What is the ideal raid size?
by Amanda Rivera 
May 14th 2007 at 2:01PM
Over at Elitist Jerks Quigon of Maraudor started a thread about raiding. In it he philosophizes about raiding as we knew it, and how things have changed since the expansion. Raids in the original WoW varied in size, but the main push was toward the 40-man grouping. We did it in MC, in Naxxramas, even with the world dragons. But with the large number of members the encounters were for the most part simplistic, since it takes a great deal of skill to coordinate a large number of people to do just about anything.
As Quigon puts it, the feeling of an epic fight has diminished somehow, despite the new encounters being more challenging. There isn't the same amount of excitement as a boss drops, that tangible electricity over the Vent channel. Is this because the encounters still need some tune ups, or is it because of the smaller group? Do you get the same swelling of pride as you form up as a group of 25 heroes to wage war as you would if there were 40 of your brethren around you? On the other hand, what about the 72-man raids in Everquest? Since we have so many variations in spec, build and class these days, wouldn't more people in a raid be better than fewer?
He raises a lot of stimulating questions, questions I'd love to hear your perspective on. What is the perfect raid size? Is it 10, 40, or 100?
[via Elitist Jerks]
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Raiding
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Mats May 14th 2007 2:27PM
Id like to see some 15man raids.
25 is a pain to get togheter, 10 forces you to leave some classes behind, 15 would be perfect.
Sylvina May 14th 2007 2:30PM
Wouldn't there be 9/24/39 of your brethren around you? Unless you're counting yourself. :P
Amanda Rivera May 14th 2007 2:39PM
But Sylvina, I count my personalities separately. :)
Seper May 14th 2007 2:41PM
I think they should merge some servers.. then we can talk..
On my server its rumored that our casual guild is ahead of even some of the hardcore groups.
But we have trouble getting 10 people together. We pull from our guild and 2 other guilds. But since our server is very small.. well its hard to get that together nm a 25man.
On the PTR server it took me 1.5 hours to get 25 people together for BT.
But now I can get 30-40 people together easy for an old azeroth raid. (aq specifically)
I as did everyone else in those 20 man raids prefered the larger numbers. We were all casuals. All there to have fun. When we downed a boss even though he was a 60 raid boss. Cheers rang through vent.
The first down of a boss in kara in our guild we had the same feeling. But when we downed him this week it wasn't that big of a deal.
I prefer running with larger groups. Makes the downs feel more important then they are. Makes it seem alot harder. You also have alot more fun. This 10 man and 25 man stuff is lame IMO.
Eldiablohijo May 14th 2007 3:04PM
The last MMO I played before WoW (Dark Age of Camelot) there was no player cap on any 'raid content', it was all shared between everyone of the same faction.
This is nice in the general fact that it supports coperation between multiple guilds.
There was an ideal number of people to bring along a raid, the more people you bring the longer you have to wait for afks/lds. The fewer you brought along the harder the encounters became but the faster you could go.
So I miss the days of the large raids, it was fun to see that much copeeration between guilds and people in general, I don't generally see that much in WoW.
Cosmic May 14th 2007 3:10PM
80. that would be awesome. 80 man raid or world boss encounter. I doubt they ever do it though.
Orin May 14th 2007 3:15PM
100+ would be so cool, unfortunately it usually just crashes servers or personal computers can't handle that many spells or actions at once...
Joeboo May 14th 2007 3:32PM
40 mans raids was the good old days. I don't like Kara and i don't have the same feelings when we first downed a 25 mans raid boss.
IMO, removing 40 mans raid was the worst move in TBC. It was easier before BC for a casual gamer to get into a 40 mans.
blackangely2k May 14th 2007 3:40PM
Honestly, 20-man was the most balanced raid size. Every member mattered, but it wasn't the faceless mob of the 40-man raid.
I have trouble identifying with the author's statement that "there isn't the same amount of excitement as a boss drops, that tangible electricity over the Vent channel." I find it to be quite the opposite. 40 people cannot express their personalities on a raid: almost the very first rule a raid leader has to impose on a larger raid is the need for discipline over the channel. In some guilds only officers or class leaders are even allowed to speak. And if such rules are not imposed, then the "electricity" she is describing is likely the horrible static of 40 whooping raiders, tired as hell after wiping on another encounter that hinged on all 40 people moving to the right at the same time.
Too much emphasis was placed on 40-man content pre-BC. Blizzard has realized the error it made, and is acting to correct it. But 2 years of "all 40-man, all the time" has set a lot of minds in stone, and they cannot adapt to encounters where they need to both be there AND be awake, because their single character is so much more important now.
Patmos May 14th 2007 3:47PM
more 10 and 15 man raids that way casual guilds can still progress while you can make heroics of the 40 man raids for those hardcore guys out there
crsh May 14th 2007 3:57PM
10-15 is fine for casual raids, 25 isn`t much of a stretch compared to the sheer pain that keeping 40 people together used to be (and no I never played EQ, never experienced those 80-mans).
I find that one of the bigger problems right now are raid IDs; I understand the purpose of them, but with a 10-man instance like Karazhan it doesn't make sense unless you have a large guild.
Take a new reset, it's Tuesday evening and my guild can put 2 groups together for Kara; the closer we get to the weekend, between one and three people from each group will not be logging to complete the run, we now have two broken groups unless we have enough to fill in. It's happend more than not that only one group, or neither, will be able to complete the weekly run because we can't interchange roles/classes between group 1 and 2.
Heroics have a, what, 6 hour-long ID? Kara could definitely use a more flexible system like that, make the IDs expire after 2 days or so, or give everybody the option to remove your ID once (only once) per reset for convenience. Those 7-day IDs were for 40-man content, it shouldn't apply to 10-mans.
Sindral May 14th 2007 3:57PM
What about loot? In a smaller party isn't there a better chance of you getting that loot that you're going for? Some people do the endgame for the content, yes, but be honest, you also want that content to be purple... And it seems to me that a smaller group would also make the experience even more impressive, because then you don't have 20 or more people just spamming 1 spell over and over, not very epic... I think 25 is just about right.
Ragbar May 14th 2007 4:06PM
I think 20-man groups would be perfect. However, I will quickly admit it is because of my own bias.
I don't know what the average guild size is out there, but I belong to a very highly skilled PvP guild. We're a small 30-member guild but all of us are close-knit and it's very rare that we take on new members. In fact, all of our recent new members have been old rivals from Alliance that got sick of their non-pvping faction and rerolled Horde to join us!
A 25-man raid is slightly too big for us to get 90% of the guild online at once. We're opening up recruiting now to get our numbers up to 40 so we can start Gruul/Magtheridon.
The other reasons I like 10-man/20-man raids is personal satisfaction and loot distribution. I think Karazhan is a great instance. It's easily learned and the encounters aren't hard to teach people. Every person gets to feel important like during Moroes or tanking a beam during Netherspite. It's not like ONE Warrior is chosen to be MT out of 5 in the raid. All the warriors we bring are Tanks or mega-dps.
Furthermore, when we do Karazhan, at MOST you might have to fight one or two other people for a piece of loot that drops. But now that we've been through Kara half a dozen times, we're bringing in new people who get great loot because most of us have it already.
For these reasons I have no problems with 10-man, EXCEPT that with only 10 people participating, it somewhat lacks a "our guild did THIS" feel. Really it was only 10 people out of the guild. 20/25-man content addresses this nicely. I am sad that Kara is the only 10-man content currently in BC though. They need to add one for 2.1 or the next content patch.
amasen May 14th 2007 4:09PM
10-15 is the perfect amount. Everyone in a raid that size matters, and with groups that small classes will be called upon to use more than 2-3 of their abilities.
The larger the raid the more limited your roll, and the more insignificant you become. In a 40man my Mage's fireballs did no noticeable damage to a boss by themselves, in a 5man a lucky string of crits could be the determining (and noticeable) factor in a win
I play video games to be a hero. And there is no way I'll ever feel like a hero if I am but a fraction of the total effort required to kill something.
Think of it this way. What's more exciting? Doing damage and noticing that your damage has an actual effect (and having others notice your damage), or making no dent in whatever you attack?
Lori May 14th 2007 4:13PM
I joined my guild speciffically to run MC last fall as did a lot of others, I guess, as we could usually get 40 guildies together fo a raid. Normally, 30+ would be signed up ahead of time and the rest gathered from those who were on and ask to come along.
Now, I have been included in two Gruul runs with them and we had 14 presign-ups with the remainder filled in from other guilds even though there were 25+ guildies online. Formerly reliable ppl don't want to raid as much.
Before, ppl started going to the instance 30 min before raid time while now they start at raid time and we are still filling slots an hour later. The latter is also simillar to situations I have seen with ZG.
My conclusion is that more ppl took the 40 man raids more seriously than the 20 - 25 man. I really liked the 40 mans better than the 20s, I think, because there was 1) more room for error and 2) they just seemed more like they were worth the effort. Some said the 20 man ZG was more difficult than a 40 man MC and I tend to agree because, early on, nearly everyone had to do their job perfectly in ZG or it was a wipe. And there were so many because seldom was everyone perfect in the same boss attempt.
With the 40 mans, we had enough of each class to have class leaders to do their own organizing and they just felt more like a raid as opposed to an instance run.
I vote for both 20 and 40 man instances like before TBC.
gunn May 14th 2007 4:30PM
20man was the best. More ZG more AQ's ftw!
Slayblaze May 14th 2007 4:40PM
I do miss the 40-man raid content before BC, even moreso after having done many, many Kara raids and the couple 25-mans that are available. There IS something nearly tangible missing in the new non-40 raids...call it what you will: electricity, exitement or whatever.
And I disagree about not being able to "be a hero" in the old 40-mans. In fact, it was fairly evident who those few people out of the 40 were that really rose to the top and became "natural heroes" just by being so on top of their game. There were always several people who consistantly were noteworthy - and that effect is diminished when there are only 9 other people in the raid. Standing out amongst a group of 39 other players felt like a true accomplishment and made me feel truly heroic at times!
I would love if somehow blizz was able to come up with a way to sneak in at least a little new 40-man content in the years to come as the past ones hold some of the most memorable moments of the entire game in my mind.
Gazoo May 14th 2007 4:56PM
I loved 40-man raids... I miss the energy, the camaraderie, the challenge that the 40-man raids held.
And truth be told, I miss having others of my class (Hunter)to perform against. In MC and BWL our Hunter squad worked as a squad to ensure smooth Tranqing and so on. It was a group effort and it was always fun to see who was on their game and who was having an off night.
This may only apply to Hunters, but in Kara I am almost always the only Hunter and while I enjoy the encounters, I miss having other Hunters there to discuss strat and such with.
Kyle May 14th 2007 9:32PM
@17
Meanwhile, while you're basking in the glory at the top of your 40-man raid, there was someone else sitting at the bottom who isn't even trying, doesn't know how to play their class, and is soaking up DKP to out-bid you on your epics.
40-man raids made people lazy, and it became blazingly apparent when people started smaller group content that a lot of people really really suck at playing their classes.
Personally I'd prefer smaller (10-25) man content where everyone matters and everyone has to play to his or her fullest potential to succeed than do 40+ man content where people can slide by making practically no effort whatsoever.
Robert May 14th 2007 5:08PM
The reason raids are 25 man instead of 20 is the extra class per faction in TBC.
40 man raids were more difficult logistically (getting everyone together on the same night) but easier in execution, because there was less individual responsibility.
To anyone who says they like tiny groups so they feel important: raiding is a team sport. Take pride in your guild, you progress together or not at all. If you need to feel an individual accomplishment as well, run damage meters.