Zuckas

Coming from raid leading a 40man fluctuating attendance guild pre-tbc (entry-level naxxramas) the headache going from getting 40 retards to show up on time at the right place with consumables to getting 25 retards in the right place at the right time is a huge difference. If you have 40 stable and awesome players then yeah, 40 people was great.
In TBC though getting a core 20 players is not hard. Although with TBC's release it has given 2 new headaches. The first being the very ornerrous attunement chains for TK. The second being guild recruitment.
With so many more small 10-15 player guilds exisitng and working their way through karazhan with 1-2 truly good players each recruiting good players is an absolute bitch of a problem.
The encounters themselves. I don't know what it is but I have to agree they don't feel as epic. A lot of bosses don't feel like they belong. Most of the Karazhan bosses give that feeling of not belonging. A prince of the burning legion with no entourage, a nether-infected dragon who likes astronomy, a golem construct in the guest quarters. It's just not the same feeling as staring out from the throne room over searing gorge or watching this huge fire elemental just burst out of of the lava.
I don't miss the other 15 raiders, I do miss the much better themed and designed enviroments the 40man instances had.

 

• Tristanian

I think the point that Quigon is trying to make (and correct me if I'm wrong) is the fact that though casuals were putting pressure, so to speak, for a reduction in raid spots, so that they were able to actually form a raid, in reality, the didn't take into consideration the simple fact that in most cases such a reduction has a direct impact on raid design. As a result, encounters became harder, more tedious and in some cases requiring absolutely perfect execution that it really feels like performing some kind of surgery. Thing is, I personally didn't sign up to perform "surgeries" on every single raid, every single night, every single week, for X months until encounter Y is nerfed down enough so that John Casual can at least have some decent attempts. It's an unfortunate situation for both sides.

Pre-TBC, things were pretty straightforward. I'm also part of the group that believes that Naxxramas is the best thing that has happened to this game, raiding wise, till this day. It had accessible encounters, wings, scaling difficulty, well tuned trash and encounters where you actually could multitask without necessarily feeling that if you didn't push the A button on time, you would wipe your raid and cause huge amounts of frustration that could lead to potential drama and lack of focus/drop in morale. Because that's exactly whats happening today. Most importantly, 40 man raiding allowed a wider margin of classes, each and every one having something to offer, without feeling obsolete or left out. I feel that the raid stacking required in most modern encounters is simply horrible and certainly a step backwards. At no point should you actually need to have to explain to people that you cannot take them into the raid, simply because you have no chance to down boss X, unless you have lets say Z ranged dps.

Then there's the matter of dead weight. I also agree that 40 mans had a A LOT of dead weight and that was something not easily noticeable, considering the raid design, save for some really challenging encounters like C'thun, 4hm, Sapphiron or KT that required everyone to be awake and be able to perform at 100%+. From a super hardcore point of view, weeding out those people can only be considered as good for any given raid group. But what about friendship ? Companionship ? Trust ? Did we just become so blind or progress horny as to benchmark people purely on their performance or was it always like that ? Like, Quigon, I play this game, mainly to play with people, having everyone overcome the same obstacles (yes I'm using the exact same words because I really believe in their value) is a hundred times better than doing it alone with a part of the people you would normally do it with. Last night, I heard the screams of joy on vent because Al'ar finally went down and although I was happy and overwhelmed, you know what, something didn't feel exactly right, it was nothing like the screams when KT went down. Something was missing...people were missing.

All in all, unless there is some serious tuning coming in the future, I personally don't believe that 25 mans will ever be or feel as good or epic as the old, pre TBC raids. I'm not going to be the one to suggest going back to 40 mans, since that would contradict the game's evolution, however I believe that a line must be drawn somewhere in between, if a lot of people are to start enjoying raiding again, in the same fashion as back in the day. This is mostly a personal wish though, rather than a general guideline, I realize and recognize the fact that for some people this change was probably a good thing but I also cant help but think "what if the line was drawn a bit wider ?". Perhaps up to 30 or at some number that would allow a better utilization of classes (hybrids included), without requiring absurd amounts of dps zerging (use Maulgar as an example), while at the same time keeping the game "playable" latency and hardware wise. Time will tell I guess.

P.S : Please excuse any typos.

 

Benita

I don't see a big problem with the new raiding cap compared to the old. Getting 25 players online who want to raid is just that much easier in a certain range of expectations and skill.

Some might not think that way, but a lot of good or exceptional players were frustrated to wait for the last few on some encounter. While that basic mechanic didn't change, the difference between the first and the last to learn the encounter is smaller now or is easier to manage to keep it small.

The pre TBC encounters had alot of overkill in raid setups. What is the big plus of bringing 5 rogues to an encounter like Gluth while you could do the same with 3? There were 6-8 special jobs in that encounter, the rest was 4-5 doing exactly the same job as 2 do now. It more or less had to be that way because otherwise you would need to train every person on one specific job and were fucked the next day. Frustration levels rise and the content gets close to impossible for more and more guilds of so called casual players.
Naxxramas was sure nice content that hardcore raiders could enjoy, but what is your guess the % of wow players is that actually set foot in that instance? Let alone see 4H or kill KT?

And then theres the technical side of raids. Im not even talking about Thaddius like encounters, which were awful enough by itself, but the part of waiting on ppl which disconnected. I dont think anyone went into a new bosskill attempt with someone offline. The odds are just better that 25 stay online than in a 40 man raiding environment.

Also how did you guys sort out the change from going to 40 to 25? Maybe the better 25 (or at least more than 5/8) are still in the guild? That would explain why things feel faster or easier. The raid as whole is just performing better.
We had some drama with cutting down the guildsize, even after month of close to zero recruitment and the usual amount of ppl stopping the game after an instance has been cleared. The reorganization worked tho for the raids, its just all much smoother if #1 is not that far from #25.

Wrong implementation of gear and new pots were also a part of it i guess, the new patch just shows over and over that this went totally wrong with the expansion.

Overall i have to say its a good change and i wouldnt want to go back to pre-TBC raiding, alot of it is nostalgia. Id like to point out Patchwerk, Thaddius, Cthun phase 2, Viscidus, random Time Lapse Chromaggus, x-times reworked Ragnaros and more i cant remember right now for encounters that ppl tend to forget when they compare new frustrations to old awesome kills.

 

• Tristanian

I would reckon its the same percentage as those that will ever set foot in SSC (won't even mention TK in its current form) or those that will ever kill Leotheras and Vashj even after they've been hit with the nerf bat. Perhaps its a premature assumption considering that the expansion is still very young but that's the data we have to work with at the moment. Contrary to popular belief, Naxxramas wasn't THAT hard, especially the earlier encounters like Razuvious, Noth, Anub. When you enter SSC right now, you are being introduced to a brick wall called Hydross, a boss that you can still easily wipe to for numerous reasons, no matter if you have him on farm or not and thus have to resort to water walking tricks in order to go and kill something else that is more "accessible". That doesn't look like smart design to me, scaling wise at least.


Like you said, most guilds had to cut down on their roster or reform. The fact remains that you still had to deal with the situation where you simply had to tell a person you've been raiding with for ages, that he just isn't fit for the guild anymore. And that is exactly what "sucked". Being able to field a 25 man raid as opposed to 40 man doesn't mean you can just get 25 random people and raid. You need class balancing, you need quality if you want to progress at a decent pace. Without a doubt the transition to 25 man oriented guilds, created a core of better raiders quality wise, but did it really improve the quality of the game, considering that the change was made in the first place to allow better access to endgame content ?

 

◊ Praetorian

As a raid leader, 25 is vastly preferable to 40 logistically. Handling loot is simpler, and keeping track of what everyone is doing is a more feasible task as well.

A lot of what I'd say has been covered above, but the main point I want to address is the lack of cheering and such on vent: I'm not sure this is because the encounters feel less epic. It's because we're all a bit jaded and have a different perspective on where bosses and loot fit into the overall picture. The fact that multiple tiers of content were released simultaneously is a factor as well. Come on, is Magtheridon less "epic" a fight than Gluth? Is Lurker Below less epic than Firemaw? It's not that the new encounters somehow have lost their majesty, it's just that it takes a lot more to get us excited.

When Nefarian went down, we'd beaten the game as far as we knew it. We were also partly surprised at ourselves in the process. Today, we know each boss kill is just another step in a road to Illidan. We expect that bosses will die, and we are more disappointed if they don't than excited if they do. Loot, even good loot, is seen as just another progression step, eventually to be replaced. When Ragnaros died, something like a Spinal Reaper or a Perdition's was so far beyond what anyone else could get at the time, there was just a sense of awe about the loot as well as the kill itself. Today, aside from the fact that things are marginal upgrades, we all know what's coming next, and in many cases even know the specific items from Vashj/Kael or t6 zones we'll be replacing our newest loot with in a few months.

When Ragnaros went down and we all cheered on vent, it was partly because of a sense of "holy shit, did we just do that?" Today, we know we're going to do it. It's a matter of time, and if the boss is mistuned, then it's just a matter of time until that gets fixed as well. Fights are still fun, but there's obviously a difference in perspective there. I don't think it's a 40-man vs. 25-man thing. We're just a bit jaded.

But then again I see lots of WoW videos (of non-world-first kills) and lots of people spamming raid or guild with "YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS" and such on every boss from Gruul to Leotheras, so maybe it's just us.

 

Schneeb

I hear all your points but our old 40 man guild in AQ and naxx had the scariest turnover, we went through a good 20 new people in AQ and probably 40+ in naxx (I stopped raiding my mage when TBC was near too). 25 man raiding let the core of 15-20 of us bring 20-30 orso pals and new people to the end game without all having to have 100% attendance and without having to feel dead at your full time job.

I think were quite a rare case, most other guilds you see at the 'end game' all cleared naxx eventually - we never managed to get 40 people there, that sucked.

So heres to seeing content that doesn't require such a hefty pool of players that have the skill etc but not necessarily the time or the inclination to raid everyday.

 

Pyrul

I tend to click on every single guild website I can here, and It's been quite interesting to see many guilds that apparently struggled in Naxxrammas, or at least didn't kill KT to be largely successful in TBC. I would imagine this is due to the raid size, would those against 25-man raids not consider this a success in the sense that it allowed many more guilds to be successful?

http://www.nascentguild.net/

 

• frmorrison

While the objectives the devs had may have not been fulfilled by 25 man raids, I like to think the smaller size has encouraged more people to raid. Plus it is easier to manage DKP and 25 people.

Other plus I see is the lesser raid instances. In WoW 1.0 it was 20 man size, but in 2.0 it is 10 man, which is a lot easier to manage and form than 20 people.

 

Emeraude

Blizzard catered to the ridiculously casual(The ones that don't want to even raid), and in essence screwed over the normal crowd, what you have here is the result.

The main crying about WoW was "Raid or Die" People would light up the General boards/Raiding boards and cry all day about how they don't want to be forced to raid for loot. The upside to this was, they COULD actually raid for loot. It was not impossible to join a 40-man raiding guild and hit up Naxx/MC/BWL/AQ40, ZG/AQ20, whatever and get your share of epics, everybody COULD do it.

The result is what you have today, Blizzard cated to THOSE people, the ones who in actuallity prob made up less of the population then your 40-man raiders. So we have this ridiculously hard content, with loot very close to what Average Joe player can get and now everyone is stuck without being able to raid successfully, unless they're in that 1 guild on the server that's on top.

I was in a Naxxramas guild, there were 4 other guilds there with me.
There were 5 guilds working on AQ40 while this was happening
10 guilds in BWL
10 guilds in MC

I highly doubt I'll be seeing The Eye anytime soon, or anything beyond that for a while.

In fact with the way things are I prob will not see Lady Vashj/Kael/Illidan or Mount Hyjal before Christmas short of videos DnT and Nihilhum release. That's a major problem, like it or not, WoW is about the end game. You can only run a 5-man instance or PvP for so long before this game becomes dull, if you can't raid you're gonna quit. I'm very very close to quitting atm.

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For the lurking Phoenix Wright faithful.

 

• Astiron

I like several of the points made here. Mainly from those who have stated that 25 is more restrictive, and 40 was as close to a perfect number in WoW as it can get.

I believe their error is always in the "pick only one" design philosophy. The first error they ever made when this game dropped as concerns raiding was the group size leap: you went from needing only 15 max (UBRS) to 40. They addressed this by capping some lower 5-mans (Strat, Scholo, etc), UBRS, and adding ZG/AQ to the mix. This effectively made progression for a not-so-hardcore guild go 5-man, 10-man, 20-man, 40-man.

And this was the sweet spot they have so far abandoned. Guilds that followed that dungeon progression eventually did the 40-mans, even if it was through alliances. In fact I would argue that guild raiding alliances became MORE popular after the implementation of 20-man raids.

Why? Because those casuals who had not been raiding previously began to see how incredibly awesome and fun the raiding game can be. And thus kept moving up and up. This formula worked while not stratifying the player base into the "haves" and "have nots"; hardcores could keep doing what they were doing, and casuals were given the opportunity to gradually adapt and move into the raiding game at their own pace.

Now with TBC they've got it capped at 25, which is kinda absurd in my mind. I never really was certain how the 25-man cap would work when it was being talked about. But with it's implementation it's caused too much damage to the social fabric of the game. It would have been best to keep it 40, and simply add more 10-25 man raid zones. And no guilds would have suffered from this. In fact, they would have prospered, as was seen with the 20-man implementation.

They've really got to stop being so single-minded when it comes to implementing raid dungeon parameters. That's just my opinion. But I think they had actually hit the nail on the head in old WoW.

The only thing they *really* needed to address was PvP and itemization across the board. And that was it, as goes game changes. The addition of more smaller raids while retaining the 40-man format would have been infinitely better.

 

Cob-

I couldn't imagine trying to field fourty for another early SSC fuck up. Twenty Five was one of many daily challenges, wait..add 15?

 

jilanea

40 man raiding is a nightmare for anyone who has limited play time. For example the top 4 alliance guilds on my server start raiding while I'm still at work.

This means to get 40 people together you have to be prepared to take in people of a wide range of play skill/commitment.

One of the dullest things in raiding is doing your assigned task (especially if it needs pots) right repeatedly, and waiting for the worse players to get it right. With 25 man caps the variance between top end and low end for the more casual guilds is reduced a lot,

Similarly having a raid cancel because too few people showed up or missing a key raid because too many of your class showed up, is extremely annoying, with a 25 man cap the variance between having 55 people and 33 people showing up for any given raid is reduced (although having 25 man and 10 man content side by side is a bit strange).

Personally I would love to have genuinely hard content between 10 and 20 group size Karazhan and the heroics were a great step in this direction, I really hope they continue to make more and harder content at this size. Yes it might not have quite the same epic battle feel, but it does have the key element, what you do counts! which for me is a much bigger deal.

Large groups are fun (maybe the most fun), when you have similarly skilled players in a full group, for most people that’s too hard to achieve.

 

Nemain

Like my guildmate zuckas already mentioned, the move to twenty-five man raids first appeared as a bit of a blessing to us, due to not having to lug around as much dead weight.

However (on K-T at least) it would appear to have somewhat backfired as many, MANY players are tied up in very compact (15-20) man guilds that, frankly, do not have a snowball's chance in hell to do SSC.

Contained in these guilds areprobably 1-5 really good players that cannot be recruited currently.

So now we're chugging along with 25 men, with the same bloody percentage of dead weight, and the dead weight is dragging more than ever before.

In short, I really don't like it.

 

Nausicca

I have to agree with a lot of this. Now WoW has been out as long as it has, and many of us have been on the raiding road as long as we have, we pretty much know whats comming and know that the boss we just killed for the first time will be nothing in a few weeks. The point of MC and Ragnaros was that it was the first ever raid instance, and no one really knew what to expect, it was all new and as such the feeling that came with killing him was all new too.

Also at the time the first guilds were killing Ragnaros, there wasnt such a large community surrounding WoW, so we didnt really hear or know about the boss and its loot as quickly as we do now after a world first. This made it that much more 'new' when you managed to kill Rag with your guild, even if it was months after the world first. These days we all know the second a new boss gets downed, and usually we know what loot its likely to drop before that even happens, it kind of takes some of the excitment and magic away.

We still shout and scream occasionally after a boss goes down, but its not like it was, Magtheridon was the only boss i can think of that rivaled the feeling of a pre-TBC boss.
But its not like i feel the game has 'lost' something because of this, more that i feel we have all 'matured' into it. I reckon Blizzard will still be able to amazing and excite us, they just have to make it that little bit more special.

Have love, will travel.

 

Nemain

In order to do that though, they redically need to increase the amount of "cool new stuff" that big raidbosses do, as well as the rewards they drop.

I mean ragnaros, nef, anything in naxx, they all did really cool things (come on, 80 foot elemental fire monstrosity bursting from the lava. how is this not cool...), that were sometimes challenging or annoying but way awesome, and never seen before.

Current bosses seem to reiterate many things we've already seen, and are seemingly designed to be as retarded and annoying as possible. Let's not mention buggy and too random.

 

• Disquette

Though it's stated out of a sense of selfishness, partially, I do think that the attunements contribute to some of the progression blocking, at least on our server. In the past, if our naxx guild needed someone to fill a dps or healing role, we were able to say "here's a couple nexus crystals and adamantite bars, get in here and {dps the boss, heal the main tank, shoot down people who get web-stuck on the walls}.

Those people weren't given too many instructions, but they could fill a role for the night, and in many cases help us out. Sure, there were Thaddius/4H/Loatheb encounters where we needed people who were more knowledgeable of how they worked, but for other fights - Patchwerk, Gluth, all of Spider wing, Noth, Heigan, etc - they could help out the raid by contributing what they could before they'd die. They'd have a good time, maybe get some nexus-shard loot, and we'd have a good filler raider when needed.

What will the "filler" pool be for The Eye? What will app testing be like when that's where your guild is?

As for the selfish part, in the interest of full disclosure, I don't play very much, but I'd like to be able to join my guild on raids when they need someone. At the moment, and it will be worse in the future, that's an impossibility.

In conclusion, I can't speak for the raids themselves, but the forgiving nature of roles in many 40 man encounters, along with the easier attunements, allowed for a logistical ease that I appreciated for the "play with your friends" objective.

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Nausicca

This is *exactly* whats happening on our server. People are spread too thinly over too many guilds. Each guild has maybe 2-4 decent players that we would want to recruit, but they are so cemented into these guilds thats its almost impossible.
Another problem thats developing on our server is a recent spate of short lived Karazhan guilds. They form from people who already killed up to Prince, they clear karazhan out pretty fast, gather a few easy purples, then collapse under the weight of internal drama, only to spring up again with mainly the same people a few days later. And this happens litterally every week.

Luckily for us we have a good base of solid raiders and we dont really need to recruit much right now, but for casual players it creates a mine field of drama and strife when looking for a new guild. It also means that when we do have to start recruiting again we will be forced to do so from a pool of people who have basically been guild hopping for months, not exactly who we'd like to chose from.

Is this because of the size of raids these days? Does 10 man Karazhan and 25 man Gruuls Lair make it easy to throw together some random people and struggle through in a short lived burst of energy? There seems to be a veritable melting pot of guilds bubbling just beneith the surface of 25 man raids and serious raid content, or was it always this way and i never noticed?

Have love, will travel.

 

Nausicca

There is a ....rumour, shall i say, with *some* evidence to back it up, that there is going to be a fix for this in the future.
Things have been data-mined from some raid zones, that indicate blizzard have thought about these problems. For example there is a Quest Item that is in the Vashj loot pool, or 'could' be in the Vashj loot pool, called Mark of Vashj or something similar. Now it could be that at some point in the future these items will be introduced into the loot table proper, and they will be simple hands-ins that would get you instant attunement to god knows where, Hyjal for exmaple.

I've probably explained that poorly, but the point it, after a certain amount of time has passed, and a lot of guilds have attuned themselves the hard way, Blizzard might open up attunement to casual people by introducing these simpler, easier hand in items.

but like i say, its not based on fact.

Have love, will travel.

 

Zaknafein

Interesting topic and even more interesting replies. I don't think the reduction in size is the only reason "we're jaded", as Gurg already explained. There are several contributing factors to that feeling and the major one (for me at least) wasn't so much the raid size but the feeling that raids have focused too much on the "numbers game". I won't touch on the other factors because they've been discussed in this and other threads extensively (itemization, tuning, trash etc).

I'm not sure I can explain it exactly and I know that essentially the numbers game is nothing new, but in vanilla raids it didn't stand out as much as it does now. (is it a matter of tuning only? I'm not so sure.) Every other boss having an enrage timer only adds to that feeling.

You may win a thousand battles, but you can only lose one.

 

Vlad3

Lots of good points in this thread, I found myself out of a raid (my guild disbanded last week). In the end I really wasnt motivated to raid for some reason, now I dont feel like joininig another guild.

For some reason I dont enjoy raiding in 2.0 like I did in 1.0. One factor is that beating something with 40 man really felt that you accomplished something, then beating those encounters was easier as the week went along, you really felt like your guild was progressing.

Now its a battle evertime, even on content you cleared weeks ago you still have to be on top of your game to defeat it, there are still wipes. Raiding 5 days a week 4 hours a day when you have no margin of error all that time is draining and I guess people are getting burned out. There is no more semi-afk moment when you were just fooling around joking in vent while clearing content on farm (say when DPS warriors tank and tanking warriors DPS).

Take another example Nef vs Nightbane, on Nef the tank get feared what happens ? He goes and kill 2-3 caster dps then he comes back to the tank, you can recover from that without problems. A tank get feared on Nightbane, its a wipe, a healer heals too much when he is about to land, its a wipe, the shield slam is parried when he is landing, its a wipe.

Raid stacking is another problem, almost never did we have to cancel raids because some class didnt show up, in 40 men if your 10-12 healers didnt show up it was always possible to do an encounter with only 7. Now you have to have specific classes in all fights, your 3 Warlocks dont show up for Mag, well your gonna have a hard time (2 warlocks isnt enough, 4 warlocks is too much). Its getting crazy like that.

All in all 40 man were epic, it felt like you had an army with you, with 4-6 in your subgroup (your class). In the begining you didnt even need 40 man to progression in MC we first killed Lucifron with 33 and Gehenas with 31 people in the raid. How many raiders complained that the raid size was too high ? I didnt hear anyone complain. If its not broke dont touch it, you gave people when they were asking and enjoying what the problem, why did they take that away ?

40 man where alot more casuals then 25 man content. You could let inexperience players with bad gear in your raid, now dont even think about let those joining your raiding guild even less your raid group. What we used to do in my old per TBC guild was forming alliance with a less advanced guilds to clear MC/ZG/AQ20 with alts, mains that still needed 1-2 of gear and recruits.

The formula solo play (1), party (5), small raid (20), end game raid (40) pleased a good portion of there customers. All in all 10 man isnt a raid, 10 man should be like UBRS an unsaved dungeon you can run as much time as you want, it doesnt require any organization which was the point of a 10 man, why put a save timer on it to give headackes to people that run it. Timers should only be for real "raids" 20+ that actually takes some sort of organization to get going, I really dont see the point of putting a save timer on a 10 man instance.

25 arent epic, if too hard they will lead to what we have now extremely unforgiving with no margin of error for any player, people getting burned out, if too easy then its a glorified version of Zul'Gurub where you feel you didnt accomplish much. 40 men werent "that hard" to get organized, if someone wanted to raid he could it was much easier to get into a guild, now getting into a 25 man raiding well thats much harder.

Well anyway I have quit raiding just this week, the experience doesnt justify the "effort" and the time anymore.