Plea

Most of us talk about Cthun/Kelthuzad/4horsemen when it comes to good boss design, but those combats are where guilds fell apart in wow. I dont think any guild disbanded because of patchwerk; but one guild I know fell because of ragnaros, one because of Sartura, one because of Cthun, one because of 4horsemen, and one guild I was in disbanded when we were practicing heigan-thaddius.

Blizz most definitely wanted to make these less often because many people quit the game when their guilds disbanded. A 25 man boss would be a lot easier to conquer; but still harder than Magmadar for example. For casuals it kinda backfired yeh.

To the question from the op; 40 was a nice number, but I like 25 too. My server had 2 guilds who killed Kelthuzad, with 25 man raids and classes we have right now, it could have been at least 6-8, and more would have seen the very high end. One drawback I see now; most of us would agree that a raid consists of the leader and 24 others, finding that leader is a lot harder than finding the rest; again for Kelthuzad, an 100 man combat would make 3x the people see the high end. To me, the magic number seems to be about leaders, more than the rest.