[Dismember]

If this has been hashed over already I apologize.

I'm curious as to what people's opinions are about Blizzard's new approach to raiding with WotLK. Namely, about how they are making the raid instances runnable with either a 10-man group or a 25-man group.

Like or dislike? Is this a positive change, or another symptom of the general "dumbing down" of WoW that many people see happening to the game? What sort of impact do you see this having (positive or negative) on current raid guilds?

Thoughts?

[dlongest]

I haven't seen anything on raiding in WotLK. But I am definitely hoping they introduce more 10 mans. I play with some real-life friends. We play about the same time each night, 5 nights a week. We have no interest in joining another guild and we dont' relish hardcore recruiting and all that entails. The chances of getting into 25 mans is low for us. But we've been doing Kara and ZA in PUGs and having a blast with that. If t hey're planning dungeons to be run in either 10 or 25 man forms, that would be awesome as far as I'm concerned.

Daniel

[Mardran]

This is, in my opinion, one of the best decisions blizzard has ever made with this game. Gear has never really been the major motivator for myself, its always been the content and I know a lot of people here share that opinion. Now its going to be much easier for smaller guilds or groups of friends to be able to experience the same or very similar content to those hardcore 25 man guilds. That is a huge thing, people complain all the time on forums about "ooh only 1% of the wow population ever gets to see end-game raid content" and such. Well as untrue as it is now, it will be even more untrue in the future. As long as Blizzard sticks to their word and has the gear level from 10 man content be perfectly suitable to get through that content, I'd expect a lot of reactivated accounts and people who would normally consider quitting to actually keep playing.

[Brucimus]

I like your pic of your warrior

[Dismember]

I have to say that I like the smaller group dynamic. If I had to name the raids that I've found to be the most fun, I think I'd have to say ZA, UBRS, and ZG. Not to say that I didn't enjoy the 40 man or 25 man raids; I've just felt like the smaller groups come together more, and the experience has been more rewarding for me personally.

What I haven't seen addressed yet is loot amount/quality as it pertains to running "X" raid as a 10 man vs. a 25 man. I know the encounters will be scaled, but what about the loot drops? Will running it as a 25 man net you higher quality loot? Has anyone seen any info on this?

[sevve]

Apparently there will be better loot in the 25-man version.

Even if this is positive or negative it is definately another addition to the wow4dummies road Blizzard is taking.

I am not saying Blizzard can't pull this off without killing the game, but I've seen other games being killed by the wish to please everyone.

[Shaiden]

Definitely like.

Those who want the loot or to hang out with lots of friends can go 25 mans.
Those who just really want to see the events and hang out with a small clique can go 10 mans.

Choice is good, I don't see why having an option we didn't have before would be seen with hostility

[Dismember]

Source: Brucimus I like your pic of your warrior

Thanks! I commissioned it from one of my guild members. She's really talented, and has had her work featured on the Blizz fanart page before. You can see the full version here.

[ebs2002]

I'm curious to see how they will rework encounters to be doable with 10 people...many of the 25man fights now I can't imagine a 10-man version (Magtheridon with cube-clicking, as an example...maybe there's less cubes I guess).

I am excited that our 10-man guild of RL friends will have plenty of content to explore, even if we don't get as good of loot. I just hope they tailor the 10man progression to allow you to move on without setting foot in the 25mans.

[Letheria]

First Post!

I like the change a lot. As I am what I consider to be a normal player that doesn't raid, WotLK will give a small group a chance to "go all the way" so to speak. Small, dedicated groups will get a chance to see all the way to the end, while larger groups will get a higher tier gear, a harder fight, and well deserved bragging rights. It'd be nice to even see a seperate tier list for each raid, like a Raid 10 Tier 8 vs. Raid 25 Tier 8. It's simply another way to play the game. And, in the end, it'll be more about playstyles and choices than about attaining the top level of gear. I like the idea that people aren't funneled into PvP, or Raiding, etc. You'll have a choice of what you want to do at 80.

[Klimpen]

As a note, in the Curse interview, they mentioned two important things.

The 10mans are going to be hard. Roughly the same as the 25mans. 10mans will not be easy-mode and 25mans hard.

The gear dropping in 10mans will only be slightly worse than that from 25mans.

Also, qq'ing about how you don't think it'll work is stupidity. Get over yourself.

[Kavtor]

Source: ebs2002 I'm curious to see how they will rework encounters to be doable with 10 people...many of the 25man fights now I can't imagine a 10-man version (Magtheridon with cube-clicking, as an example...maybe there's less cubes I guess).

They've already pulled it down from needing 20 clickers to 5. Dropping out 2-3 channelers wouldn't be a bit deal.

[Satrina]

It's a good change. Hopefully we'll someday get away from the 25-to-kill-1 silliness. At least for humanoid bosses.

[Trual]

Not a big fan of the change, to be honest.

We know Naxx is going to be the first raid zone, so they're going to take an epic fight like the 4 Horsemen, and make it a 10-person fight? We'll now be at 25% of where the encounter was when it was first designed, and was regarded by many as the best tuned encounter that Blizzard had designed up until that point. Unless they decide to completely re-design the fights with only themes in common, I can't see the same encounter working with 40% of the people as the 25-man version.

I simply can't see how they're not going dilute the 25-man raid "epicness" of an encounter.

The gear dropping in 10mans will only be slightly worse than that from 25mans.

I could have sworn they told Gamespy that it was going to be a full tier difference... So the difference between SSC/TK, and MH/BT gear.

[Klimpen]

No, the 25 and 10man are going to drop different versions of the same Teir set. Ala Gladiator set being mix and match.

There will be some difference, but it wont be huge [probably just itemisation focus].

[Roana]

Source: ebs2002 I'm curious to see how they will rework encounters to be doable with 10 people...many of the 25man fights now I can't imagine a 10-man version (Magtheridon with cube-clicking, as an example...maybe there's less cubes I guess).

The idea is to capture the essence of the fight, not the precise mechanics. For example, the High King Maulgar fight is not too different from the Wizard of Oz event in its nature (Oz is an order of magnitude easier, of course). The main difference is that every single mob in the Maulgar fight requires more attention than a single mob in the Oz fight.

Could you do something like the four horsemen in a 10-man? Yes. Not the very same fight, of course, but a similar fight with a similar feel that required a similar strategy, yes. Think how Netherspite works and you may have an idea how it could be accomplished.

Magtheridon is an interesting case on its own -- I personally think the mechanic was inspired by certain old world 5-man fights, such as the Cannon Master Wiley fight in Scarlet Stratholme, and then adjusted to make it more interesting for a 25-man raid. Try doing a pre-expansion undead Stratholme fight without an AE class (so you have to set up a holy water rotation), and you'll get a very similar effect to cube-clicking out of a 5-man fight, even.

Note also that conversely several 25-man fights are artificially scaled up to keep more people busy. An old example is Gehennas in Molten Core, which is extremely similar to Alexei Barov in Scholomance (the death knight with two undead guards), just that single target abilities have been turned into AEs and similar effects that keep more people busy.

The one big question is how challenging a 10-man fight can be compared to a 25-man version. You simply cannot expect a member of each class to be present in a 10-man, so fights have to be flexible with regards to class requirements. On the other hand, the most challenging 40/25-man fights have required raid stacking for the first kills, and it's not sure that this is a "feature" you want to replicate for a smaller sized raid. The idea for a 10-man raid will probably be to challenge you enough to create entertainment, but not so much that you seriously have to think about raid-stacking and people respeccing into leatherworking to have a drums of battle rotation. 10-man raids will be for a different audience and will likely be designed accordingly.

I am excited that our 10-man guild of RL friends will have plenty of content to explore, even if we don't get as good of loot. I just hope they tailor the 10man progression to allow you to move on without setting foot in the 25mans.

I believe that is the plan.

[Trual]

I think a lot of people said that when BC came out, though - when raid size went down to 25.

I'm one of those who didn't like the 25-man drop either. Honestly, I would have said that a raid group of 30 would have been perfect. 9 classes x 3 each, + 3 free spots to fill as the fight required. Something like that would have given us a lot more flexibility in TBC raiding, and the 3 extra slots would have done a lot to add some variablity in strategy without having to front-load a raid group.

Edited/Added:

Source: Klimpen No, the 25 and 10man are going to drop different versions of the same Teir set. Ala Gladiator set being mix and match.

That's not now I read the Gamespy quote. The last part of that quote reads to me like there will be a 1-tier difference between 10 and 25 man zones, although having something like "Destroyer" drop in the 10-man and "Vengeful Destroyer" drop in the 25-man with the set bonuses being shared doesn't seem too far fetched. But I think the gear itself will be ~10 ilvls (seems to be about the tier difference right now) different between them.

Source: http://uk.pc.gamespy.com/pc/world-of-warcraft-wrath-of-the-lich-king/872794p1.html This doesn't mean that organized raiding guilds still won't be at the top of the loot pyramid. 25-person raids will earn more, higher-level rewards, in what should be the equivalent of one "tier" of loot quality.

[Alent]

Consider the success of Karazhan and ZA vs the success of SSC/TK.

From what I understand the 10 man blackrock Spire stuff was the kara/za of it's day, and massively popular at that.

10 man content is just more accessible, I would rather see wow bump up the group size to 6 and make it into 12 man content, just to make including more classes/friends easier.

[Trual]

Consider the success of Karazhan and ZA vs the success of SSC/TK.

Honestly, I consider the numbers of people in Kara to be one of the biggest misconceptions in this game.

First of all, you have a waterfall effect, where people who have cleared BT by default have cleared Kara (and contribute to that percentage). Then you have the millions (literally in this case) who do Kara on multiple toons. What really needs to be calculated is how many accounts are in Kara vs SSC/TK vs BT in order to determine their relative success.

Will the numbers for Kara be higher? Of course they will - it's an entry zone after all. But the fact that wowjutsu reports 99% of people as having been to Kara in the first place should show that there's a problem with the math being used.

[Velhym]

I'm still kinda hoping for differentiated content. I'd kinda despise running a 10 man instance only to run the same instance as a 25 man raid.