Jaxtrasi

That is not the intention. 25-man raiders require more, and more sophisticated, content over time. There is no reason for this to be compromised. If the encounter has to be rethought and simplified for the 10-man or 5-man versions, and if the 25-man version is widely regarded as "better", "more challenging" or "more epic", so be it. All the better, as it provides strong motivation for people to aim for the 25-man cutting edge.

25-mans should not compromise. 10-man and 5-man versions of similar encounters will have to compromise, but this should not influence the design of the original 25-man encounter.

While this sounds intuitively true, I don't think it's actually the case. You can test it right now by going back to Molten Core (legendary for it's appalling design even with 40 people present) with a small handful. Does it feel cavernous? Yes. Does it feel unwelcomely cavernous? Not IMO. Raid dungeons contain the legendary giants of the warcraft world, and it's a well established fantasy trope that legendary giants live in legendarily gigantic houses. You're supposed to feel small and lost, that's part of the point.

Gruul's Lair is a fairly extreme case of sheer emptiness, but it's not significantly larger than, for example, the room above Magtheridon at the end of Blood Furnace. As long as he knocks people back right to the edges sometimes, you get the feel of a giant living in a giant room. I'd say, in fact, that if you were to specifically redesign the geography and put Gruul in a smaller cave, he'd look pretty silly standing by himself in a cubbyhole barely large enough for him to move around in.

Key to the whole concept is that I don't think this should be true. What's necessary is some rethinking about how it's going to work. There is no reason people should expect to clear every (even unlearned) five man the night they enter it in under a few hours. The only reason to do so is that this is how it is implemented in WoW as a rule, but look at BRD and to a lesser extent Uldaman. It wasn't always the case.

I'll try to go over in more detail how I imagine the "five man raid dungeon" working but really, as long as there is progress, challenge and reward, there's no reason for it to also be completeable in one night. As a simple example, imagine five man Karazhan. Like ten-man Karazhan, poorly organised, geared or skilled raids can repeatedly kill Attumen in order to get some epixx. They're not seeing the whole instance, but they are getting geared up and (hopefully) learning to play. If they're not even good enough for Attumen, they can take out the basement animals. When they're feeling more confident they can clear to Moroes and try him.

As long as the instance is on a one-day lockout (as opposed to something longer) this is 5-man friendly, PUG friendly and casual friendly. A PUG can down a single boss, or a handful of bosses, and get (crucially) something that was worth their time. A dedicated small guild can hammer away at Karazhan on some approximation of a raid schedule, working their way towards clearing it in a night.

Back when Naxxramas came out, they put an amusing dig at non-raiders in at Light's Hope chapel. If you talk to Korfax (the guy who crafts Dreadnaught) and get the Dark Iron Scraps quest from him (Dark Iron Scraps being the patronising and unrewarding "content" they introduced for non-raiders along with Naxx) he says the following:

Recently my opinion has changed from thinking that the designers are elitist raiders, to thinking that the designers are well-intentioned, extremely enthusiastic raiders who like many humans simply cannot get their head around the idea that other people don't like what they like. "Surely," they (or many others) would say, "If you'd only try it, you'd understand how much fun it is, and fall in love with it like we have." The folly of this ought to be self-evident.

All of vanilla WoW, and all of TBC, is designed to gently or forcefully encourage you towards 40/25 man raiding. Quest chains ultimately (in the sense of genuine closure) conclude with raid bosses. Content is designed to gradually turn you towards the biggest, latest content. Recent accessibility changes in TBC leave me with a distinct impression of genuine fondness for their work on the part of the designers. "We made this beautiful, complex dungeon. Won't you please form a 25-man raid and try it out?" I hear them say.

Why the tangent? Something I didn't make clear in my initial post (and I'm trying to figure out how to reword it to do so, without making it even longer) is that central and critical to the whole concept is that there should be no exclusivity of content based on group size.

Take that with a pinch of salt. 25-man is 25-man and 5-man is 5-man. You cannot duplicate the feel of 25-man in 5-man. No one expects anyone to do so. Raiding is often compared with sports - I think this is a reasonable comparison. The Olympics is not the local county competition. One is "like" the other but not the same. It's not possible to make them the same, because the differences are absolutely intrinsic. If you want to participate in the Olypmics, you have to do what is necessary to get there.

The same thing applies to group size. If you want to participate in "epic" battle featuring whole armies of players, you have to participate in large-group raids. That's implicit, and no one at all is arguing that point (at least to my knowledge). However, the Olympics does not restrict certain events. It's not the case that in the local county competition you can participate in the high jump, but only Olympic-quality atheletes get to try themselves at the long jump.

The nature of the content is necessarily different; unavoidably so. But the source of the content and the restriction of the content is exactly the same. Events are not restricted by quality or by commitment. Obviously being an Olympic athelete represents a substantial commitment on the athelete's part. Being the best requires talent, skill, dedication and persistance - the same is true of top-level raiding.

Why then, the oft-repeated argument that content should be restricted? Not where it is unavoidable, as I have just belaboured, but where it is avoidable. Why is Kael'thas restricted to a certain group size? Vashj? Illidan? Archimonde? Nefarion? Ragnaros? Kel'Thuzad? Magtheridon? Gruul? Teron Gorefiend, even? In fact, with the possible exception of Kargath, every single notable NPC from existing Warcraft or newly developed (and clumsily foreshadowed) WoW.

There is a reason that they put Illidan on the cover of Burning Crusade, and not Warlord Kalithresh. I often hear from raiders (obviously not all raiders are the same) that what they care about is the intense challenge, and the corresponding reward, and then the further intense challenge. What does this have to do with exclusive access to certain content?

Another analogy I often see made is a straw man involving other computer games. That purchasing a computer game does not give you the "right" to skip straight to the end without bothering to play through the middle. This is a reasonable analogy. However, what the designers of wow and many raiders simply don't seem to understand is that group size is a choice, not a requirement. For whatever reason, people can't or won't form larger groups. Blizzard have formally recognised this now (which is great progress since vanilla).

So let's extend the analogy. Assume we're playing a single player RPG, and at the start you can choose to be a fighter, rogue or wizard. The fighter gameplay is really, extraordinarily good, at least by comparison to any of its competitors. The wizard gameplay is also very good, but very different in nature to the fighter gameplay. Halfway through the game, playing as a fighter, the plot just stops. There are a few more enemies to defeat, but at each stage you are told "your valiant NPC wizard friend has defeated the great enemy, please clean up his lieutenants".

You might say "then play as a wizard" and this would be missing the point. Modern computer games (rightfully, and thankfully) emphasise choice. Having multiple ways to play through a game expands your market and makes good financial sense. To then take this choice away at some point, by having certain choices simply not work any more, is disingenuous at best and dishonest at worst. If the game allows you to play a fighter or a wizard, both options should be existent and complete.

Why should group size result in certain players playing second fiddle to others, both implicitly and explicitly? Surely skill, dedication and effort (the virtues lauded by raiders and non-raiders alike) should be the relevant factor? What does a choice or preference in size of group have to do with that? It is great that WoW can provide content for solo players, small groups, large groups and very large groups. Who benefits from the content being different for each group size?

The system I've proposed removes this problem whilst at the same time ensuring that there remains a large group cutting edge of players who have access to the best, newest content first.

EDIT

I apologise if I seem terse or dismissive. That is not my intent. As you can see, I struggle with verbosity.

"I've never known people as dogmatic as those who insist that all opinion is equally subjective."