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08-12-2006, 02:30 AM
(This post was last modified: 08-12-2006, 02:31 AM by Concillian.)
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.a...p=1#post9467359
Eyonix:
Quote: It's true, the plan is for five-player capped grouped dungeons. Ten-player capped raid dungeons. As well as Twenty-five-player capped epic raid dungeons. We wanted to focus on smaller raid environments, primarily to allow for greater individual player contribution. Also, in these smaller environments, hybrid classes have more opportunity to shine.
This is perhaps the best news I have heard yet concerning the expansion.
I know some people won't like it, but for me personally this is about as good as WoW related news gets, period.
Conc / Concillian -- Vintage player of many games. Deadly leader of the All Pally Team (or was it Death leader?)
Terenas WoW player... while we waited for Diablo III.
And it came... and it went... and I played Hearthstone longer than Diablo III.
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The news is just flooring our guild, but most people like the change. It'll be great to have encounters with more individual play in them, although I think Blizzard has done a great job with some of the boss encounters in Naxxramas and the end of AQ40 as far as 40-man raids goes. The big thing, though, is the change that this is going to bring to existing guilds. There will no longer be the need for very massive guilds to raid. 2/3rds of the players = 1/3rd the drama imho. At the same time, what do guilds who do have guilds sizes designed for 40-man content do? Run two 25-mans? Or downsize? Already, our guild is talking about letting the expected attrition at expansion take care of downsizing for us.
I think this'll be a positive change. I think there will be more guilds and more people will be able to find groups they want to be around. However, it's going to take some time for many guilds to adjust to it.
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And, of course, there's a *lot* more being revealed. PvP changes, the addition of Bloodlust, and much more.
http://www.1up.com/do/previewPage?cId=3152830
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Very good change IMO. The expansion is sounding very good to me right now.
My first thought on how a 50-60 player raid guild would adapt to running 25 man instances rather than 40 is to split into Pacific and Eastern time raids. Having a choice of start time will make regular attendance easier, so it might not need all that much extra recruiting to fill two raids - and you'll want to do that anyway to add the extra classes to your mix.
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Yes, but these 25-man dungeons won't be like the relatively easy 20-man dungeons that we've seen already. These are going to be tough dungeons that require skill, gear, perseverence, and time. They likely won't be something where you'd want to split your best players into two raiding parties. I suspect that what's going to happen is that a whole lot of guilds are going to be breaking up, reshuffling, and reforming over the coming months. Guild sizes are going to have some radical adjustments with core players staying in some guilds and other people breaking off to join other guilds just forming. Overall, I think it will be good, as there won't be this trap where you have to be in only the very small handful of gigantic "raid capable" guilds to see high end content. If you don't like some people, you'll have more freedom to quit and join some other guilds whose people's personalities suit you more. I like it, but it's going to take a while to adjust to it.
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Best news I've ever heard about this game. Holy crap.
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Quote:Yes, but these 25-man dungeons won't be like the relatively easy 20-man dungeons that we've seen already. These are going to be tough dungeons that require skill, gear, perseverence, and time. They likely won't be something where you'd want to split your best players into two raiding parties. I suspect that what's going to happen is that a whole lot of guilds are going to be breaking up, reshuffling, and reforming over the coming months. Guild sizes are going to have some radical adjustments with core players staying in some guilds and other people breaking off to join other guilds just forming. Overall, I think it will be good, as there won't be this trap where you have to be in only the very small handful of gigantic "raid capable" guilds to see high end content. If you don't like some people, you'll have more freedom to quit and join some other guilds whose people's personalities suit you more. I like it, but it's going to take a while to adjust to it.
Certainly all current raiding guilds will need to adapt. If a guild has exactly the right people and schedules now to reliably raid with 40 people without anyone feeling pressured into attending or disappointed at being excluded then this is clearly not a good change for them. A sixty player guild with 20 regulars that gets a random five other players showing up some nights and all 40 on others will appreciate the change - especially if the smaller instances on the hard setting are competitive enough that running them doesn't feel like a waste of time to players with access to the 25 man ones.
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Quote:Yes, but these 25-man dungeons won't be like the relatively easy 20-man dungeons that we've seen already.
I don't doubt they will be harder, but go to ZG or AQ20 without any MC, BWL, AQ40 or Naxx gear. Hit ZG with just end game blues (not even dungeon 2 stuff). The current 20 mans are pretty challenging in that setting, but not many people ever experienced them in that light. Even if you only have ZG and AQ20 gear (have mastered those instances) those places are easily as hard as MC and BWL and even some of AQ40. Not quite the challenge of the 40 man stuff but some of the 20 mans are easy is because of overgearing. :)
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From a guild management point of view, this is going to be.... interesting? I think that's the word I'm looking for, but I'm really not sure.
Consider the guild in which I am the Druid officer, Divinus of Thunderhorn. On a 40-man raid night, we'll have anywhere from 35-45 online at startup time. Great number of people to do a 40-man raid. I don't see us growing too much larger, and I also don't see us cutting back. With the new caps, we stand to have anywhere from 10-20 people sitting outside unable to raid at formup time, with more trickling in later.
We could grow a bit and then form two 25-man raids that night, but I don't see any good reason to spread the "talent," so to speak. The goal will be progress, and spreading up the A-Team players doesn't accomplish that. However at the same time, I doubt anyone will want to completely abandon Naxxramas, so we're back to raiding with 40.
Brings up lots of questions, and for some reason I see the self-proclaimed "casual" players lauding it. If the number of AQ20 and ZG runs are any good indication, I don't forsee a lot of pickup BC raids for quite some time.
Lots to digest.
Oh, and by the way, anyone find any screenshots of the Draeni war elephants? I've got 700some stacks of runecloth in waiting...
See you in Town,
-Z
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08-12-2006, 05:50 AM
(This post was last modified: 08-12-2006, 05:58 AM by Hedon.)
I basically concur with Mongo on this.
Gameplay wise it is probably a good change. Less people make for less complications, less downtimes, less organization overhead etc. Blizzard has shown in ZG and AQ20 that raiding encounters on a smaller scale can be as challenging as the big ones. Jin'do is imho more difficult than anything you encounter in MC.
But the consequences for existing guilds can be devastating indeed. Managing a sufficient pool of people for 40 man content is like shepherding cats. We raiders are not exactly known for our humble egos. ;)This very annoucement alone is probably enough to stir guild drama on it's own. People will look at their fellow raiders and make mental lists with whom they would be willing to raid in a smaller raid environment if they had the choice. This could very much accelerate the unraveling of existing guilds, which would be a pity as most of them haven't probably even visited Naxx yet. The looming shadow of guild reorganization and a general feeling that the era of 40 mans will end anyway isn't exactly a motivation for progression in Naxx or AQ40.
In the end: yes, it's probably a good decision for more managable and accessable content, yet the adaption process will hurt. One can only hope that Burning Crusade will be released soon, so that the uncertainty will end.
On another note: I hope that this is not beginning of complete "casualization" of the game. There are already people whining that the current 20 mans are to much to ask for, and some are even not willing to do five content. A WoW where the most casual players set the standards is certainly not something I'm looking for.
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Quote:I don't doubt they will be harder, but go to ZG or AQ20 without any MC, BWL, AQ40 or Naxx gear. Hit ZG with just end game blues (not even dungeon 2 stuff). The current 20 mans are pretty challenging in that setting, but not many people ever experienced them in that light. Even if you only have ZG and AQ20 gear (have mastered those instances) those places are easily as hard as MC and BWL and even some of AQ40. Not quite the challenge of the 40 man stuff but some of the 20 mans are easy is because of overgearing. :)
This is very true (i.e. if you've only run Maraudon as a 60 because it came out after you'd already capped). Ossirian is probably harder than any boss in MC. And pre-nerfed Rajaxx wasn't easy either.
Also, I hope they do eventually scale existing content to be worthwhile in "hard" mode to level 70s.
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Quote:On another note: I hope that this is not beginning of complete "casualization" of the game. There are already people whining that the current 20 mans are to much to ask for, and some are even not willing to do five content. A WoW where the most casual players set the standards is certainly not something I'm looking for.
Since release:
- 1 new level 60 5-man dungeon + tweaks to existing 5-mans
vs
- 2 20-man instances
- 3 40-man instances
I imagine any whining from "the casuals" is a product of being almost completely ignored for 18 months.
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Good news. :D
Already my guild has difficulties to motivate 40 people for Ahn'Qiraj consistently.
I expect that many will quit WOW after the initial excitement over the expansian has subsided.
Old age and treachery will always overcome youth and enthusiasm!
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Quote:I basically concur with Mongo on this.
Gameplay wise it is probably a good change. Less people make for less complications, less downtimes, less organization overhead etc. Blizzard has shown in ZG and AQ20 that raiding encounters on a smaller scale can be as challenging as the big ones. Jin'do is imho more difficult than anything you encounter in MC.
But the consequences for existing guilds can be devastating indeed. Managing a sufficient pool of people for 40 man content is like shepherding cats. We raiders are not exactly known for our humble egos. ;)This very annoucement alone is probably enough to stir guild drama on it's own. People will look at their fellow raiders and make mental lists with whom they would be willing to raid in a smaller raid environment if they had the choice. This could very much accelerate the unraveling of existing guilds, which would be a pity as most of them haven't probably even visited Naxx yet. The looming shadow of guild reorganization and a general feeling that the era of 40 mans will end anyway isn't exactly a motivation for progression in Naxx or AQ40.
In the end: yes, it's probably a good decision for more managable and accessable content, yet the adaption process will hurt. One can only hope that Burning Crusade will be released soon, so that the uncertainty will end.
On another note: I hope that this is not beginning of complete "casualization" of the game. There are already people whining that the current 20 mans are to much to ask for, and some are even not willing to do five content. A WoW where the most casual players set the standards is certainly not something I'm looking for.
As a raider (I guess) currently progressing through BWL, I love this change. I only raid 40-person dungeons because they're the only way to progress my character - I find them boring and tedious, and I really enjoy five-man, ten-man, and twenty-man groups a lot more (tending towards ten-man as an ideal size).
As far as having people excluded from content because a guild was designed to contain 40 people for raiding, I'm not too sympathetic. "Casuals" had to deal with the exact same issues raiders will go through when the player cap on Stratholme, Scholomance, Blackrock Spire, etc. was lowered. Yes, there are guilds of ten to fifteen people who enjoyed making guild runs through those instances. I'm in one of them. When the player cap was lowered, we lost our main guild events, which really allowed us to learn, bond, and work together.
Casualization is something that I predict WoW will tend toward. Everyone knows that casuals are the majority of players - Blizzard (and behind them, Vivendi) would be foolish to cater to the minority of hardcore raiders. It just doesn't make any business sense. Smaller-group content is just more inclusive. Raiders can still clear five, ten, and twenty-five man instances, but the shift towards smaller instances makes that newly-developed content more accessible to casuals as well. They cater to the majority and don't exclude the minority.
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Wow ... just wow. I like the change from a game perspective, but it could be very painful getting to that 25.
Trade yourself in for the perfect one. No one needs to know that you feel you've been ruined!
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Quote:Wow ... just wow. I like the change from a game perspective, but it could be very painful getting to that 25.
Personally, I think this is a good thing. The smaller dungeons have always been very fun to me. I look forward to more creative, epic fights on a smaller scale. Things like Jin'do, Hakkar, and Ossirian are tons of fun and I think that if the focus becomes to make those smaller instances fun, I think Blizzard will really throw everything they have into the effort. :)
As far as putting together the 25-man runs, I think that there will be groundwork that will need to be laid, but I think once it works itself out, then it should be a much better system than what is currently in the game. This even raises the possibility that the big raiding structures necessary to keep 40-man raids going will be largely unnecessary. Organizing a 25 man raid will be quite a bit less of a hassle than organizing a 40 man raid.
One thing that I think is kind of lame, however, is that they plan to put a timer on the 10-man raid instances. I just don't understand the point of that since it means that you will only be able to do 5-man instances without having to worry about raid locks. Hopefully those raid timers will be relaxed shortly after the expansion comes out to be more in line with how the end-game currently works.
-TheDragoon
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Quote:One thing that I think is kind of lame, however, is that they plan to put a timer on the 10-man raid instances. I just don't understand the point of that since it means that you will only be able to do 5-man instances without having to worry about raid locks. Hopefully those raid timers will be relaxed shortly after the expansion comes out to be more in line with how the end-game currently works.
I at first thought that, well if they make the instance hard enough that you will need more time to get it done then this is a good thing. But then, when thinking about it even more I realized that for some of the smaller guilds that if you can't finish it in one night anyway you might never reuse the raidlock. That's actually how ZG, AQ20, and MC is happening for us on Terenas (and we are working on Rags now). We have yet to reuse a raidlock. We go as far in a night as we can in the time we have (4 hours is the cut off time, but many people will go 5). Hakkar is down, Ossiran I hope will go down on Monday. It's not like it completely stops progress, you still get the place on farm and it still ends up taking the same time block. Blizzard hasn't designed an instance yet that once you 'get it' takes more than about 4 hours to complete. OK I can't speak for any of the Naxx wings.
So yeah I'm not sure about raidlocks on the smaller stuff. Really anything shorter than 3 days will make it pretty much not usable for a sizable portion of players as far as saving progression and will just mean it's yet another artifical way to slow people down. I guess that isn't horrible, the game isn't really hard, but yeah. Maybe a system where if saving for progression really is the big deal that a boss just drops something that allows you to get back to that point again quickly. Dunno. I've never been a huge fan of raid locks to begin with.
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Quote:Since release:
- 1 new level 60 5-man dungeon + tweaks to existing 5-mans
vs
- 2 20-man instances
- 3 40-man instances
I imagine any whining from "the casuals" is a product of being almost completely ignored for 18 months.
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!" Well, yeah, on average, they get one whole new boss to defeat each week. Otherwise, they're slogging through the same content they were doing before. On the other hand, the casual content that has been released tends to be completed very quickly (or for the grinding quests involves doing the same thing repeatedly). It took, what, a week for most people to have seen all that Dire Maul had to offer when it came out. ZG was fun, and yes, I went through it and the whole learning curve with a group all in low quality blues with an alt on Twisting Nether. But even with this group, it only took a couple weeks to learn and finish ZG. It doesn't compare to the months-long learning curves of AQ40 or Naxxramas. I'm looking forward to having new content in the expansion that takes small groups a long time and a lot of effort to learn and finish, too.
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08-12-2006, 05:15 PM
(This post was last modified: 08-12-2006, 05:17 PM by MongoJerry.)
Quote:As far as having people excluded from content because a guild was designed to contain 40 people for raiding, I'm not too sympathetic. "Casuals" had to deal with the exact same issues raiders will go through when the player cap on Stratholme, Scholomance, Blackrock Spire, etc. was lowered. Yes, there are guilds of ten to fifteen people who enjoyed making guild runs through those instances. I'm in one of them. When the player cap was lowered, we lost our main guild events, which really allowed us to learn, bond, and work together.
The comparison isn't really the same. First of all, all of those dungeons were already designed for 5-man (strat, scholo, and lbrs) and 10-man (ubrs) parties already. People who were running them with 10-man and 15-man parties were already zerging them as it was, so there was little "learning" or "working together." Pretty much it was all just kill the monsters with little planning and get the loot. And, oh, if you want the quests, make sure you drop group before the fight. Lowering the raid caps merely returned the dungeons to their intended level of difficulty, although it took so long to do it that it was like closing the barn door after the animals have all run out.
In your case, however, that shouldn't have mattered. After all, if you were able to organize 15-man teams, then it's not a stretch that you could get five more people to run ZG with you. By the time the raid caps were lowered on the 5- and 10-player dungeons, you should've been ready for new challenges anyway.
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I don't see this as a positive change at all. The top end guilds just got the shaft. There is no way any of the "elite" guilds will split up their raid force to run 2 25 man raids. Nobody wants to be in the "B" team. My guild has 7 bosses down in Naxx and will have 2 more down shortly. I am not looking forward to saying goodbye to 20+ people when TBC comes out. That is the reality for top end guilds. The trend of Blizzard has always been to dumb down raiding and i see this change as being that. The intricacies of the fights in Naxx requires every raid member to be awake and thinking. Usually one death unravels the boss attempt. Whatever guild i have been in we have taken Hakkar down on our first try and Ossirian down on our first try. Lots of people consider those fights HARD and some have never defeated those 20 man bosses. I considered them TRIVIAL and EASY. And yes i have done them with characters in blues and greens. It seems the casuals have won the day and the dollar speaks mightily to Blizzard. I guess its a great business move on their part.
I don't want easier content. I will be very surprised if they can make 25 content as difficult as 40. I do wish they had spread the hurt out a bit and made 25 cap dungeouns before the expansion. This is a harsh change and i am interested in how many hard core raiders will stay around for this game.
Cenarius Alliance
Liscentia 80 Death Knight (450 Herbalism 425 Inscription)
Mysteryium 80 Shaman (450 Skinning 441 Leatherworking)
Tutelin 80 Priest (413 Enchanting 420 Tailoring)
Frozzen 73 Mage (Tailoring 375 Enchanting 375)
Obstinate 71 Hunter (375 Herbalism 375 Alchemy)
Squabbles 70 Warlock (Tailoring 375 Leatherworking 291)
Niniuin 70 Paladin (Herbailism 375 Alchemy 375)
Thunderous 66 Warrior (Mining 375 Tailoring 360)
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