Posts with tag 25-man-raiding

In case you hadn't heard the news, patch 5.3 is set to hit live servers tomorrow. While 5.3 doesn't include a new raid, there are a host of different new activities, including four new scenarios, heroic scenarios, a ton of pet battle changes, and of course the advancement of Mists of Pandaria's storyline as the heat ramps up between Alliance, Horde, and an outlier faction of Horde rebels. It's back to the Barrens again -- and this time, Crossroads isn't the area of contention.

But on top of all of the new content comes a ton of different class and content changes as well. We sat down to chat with Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street about patch 5.3's changes, as well as some upcoming changes for patch 5.4, response to subscription losses, Vengeance changes, that big unannounced feature we've all been dying to hear more about, and much more.

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The new Thunderforged loot designation -- much like the affix Raid Finder -- was introduced into Patch 5.2 for a number of reasons by Blizzard. While the affix does stay certain pieces from disenchantable execution on farm bosses, players largely regarded Thunderforged items as another attempt to help 25-man raiding guilds stay afloat. The developers didn't want to go back to late Wrath of the Lich King model of completely higher loot in 25mans, so instead Thunderforged items can drop in both sized raids. However, the drop rate in 25-mans would be higher than that of 10-mans.

"How frequent is more frequent?" players would ask, especially when given the chance to chat with the developers about patch 5.2. Ghostcrawler deflected the question on TotemSpot's interview, preferring to let players figure out the drop rates themselves.

Fortunately for us, WoWProgress has analyzed the loot drops using its database of characters, guilds, and bosses killed this first week of Patch 5.2. Looking at loot gains from Jin'rokh the Breaker, specifically:

• 11.7% of the 10-man loot equipped by characters was Thunderforged
• 25.7% of the 25-man loot equipped by characters was Thunderforged

Even figuring in disenchanted items, WoWProgress figures the drop rates to be approximately 10% for 10-man and 25% for 25-man. From personal anecdote, my 25-man raiding guild saw usually one but sometimes two Thunderforged drops per boss in addition to four to five regular mode drops. Tier pieces, of course, will never drop as Thunderforged.

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Mists of Pandaria is here! The level cap has been raised to 90, many players have returned to Azeroth, and pet battles are taking the world by storm. Keep an eye out for all of the latest news, and check out our comprehensive guide to Mists of Pandaria for everything you'll ever need to know.

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Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook.

Lately Blizzard has been moving toward making 25-man raids more rewarding again. They've already done so in Asia. Elsewhere, they are trying something new with Thunderforged items, which will drop more frequently in larger raids. Time will tell if this is enough to save 25s. In the meantime, some guilds, like the one in the email below, are thinking about making the leap from 10s.

Hello Scott!

Very long time reader - first time writer! I love this blog - you have given some really awesome advice, and now I'm looking for some myself, oh wise one!

I'm a GL of a 10 man raiding guild. I've seen guilds fall apart around me, and I've seen guilds hold strong through the past 6 months. I'm proud to say that my 2 year old guild is doing fantastic.

So, what's the problem? We're doing perhaps a little *too* well. We've been getting applicants without having been actively recruiting. We've brought in some great members. We rarely turn applicants away - if they seem like a great fit, we work with them to give them the opportunity to raid with us. We run two 10-man groups, but with new members coming in that want to raid, we're having to sit people.

Now there are rumblings and whispers about running 25s.

• Raid Finder: ilvl 502
• Normal mode: ilvl 522
• Normal Thunderforged: ilvl 528
• Heroic: ilvl 535
• Heroic Thunderforged: ilvl 541

@rastailian @oliviadgrace Thunderforged is the controversial idea I mentioned weeks ago, not the cool unannounced feature from yesterday.

- Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) January 23, 2013

Hit the break for Tyiliru's full post. Will this make you more inclined to push for 25-man raiding over 10-man? Is item level inflation getting totally out of hand, and will this really make an impact, given that 25-man raiders already gear somewhat more quickly than 10man raiders?

You may remember Hamlet from Elitist Jerks, or you may not. Whether or not you do, he's written an interesting post over on his personal blog discussing the 10 man vs. 25 man raiding issue. I addressed my own thoughts on this issue this week, but Hamlet's take is far more analytical (which is to be expected) and also somewhat epistolary, taking the form of feedback on the issue and expanding from there.

Frankly, I'd do the post a disservice by attempting to summarize it, but I'd also be doing it a disservice by carving it up piecemeal here and commenting on it. One aspect of the post of note, that I really found both interesting and a trifle challenging to my own preconceptions, is his deconstruction of the notion that 25 man raiding is logistically harder than 10 man raiding. His points about how 10 man raids can often be far more difficult to run if even one player misses a night is valid, and he goes through all the ways 10 mans are limited by their smaller pool of players in a thorough and convincing manner.

This is in service of the main point of the piece, which again I think deserves your full attention. He makes the case that the problem isn't logistics at all, but rather that due to group composition constraints 10 man raiding simply can't be as complex, strategic or difficult as 25 man raiding, and so it's not an issue of logistical difficulty, but rather purely inequality of design. In other words, 25 man raids are generally harder than 10 man raids because they can be, they don't have to be designed to be completed with limited group compositions. There are 34 specs in the game, and 25 mans have more room for more options than 10.

Again, this is summarizing a really well thought out piece. You may or may not agree with it, but please go read his argument and don't just rely on my brief on it -- by necessity I'm missing a lot of subtleties here.

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It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!

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I have primarily run in 25 man raiding for the entirety of Cataclysm, and I raided all through Wrath of the Lich King and even Burning Crusade in 25 man raids. 25 man raiding is where I have the most fun. I like it for a variety of reasons. I enjoy having a wider selection of classes and specs available, I generally feel like a larger raid makes a fight feel more dramatic, I dislike how empty some raids feel with a smaller group. To me, a 10 man feels like a UBRS run. These are all personal reasons, I accept that they're not universal. I also wasn't impressed the few times I went into 10 man raids this expansion - the fights always seemed much easier, we blew through bosses we struggled with on 25, clearing 10 with undergeared alts due to the extremely forgiving space mechanics of raids like Firelands and Dragon Soul on 10 man.

So please understand, I am not a partisan of 10 man raiding. I don't like 10 mans. I find that their elevation to the top form of raiding was destructive to the game, to guilds, and to raiding itself. But they are and have been for some time the primary way that people raid. I hate 10 man raids. But the time has come to accept that we have killed the 25 man raid in all but name. It's not a question of should they be removed. They effectively have been removed. You see a lot of debate on what can be done to save the 25 man raid, and the developers have addressed the issue repeatedly in the Reddit AMA and Best Buy Q&A. But you'll notice that they address the issue by acknowledging it and highlighting the issues facing 25 man raids (difficulty of logistics, higher churn rates, higher recruitment needs, difficulty of encounter movement) but that no solutions are forthcoming.

Even the mightiest among us are not immune to the decline of 25 man raiding. Paragon, who you may remember as one of the world's leading 25 man raiding guilds, is switching to a 10 man raid with the release of Mists of Pandaria. Reasons given include raider burnout during Dragon Soul, difficulty of recruiting players to fill those gaps (and I can attest to that one in a general sense, even far less progression oriented 25 mans are struggling to recruit right now) and player schedules changing.

It should be interesting to see how Paragon does as a 10 man in Mists of Pandaria. Some guilds thrive after the switch, others rebuild and re-enter 25 mans. I personally can't help but think this is a symptom of the gradual erosion of 25 man raiding, myself, but we'll see.

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It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!

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10-man raid testing on the Mists of Pandaria beta has been under way for quite some time now, but if you've been wanting to give 25-man testing a try, it starts tomorrow. Watcher made the following scheduling post late last weekend.

Raid Testing Schedule - July 30-31

After the weekend, we will be testing a number of raid encounters, including 25-player encounters. The testing schedule for remaining Normal modes will be somewhat accelerated, since the encounters are already familiar to many testers and we are just verifying functionality and tuning.

Each encounter should be available at approximately the listed times below for all Beta Test Realms, regardless of suggested geographical region.

Monday, July 30th

Blade Lord Ta'yak (Heart of Fear) - 10 Player Heroic
10:30 PDT (13:30 EDT, 19:30 CEST)

Gara'jal the Spiritbinder (Mogu'shan Vaults) - 10 Player Normal
16:00 PDT (19:00 EDT, 01:00 CEST)

Tuesday, July 31st

Stone Guard (Mogu'shan Vaults) - 25 Player Normal
10:30 PDT (13:30 EDT, 19:30 CEST)

Imperial Vizier Zor'lok (Heart of Fear) - 25 Player Normal
12:00 PDT (15:00 EDT, 21:00 CEST)

Protectors of the Endless (Terrace of Endless Spring) - 25 Player Normal
13:30 PDT (16:30 EDT, 22:30 CEST)

Feng the Accursed (Mogu'shan Vaults) - 25 Player Normal
15:00 PDT (18:00 EDT, 24:00 CEST)

Blade Lord Ta'yak (Heart of Fear) - 25 Player Normal
16:30 PDT (19:30 EDT, 01:30 CEST)

Tsulong (Terrace of Endless Spring) - 25 Player Normal
18:00 PDT (21:00 EDT, 03:00 CEST)

As always, this testing schedule is very fluid and subject to the realities of a beta environment. We might have to change the time of a testing session or cancel it entirely, due to bugs, builds, server hardware issues, etc. Keep an eye on this forum for the latest information, and thank you in advance for testing and providing feedback.

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As you can see, there is still some 10-man testing left, but it's going on right now, so log onto beta servers quickly if you want to participate.

If you're wondering how on earth you'll be able to get a group together on beta tomorrow to do a 25-man raid, I can assure you there have been plenty of trade chat groups thus far that you can join. Many of the groups are guilds who don't have their entire roster on beta, so they have to pug additional players to fill their raid groups.

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It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!

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You know how raid nights go. Sometimes you have the bare minimum of people showing up, and you're desperately trying to fill spots. And on some occasions, everyone inexplicably shows up at the same time. When you go from barely scraping by with eight or 22 to suddenly dealing with a glut of 15 to 25, obviously somebody's not making it into the mix. So how do you decide who?

Some guilds simply go by attendance numbers; if you've shown up consistently, you're in. If you just happen to be making an appearance for farm night, you're out. Some guilds pick based solely on performance in the raid itself; if you're consistently pulling high DPS and not standing in fire, you're in. If you can't find your way out of a poison cloud with a map and GPS system showing you the way, you're out.

But what do you do when you're the one being sat?

I was trundling through Wowpedia the other day for some background reading on loot systems (I'm writing a follow-up to Robert's not-so-original WoW miscellany) when I was struck by a sudden thought: I literally cannot remember the last time I saw a guild on my server advertising a DKP system or common variant like Suicide Kings. They advertise what level they are and what type of players they're looking for, the kind of raid content they do if they're raiders, if they do Rated Battlegrounds, and all that good stuff. But only very rarely is DKP ever mentioned, rarer still with a 10-man raiding guild.

I trawled through the guild recruitment forums to see if this was actually part of a wider trend, but don't know what to think. The 25-man raiding guilds are the most likely to say they use a DKP system or variant; 10-man raiding guilds nearly all use loot councils, at least from my (admittedly brief) survey of the current advertisements.

Is this also happening on your realms, or have I gotten this wrong? We all know that every DKP system has its issues and that administrating them is one of the larger headaches for guild leaders. 10-man raiding is also more popular than 25-man raiding right now, and it probably doesn't make sense for a guild to obsessively track DKP for a 10-man where most players probably aren't rolling on the same stuff. Is DKP dying, or is it just a sign of the popularity of the 10-man model?

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Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available from No Starch Press.

With today's column, I'd like to illustrate a point by getting personal. Normally I don't like to do that very often, but my guild's own experience is dovetailing too neatly with an overall trend.

In reviewing the guild experience in Cataclysm and in looking forward to improvements we might see in Mists of Pandaria, I've mentioned how hard it's been for 25-man raiding guilds to survive in the current environment. I've noticed people voicing the opinion that if you like 25-man raiding, you can go find 24 other people who do and make it happen. I can understand how someone might believe that -- and in an ideal world, it should be that easy. Finding those players isn't easy these days, but that is in fact the easy part.

The hard part is finding people who want to lead said group.

In a game where tools like the Raid Finder have democratized raiding, how does the mindset of players in top-echelon guilds pushing for world firsts differ from yours and mine? How much time do bleeding-edge guilds really put in? What tricks help them push past wipes and overcome raid challenges? How do they make up time and nudge past other guilds to claim world firsts? And why do other WoW players love to follow the action?

The whole sprawling scene plays out onscreen in the feature-length documentary Race to World First -- and you can watch it free right here at WoW Insider now through Feb. 3. (The film is also available at RacetoWorldFirst.com for a small fee.)

The Looking for Group Productions film, begun back in the day when clawing to a top spot on raiding progression charts was perhaps at its cut-throat peak, follows a handful of top-tier WoW guilds in their sprint to the top. Producers John Keating and Zachary Henderson conducted some of the early interviews for Race two years ago at BlizzCon 2010's WoW Insider reader meetup, including familiar faces like WI Editor Adam Holisky and GM/actress/huntress extraordinaire Michele Morrow.

Get a peek at this film for free while you can right here at WoW Insider. Who knows what in-game challenges you might feel up to tackling after seeing that much fiery motivation in action?

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