May News/Discussions

[Skandranon]

Yes, a 10 player instance which is tuned to the relative difficulty of it's corresponding 25 player would be harder on each individual which is a good reason to have the same loot tables. I also don't have any argument over excluding players who can't perform the required gaming challanges.

Blizzard does.

I appreciate you're arguing here on the basis of principle, but Blizzard wants people playing the content, and to be frank, the majority of players are really bad. It's basically a choice between two cases:

1) Ten mans that are equal in relative difficulty to 25 mans. Loot of equal quality and proportionate amount. Harder on each individual. Out of reach for the majority of players.

2) Ten mans that are easier than the equivalent 25 man. Loot of lesser quality and possibly proportionate amount. Easier on each individual. Accessible to far more players.

You want case 1. Blizzard wants case 2. The point I'm making is that there are pluses and minuses and Blizzard isn't being crazy to pick 2 - you just disagree.

I understand this perfectly, I also understand that it is a design philosophy based on a false assumption. That assumption being that the user base of MMO's is not growable and that to maximize profits you need to design to minimize or negate churn.

This isn't a bad assumption when designing content for the live team. Live team updates don't grow the MMO base; the boxed content is supposed to do that. You don't get into an MMO because of something the live team just added, because chances are you won't even see it for months. The entire purpose of the live team is to reduce churn.

And what's the opposite assumption? What is the counter-philosophy if this one is wrong? Are MMO userbases infinitely growable? What can the live team do to affect that - efficiently?

Whatever the end game is, whatever group size it happens to be, the live team needs to be able to produce content for it within its capacities and resources. 5 mans aren't the endgame specifically because they clearly can't build those fast enough relative to the rate of consumption. I don't see the alternative, unless your choice is to forego the live team completely, ignore people who reach the end of content, and just crank out an expansion every two years.

It seems totally absurd to me that...

You keep making these statements. "It's totally absurd that..." "Blizzard's crazy in that..." "It doesn't make sense to me that..." Blizzard is a quality game company with very smart people in it, and have made some of the best games of the past decade. What's the simplest and most compelling solution? That Blizzard is run by maniacs who don't make sense? Or that what they're doing is based on a very rational and understandable plan?

Things happen for reasons. In this case, they're happening for good reasons. You can't make a reasonable criticism of Blizzard's design by asserting that it's self-evidently absurd, because there are plenty of reasons why it's completely rational. If you want to suggest an alternative, you need to explain how what you suggest is better all-around and covers all the same ground the current endgame does.

[Chesspiece_face]

Things happen for reasons. In this case, they're happening for good reasons. You can't make a reasonable criticism of Blizzard's design by asserting that it's self-evidently absurd, because there are plenty of reasons why it's completely rational. If you want to suggest an alternative, you need to explain how what you suggest is better all-around and covers all the same ground the current endgame does.

No, I can't make an argument asserting that it is self-evidently absurd. I can, however, do what exactly what I have been doing. Quoting people who work for blizzard describing their design philosophy, and using those quotes to point out flaws and inaccuracies between what they claim to be doing with content and what is really happening "on the ground level" as it were.

I think your position that blizzards design and the one I am arguing for are worlds apart isn't very accurate. In fact I see the changes blizzard is making and has been making as a continuous pattern of moving towards the type of design I am speaking about. Many people conflate the idea of lower gateways of admission with feelings of "OMG free epix!" and i think this is the challange blizzard will face going forward. I'm sure we both agree that the more people that can reasonably see a piece of content the better. I'm sure that blizzard also agrees with that. I think that the great problem with the current end game is that the gateways for admission into any piece of content grows exponetionally with each step you take up the ladder.

Presently the gateways for content include things like # of Friends, Gear, Skill, Time, and maybe Character Spec. Time is more of a constant in these types of games. It's a fact, if you want to play you need to invest the time. Character Spec limitations are sort of brought up in a previous post and those issues are related to Class Balance. But the remaining gateways are really inescapable when you view the present state of WoW. And in many ways the design of the end game mishandles these gateways.

The fist checkpoint anyone needs to go through is the Friends aspect. Then depending on where you are in the progression Gear and Skill can move back and forth as more important. This is a problem because Gear and Skill (instead of alleviating the social issues of the Friends gateway) tend to exacerbate those issues. When Raiding guilds start losing players they need to start recruiting people at their level of content and because of the way things are set up presently the number of players at any step of progression is limited. I can go on and on about the inherant social issues with raiding, I'm sure I wouldn't be telling people anything they don't know.

When I look at Blizzards decision to create 10 player versions of 25 player content I see this as a strong step in the right direction. But I don't see it as alleviating or even necissarily reducing the hard gateways that are present in the WoW endgame. This is an issue specifically for WoW because the curve for most of the game is very low, then you hit the endgame wall and if you are able to get over it you can start to progress again with a higher curve. As long as that wall is there though it will produce a lot of the churn we are both talking about.

Let me say that I am not against the disparity of Tiers of loot between 10 and 25 player versions of content on principle. I have misgivings about how effective it will be to alleviate the aforementioned wall. If I am playing in the 10 player version of (insert instance here) and the rest of my guild is raiding on the 25 player version will the gear disparity be too large for me to sub in with them in the 25 player if they need a spot? Therein lies my hang-up. By creating relative difficulty instance versions with the same loot tables you can alleviate the hard wall and social frustrations related to raiding (The same frustrations that many people use as an excuse for why 25 player content should have better rewards!) by creating a greater pool of players. You also alleviate a lot of the loot pressures of raiding: If I am subbing in for someone and I normally progress my loot in a 10 player instance there is less of a chance of problems developing over loot drops. People would be more inclined to come into a raid for the first time knowing that they aren't going to get anything for their time or trouble if they have another means for progression already.

The benifits of this for raiding guilds wouldn't stop there either (and this benefit will be seen to some degree just with the inclusion of the 10 player versions). Because it will be much easier to gear up other members of your guild so that they are on the same level of the progression curve. The disparity between the gear of the raiders in any guild and the rest of the guild has always been a problem and it only hurts a guild when it is more efficient to recruit outside "mercenary" raiders to keep doing content instead of helping the members you already have progress up the curve.

I think the response a vast majority of the players get when they try to poke their head into the end game as it stands now is "sorry, you're not geared up enough. Go do PuGs/PvP/Whatever till you get your gear high enough" (ironically by the time they actually do that the rest of the raid is at the next tier and they are still undergeared) when the environment of the end game needs to be "Dude! get in this group, you need to see this!"

[Lissa]

Umm, not really, no. If it were, why does Zul'Jin drop almost Hyjal level loot?

And ZA is mostly challenging because of your group's gear level and class composition. Can't say the same for most of SSC/TK/Hyjal/BT.

Zul'jin drops T5 set piece level loot. He drops below Vashj and Kael level loot. Zul'jin (and Malacrass) drops ilvl 133, Vashj and Kael drop ilvl 138.

[Icebird]

Here's a wild theory on my part:

When Blizzard initially launched the game, they thought raid content would appeal to a small, devoted, "hardcore" gamer crowd, while the so-called "casual" players would be happy with 5-15 player instances and everything else.

Then the game became more popular than they probably ever dreamed, and they discovered that a lot of those "casual" players wanted to see all the content as well.

This has led to a bit of a dilemma for Blizzard: how do you make as much of your content as accessible to as many people as possible, while still maintaining challenging content for even the most cutting edge guilds?

The Burning Crusade is pretty much a case study of Blizzard zig-zagging between these goals. Capping the maximum raid size at 25 people made content *more* accessible (by reducing the logistical barriers to raiding); devising long and complicated attunement quest chains made content *less* accessible - until the point where they decided to remove them, and then suddenly boatloads more guilds were in SSC/TK/Hyjal/Black Temple.

The Sunwell Plateau requires no attunements. Its just flat out hard - hard enough to satisfy even the most bleeding edge of guilds. However I do expect a larger proportion of guilds to complete Sunwell than say Naxxramas because they will have longer to work on it before the expansion (best guess for release date - November or December).

I think Blizzard has made enough statements to the effect that they want people to see the content they create, they want players to feel part of the world. They've said they made a mistake by keeping Illidan pretty much locked up in Black Temple so the only players who to see him were raiders that made it that far.

When viewed through the prism of trying to cater to a very diverse player base, the two dungeon system makes a lot of sense as an extension of a lot of the initiatives begun in the Burning Crusade. Heroic dungeons showed they could extend the life of old content by creating an additional difficulty level. Karazhan showed they could design a 10 person dungeon which contained most of the complexity of a 25 person raid. Zul'Aman showed they could make a 10 person dungeon that was more challenging.

Re-using the same dungeon for two different raid sizes generates more bang for their development buck. It caters to groups that can put together 10 person raids but for one reason or another don't want to participate in 25 person content (and lets face it - its easier to get a group of 10 friends to group with than 25). It increases the options that 25 person raid guilds have for "off-nights", and also gives you more options for gearing up alts.

I'm okay with different difficulty levels and different rewards for the 10 and 25 person dungeons. Some encounters might be exactly the same, some might be wildly different but I think Blizzard will attempt to retain the essence of each fight (the Kael'Thas re-purposing in Magister's Terrace as one example - fights are completely different but many of the game play elements are the same). And I'm pretty confident that 10 person Arthas will be a lot harder than say, 25 person Naxxramas.

Chris

[Skandranon]

The benifits of this for raiding guilds wouldn't stop there either (and this benefit will be seen to some degree just with the inclusion of the 10 player versions). Because it will be much easier to gear up other members of your guild so that they are on the same level of the progression curve. The disparity between the gear of the raiders in any guild and the rest of the guild has always been a problem and it only hurts a guild when it is more efficient to recruit outside "mercenary" raiders to keep doing content instead of helping the members you already have progress up the curve.

Well, I agree that having 10 mans drop same-tier loot would be better for 25-man raid guilds, and thereby presumably better for 10 manners who want a boost up to 25-man raids. But that doesn't seem to be a compelling argument for exclusive ten-mans of equivalent overall difficulty and higher individual requirements, which is a prerequisite for equal-tier loot. How many of these people are there? Moreover, how many of these people would there be if loot was equal-tier?

You've said a lot of things that are mostly true, but they aren't adding up to an argument as to why you think 10-mans should be made equally difficult at the cost of accessibility. You talk of the gateways to endgame like a ladder, but I'm not sure the analogy fits, because you don't encounter barriers to raiding sequentially. You encounter them simultaneously, and any one of them can stop a player from entering the endgame. If you don't have the time, you're done, even if you have the skill and social comfort level. If you don't have the skill, you are also likewise stopped, even if you have time. And so forth.

Therefore, making it easier to satisfy one condition while making it harder to satisfy another doesn't accomplish anything. The obstacle hasn't been removed, just moved to a different spot on the path. It's still in the way. Blizzard also realizes that barriers to end-game tend to occur together, hence the stereotype of "casual" players. Obviously not everyone is like this, but people who aren't comfortable in 25-man groups tend not to have very much time. People without much time tend not to have much skill, and so on.

Making ten-mans easier is an elegant solution that brings all the barriers down at once. You need less people, you need less time, you need less skill. And to preserve the challenge-for-reward dynamic, you get worse loot. There's nothing flawed or inconsistent about this.

[Lissa]

Blizzard does.

I appreciate you're arguing here on the basis of principle, but Blizzard wants people playing the content, and to be frank, the majority of players are really bad. It's basically a choice between two cases:

1) Ten mans that are equal in relative difficulty to 25 mans. Loot of equal quality and proportionate amount. Harder on each individual. Out of reach for the majority of players.

2) Ten mans that are easier than the equivalent 25 man. Loot of lesser quality and possibly proportionate amount. Easier on each individual. Accessible to far more players.

You want case 1. Blizzard wants case 2. The point I'm making is that there are pluses and minuses and Blizzard isn't being crazy to pick 2 - you just disagree.

Ah, but they could make it the reverse though too Skan. With more people you could design in more leeway for error. Remember, having 90% of the people on the ball for a 10 man raid means only 1 person can be off while 90% being on the ball in a 25 means 2.5 people could be off. In effect, Blizzard could make the 10 mans where the real difficulty lies and make the 25 mans for the general populous that isn't as good.

[Taelas]

Lissa, organizing a 25-man is harder than organizing a 10-man. It's simply easier if they make the 10-man the easier progression.

[Skandranon]

Ah, but they could make it the reverse though too Skan. With more people you could design in more leeway for error. Remember, having 90% of the people on the ball for a 10 man raid means only 1 person can be off while 90% being on the ball in a 25 means 2.5 people could be off. In effect, Blizzard could make the 10 mans where the real difficulty lies and make the 25 mans for the general populous that isn't as good.

Ah, but then this gets to my point about barriers tending to occur together. People uncomfortable in a 25-man also tend to have less time and skill. Making the 10-mans the true hardcore challenge raise one barrier and lower another, and it's just as bad for content accessibility.

In essence, what Blizzard is doing is designing for the population they have. They know, in a general sense, what that population's attributes are, and are maximizing accessibility for them within the boundaries of design efficiency. That is not a bad thing to do.

[Lissa]

Lissa, organizing a 25-man is harder than organizing a 10-man. It's simply easier if they make the 10-man the easier progression.

Yet imagine a 10 man Illidan with the same difficulties you find in 25 man. How many people do you think would actually be there in 10 man that are there in 25 that really shouldn't be there in 25 man, but there is enough people to cover their inabilities to allow them to be there? 25 man has some leeway for slack, but 10 man (if made as difficult) wouldn't.

Just because organization may be easier, doesn't mean that the actual run would be easier.

[Taelas]

Yet imagine a 10 man Illidan with the same difficulties you find in 25 man. How many people do you think would actually be there in 10 man that are there in 25 that really shouldn't be there in 25 man, but there is enough people to cover their inabilities to allow them to be there? 25 man has some leeway for slack, but 10 man (if made as difficult) wouldn't.

Just because organization may be easier, doesn't mean that the actual run would be easier.

That's not the point.

They are already easier to organize.

If they also make them easier to beat, people with less skill can join those 10-man runs as well.

That means they have two progression paths: One for 'hard core' players (i.e. players who have the time to commit to raiding often, and who have the skill to do so), and one for 'casual' players (i.e. players who lack either the time or the skill or both).

Really, Skandranon explained this already, and much better than I could.

[oldmandennis]

I challenge you to scale the Illadin encounter down to 10 while still keeping all the essential challenges of the full version. It has to be completable by any reasonably balanced group of 10 at the appropriate gear level. It has to be completable with 1-2 of the less favored specs like Ret or Moonkin. It can't require any one class. Min-Maxing your raid composition can't make it trivial.

[Taelas]

There are 10-man fights in-game now that are trivialized (or were when they were actually hard) with the right composition -- Aran, for instance.

[Swiss Mercenary]

Yet imagine a 10 man Illidan with the same difficulties you find in 25 man. How many people do you think would actually be there in 10 man that are there in 25 that really shouldn't be there in 25 man, but there is enough people to cover their inabilities to allow them to be there?

About 3-4. They are either our friends, or we need their class.

Who those people are is made very evident when their constructs get in the raid, or they are the first to die to Archimonde, every attempt.

25 man has some leeway for slack, but 10 man (if made as difficult) wouldn't.

One of our three ZA healers frequently, and correctly comments that we are, in fact, on a two-healer run.

One monkey in a ten-man won't kill you. Three monkeys in a 25-man is a very similar ratio.

More people covering for you isn't the factor - it's ratio of people who know what they are doing, to people who are carried. And that ratio transcends group size.

Until you get to Gorefiend. I'd much rather do that fight with 10.

[ArchNemesis]

There are numerous fights in end-game content that provide very little margin for error.

Archimonde would be the first that comes to mind, and is also why I truly consider the fight by far more difficult than any other in BT/HJ. If a single person dies because they lagged or misjudged their Tears, it can often set in motions a chain reaction of deaths which cause a raid wipe.

Reliquary of Souls is the second, at least for an interrupters standpoint. Failure to kick a single Spirit Shock can often cascade into raid wipe, or the accidental kick of a Deaden can cause such a significant drop in raid DPS that you dont make it through phase 2.

On the other hand, in difficult 5-10 man groups, you dont have the room to bring any dead weight. If one of your DPS'ers is outputting 50% of your other two, you are running at 75-80% of your groups potential DPS.

Both arguments have merit, and are completely valid. There are many things that make 10 mans and 25 mans independently challenging.

[Lissa]

That's not the point.

They are already easier to organize.

If they also make them easier to beat, people with less skill can join those 10-man runs as well.

That means they have two progression paths: One for 'hard core' players (i.e. players who have the time to commit to raiding often, and who have the skill to do so), and one for 'casual' players (i.e. players who lack either the time or the skill or both).

Really, Skandranon explained this already, and much better than I could.

So are the heroic 5 mans, but do you remember what the heroics were like prior to 2.1 (especially Shattered Halls and Arcatraz)? Think about 10 man being like that in difficulty (the pre-2.1 heroics that weren't trivial) and imagine the 25 mans like 10 mans in 2.2 (before they were really trivialized). This is the kind of thing I think Chesspiece is trying to get across. Make the fights the same in both areas, just make the 25 scale up health. Suddenly you have the situation where 10 mans become the perfectionist area and the 25 mans become the leeway areas (possibly being doable with 15 to 20 people being on the ball). The point is, Blizzard could go either direction and could still make it challenging for all involved and give similar scales of loot (10 man for the pefectionist way of play and 25 man for the total number of people involved). Now do you see where Chesspiece was going?

[Skandranon]

Now do you see where Chesspiece was going?

We all understand where he's going, Lissa. What you don't understand is that my argument is that it is worse overall for Blizzard to do that as opposed to the way they're going to do it, with easier 10-mans. Is this clear enough for you?

[Lissa]

We all understand where he's going, Lissa. What you don't understand is that my argument is that it is worse overall for Blizzard to do that as opposed to the way they're going to do it, with easier 10-mans. Is this clear enough for you?

And I disagree that it would be necessarily worse. It would be easier to design more leeway into 25 mans than it would be in 10 mans. There's pros and cons to both ways of doing it, I just don't see that either way would be worse than the other.

[Pantalaimon]

And I disagree that it would be necessarily worse. It would be easier to design more leeway into 25 mans than it would be in 10 mans. There's pros and cons to both ways of doing it, I just don't see that either way would be worse than the other.

Could you elaborate on what the pros of having entry-level raiding be 25s and high-end being 10s is? I don't see any thoughts on why it would be better, just that Blizzard could do things that way if they'd like. And, I mean, Blizzard could do anything they'd like:P

I think it's worth discussing because it moves beyond the scope of what chesspiece was talking about; meaning obtaining equal loot in 10s and 25s.

Edit to contribute: We've already hammered over why blizzard likely keeps the loot one tier behind (so the encounters can be justifiably easier, and thus accessible to more people). They could beef up the difficulty of 10s and have equal loot, leaving some current "casual" raiders without an end-game, but why would they make the easier to organize raid harder in skill and vice versa?

The way it currently is now, there's a ladder yes. But that ladder works - you climb it as much as your combination of skill, social ability and time dictate. If we flip 10s and 25s, then there's no ladder, just one plateau - if you have good social abilities and mediocre skill, you'd do 25s, if you have good skill and perhaps not as big of a circle of friends, 10s. Sure there'd be people that benefit from that situation, namely people with god skill and not as big of a circle of friends would be on bleeding edge progression. But I believe in the long run more people would lose out: the "loafers" with bad skill but lots of friends, the prototypical "casual" with four kids and a small circle of friends who has time for a one-night kara clear, but not progression encounters on a 10-man boss, etc.

[Chesspiece_face]

The way it currently is now, there's a ladder yes. But that ladder works - you climb it as much as your combination of skill, social ability and time dictate.

Herein lies the (so-called) problem though. The ladder doesn't really work. It works for 5-player content but then totally breaks down after that. Like Skan says: at this point you are hit with mutliple gateways impeding anyones ability to continue up the ladder. My point regarding the gateways was just that # of friends is a hard deal breaker, a players gear and skill can always be improved.

I also think I should clarify my position a bit, the debate has drifted (not necissarily a bad thing, it's still interesting.)

Kaplan says: the difference between 10 player content and 25 player content should be social comfort level.

Kaplan says: there should be easy designed 10/25 player content and hard designed 10/25 player content

Blizzard already states that they are implementing 10 player versions of 25 player content just with 1 T-level lower loot.

I think this last point really throws the present progress ladder into more disarray then might be obvious at first. Skan, you say that the lower level of loot in the 10 player content allows them to balance it easier and allow more people to see that content. But how much easier can they really balance it? even with a T-lower loot table they can't balance it down to really be much more accessible (in either difficulty or time investment) without leaving 25 player content ghost towns. Who cares if it is lower tiered loot if the players will be onto the next 10 player instances before the 25 players can gear up in thier instance. Suddenly the 10 players are obtaining the same level loot and they are seeing fresher content than the 25 players. The only place the difference in loot quality becomes an issue is either right when content is released or when most of the people are at the highest level of content. This leaves the 10 player instances needing to be balanced pretty close, at least in time investment, to the 25 player content to force things to fall in line. Even with the difference in loot levels 10 player content will have to have reset timers close to the 25 player content if not the same else players blaze through the 10 player stuff and not even bother with 25 player content. If you really want to design them easier than forget one tier lower gear you need to drop the gear down a helluva lot lower than that. (But then you have 5 player instances.)

Taking the step of creating 10 player versions of 25 player instances really equated to jumping out of the plane and now they are sitting there going "hmmm, do I really want to pull the cord?"

If, however, we abandon the concept of the progress ladder as it stands we can come up with an arguably better design which allows a place to progress for the most amount of players.

For those that may not have the time or skill needed to sit at the big kids table there is always 5-man stuff. You start with the normal instances and when you are adequately geared from those you can move on to Heroic versions of those same places. Progressing from Easy Heroics to the Difficult Heroics offers you better loot and should increase player skill.

For those that have more time and skill you have 10/25 player content with the deciding factor being, like kaplan says, social comfort level. These instances also progress by difficulty with the Easy Instances being more lenient on player skill and also offering lower Tier loot. As you progress up the difficulty ladder of instances the loot goes up in quality as does the requirements on players. By keeping these instances in the same tier loot however allows blizzard to balance both instances to require about the same amount of time, etc. so that they don't have to worry about people flooding to one or the other because they can loot up faster. It also allows players to move more freely between each version alleviating pressures on raiding guilds. As well as allowing blizzard to totally forego attunement chains etc. (I saw a lot of people frown when they dropped the attunements in a lot of the BC stuff because now people would be going into the higher level instances without having learned the lessons present in the lower stuff.) If you have a difficulty based curve in place, however, any player with appropriate gear will have at least some experience and associated skill whether they got that experience from 10 player content or 25 player content.

Edit: There is also no reason that there cannot be 10 player content ala Black Rock Spire, which is essentially an extension of 5-player content and doesn't have the equatable 25 player associated instance.

Edit 2: I also understand the argument for easy versions of high end content. If there is going to be a cool Arthas battle why not make it so that all your players can see it and feel like they are part of the story. But by this logic why don't they just make 5 player versions of those instances? That is the level where most of the players end up at anyway and it seems like that is the level which needs the most leeway in getting to just SEE the rest of the story. It seems that the mentality is that these battles need to maintain some Epic nature, but by imposing granduer based on the number of players you are already limiting the amount of people that can see it. A properly designed encounter using dialogue, setting, etc can bestow a feeling of Epicness on players no matter how easy the encounter is. (My favorite thing in the whole game is still the Opera scene in Kara.)

[Lissa]

Could you elaborate on what the pros of having entry-level raiding be 25s and high-end being 10s is? I don't see any thoughts on why it would be better, just that Blizzard could do things that way if they'd like. And, I mean, Blizzard could do anything they'd like:P

Look at what entry level raiding was in 1.0. For a very long time it was Onyxia, around 1.5 they introduced Zul'Gurub, but in overall skill, Onyxia was still easier. Overtime, people started taking less and less people to Onyxia because they figured it out as taking 40 people became overkill (and the only reason to bring 40 eventually is to reduce kill time to the extreme).

If you look at tBC at launch, the only raid instance that required no attunements was Gruul's lair. If you also look at the way Blizzard lays out difficulty based on the tokens, Gruul's lair *should* have been easier than Karazhan (Maulgar should have been easier than Curator and Gruul should have been easier than Prince). (To show why this is the case, look at token layouts at present, for Tier 5 the gloves on Leotheras, the pants on FLK, shoulders on VR, hat on Vashj, and robe on Kael. Similarly for Tier 6 the gloves on are Azgalor, shoulders on Shahraz, pants on council, hat on Archimonde, and robe on Illidan. Difficulty for Blizzard has been shoulders -> gloves -> pants -> hat -> robe with shoulders and gloves sometimes being interchangeable.) The reason *why* Gruul's lair was more difficult than Karazhan in respects was because of bad tuning on Blizzard's part. They made the situation *too* difficulty and made it so people *had* to be buffed to the gills if they wanted a chance to succeed in the early raid instances. (Do you remember just what was required for Curator in the early days? People were going into that fight with every buff imaginable to have a chance against him.)

I think it's worth discussing because it moves beyond the scope of what chesspiece was talking about; meaning obtaining equal loot in 10s and 25s.

Edit to contribute: We've already hammered over why blizzard likely keeps the loot one tier behind (so the encounters can be justifiably easier, and thus accessible to more people). They could beef up the difficulty of 10s and have equal loot, leaving some current "casual" raiders without an end-game, but why would they make the easier to organize raid harder in skill and vice versa?

They could do that same by tuning the encounters for 10 man and then scale hit points and maybe damage done by mobs/bosses for 25 man, but they would be able to leave some slack. I don't buy Kaplan's comment about the social aspects as I only see marginally more people raiding the 10 mans than the 25 mans. A lot of the people you see raiding 10 mans that don't appear to be part of raid force that do 25 mans typically, but a large number of these people are alts of people that are raiding the 25 mans with their mains.

The other aspect that is being ignored by most is that there are a good number of people that *are* really good, but they can't stand dealing with 25 mans. Why should they be told that they can't have the challenge of a truly hardcore run at 10 man, why should they be forced to 25 man?

The way it currently is now, there's a ladder yes. But that ladder works - you climb it as much as your combination of skill, social ability and time dictate. If we flip 10s and 25s, then there's no ladder, just one plateau - if you have good social abilities and mediocre skill, you'd do 25s, if you have good skill and perhaps not as big of a circle of friends, 10s. Sure there'd be people that benefit from that situation, namely people with god skill and not as big of a circle of friends would be on bleeding edge progression. But I believe in the long run more people would lose out: the "loafers" with bad skill but lots of friends, the prototypical "casual" with four kids and a small circle of friends who has time for a one-night kara clear, but not progression encounters on a 10-man boss, etc.

IMO, the best solution for Blizzard would be to set normal and heroic levels to the instances. Make it so those people that want a truly hardcore experience can do the heroic level at either 10 man or 25 and get one level of loot higher than what normal would be. You then give the hardcore people the same amount of opportunity at which ever level they prefer while still leaving things open for the less skilled and more casual players to run either at 10 man or 25 man.