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Von Kaiser
Orc Warrior
Argent Dawn (EU)
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Loktar!
Notable advantages of this system
1) At every major content release (Age), each group of players receives content which is at least as notable as the content they're getting under the current system. (That is to say, there aren't necessarily new Arenas, or Battlegrounds, but that's no worse than the situation we have at the moment, and they could always add those too if fairness is an important consideration.)
2) Much of this content is recycled, at least as far as artwork goes. This either makes the content cheaper to develop, or faster to develop, or allows the art team to do more work on the leading-edge (25-man) content.
3) Each player group (PVP, 5-man, 10-man, 25-man) receives new challenges, rewards and mostly importantly, options for progression at every new Age. I've ignored the question of soloable content, which would have to be added on an ad-hoc basis at the same time.
4) Players who wish to join the bleeding edge no longer have to spent months grinding up through the lower tiers to join the highest tiers. This is good for the players, and good for the raid guilds that want to recruit them. They will of course not have the practice at 25-man raiding, but they weren't given their gear for free (they still had to earn it, just on a shorter timer and in a smaller group) and if they're good players worth recruiting, the guild can train them up without having to worry about running old instances for gear.
5) The elite are still the elite. Not every could, or would want to, participate in the 25-man bleeding edge of the game. For those that do, there are unique rewards to recognise their commitment.
6) People who want to experience the content "as-is" and progress at their own pace can still do so. Slow raiding guilds can still grind away at the 25-man versions of the dungeon for the challenge and satisfaction of it. In fact, they have it better than they have it under the current system, as there is no need to nerf the existing 25-man content. Bleeding edge raiders currently scorn slow raiders for not being there "when it was hard". As the encounters can remain unchanged, this disparity is for the most part removed.
Objections:
Q) Won't retuning or redesigning the instances for a smaller number of players use a lot of development time?
A) Yes it will, but it will use a lot less than the development of an entire new dungeon for a particular group size (for example, Zul'Aman which is restricted only to 10-man will have been a lot more expensive than retuning Tempest Keep for 10-man would have been).
Q) Why rehash old content when you could design new content?
A) Because for the people who didn't have access to it before, it *is* new content. Not only that, but it's new content with no art requirements at all... making it win/win.
Q) Why should 5-man have the same rewards as 25-man?
A) Because by the time those rewards have been made available, the 25-manners have access to much better gear. The 5-manners *will* have put less work in than the 25-manners (due to simplified organisation, etc) but it will be impossible for them to reach the level of 25-man gear without joining a 25-man raid. The elite remain the elite, and the non-elite have a path of progression which is cheaper for Blizzard to develop and no less satisfying.
Q) But this makes it easier for people who aren't in large raid guilds to get gear!
A) Yes, that's the idea. People who don't want to raid win. People who want to raid but aren't in a raid guild yet win (because they can get the gear they need to be able to join in with 25-man raiding), and even people who are in a raid guild win by having access to a pool of much better-geared recruits.
Q) An entirely new 10-man dungeon provides content for 10-man groups and 25-man groups, but a rehashed 25-man-into-10-man only provides content for 10-man groups. What's up with that?
A) On the release of a new Age, the 10-man group gets new content from the retuned old dungeon, whereas the 25-man group gets new content from the newly released 25-man dungeon. Every group gets new content in every Age.
Q) WoW needs an elite core of players to inspire others.
A) It would still have one. Killing (say) Illidan soon after Black Temple went live would be as impressive a feat here as it would under the old system. The 25-man raiders are going to have no respect for people who killed 5-man Illidan, and the 5-man people either don't care or are happy to accept their "lowly" role. The only people that lose out are the raid scrubs who are two tiers behind in progression and like to lord it over the five-manners. The Arena has already pretty much killed this group anyway.
Q) Won't people stop raiding 25-man entirely with this system?
A) There's no reason to believe that. It may be that with equivalent gear available (eventually) through 5-man and PVP systems, only those who genuinely want to raid end up raiding. Their dedication is rewarded by being the first to see new content and get the new gear, access to special titles and the chance at "world firsts" and "server firsts". If it turns out that in the absense of exclusive privileged access to the best gear and the most high-profile content (signature Warcraft bosses, etc) the raid game dies, that saves Blizzard the bother of having to develop (complex) 25-man content in the future.
Q) Why is the best available PVE gear better than the best available PVP gear during an Age?
A) Balance on PVP servers, primarily. Since PVP gear is (much) better itemised for PVP, raiders would stand little chance against PVPers in world PVP with similar iLevel gear.
Q) Titles are lame.
A) Okay. I think so too, and I much prefer the more complex or involved reward systems in City of Heroes and Lord Of The Rings: Online. Titles seem to be Blizzard's non-mechanical reward of choice so I used them too. Feel free to substitute a public Hall of Fame, mounts, pets, tabards, +1% XP, +1% Rep, or my favourite, a permanent +5% size increase, instead. Whatever you feel (other than actual gear) ought to separate the elite from those who come after them.
Q) Why do the five-man dungeons have reduced lockout timers? That way five-man groups can accumulate gear much faster!
A) Exactly. This allows advanced raid groups to gear up for their content more quickly and conveniently and allows raiders who want to join the bleeding edge to put time in now to get there before the next Age arrives.
Q) You can't retune a 25-man encounter to a 5-man encounter.
A) You can't exactly replicate the structure and quality of every large group encounter with a small group. Some players find the "epic" feel of large numbers of players present to be valuable, but those players will have large group content available to them. Some encounters require certain quantites of certain roles (two, three, four tanks, etc) and these would need to be redesigned for 10- or 5-man play. However, replicating the exact nature of the encounter is less important than including content at all. If a player wants to experience the full complexity of a 25-man encounter, that encounter will still always be available to them. Players who can't or won't do that can experience a redesigned, less complex version along similar lines later on. However, the flavour of the fight and if necessary exhaustive learning of the fight can be retained. A long fight with many phases will be much quicker to learn with a small group, but still extremely demanding by comparison to a tank and spank.
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