Jaxtrasi

That was rather the point of what I proposed. Could you explain in more detail how I have failed to achieve that, so that I can correct the design?

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

 

Zifna

Implementing soft caps with better drawbacks might be a less time-consuming method of doing a similar thing.

For example, you can enter a dungeon (the very same dungeon!) on Raid mode when it's released. When the next dungeon is unlocked, Assault mode becomes active for that raid. If you enter an instance on Assault instead of Raid, you can enter with up to 40 players (or up to 20 for 10 mans, up to 10 for 5 mans).

At the same time, you make much more gear (especially flashy gear) available through quests. Most quests cannot be completed on Assault mode, and non-progression oriented trash drops are less frequent (i.e. same amount of HoD, less gems and trash epics, no Badge of Justices off of bosses).

If you only unlocked Assault mode for Black Temple when Sunwell came out, it would largely negate the idea that people would learn fights the "wrong way" and there's a strong incentive for an Assault raid to improve to the point where they can "Raid" an instance--they'll get tons of loot from all the quests they could never do! Additionally, it will help all the more "friendly" guilds who want to keep a stable raidforce on but hate having people sit out. Many people won't care if they can't get the quested Phoenix mount if it means that they can bring all six of their IRL friends who play mages.

 

Jaxtrasi

That introduces plenty of content for casual or incompetent players who are happy to zerg all over the place in huge groups, but doesn't add anything for small groups of competent players who want a meaningful progression of content and reward.

I think it's a good addition, but I don't think it's a good idea in isolation. There's a market of people who (apparently) went to Kara, and went to Zul'Aman, and somehow never went to SSC. Blizzard have apparently noticed this and are planning for it.

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

 

Thanaomira

I'm one of them. I could go on and on why I prefer 10s over 25s, but that would be quite irrelevant to the original conversation.

I like this idea: give me challenges, and let me see all the lore. My hope is that someday, "small raids" will become first-class citizens like "large raids". We're not there yet.

When Prince died, the 25 raiders were ready to go on to Gruul. For the 10 raiders... we had nothing. Gruul, Mags, SSC/TK, and only now are my 25-raid friends hitting MH/BT. Meanwhile, I was levelling alts, due to lack of content. Now I have ZA (I haven't seen it in a substantive manner, due to being last in line in the guild I just joined), but that only shows how much of a second-class citizen small raids have been.

Insofar as lore, Illidan is as irrelevant to me as the forum raiders who bemoan that I can get T5/T6 gear. "You are not prepared!" "You don't deserve that!" That's nice. Who're you again, and why do I care about you?

This proposal is interesting in that it recycles a lot of stuff. I won't really care if the place has been solved at the 25-person level by all the 25-person raiders; I'll care much more that I get to go. Sure, it'd be nice to have a place that's our own, but if this is the compromise that's needed, I'll take it.

 

Mr. Crow

I'd like to start by saying that this is a very interesting idea, but I have a few issues with it.

1) It's already been brought up that tuning a 25-man encounter down to a 5-man fight would be immensely difficult. Implementing a system like this would, I think, stifle the creativity of the designers when they want to push the envelope in new raid encounters. This system would force them to consider, as early as the initial development stages, how they'd implement the encounter for 5-man, 10-man, and 25-man groups. The development time that would be theoretically saved by not forcing the creation of new art and assets would likely be spent completely reinventing a given encounter to suit a 5-man run.

2) From an art/asset design perspective, the huge architecture used in raid dungeons is built to accomadate the size of the raid going in. When that raid can be busted down to a 5-man team, the volume of empty space around the character doesn't feel epic as much as it would feel ill-used, bloated. Gruul for a 5-man team would be ludicrous, since you have this huge room that has nothing in it but Gruul -- it would be creepy and unsettling, like walking through an abandoned airport.

3) I like the idea of a return to soft raid caps, where a 5-man could be 10-manned, or a 10-man could be 20-manned. Hell, I'd go the distance and say allow 25-mans to be 40-manned (the raid panel still supports 40, so there might as well be a use for it other than flashback radis). The penalty of taking too many people to the instance could be as simple as removing Badges of Justice from the loot tables. A system like this would control itself because casuals will get to see the content but face greater competition for boss drops, and raiders will want to keep the cap because they can at least get BoJs out of the run.

From a design perspective, it becomes a matter of when you stop designing the game for groups larger than 5 people. Consider Blizzard's multiplayer history: the Warcraft RTS games would allow 2-8 people to throw down together at one time. Starcraft may have upped that number. Diablo allowed small groups of people to team up. World of Warcraft is the next step: they want large groups of people working together. They realized 40 was too many at once, but 25 is a good number. I think asking their designers to curtail their 25-man dreams in order to provide content for 5-man guilds is hampering their ability to move forward in their design philosophy.

That's not to say that tuning a 25-man down to a 10-man is a bad idea. I think 10-mans should be the bare minimum for a raid of any kind, and I think that there should be 10-man friendly content. Because putting 10 people together is far simpler than 25 or 40, and it's not much more difficult than getting 5 people together. I think the people who can't pull together a worthwhile 10-man team are a dramatic minority, and it makes more sense for Blizzard to build for larger groups and ask the players to meet them halfway by bringing the manpower.

Thanks for listening. I'm really looking forward to discussing this further.

 

Maegril

Yes it's still a problem. If you run primarily 5 (or even 10) man groups, you'd been doing the same stuff for a very long time pre ZA. And ZA is pretty tiny (and only for 10-mans). There is, in fact, exactly zero new 5-man content in the game currently from when the expansion launched on, unless you're including stuff like Ogri'la/Skettis (which I don't think are what's being meant as 5-man content). The only way that this isn't true is in terms of gear progression. That's all well and good, but it's not always about the gear, 90% of the discussion on this board notwithstanding.

Whether or not I and the folks I play with can blow through every heroic in 30 mins or still struggle to get through some of the nastier ones, there's nothing that's compelling or interesting for us any more. We've tried it all, done it all, and the only possible place to look to for new content is ZA and 25-man raiding. That's disappointing if you can't/won't invest the time/commitment to do that type of raiding. It's also disappointing if you think, for example, it would be really awesome to see BT but you'll never get there because you're not doing 25 man raiding. And that seems to be what the original post is trying to address.

(Though personally I'd rather have more interlocking progressions: For example, every major hub (TK, SSC, etc..) has a 5-10-25 level 70 "progression" oriented set of dungeons, and there's an overarching progression from hub to hub. No need to try to retune Hydross for 5, but something along the lines of the Blood Furnace tie-in where in the 5-man you go in and kill the "safe" controllers pinning Mags down. In a hypothetical 10-man you have to disrupt the emergency reinforcements sent to get him back under control. And in the 25-man you do Mag more or less exactly like he is now.)

 

• Elsebet

In DAoC I was a member of a small "gank squad" style of guild and I earned a ton of realm points while following a fairly casual (3-4 hours a night) schedule. I experienced the same content that the PUG/zerg guilds experienced, just progressed my RA's at what I would assume in general was a faster, more efficient rate. To me that is a good dividing line between serious, skilled players without a lot of time and people who just play for fun. Right now, a fun guild would probably not see much past Gruul, if they can muster up a 25 man raid force. The soft cap idea seems to make a lot of sense to help in that regard - give more reward for doing things efficiently and with a smaller force, but make it easier for everyone to see the really climactic lore and content.

Elsebet

 

gnoop

Magister's Terrace seems to be at least some indication that Blizzard understands that casuals are bored with the game.

Unfortunately, this still doesn't get down to the point; that casuals are missing out on large chunks of lore because, for whatever reason, they're unable to get into the high-end content. Unfortunately, retuning is the most logical choice. Yes, it will involve extra effort. Are there really any good alternatives that allow casuals to go in? Suggesting bumping the limit isn't really going to solve the problem. If we're talking about casuals, pugs get included. The effort on some nights to get 5 people together is hard enough, let alone trying to get 40 people together to try and run Black Temple. Hell, I've watched people in /2 trying to find 2 healers for Kara. 60 minutes later, I'm watching the person still asking for 1 more healer. I couldn't imagine "LFM 4 healers, 3 tanks, 5 dps - BT".

Would 25-man's feel a bit empty with fewer people? Eh, not that bad, really. Is there a lot of retuning that needs to go in? You'd have to alter the boss scripts a bit. How much depends on things go. A bit more thought in design is really all that has to happen, though.

 

Katria

I think going down to 10 man is far enough. With a 5 man dungeon, I think people will expect to be able to clear it on the first try...are there any 5 man dungeons that can't be finished with a few wipes? Timed events (like heroic SH) might take multiple attempts to complete successfully, but actually finishing the dungeon is doable in a single attempt, probably with a few wipes on the first go through.

With a 10 man raid, people will expect to learn the encounter. And 10 man raids are can be done in a pug...kara is. I think more than 10 is just hard to fill out for a pug and small guilds, but 10 has turned out to be a very good number given the success of kara. There should still be new 5 man content, but I can definitely understand that tuning down a 25 man encounter to be doable with 5 would destroy all of the original flavor of the fight.

I wonder how much retuning would have to be done. For example, I know that kara can be cleared in 3-4 hours with a well-geared 5 man group. So it's just a matter of having the gear to do it...so in theory if you toned down the mobs hps/damage (to simulate the gear advantage those who 5 man it now have), you could make it a 5 man instance. I wonder how many 25 man fights could be toned down to 10 man just by reducing stats on mobs. Obviously more tuning would be needed for complex fights like Vash and Kael, but it seems like that would be enough for many bosses. Having never seen any 25 man content I couldn't say, but from reading about fights like Void Reaver or Gruul I'd say retuning many fights is really just a numbers game.

 

dbresq

This is what Jaxtrasi is getting at and what I think a lot of people are missing. Imagine if there was no SW25 in 2.4, just better drops in BT/HYJ. That is, you will get gear upgrades, but no new content to use it on. That is what the situation is like for non raiders at the moment - they are getting plenty of gear upgrades, but nothing new to use it on. I consider this will be a factor that will eventually push me away from the game; I don't want to raid next expansion as it's simply too time consuming. I do however still want to play the game, albeit as a game rather then a second job in terms of hours required. That leaves me with solo/5 man PvE and PvP.

New 5 man dungeons are basically non existant once you clear those offered with release so PvE will offer no new content. PvP is much the same - while it is not scripted to the extent PvE is the fact remains that you are still fighting against the same classes with the same abilities in the same battlegrounds/arenas you have had access to for the last 12 months. Nothing new. Under the current model PvP will offer the best progression path in terms of cutting edge loot but at the end of the day the content will not change from patch to patch. If Blizzard do release an expansion after WotLK I will probably have left the game before it's release due to lack of new content unless things are changed.

That said though, what incentive do Blizzard have for improving the game for non raiders (10 or 25 man)? Subscriptions are going up, not down. Either non raiders are generally happy enough with the game to keep playing it, or (more likely) the game is attractive enough to draw more new subscribers then the amount of people leaving the game. In either case profits are increasing which means they are doing well enough from a business perspective to keep going as is.

 

Addled

To be honest I wish they would change 10 mans to 15 mans, and 25 mans to 30 mans. There just isn't enough space for a "proper" group composition in a 10 man. With a 15 man dungeon you'd have a tank/healer mixed group, melee DPS with maybe the offtank(s) group, and a 3rd group for casters/healer/shadow priest for mana returns.

Now that we're getting Death Knights, raid composition just got harder and we're not getting any extra space to help out.

I will concede to you that Gruul and/or VR could easily be reduced to 10 or even a 5 man dungeon. Both of those fights are more or less tank and spank with the added bonus of "Get out of the cave-in/Get away from each other/Get away from the orbs/Stay in melee range of VR you idiot/etc". However, consider the case of High King Maulgar, which requires a mage tank for one add, multiple hunters/a single moonkin to tank another add, warlocks to chain enslave spawning felhounds, etc. You'd never fit the classes needed for that into a 10 man, much less a 5 man.

You can read up on the fight on WoWWiki, but I think you'd agree that it would be tough, if not impossible.

You know, that describes me exactly. I care nothing for loot, I raid because I love lore and I love being able to work with 9/24/39 other people to get Mr. Big Bad Boss Guy down.

I'm sure someone will flame me for this, but I once offered 1000g on my realm forums for a raiding guild to run me to Kel'thuzad so I could screenshot his dialogue. My old raiding guild had only started Naxx when BC came out, so I never got to see it, and I'm a bit unhappy since Kel is a big lore figure. Unfortunately, nobody wanted to go ;-(.

But Blizzard is working on this. I heard on an interview that they want to have everyone be able to "meet" Arthas, but only raiders would be able to fight him in WotLK. And it's probably really easy for Blizzard to do. Imagine rolling a Death Knight, spawning in the Scourge version of Elwynn Forest, you do a couple of simple quests like raising the dead, poisoning some poor farmers, etc. Then, you go meet Arthas, Arthas gives you a big speech, congratulates you on graduating "Death Knight Academy", then you get kidnapped by Alliance/Horde forces, taken back to their camps, turned back into your "Good" self, and you claim allegiance to the Alliance/Horde, promising to fight Arthas.



You know, I never understood people like you. You don't raid for loot, you don't raid for lore, you don't raid for the experience. Essentially what you're saying is "I just want new stuff! I don't care what it is!" And if that's true, why not go back to pre BC instances? You did clear AQ20 to Ossirian right? MC to Rag? ZG to Jindo and Hakkar? AQ40 to Cthun, plus the optional bosses?


I wouldn't say that Terrace is proof that casuals are getting bored. Terrace is just a way for even casual players to meet the fabled Kael'thas, since only raiders will meet him in TK. From the reports I've been reading, it doesn't seem that Terrace, either normal nor heroic, requires any more skill than regular 70 instances/heroics. Most people say Terrace is largely fun, especially the boss fights.

 

◊ Vaccine

I think its a good idea in principle but your suggested implementation would fail badly.

One thing I would like to see is tiered 5 mans. That is similar to your suggestion that the TK instances would be a step above normal 5 mans, and drop appropriate iLvl blues to signify that.

The same for heroics, have 2 or 3 tiers of heroic difficulty instead of just the 1. The benefit of this is that non-raiders get a form of progression. Rather than just hitting 70 and wham you've got 7 dungeons to pick from, you hit 70 and you have 3-4 dungeons to choose from. Once you've farmed these up for gear you're okay to go into the next 3. Then you get heroic keys and the same happens there.

Another thing I like is the idea of the SWP/AQ model of releasing a 5 or 10 man alongside a 25 man, that has a lot to do with it both in looks and lore. I think this cuts down on development time (if you're designing two dugneons to look similar you can skimp a lot on desigining the mobs and archtiecture as there is a lot of crossover, same with quests and lore) and it also helps prevent any one style of play from feeling ignored.

I'm not saying that 5 mans should scale with difficulty right up to iLvl 151 stuff, I do think 10 man should.


I like the idea of concurrent releases of 10 and 25 man dungeons that match each other in progression. It allows a progressional path via 10 mans that is currently not possible (KZ->ZA is hardly a path).

Imagine the following scenario for TBC:

-Karazhan is on farm, Gruul and Magtheridon receive continual retuning and SSC gets heavily nerfed. Thats all what happened in the first few months. But lets say TK was locked at this point (the entire place, not just the eye).

-The cutting edge guilds hit Vashj a few months later. Blizzard monitors this closely and decides that once the 100th guild to kill Vashj has killed her 4 times, thats when they will push the next content. The world first guilds might have had her on farm 6-8 weeks, which I think is an acceptable time to wait. The large majority of current Illidan killing guilds will probably be on Vashj when the new content comes.

- Content patch! With the defeat of Lady Vashj the Cenarion Expedition have been able to once more lend their aid to the Naruu. In turn this has freed up enough Aldor and Scryer troops to reinforce the Netherstorm garrisons and make a push on reclaiming Tempest Keep. First daily quests added involving disruption of the mana forges, eliminating air defences on and around TK and gathering resources from the eco-domes to feed troops. Something is amiss in the Arcatraz, the place has drifted from the main keep and is now outside of the protection of the Eye's defences. Dailys in the Arcatraz 5 man and heroic become immediately available with the patch.

- The dailys are more as a way to make the player feel more involved than as a deliberate cock block on progress. They are not excessive and on any medium pop server the dailys should be completed inside the first week. The completion of stage one gives a fly point (somewhere near the goblin outpost now, which wouldn't be there), a few more dailys and access to the Mechanar normal and heroic (disrupting the mana supply has meant the eye cannot stay at full power, and can no longer protect the Mechanar).

- Players venture into the Mechanar whilst continuing in the only week old Arcatraz and continue to get new drops and the like. Unlocking the Mechanar has also opened a new boss in the Arcatraz, lets say one of the Forge Master things that hold the keys in Mech. (encourages people to still go arc as new boss drops new loot).

- Another week (earlier on high pop servers) and enough dailys are complete to launch the final assault on the Kael's forces. Lets say this involves multiple bombing runs ala Halaa runs and taking out the remaining defenses on the Botanica and the Eye. Completion opens the Eye, the new 25 man dungeon as exists today. Bosses would be slightly harder to make it more of a progression from SSC but none as hard as Vashj bar Kael.

- The completion also opens The Botanica, a brand new 10 man dungeon which is a direct continuation of Karazhan and parallels TK in the progression line. Tough bosses, timed loot runs (the ZA system of timed loot is an excellent pacing and reward mechanism) and enough content to last a fair while, longer lifespan with timed runs for the final chest. Drops are 75% blue quality items of identical iLvl to TK items (iLvl 128 armour, iLvl 134 blues). Warpsplinter, the last boss (could make a rock solid warpsplinter using current mechanics for 10 man) drops a couple of epic items equivalent of pre-Kael TK loot (128 epics). They get nice rewards but will find it impossible to make full epic sets from this. Thats the idea. The dungeon will have a rep associated with it and eventually a really hard over the top unlockable boss (think Viscidus or Ouro style) that drops kael level (141) blues and a few epics like the previous ones (128). This is the pinnacle of 10 man raiding and is hard. The idea here is to make a TOUGH 10 man raid that rivals the current endgame 25 man.

3 months later...

- So Kael has been beaten, Warpsplinter too. Both the 10 man elite and raiders in or finished TK are still running Botanica for loot, rep and the timed run rewards (good epics maybe, phoenix mount/pet, use your imagination).


-Blizz starts the cycle again. Mount Hyjal is released within 6-8 weeks of the top guilds getting Kael down. Okay we're gonna save a bit of dev resources here and not link the new 10 man to Hyjal. (though it would be easy to do lore wise). Hyjal is for the raiders, Zul Aman gets released for the non-raiders. There are no world events or the like for this release, just a new dungeon to explore. The dungeons are identical to as they are now. Zul'aman follows the same loot forumla as Botanica. ilvl 141-151 blues, ilvl 141 epics from Malacrass, Zul'jin and timed chest box 3. Malacrass and Zul'jin drop 1 blue if 1 timed chest was unlocked, 2 blues for 2, 1 epic for 3, 2 epics for 4. If no boss was killed in the timed run time, Malacrass' door won't open that reset. Difficulty is tuned up due to the addition of Botanica after Karazhan.

- A few months after Hyjals release BT is pushed live. BT is a cut down version of what it is now. Players start at the Deathwsworn base inside. The sewer section up to Supremus is used for the 10 man BT, lets call it The Karabor Sewers. Again no daily quest effort to open but a fair bit of lore. Lets stick 4 bosses in the 5 man initially. We already have Najentus and Supremus. Both these bosses are considered a fair walk over as far as 25 man bosses go, but the thing is they both scale down to 10 man with little or not effort. A slight tuning in hp, dmg and possibly hurtful frequency and both bosses are completely fine with no additional ability tuning. Then we add in a couple more. Lets add one before Najentus off on one of the sewer side paths that no one ever goes to. He can be a nice Water elemental boss, we don't have enough of those. Then after Naj you can add a Nether dragon rider as a boss at the trash before Supremus in the corner. Flies about, commands waves of attacks etc... possibly Rajaxx v2.

- Once Illidan has been downed on the server, the large gate behind Supremus opens up and unlocks one additional boss. Another tough optional kind of affair, with lots of "status" rewards instead of pure power ones. This dungeon is going to be shorter than the previous ones, thinking of dev time and the like.

- Present day: Magister's terrace (10 man) and SWP(25) are currently being tested on ptr.


That would be the way I'd do it.

Pros:
- Clear progressional ladders for 10 man raiders.
- More content for small groups as well as offnight for 25 man raiders content.
- Linking dungeons in theme/design cuts down on some dev costs and time.
- 10 man based rep and dungeon drops help flesh out missing items from 25 mans and offspec loot too.
- For the large part art can be reused. Think of how Rank 7 gear was like smaller, less flashy versions of Rank 14 stuff, or how BS weapons grow in model stature. The same could be applied here, the 10 man stuff could be small cut down versions of the 25 man stuff, less flashy but still good looking. Cuts down dev time in making two new models.
- Tieing themes in helps smaller groups of players feel like they are contributing to the ongoing plotline.

Cons:
- Dev time in R+D would definately increase some.
- More balancing to do.


Think about this though. Had they done it as I've suggested there there would be very little extra dev/design time needed. Sure you'd have to do the quests for the TK opening event. But the dungeons are/were already created. Botanica needs very few changes to turn it from 5 to 10 man. It has a lot of bosses already for a 5 man, the mobs have interesting mechanics already. A few boss tweaks to 10 man, more trash and an additional boss and you're there. Rest of TK is unchanged. MH is unchanged. ZA is unchanged (loot would have initially be designed different but no extra effort). BT would be cut a little but no desing is needed, just a bit more balancing of the Karabor Sewers section. No one would miss the Botanica really. I don't find myself thinking "I wish there was an extra 5 man at level 70". With all the reused heroics of leveling instances and the like, there is tons of choice. They could even have done the Bot/Eye thing with say Underbog (10 man) and SSC.

This is what I'd like to see for the expansion. At present we have 8 level 70 dungeons, + those 8 on heroic, + the 7 leveling dungeons on heroic. If we're looking at similar numbers for the expansion, I'd love if they could hold back one of the level 70 dungeons and one of the leveling dungeons and turn them into 10 mans in a progression chain. I can't see a downside whilst I can see many many positives to it.

 

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."

 

Redelm

I’m gonna go out on a limb this morning and test this idea out. Because re-tuning most 25 man content is insanity in my opinion.

I think a good idea might be to have sub-dungeons with every new 25 man that comes out. However, the catch being these will be challenges, unlike the current 5 man stuff. And but challenge I mean that wiping on a boss for a few nights would not be unheard of unless in the highest tier gear (even though most badge and pvp is equivalent, but that another discussion) Once the last boss falls of the hardest (or only) instance you will get a portal to the final 25 man boss. Because in the grand scheme of things the final 25 man boss is the only true lore figure. And you could even engage him if you so choose, however the boss will be unchanged. That way even the casuals can listen to the 1-2 minutes of dialogue before the fights. Yes, I know you won’t get to see the death animation or collect the phat lewtz. But you will get the experience that you desire.

This was a very brief and general explanation of my idea, but I’m gonna throw it out there.

 

• Disquette