aware at all times what is going on.

And these are all things that you have to be aware of in the EASIEST of the 40 Man raid instances. If you had even experience raiding in MC, you would know how wrong your above statement really is. The fact that there is even more that you have to do in BWL, AQ40, and Naxx shows how little raiding is simply, "push two buttons and pay attention". Anyone here can go back and look on their first days of running these instances and remember how they weren't a joke (people running AQ40 and Naxx look back on MC as if it is a joke now, but it wasn't when they were just getting into it after just got their gear out of Strat, Scholo, BRS, Dire Maul, and others).

On a personal note, I think you've pretty much reached your limit with me. So from now on, I will ignore your posts and responses to me. You are of course free to contradict or taunt me in any way you want. Yeh, you can deny doing that too of course. Look at it this way, you join an elite company of people that I ignore here that includes Doc, Pete and several lesser personalities. I have enough aggravation in RL, why do I need to get aggravated here? Exactly.
So long and thanks for the fish.
-A

That's typical of you Ashock, take the cowards way out. Typical thick headed, I-don't-care-what-you-think attitude that means you will never really learn. Simply put, you get aggrevated because you are unwilling to see anything from another person's view point, you only want people to agree with you. Guess what, people have their own minds and have their own ideas, and those people that are willing to have an open mind can learn and grow, but that will never happen for you cause you're a narrow-minded individual.

[Lissa]

No. This leads to quick burnout. Trust me, I've tried it myself.

For some Quark, but not all. I kinda enjoy this kind of thing myself...over course I'm raiding in some form about 5 to 6 days a week... :whistling:

[oldmandennis]

Take your e-egos and your e-peens and your tired tired old arguments about raids vs small groups and go someplace far, far away from this thread. It is absolutely irrelevent.

Only it's nothing like that from what I've seen. The difficulty is for the new lower level (60-64) instances and it's based on player level.

Later posts made it seem more like a toggle the party leader sets as they zone. Also, I haven't seen any mention of elite levels for the larger instances. It is quite possible there is no difficulty setting on anything larger then 5-man.

... You must not know what most of us are like if you're actually saying this is a good thing. You want to start an arms race where the first to 70 win and get a raid spot?

Well there will be more to it then some kind of grueling ultra leveling mararthon. Look, you are going to have some spread in leveling speed. In some cases it's going to be quite extream, as the completionists fly back and forth over outland doing obscure fedex quests, and the altitis players hop back and forth to maximise rest XP. You could easily have a 3-5 month gap in people dinging 70 on their mains. Then, if the encounters are truely difficult, you have a 1-2 month spread as people gear up their arcane resist or w/e. By the time all of that is done, you will have had SOME atterition. And the people who got there first will be ready to start rotating out, as they will have most of the loot in the zone.

[kershner]

Only it's nothing like that from what I've seen. The difficulty is for the new lower level (60-64) instances and it's based on player level.
Either I'm heavily confused or you are.
... You must not know what most of us are like if you're actually saying this is a good thing. You want to start an arms race where the first to 70 win and get a raid spot? Can't log out ... Bolty is two bubbles ahead of me!. Right, that's exactly the atmosphere I want in my raid group.

Every "superguild" that formed on my server by the first group of 60s to start filling raids died. Every single one. It took the ones alliance side only a few months at most, and the only one horde side to last more than a year recently disbanded. Members > Loot, and I'm not going to partake in some stupid race that'll shatter friendships and abandon people who can only spend 10-15 hours a week on this game instead of 40 just to get an item a few months quicker then have it all fall apart.

I love the imagery... I'm not arguing that the grind effect is a good thing, I'm instead arguing that the concerns current guilds have over how to restructure (including already arguing over who will be booted) are moot because those problems won't have to be faced due to the larger damaging effect of the grind.

As for the difficulty level, we are likely both heavily confused. lol. There is conflicting information, but the most detailed is this statement from the EU press tour:
"A new feature is the difficulty settings and the group leader can select between five modes, of "easily" to "super+heavily". Loot is also variable depending on the degree of difficulty you underatle. The harder the difficulty, the better the loot."
Contradicting this (perhaps) from the 1up article is this quote:
"The loot will scale with the level of difficulty selected for the zone (that level of difficulty is related to the level of the players involved)."

I *hope* that the first is correct and that a difficulty slider is implemented. The latter actually implies both, the non-parenthetical states 'selected', the parenthetical states level.

-Kershner

[Tuftears]

How long would it take to mindlessly farm for the items for the (Darkmoon) neck?

2400 rugged leather, or given a roughly 80% drop rate from the yeti in Winterspring, 3000 yeti, so at an average kill rate of one per minute, 50 hours. Not horrible, especially since you can start/stop it anytime you like, or you can buy rugged leather off the AH at maybe 3 gold/stack of 20, or 360 gold.

For some classes, bear in mind, this is a necklace easily as good or better than a Molten Core epic.

Druids: cat form, +39 AP, +1% crit, 10 stamina
Rogues: +29 AP, +1% crit, 10 stamina
Warriors and Paladins: +20 AP, +1% crit, 10 stamina
Hunters: +38 RAP, +0.4% crit, 10 stamina

Epic necklaces:

Barbed Choker: +44 AP, 1% crit, +10 sta (drops from Fankriss in AQ40!)
Onyxia's Tooth Pendant: +12 agility, +9 stamina, +10 fire resist, +1% to hit, +1% to crit
Eye of Hakkar: +40 AP, 1% crit (no stamina!)

Blue necklaces:

Imperial Jewel: +32 AP, +7 sta
Mark of Fordring: +26 AP, +1% crit
Stormpike Soldier's Pendant: +18 AP, +15 sta
Will of the Martyr: +30 AP, +10 sta

[Icebird]

A druid in our guild farmed all 600 glowing scorpid blood he needed in a week...

[Quark]

A druid in our guild farmed all 600 glowing scorpid blood he needed in a week...

A week is too long for some people, while I've gotten one new item in the past two months (and it's still not even usable until we get further). But hey, I'm swimming in stuff, I live on easy-street where I put in no effort and get phat lootz.

I really don't want to diminish other player's concerns, there are problems with this game. I'm just tired of being treated like a loot-whoring jerk with too much time on my hands because I actually raid.

[Warlock]

It's probably better to farm cash and buy the parts for the Darkmoon than accumulate the entire hand-in yourself. If you're specifically looking to upgrade your neckpiece and value it's stats, the Darkmoon is a good choice since you can choose exactly the item you want. If you're looking for other upgrades it'll take a bit longer to get them through the Darkmoon system.

[Warlock]

A week is too long for some people, while I've gotten one new item in the past two months (and it's still not even usable until we get further). But hey, I'm swimming in stuff, I live on easy-street where I put in no effort and get phat lootz.

I really don't want to diminish other player's concerns, there are problems with this game. I'm just tired of being treated like a loot-whoring jerk with too much time on my hands because I actually raid.

What we can't tell is how many hours of play that week is. I'd guess 20 or so, resulting in one decent epic item. I'm pretty sure you'd get better than that if you spent the same amount of time in MC or BWL with your guild on a new 60 alt.

I don't think you're a jerk at all. I recognise that later raids are a different level of difficulty to the first ones released; that you're able to enjoy yourself in that way does not diminish my experience. That little has been provided for smaller groups as raiding has grown from MC to Naxx does. The 1.10 chain is a start but that seems to be it before the expansion.

I'd like to see more playstyles supported. I'd like to be able to join a raid on occassion and not be a liability to my guild simply due to inability to obtain the necessary gear; I'd like to be able to take loot from raids and not trivialise the rest of the game. I'd like it to be an option rather than a lifestyle.

[Lissa]

What we can't tell is how many hours of play that week is. I'd guess 20 or so, resulting in one decent epic item. I'm pretty sure you'd get better than that if you spent the same amount of time in MC or BWL with your guild on a new 60 alt.

I don't think you're a jerk at all. I recognise that later raids are a different level of difficulty to the first ones released; that you're able to enjoy yourself in that way does not diminish my experience. That little has been provided for smaller groups as raiding has grown from MC to Naxx does. The 1.10 chain is a start but that seems to be it before the expansion.

I'd like to see more playstyles supported. I'd like to be able to join a raid on occassion and not be a liability to my guild simply due to inability to obtain the necessary gear; I'd like to be able to take loot from raids and not trivialise the rest of the game. I'd like it to be an option rather than a lifestyle.

I'd say it's a lifestyle if you choose it to be that way. There are plenty of things that you can do that don't revolve around raiding. I know Bun rarely raids on his characters and puts most of his time into playing alts and trying different things with the same classes (he's got two druids, two warlocks, and I think two hunters, with the druids, a warlock, and a hunter capped, but each has a different talent build for each duplicate). We also have a number of people in our alliance on Stormrage that raid when they get a chance and they have some decent gear as well and are learning how to raid. As was stated by others, you typically will have a core raid group and then those that can make raids as time permits.

The "necessary gear," isn't as hard to obtain as main people think. Most raiders started out with blues from the "end game" instances (Strat, Scholo, BRS, Dire Maul) and then geared up in MC before progressing to BWL and on. The worst part about preparing for BWL was farming MC for the cores to make the fire resistance gear, although you can get around that to some degree if you're a cloth or leather wearer.

[Skandranon]

What this change does is to make more content accessible to more people without reducing difficulty nor the reward differential between casual and hardcore.

See, this is the part oft-quoted but rarely argued. How many "more people" is this content accessible to?

Perhaps my wall-of-text post earlier on discouraged readers. Let me make it short and sweet.

The only people this change helps are hardcore players who cannot currently reach 40 players by way of some external constraint. Except for these players, anybody who does not max-limit raid now will not max-limit raid in the expansion.

You can approximate the number of people who will benefit by looking at the number of people who regularly raid Zul'Gurub and the Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj, but who do not raid Molten Core. On my server, there are very, very few of these players. I suspect it is the same for other servers.

[Skandranon]

As such it can be said that there is 60% less drama in a 25man group than in a 40man group.

Quite frankly, I don't think it's possible to quantify drama. I suppose your statement that "it can be said" is true, but the saying is utterly meaningless. It shouldn't be interpreted to say that all guilds will experience a reduction in drama of approximately the same size, because that's simply untrue. There are many who have experienced a reduction in drama from going from a small guild to a large guild; the reverse is not always true. That your personal experience may be different I respect, but everyone's experiences are different.

[Thecla]

Time isn't the issue here.

I meant simply that once people have invested a lot of time with things set up a certain way (say, 40 player raids) it naturally becomes difficult to change things without causing lots of hurt feelings. Had your 40-person raid team had been going for one week it surely wouldn't be too difficult to trim it down to 25, so in that respect time is the issue here. (This explanation provides no consolation to you in your situation, I understand.)

Of course, I have a completely different and irrelevant beef with the way WoW is designed as a massive time-sink, leading players on down an endless electronic path, lured by the promise of better stuff at the end of it. I don't believe MMORPGs have to be that way, and no doubt you don't have to play them that way if you don't want to; but the concept worked for EQ, and it has worked even better for WoW.

my girlfriend is the second tank, and it very good friends with the main tank. If we do 2 raid groups, they'd be forced into separate groups regardless of their wishes, which would likely make the game less enjoyable to both

Well then, whatever you do, my advice is not to put both your main tank and your second tank in the opposite group to the one you're in. (j/k.:P)

[kershner]

Quite frankly, I don't think it's possible to quantify drama. I suppose your statement that "it can be said" is true, but the saying is utterly meaningless. It shouldn't be interpreted to say that all guilds will experience a reduction in drama of approximately the same size, because that's simply untrue. There are many who have experienced a reduction in drama from going from a small guild to a large guild; the reverse is not always true. That your personal experience may be different I respect, but everyone's experiences are different.

Actually, given that the design of my argument was mathematical and not anecdotal in nature, there will *definitely* be a reduction in net 'drama' due to the principles of group dynamics and constraint behavior. Not all guilds will experience this, but on average all guilds will. This isn't 'my personal experience', this is social behavior theory. Smaller groups function better.

-Kershner