Patch 5.3 interview with Ghostcrawler
Mystery of the Unborn Val'kyr
The latest patch 5.3 news
All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsPoll: Should 40-mans make a come back?
by Amanda Dean 
Dec 23rd 2008 at 8:30AM
Peeking around the official forums, I saw a few threads dedicated to the reincarnation of 40-man raids. Do you remember the old, pre-BC epic AQ-40/MC/Naxx days? I can honestly say I really do not. I was a freshly minted 60 when BC came out. I got my feet wet in ZG and AQ-20, but that's it. Perhaps I'm missing out on something important. It's entirely possible that others feel the same way.Since Blizzard has tuned Wrath raids to both 10 and 25 person versions, what's stopping them from rounding it out to a full 40. Perhaps they could even go for more. Many are already complaining that Naxx is too easy. They're looking for a real challenge. I don't know if Blizzard is open to the possibility of tuning up the dungeons, but we've seen evidence that the developers do listen to player feedback.
Would you want to go toe-to-toe with Arthus along side 39 of your best friends? Tell us what you think:
| I don't care, raiding isn't my thing. | |
|---|---|
| No, 25-mans are big enough. | |
| Heck yeah! Bring back the 40s. | |
| Come on, Blizz, give us 50-man raids. | |
| Yarp! Do I hear 100? | |
| I might give big raids a go, but I wouldn't make them a habit. |
Filed under: Polls, Fan stuff, Blizzard, Instances, Raiding, Forums
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 8)
rosencratz Dec 23rd 2008 10:48AM
Maybe open up all raids to have a 40 man option. instead of Heroic mode set it to "practice" mode, no drops ofcourse....
This way round you can take any amount of players you like 1-40 to just mess about with a surplus of healers.... like a training aid.... I don't imagine anyone would use it really... I'd like to balance the no drops with inconsequential deaths and so as to not make it an easy way to see end content scripted events be removed and mob models get replaced with target dummies or clowns or something but meh..... I also kinda think it's pointless so i'll be quiet...
Balius Dec 23rd 2008 3:40PM
The problem with bringing 40 man raids back for the "fun" was that they weren't fun. They were tedious organizational nightmares with little payoff for any individual member of the raid relative to the problems putting them together. Running them was prestigous precisely BECAUSE they were such a pain in the butt to put together.
When people want difficulty and challenge, they aren't looking for micromanagement and babysitting 39 other players. Few people calling for more difficulty are hoping that they'll get to try to organize joint runs with other guilds. What people asking for more difficulty want is to actually play WoW, and do so at a level that matches their own abilities.
You don't need more people in order to introduce difficulty. A five man dungeon can be designed for people in tier eight gear, if that's the choice the developers make (and I'd support endgame small-groups, instead of raids). In fact, smaller groups can be designed to be MORE difficult than raids simply because the added difficulty in organization doesn't need to be factored into the encounters. And, as people fighting Sartharion with three drakes can attest, smaller groups mean that there is more responsibility for each individual member with less leeway.
Collecting people and babysitting them, making sure others bring their own foods and potions and gear and show up on time, that's time wasted from my perspective. Good riddance to large groups, they burned me out of the game once, and I was never sad to see them go.
Baine Dec 23rd 2008 6:27PM
As a guild officer and a class leader with plenty of pre-BC raiding under my belt, 40-mans were a freakin nightmare that need never return to the game. You spend 2/3 of the time "raiding" trying to sort out everyone and task everyone and the remaining 1/3 trying to wait for all the ADD knuckleheads that went AFK during all the waiting, then to top that off, mobs would only drop 2-3 items, to split among 40 people, you think loot drama is bad now.....
Grant Dec 23rd 2008 8:39AM
As someone who used to run those 40-man raids on occasion, allow me to say "Good riddance!" The logistics of runs like that were nightmarish, and with the increased homogenization of the classes, you don't need to have 40 people to fit in the occasional odd class spec.
Please - no more 40-mans!
Hamma Dec 23rd 2008 8:39AM
40 man raids being the end all of end game back in the day is the reason I quit and only recently came back. It puts everything so far out of reach for anyone but the most hard core Guilds. I say that because the amount of time and effort to organize 40 people into solid groups of 5 AND get all the consumables needed to make the runs is just.. well not fun and a massive grind.
I'm not QQ'ing at all I just think they've really perfected things with solid 5 man, 10 man and even 25 man instances. They aren't massive grinds to get into, they don't take 30 hours to complete and most of all they are fun. Kudos to Blizzard for making things much more enjoyable.
Gessilea Dec 23rd 2008 10:11AM
I agree completely. The challenge of 40 man raids wasn't the instances themselves, it was logistics. I was what we called the "raid mom" for a raiding guild as we started and cleared MC and Ony, then went about halfway through BWL (the guild continued from there, while I, like many officers in raiding guilds, burnt out and quit the game). Sure, having so many people in one place felt epic, but that assumed you were okay with spending hours upon hours farming for the 15 different kinds of consumables you might use in an evening (more if you were an officer and regularly carried consumables for the slackers in the guild), then hours waiting around for that last couple of people to show up, drop their pvp flag, hearth back to SW to repair, beg for mage water, run out of health pots halfway through the run, come back from being afk...
And lets not even talk about loot distribution, okay? I'm getting hives just thinking about it. Good riddance!
Shardrell Dec 23rd 2008 8:42AM
I had some good times in the old 40 person raids, but I was very happy when they lowered the number of people. Most of the time, only half the raid was worth grouping with. The rest were frequently unpleasant/unskilled/uninteresting/afk people who were just brought along to get the raw numbers up. When the number was lowered to 25, I got to raid with the enjoyable half of my old raid group. :)
Gareth Dec 23rd 2008 10:07AM
Maybe this is where the 40 man argument is more important, maybe there should be 40 man raids so that we can have some people who are not as skilled included?
Then it should not be a problem to make a raid instance where
there are harder bosses included to test the better 40 man groups and the rest a bit simpler.
steve Dec 23rd 2008 8:43AM
Raided up through BWL on my 'lock and got my fill of 40 mans. Even in a moderately serious guild, it felt like on any given night, 25 people were carrying the other 15 through all of the content (which is probably why we could never get past BWL). And all of the waiting! I feel like 25 is still a lot of people to organize, and really prefer the feel of the 10 mans. I thought ZG was perfect with 20 and was my favorite level 60 raid.
Tunahelper Dec 23rd 2008 9:14AM
I have to agree. I loved ZG and AQ20. MC was fun, but it did take a lot of planning. 25 mans sounds like the right number to me
Deef Dec 23rd 2008 8:46AM
No more 40 mans! They were hell!
On a related note: Why do we have 10 and 25 mans? Why not 10 and 20 mans? It just seems odd. Say you have 2 10-man groups in Naxx. When the 10 mans are cleared, we should be able to just combine the groups and head into the heroic. Why look to the bench or PuG 5 more people?
At least with the old raids the numbers made sense: 20-man and 40-man. Take your two 20 man raids and just combine them and head into the 40-man! Why can't they apply this reasoning to the current model?
ChristyFox Dec 23rd 2008 8:48AM
How about creating a Dungeon Group Facilitator similar to Battle Grounds. You click on the instance you want to play and it automatically pairs you with different players to join you from other servers.
Deef Dec 23rd 2008 8:54AM
I just got a chill down my spine upon consideration of a "Dungeon Group Facilitator". Picking up pugs from my own server is rough enough, but at least I might have to see then again, so they might not be a total ass. Gathering up people you've never seen before and will probably never see again? Yikes.
holyground Dec 23rd 2008 9:46AM
It's not raw numbers that is the problem, it's getting everyone to follow directions. Do you use vent in BG with non-guildies? How do you threaten/cajol these people to listen.
Who leads it?
Look, I started in 2005. I did everything up to AQ40 (I couldn't be bothered to gather the mats to do Naxx). There are great memories from our first time downing Rags, or executus, or Osirian, but many, many canceled raid nights when tanks 3 and 4 couldn't make it. Many, Many frustrations when someone blew up my group because they couldn't be bothered to see that they were the bomb.
The problem with nostalgia is that it's like taking a seive to your memories. you strain out all the junk and bad and all you're left with is the warm memeories. 40 mans were just as much, if not more, frustrating and hard as BC was. Maybe it was for different reasons --LOOT THE CORE HOUND, Go get the fire buff, Where's the next spire??--but just because it happened first, doesn't mean it was best.
Me? I love 10 mans. There's a true sense of comradre in there. I run with the same 10 people each week (my guild is big enough for 3 10 naxxes a week). We do the 25 mans too, but there approached with more seriousness than the 10 mans.
I guess, for me, the more people you add, the more likely you can't be yourself. Raiding in the 40 mans was like a career: either you did only that and spent your entire week getting ready for it (if you did it casually, then you were part of the 15 everyone else was carrying) or you didn't raid. 25 mans are like a job. You get paid for that effort, but sometimes it's effort.
10 mans are like hanging out with your friends. Yeah, sometimes you go places, but mostly, you're just there for the ride.
/my2cents.
Moolan the Death Knight Dec 23rd 2008 10:25AM
Grouping with people from other realms may be the single worst idea ever posted here. I play an on RP-PvP realm and I sure as hell do not want to be grouped with a bunch of idiots named XXLegolasXX and URMom. Its tolerable in BGs simply because one doesn't have to pay much attention to names, only body counts. Note that the lack of respect goes both ways - and it usually doesn't start with the RPers.
Additionally, there's the issue of loot rules - those are best not decided on the spot. Even within a server, there can be a great deal of variation, but disputes can be resolved in-server. When you start going cross-realm, the potential for unresolvable conflict greatly increases.
It may seem like an elitist attitude to you, but it's really more about self-preservation.
Cbeefman Dec 23rd 2008 9:00AM
the 10/25 raids are perfect
to hell with the old days, i don't miss the days of have 40 people in the raid but only 15-20 are actually pulling their weight
F0REM4N Dec 23rd 2008 8:52AM
No no, I love it when getting the raid together is actually harder than the raid itself.
(internet sarcasm)
dar Dec 23rd 2008 8:54AM
In vanilla, I was in a smaller guild. We would do mc (full clear) , onyxia, and a bit of bwl. We almost never had a full group more than 1 day of the week. 20-30 was basically what we were getting, and it was damned hard to recruit on the server i was on at the time (bronzebeard-us).
That's the problem I have with 40 mans. The content can be a LOT more fun and interesting, but the recruitment is just a pain, especially if you're not pushing the edge of the progression curve.
Trikso Dec 23rd 2008 8:55AM
Srsly, we managed to organize a pug (with a few guildies ofc) to do 25mans, and last weekend we downed hc malygos as a 3rd "guild" on the server. It took us like 2 weeks of running nax + sart with 1 drake to find the core people and now we have like 20 guys who wanna do the raids on weekly basis + some casuals that can be replaced with other casuals.
But my point is - there would never be a chance to herd 40 sheep and do something like that.
FenSat Dec 23rd 2008 8:56AM
/sarcasm on
I'm all for the return of 40-mans so that a few of us can, once again, carry the many.
/sarcasm off
Now that that's out of the way, let me just say...no. I'm not even a huge fan of 25-mans, because the larger the group raiders you have, the less personal connection to other raiders (i.e., Joe the Mage becomes that mage in group 4) and less coordination you have. In regards to the latter point, the challenge should be the content not getting 40 people on the same page; it can be difficult enough getting enough people to focus in 25-mans and sometimes 10-mans to get content done.
It also increases the need for loot systems like DKP, which I'm not a fan of. In smaller raids where people pretty much know each other and trust each other to some degree, it's easier to distribute loot in such a fashion that nothing goes to waste.
40-mans would also create a huge gear gulf, as the gear would easily outstrip 10-man gear. Right now, someone can step into a 25-man with 10-man gear and feel useful, and someone who runs 25-mans regularly can step into a 10-man and not be insanely overpowered. 40-man gear would likely tilt that balance too much in favor of the person running larger raids in terms of itemization.
Finally, humongous raids like that are, I sense, going the way of the dodo in MMORPG's altogether - and with good reason. So, no, let's not go back to an old model that didn't work so well.