Why?

The concept of "25-man raids dying" is bullshit, because it's the same damn raid as the 10-man. The bosses have more health, a few new abilities and do more damage, but it doesn't really constitute to anything that can "die".

You read what he said. More loot per player. If you have a big enough guild, 25-mans are still the way to go.


This is the greatest thing ever for small guilds. The greatest thing. EVER.

So the guy got downrated because he doesn’t agree with the change? He has a point, it is a “terrible idea” for those players who are 25 man raiders. Say what you want about numbers, and drop ratios and be completely WRONG.

One of the things many guilds can attest to right now as we speak, is the burnout of players as the content gets stale. Why would you set up 25 mans only know that you will eventually probably drop down to 10 man content as your raiders start to get bored with content and stop showing up? Wouldn’t it just be easier to organize 10 man raids with that same understanding, and then take breaks between content patches without shoving raid schedules down your guilds throat while not really expecting them to show up for hard mode content some of them just have no desire to do?

It is a terrible idea if for no other reason that 25 mans will die, not an instant “cataclysmic” death, but one where they will cease to exist over time, and as those attendance numbers drop throughout the expansion, Blizzard will have their numbers to prove that all 25 mans just aren’t popular enough to constitute spending time on 25 man raids. OK, maybe that’s a bit apocalyptic, but if the next expansion doesn’t even have 25s, remember it was a natural (one of the appropriately natural, not exclusively natural) progression for the content.

It's already been established that this is good news for good raiding guilds that all show up on time and prepared.

I'm just concerned about pugs. I recently stopped playing because all the guilds on my server were full on tanks. Most of the tanks in guilds were well-established, having been there from day 1 of Wrath and deeply entrenched in their guild.

This change really sticks it to 25-man pugs, which oftentimes had room for a third tank for some encounters. :(

This is a terrible idea as far as druids are concerned, no more multiple sets :( well easily at least....

I LOVE this idea. This is exactly how I thought it should be from the beginning.

Running a wider variety of raids each once a week sounds MUCH better than running the same one multiple times each week.

And it never seemed right to me that 10 mans were penalized gear-wise when the difficulty was supposed to be tuned to be the same for them as 25 mans were for 25 people. Obviously, as the article states, the logistics with 25 are more difficult but its much better that this be compensated with MORE gear/emblems/gold etc than BETTER gear, when the increased difficulty is supposed to only be logistical and not with the actual encounter itself.

@Rhabella

I think part of the reason Blizz is making this change is to keep players from feeling obligated to run both the 10 and 25 man versions of the same raid every week. Maybe when people aren't running the same raid twice a week there will be less burnout and "stale" content? There is still an incentive to run 25 mans if you can, when the bosses drop more gear and badges per player, everyone in the raid will get geared up faster than they would by running 10 mans.

It'd be better if you said WHY it's a terrible idea.

Personally I'm in favor of this idea, and for a few different reasons. The one being there is less of "shopping list" feel to raiding.

Right now in order to stay "competitive" you need to do the following: VoA10, VoA25, Random Daily, Random Weekly, hit ToC10 and 25 for that damn trinket that wont drop, ICC10 and finally ICC25.

That's 8 different "to-do" items. Now, give the 10s and 25s the same gear (but make 25s slightly more attractive) and you get this:
VoA25, Random Daily, Random Weekly, ToC25 and ICC25.

Now we're down to only 5 items for the evening's list. (assuming you do it all in one fel swoop.) Pretty soon you'd get that trinket from ToC25 (since there are more drops proportionally) and you've filled out your badge gear comfortably. It then drops down to:
Maybe a quick VoA25, Random Daily, maybe the weekly, and ICC25.


You've picked up the same gear, but you've just cut the time investment in half. Why is that such a terrible idea?



Additionally, I think people are focusing on the "same gear" and missing the "more lucrative" bit. From what I've read I'm assuming the following hypothetical situation:
In 10s, ~2 pieces of gear and 1 badge drop. (and gold)
In 25s ~6 pieces of gear drop and 2 badges. (and gold)
Sure, it's the same gear. But in 10s it's a 1:5 and in 25s its a 1:4 ratio. Not to mention more badges for the effort.

If those are your only two options for a dungeon the logical choice would be to try for a 25 over the 10. THAT is what I understand "more lucrative to be"

This IS a fucking terrible idea for every except 10 man raiders. Pugs and 25 man groups will have a terrible time with this. If I had a nickel for every damn time I got into a pug downed one boss and then had 10 people leave on the first two wipes.... Fuck blizzard and their "oh shinny, I want one too!" mentality anymore. 10 man gear was a half fucking tier below 25 man content you know what that means in dps, not shit. I stopped playing the game at the end of ToTC and came back about a month ago, I still out dps 95% of the damn population without t10 gear on my rogue...

To Rhabela:

He got downranked not for thinking the ideas terrible but for not explaining why. You're getting downranked, though, for your Chicken Little act.

Sorry, but I don´t know why you are so angry or sad about this change.

-You enjoy 10 man raids? Great, in Cataclysm you will be able to run them, and the loot per players ratio will be the same as in 25man raids. The gear will be the same, because it will be as hard (or easy for some) as 25man raids.

-You enjoy 25 man raids? Great, in Cataclysm you will be able to run them, and the loot per players ratio will be the same as in 10man raids. The gear will be the same, because it will be as hard (or easy for some) as 10man raids.

Wait, you say that you deserve better reward from 25man raids because they are harder to organise? You say that in WotlK, you won´t say that in Cataclysm (unless you are a brain-less troll): expansion after expansion, raids are easie to organise. TBC - no more 40man raids, WotlK - even casuals can go pretty far in the hardest raid with gear only from heroics, and from what we heard now: Cata - short raids (able to group with people with limited playtime), more raid (less people locked-they did an other raid earlier in the week).
In Cataclsym, it will be easy to organise 25man raids.
Why run 25man raids then? Because you enjoy runing them more then you enjoy runing a 10man raid!
``Whether you're a big guild or a small guild the choice won't be dependent on what items drop, but instead on what you enjoy the most. ´´


Now, why do they have the same lockout?
Today, we see all the time QQ on the forum: ``Im am sick of ICC I am only raiding that and it is pretty boring .´´ Hey guys, Blizzard heard you! And they will do something against it!
First of all, a few little raids against one long raid. The amount of content will be the same, the diversity of that content will be much bigger.
And, you wont have to run the same raid twice per week, simply because you can´t!
Don´t fear, you won´t lack instances to raid, I am sure Blizzard will think about it (or already did).
Wait, you say that people who don´t want to raid the same instance twice don´t have to? You don´t like runing heroics, but you do so anyway!

I expect that the larger and more hardcore guilds will still do 25-mans, just because it's a more efficient way to get loot. Smaller guilds and PUGs will stick with 10-mans, because they're easier to organize. And if it turns out that everybody runs 10-mans and 25-mans die...who cares? In that scenario, the players have voted that they prefer the 10-man size so nobody should mourn the death of the larger raid size that they didn't enjoy.

"So the guy got downrated because he doesn’t agree with the change? He has a point, it is a “terrible idea” for those players who are 25 man raiders. Say what you want about numbers, and drop ratios and be completely WRONG."

Wow.com lets people voice their opinion. It is his/her opinion that this is a terrible idea.

Wow.com also lets people voice THEIR opinion on said opening opinion. Therefore, it is perfectly fine for others to downrank him.

Just to spell it out seeing as many people don't seem to have actually read or fully comprehend the math of this:

"25-player versions will drop a higher quantity of loot per player (items, but also badges, and even gold)"

Now, using this let's build a hypothetical situation using very basic figures, so in Cataclysm, theoretically:

10-mans will drop 2 pieces of loot (0.2 per person) and 2 badges (2 per person)
25-mans will drop 6 pieces of loot (0.24 per person) and 4 badges (4 per person)

This means that it will still be worth doing the 25-mans if you can as your guild will gear up faster. There is actually absolutely no reason why these changes would kill 25-man raiding. Please read before you complain next time. =)

I have to agree with Como on this one, but not because of some sort of "raiding as we know it will end!" feeling.

I think there is merit when people say that this might end up killing 25-man raiding. Certainly not a fast death, but if it just becomes too much trouble to pull 25 people together, guilds will start to get their 10 best players and just do that instead. It would be folly to insist that people don't play for the gear, because they do, and when 25s no longer drop superior gear, I feel like there will be a lot more people who don't think they have to 'deal' with what they feel to be crappy players and will form their own guilds and raiding groups. Suddenly the game becomes that much more exclusive.

And this will be especiailly hard on PUGs. There won't be any raid-geared people looking to start various PUGs for whatever reason; they can't get locked to any raid their guild might be doing that week. They could bring alts, of course, but as we've seen, a lot of raiding guilds have their own special alt runs too. Plus, if you get locked to a 10 or 25 as a pugger, you can't pick the other to join if your group falls apart with next to no chance of it reforming later to finish content. And what if you get a 10-man for a weekly raid quest? There goes your chance of trying to find a 25-man that might actually finish more bosses.

Don't get me wrong, I dont' think this is the end of the world. I just don't think it's the BEST THING EVAH either. I think it could have ramifications that we just don't understand yet and I'm a bit concerned how this will effect the raiding culture.

The best guilds will still do 25 mans because that is the fastest way they will gear.

Also, I read the blue post to say that the early tiers of raiding will be split amongst smaller raids (and therefore more lockouts), but that the later tiers will be more 'epic' and therefore closer to what ICC is today. That would lead to PUGs being able to do the early tiers and having more trouble completing the later tiers.

I've seen a couple observations against this change and I do not entirely understand them other than a "this is bad because it's different" standpoint.

OBSERVATION: This will lead to faster player burnout as content gets stale since 10 and 25 man versions are effectively the same now.

One could speculate that it will take longer for content to get stale if your running something once a week instead of twice a week (10 or 25 man vs 10 and 25).


OBSERVATION: 25-man guilds will slowly die throughout expansion as players migrate to 10-man runs instead

I anticipate this will happen just as Arena participation dropped when Blizzard shuffled up how Arena points were distributed. Players who run 25-man solely for the better gear will most likely transition to 10-man runs over time. In both cases the change was made to take away perceived rewards that was too good to pass up for playing in a manner that was not as enjoyable.

Reasons to run 25-man not affected by this change:
- Some players prefer the social interaction of 24 other players

- Some players have many friends/guild mates on line that they like to run with and 10 man dungeons aren't big enough. (Picture having 12 friends consistently online who like to run together, 25-man content is better for you as long as you can find 13 other people to run it with regularly)

- Some roles get more forgiving in 25-man content, like healing for example. I play a Disc/Holy priest and can say that healing a 10 man is far less forgiving than a 25-man due to the number of healers backing you up

Reasons to run 25-man affected by this change:
- I want the best loot and it drops in 25-man. - Now you can run either 10 or 25 man, this is a win for you unless you run both each week to increase your odds of getting a drop. In that case it sounds like 25-man will be better for you still.

- I love to raid and enjoy running both 10 and 25-man content weekly - Unfortunatly this category of players gets shafted unless they run alts through raids. On the flip side this could be looked at as a boon towards gearing up alts as it encourages running multiple characters to accomplish your goal.

- I want my guild to be highest on progression on the server - this one is interesting. It extends "Bring the Player not the Class" to "Bring the Quality not the Quantity". Now the big 25-man guilds that traditional envelope high quality players from smaller guilds may find themselves competing head on with them.


In the end it comes down to the question, why do you run 25-man raids? Is it for the best gear, the epic feel of 24 other people, to run with more than 9 other friends, server status?

Agreed, Kab.

Most of my gear is from 25-player Icecrown, because it's the best I can get my hands on -- I built my "shopping list" around Deathbringer PuG runs. I'd love to wear the i251 stuff my guild and I get when we raid, but sadly it just can't compete.

With both raid sizes offering the same quality of loot and the same items -- but with more items dropping as the draw for 25-player guilds (Since fewer people will want to risk PuGs on their mains, if it'll lock them out for guild 10-player raids) I reckon we'll see neither raid size die out.

That said, this is something I've been hoping to get for a very long time. From the jumps to 5-player instances to 10-player raids to 20 and 40-player ones, then from 5-player instances to 10 and 25-player raids, now from 5-player instances to 10-player raids because I won't have to go on PuGs to make my character the best-geared tank he can be.

Fantastic.

Maybe we'll get cheaper badge loot, too. :D

The biggest issue I see happening is that people are locked into the mindset of raiding as it exists today. This same thing happened at discussion of TBC launch, and the same thing happened at the discussion of Wrath launch.

Raiding is going to be substantially different in Cataclysm. That is the simplest way to explain it. Expect a LOT to change. This is just a precursor to that. Cataclysm is going to be very much the WoW 2.0 launch. It's in the same land with the same characters, but the changes we are seeing as a preview thus far show clearly just how much change is coming our way.

Just relax, and ride the wave of change, because it's going to be... dare I say... cataclysmic?

It definitely looks like 25-man is going to drop more loot and badges per player. So 2 pieces might drop in 10 man, but 7 pieces might drop in 25 man, making the RNG component of gear acquisition more manageable. I'd expect an additional badge for beating it on 25-man, as well.

I am very curious to see if this works. Making it much more likely that your gear is going to drop for running a 25-man group might well be enough motivation for it to be run, and I think Blizzard are committed to 25-man because it's the smallest a run can get with full class representation.