Douglas

That's fair, but personally I'm less concerned about the player pool discouraging a team composition becuase of a belief than I am with Blizzard forbidding a team composition because of a design requirement.

There are folks who think it's pointless to have any tank other than a tankadin in a 5-man. There are folks who won't do a heroic without two mages. But those come from player prejudices. If a team of buddies with an unusual but balanced group composition wants to try the run, I'm personally more concerned with whether Blizzard thinks it's reasonable than whether the PUG and forum communities think so.

But you have a valid point, and being careful about that sort of thing opens up the content to an even wider audience of people (like those who are absolutely dependant on PUGs).

 

Jaxtrasi

None of the situations so far invariably create that problem. Certainly not more so than content that existed at 60 (Flamewreath springs to mind as a group-destroyer - in fact most of UBRS was a pain in the neck for a variety of composition reasons) and at 70 (Raven God, again).

For example, if the final boss has randomly generated abilities based on the composition of the classes he is fighting (Malacrass, but all at once rather than one at a time), that doesn't exclude anyone. Maybe including a paladin gives him access to certain paladin abilities that some players (incorrectly) consider broken. That's no worse than existing player prejudices that spring up with some or no justification, and it makes for much more interesting content.

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

 

epiphenom

I agree. You'll note that in the section of my post you quoted, I mentioned how high end raiders act to retain non-hardcores. I didn't say that they retain non-raiders, which is what you seem to have read out of it. BT clearing guilds keep BT learning guilds; early Hyjal/BT guilds keep people learning Vashj, and so on and so forth down to people learning Karazhan, even if they never intend to get into 25-man content (which almost never happens nowadays). Which means that according to Wowjutsu, raids only serve as retention on 2.4 million out of the 6 million or so players on US/EU realms. I'd imagine that another sizable chunk of that 6 million is held with arena PvP, although obviously I don't have statistics for it and there's some overlap with raiders.

On the other hand, a new 5-man holds people for maybe a couple weeks, and only for those people who aren't already raiding, and who are level capped and who haven't exhausted the other content available to people in that situation. That's not the overwhelming majority that many people assert that it is. No single development item will retain 100% of players. Just because raiders aren't everybody doesn't mean that raids aren't superior in terms of development efficiency.

 

Jaxtrasi

Your maths is a little spurious here. Assuming your premise that 30% of the player base are raiders (which wowjutsu doesn't prove, but let's assume that anyway) the existence of top-end raiders at each tier as a whole is partially responsible for the retention of raiders. But because each tier gets progressively smaller, the retention effect of each new instance is likewise progressively smaller.

If the majority of raids are still at the T5 level, which has been available practically since release, then the release and continued existence of Black Temple is responsible for only 10% of the raider retention, and the release of Sunwell Plateau for only an undetermined fraction of that.

You're comparing an invented estimate of the consumer base for a new five man with the estimated consumer base for all raids including ten-man raids.

EDIT

Actually thinking about it more closely, what you posted makes no sense to me at all. Your implication is that without raiders slightly further ahead in progression, raiders slightly further behind in progression would quit? What does this have to do with the release of the Sunwell? Are you claiming that there is a butterfly effect, that one Sunwell guild keeps ten late BT guilds playing, who keep a hundred early BT guilds playing, who keep a thousand T5 guilds playing?

EDIT2

Clearly the userbase of people who aren't raiders but want new PVE content is larger than you estimate, because Blizzard have introduced new bade gear and are about to release Magister's Terrace. I would posit, however, that the release of badge gear is unnecessarily insulting to raiders and is therefore a bad solution to the problem.

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

 

epiphenom

Actually, I did make an error, but not that one. New 5-mans are retention factors on all players who will eventually reach 70 with that gear relevant to them at that point, so I erred in excluding all people who weren't level capped. Retention effects reach beyond players who are actually playing in that instance, and my description of 5-mans incorrectly implied that they do not.

A new 5-man, like a new 25-man, makes a certain proportion of players keep playing because they either are there or will get there. Nobody raids Gruul to raid Gruul; they're always hoping to move on to TK/SSC. On my server, there are 5-6 guilds constantly recruiting for 25-man content, some of whom still aren't past Kara yet. But they want to get there, and a factor in their motivation is that they've seen people who've been there and think "I can do that." Another factor is that some people really want to see Archimonde and Illidan, and the inclusion of lore in raiding also makes up a strong incentive to get there. Current nonprogression level 70 5-mans are proportionately less of a motivation to reach 70 because reaching 70, to a degree, incentivizes itself. But getting to run high end dungeons and heroics is a nontrivial element in motivating people to level up.

The unifying principle is that people need to be incentivized to continue playing, and the core of it is convincing them that whatever their goal is, it's worth the time they're spending to reach it. This is a far more difficult task for hardcores, because they consume content that much faster. And if content isn't provided quick enough to prevent them from getting bored, they decide that the long waits between new things to do aren't worth it, and quit.

The proportion of the population willing to blow money, consumables, and time on difficult content is actually quite small. The rest of them need a bit of extra motivation, and bleeding edge raiders show that it's possible and that you get well rewarded for doing it. At some level, the hardcores assure the less hardcore that what they're doing is worthwhile, despite the potential frustration. Conversely, if they get tired of the game and leave, mid range players question whether their efforts are going to get them anywhere worthwhile. (More here; which is oddly meta considering that the discussion there was sparked by a thread here.)

Now, there's no reason, in theory, why 5-mans can't also serve this purpose. All you need is something for the hardcore people to do that keeps them happy and in the game, and which can trickle down to make large sections of the rest of the player base think "I can do that" and "doing that is worth it". The problem with making 5-mans this content is that Blizzard simply cannot make 5-mans fast enough. It looks, at least from what we've seen, that you can make two, maybe three, 5-mans for the development time of one raid instance. A raid instance can keep the hardcores for maybe five to six months (as I said, the nine months that Hyjal/BT has had to perform that job is clearly too long, and hardcores are starting to leave the game on account of that). Three 5-mans cannot hold hardcores for nearly that long, because they'll be beaten quickly or they'll be incredibly frustrating (I can elaborate on this in another post, if this point is hard to understand for anybody).

Bottom line: hardcores have to be kept happy, because keeping them has positive effects on non-hardcore players. Raiding is a pragmatic way to accomplish this because it is possible to churn out raid content as fast as it is consumed. PvP is a pragmatic way to accomplish this because it does not require much development time at all. Dungeons are an impractical way to accomplish this because they are consumed too quickly. When you have limited resouces, you must spend them in the most efficient manner, and what is generally considered "casual" content is not efficient.

 

Douglas

A lot of people claim this, but I've never seen it. Most of the people I know who play the game haven't paid any attention to the more hardcore players. They're in either because of previous experience with Blizzard games or because of non-hardcore buddies who are in, in all the cases I'm personally familiar with.

So, what you claim is a common claim, and I'll grant that it's possible... but I don't happen to believe it myself. I think if the most hardcore players left, it wouldn't actually have much impact on the rest of the population.

(Might be that it's different among folks who PvP, with the whole "esport" phenomenon or something. The folks I know tend to deeply loathe PvP.)

Now, I don't think Blizzard wants to let the more hardcore folks go, because they have a general policy of having their games appeal to as many different user populations as they can. But if they lost 'em, I don't think it'd have much impact on the other players.

 

• Mjollnir

Au contraire! Plenty of serious endgamers seek the ever elusive DST. Not only do PUG 25mans happen for DST's... but plenty of PUG Gruul's happen just to raid something quick and straightforward. Mag is arguably quick, but a nightmare for a PUG.

 

Jaxtrasi

I'm not sure whether this is a subjective assumption or circular reasoning, but in either case it's wrong. Some people raid Gruul because it's a stepping stone to further content. Some people raid Gruul because it's the only upgrade content available to them. Some people raid Gruul to try it out, decide it's not for them, and stop. Some people raid Gruul casually, just because it's there. (I don't think Gruul has reached the stage that Onyxia reached with genuinely casual PUGs, but the people in those PUGs were not raiders and had no eye on advancement.) Attending a Gruul raid says nothing about your intentions in the future, or how much attention you are paying to where you move on to from here.

Of course, if everyone followed the 5->10->25 progression as Blizzard intend them to, then your assertion would be true, but clearly they don't. People don't only run heroics to gear up for Kara. They don't only run Kara to gear up for 25-man.

I don't see any evidence for this assertion. Cutting edge raiders perform one critical function, which is the development and publishing of strats. It only takes a handful of raiding guilds across the game as a whole to perform that function. Beyond that, there's no evidence to suggest that they perform any retention function whatsoever. It's a plausible theory, but so is the theory that WoW players in general and in the majority don't care one whit for what anyone else is doing, and focus purely on themselves or their guild.

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

 

Nezralix

I think the "casual raider" population cares a *little* bit about what the bleeding edge is doing, but not about particular guilds. If Nihilum suddenly decided that WoW doesn't have enough grinding for them and went to play EQ2, most of this crowd would just find other guilds to pay attention to. WoW is good enough that this isn't going to happen on a large scale until another title comes out that's *significantly* better, so for all intents and purposes, the bulk of the population is unaffected by the top-end population.

 

Jaxtrasi

Yes. Reading their website is one thing. Quitting because they quit is quite another.

EDIT

In any case, this seems like a colossal off-topic tangent. If I were proposing that 25-man content should be abandoned because "no one" wants it and so on, it would be a serious issue. Since I'm proposing to keep 25-man content, then we don't need to "prove" that 25-man content is worth retaining.

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

 

Douglas

I'll go further than that: if we want the 10-man progression path to appeal to the people who like Karazhan but don't like the 25-man progression path today, we need the 25-man progression path to be there.

Otherwise, the folks who for example get bored without the level of coordination that Gruul takes will end up having their needs met by the 10-man content. The 10-man content will require specific class combinations and so on. And as a result, it will no longer be good content for the crowd for whom it is good content today.

We need the 25-man content to be there, so that the design sensibilities that go into it do not "infect" the 10-man design.

 

Jaxtrasi

You should change that example to Maulgar, or Addled will jump on you.

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

 

sneek

This got me thinking and let me produce the majority of the post below.
Let me add though that for our guild it has turned out to be just perfect, considering we made a mangement call to sit out till they properly tuned Gruul and then waited for SSC to be properly tuned by means of the Consumable patch.
And of course several other rough spots during the rest of TBC we'd have to raid significantly less due to recruitment issues that were the result of this management call.


Burning Crusade has as much content, if not more once you factor in small raid content, for raiders then regular v1.x World of Warcraft had - normalized to product lifespan.

MC: Luci,Mag,Geh,Gar,Ged,Shaz,Sulf,Gole,Domo,Rag = 10
BWL: Rzr,Vael,Brood,Firemaw,Drake2,Drake3,Chrom,Nef = 8
AQT: Sker,Trio,Sart,Fank,Blob,Huhu,Twin,Worm,C'Thun = 9
Naxx: Anub,Faer,Maex, Noth,Heig,Fungus, Patch,Grob,Dog,Tbolt, Raz,Gothik,FourH, Saph,Kel'Thuzad = 15
Onyxia: Onyxia = 1

Total: 1+10+8+9+15 = 43 bosses (vanilla, Dec-2004 to Jan-2007 or 24 months)
Or 1.8 forty-person bosses per month.

Mag: Mag = 1
Gruul: Maulgar, Gruul = 2
SSC: Hydross,Lurker,Tidewalker,Karathress,Leotheras,Vashj = 6
TKE: Alar,Void,Astro,Kael = 4
MH: Rage,Aneth,Kaz,Azga,Arch = 5
BT: Naj,Sup,Aka,Tero,BB,Souls,Shaz,Coun,Illi = 9

Total: 1+2+6+4+5+9 = 27 bosses (BC, Jan 2007 to Apr-2008 or 15 months)
Or 1.8 twentyfive-person bosses per month.

So, BC has practically as much (large raid) content for it's lifetime as Vanilla had.
The difference is when this content was available to be touched.

This would be the pacing of it, which was much more natural in Vanilla WoW; the gradual release of BWL, AQT and then Naxx that really acted as a natural barrier against excess progression drive.
While anecdotal, I know that on our little server the few top guilds were indeed bumping into these "no content" blocks, one for AQT and another for Naxxramas, during pre-BC World of Warcraft.

Now, what I would suggest is indeed stagger the release of raiding content like the OP mentioned, but this need not be too complex.
The "polish" of instances can be better too once you stagger release of the raiding tiers; to some extent this has exactly been done in today's Burning Crusade - only the "unpolished" content was available from the start.
Staggering release of raiding content will also allow opening of these raiding tiers to be preceded by Isle of Quel'Danas-esque world events, allowing non-raiders to experience some tie-ins with the "lore" of these instances as well.

By staggering release of raiding tiers in "Seasons", or "Ages" as coined in the OP's article, you can "end" such a season with a timed run of that Tier similar to the Opening of Ahn'Qiraj - Red Sceptre Shard quest.
Possibly only within the Heroic variant of that tier's raid instances that contain this timed run which yields a uniquely visible reward for every raid member that starts and finishes this run in time.
Of course, the Heroic variant needs to be...
...an exact copy of the regular instance but tuned towards end-of-tier-life gearing for guild that gears their guild efficienctly.
...only accessible for one or two resets at most to preserve the uniqueness and degree of excellence this visible reward represents.
...geared for by each guild. Badges that drop from raiding encounters can and should be used to patch in gear holes in everyone's equipment.
...potentially under the influence of the Arena ruleset, denying outside influences such as world buffs, food buffs, elixers, potions or even completely soulstoning the raid.

By doing the above you pace trailblazing guilds and provide not only "first kill" challenges but also an "excellence" challenge when such a raiding guild should have completely mastered the instance.

Because the "excellence" challenge is only available for two resets, two weeks, this cannot be "cheesed" by doing the challenge run repeatedly and/or by outgearing it with next-tier PvE loot.
This challenge needs to be available for at least two resets since there might be unforeseen circumstances that botch up a speedrun and an extra reset gives these guilds a second chance. Also it can cause increased competition amongst all guilds in the second reset in order improve on their race for the fastest guild to clear the Heroic versions of the raiding Tier.
Since the "excellence" challenge yields a very visible, unique and limited-edition (vanity) loot it will retain it's value.

Off the top of my head; a good candidate for such a visible and unique piece of vanity loot would be a mantle (shoulder based item, an "enchant" for a shoulder perhaps?) similar in impressiveness/visibility as Maiev Shadowsong's mantle.

 

gnoop

Do you mean 2.4, specifically? That might be overkill for a single patch. Still, an additional 5-man at some point earlier than 2.4 would have been a nice bonus for the casuals that, for whatever reason, couldn't make the progression into Kara.

 

Nezralix

How would it be overkill? I'd have to imagine that they take a fraction of the time of creating, testing, and tuning a raid instance, and we've seen a few of those released. They also don't provide as much playtime.

 

epiphenom

I will grant that it theoretically says nothing about any of those things, but the only statistics we have show that 68.3% of players who get a Gruul kill go on to get at least one kill in SSC (and, presumably, there is a portion of the player base who have a Gruul kill and are trying to get a T5-level kill and have not yet succeeded). So there's a strong correlation between people who start 25-man content and people who want to continue in it. Fair enough?

Frankly, I'm not sure sufficiently rigorous evidence exists to present. I think that this has been observed by numerous people, including the two experienced game designers in my previous post's link, suggests that there's something to it. On a personal level, I have a lot of anecdotal evidence, but again, that's not really worth anything in a serious discussion. I do want to clarify that I'm not asserting that everyone follows Nihilum or top-world guilds; the relationship tends to be a lot more personal than that. I've found that casual raiders of all degrees of casualness tend to be aware of who the top guild(s) on their server are, their general level of progression, and that those top guilds' view of raiding tends to influence those players' views, including on the key question of "do we keep trying to do this?".

In this I disagree. This is incredibly relevant, because Blizzard doesn't have infinite resources. Arguably, given the low rate of content in TBC (we are only now getting, more than a year after release, the first 5-man and first 25-man that weren't supposed to be in the game at release; BT and Hyjal were delayed 5 months on account of insufficient development time), it's difficult to even argue that Blizzard has substantial resources. Nothing comes without cost, and retuning 5-mans, 10-mans, and 25-mans each Age, under your proposal, sucks development time and money away from new content (of all kinds). It's not that you don't take development time into account, but I think you underestimate the time needed to retune things. Your answer in your initial post is that it will take "less" time; well, okay, but is that enough? PvE Ages advance "as development time allows"; what happens if, as is happening now, the delays between ages are so long that the hardcore edge begins to grow bored and burn out, because development time does not allow?

The answer I'm getting from this thread is "Screw the hardcore, let them burn out", and I'm pointing out the significant potential negative consequences of that answer, and the important role that timely releases of cutting-edge content play. Maybe it's not your answer, but I haven't seen a clear one yet. Basically: what happens if Blizzard can't do it? I don't think sacrificing ZA is enough to complete the changes you propose. I would even go as far as to say that TBC patch history is evidence that the development team is incredibly slow and limited in resources, but I grant that can be contested. It's not 100% clear that it can be accomplished, so I think it's important to discuss what happens if it can't.

 

Douglas

There are times when I really, really wish WoW weren't so dominant. Everybody is afraid to tamper with the formula, so there's a bunch of stuff we've essentially got only anecdotal evidence for, but there's no way to really experiment to realistically find out the real answers.

Might satisfying the most hardcore players have retention implications far, far beyond what their numbers would indicate? Sure, absolutely, nobody has anything beyond personal or at best anecdotal evidence otherwise. It would be crazy to assert that it's impossible. But they might not, too. And in the current environment there's no realistic way to find out.

 

Shadout

The reason you see lots of raid instances released in patches and pretty much no 5 mans, is not just because they prioritize 25-mans over 5-mans...
They dont release an expansion before the planned 5 mans are in, whereas raid instances can easier be thrown in at a later date.

What they should/could have done for all those people who want more 5-man instances in patches, was to not have released a few heroic versions of the existing 5 mans at TBC release, then throw those out in patches, with slightly more interesting bosses than just "more health, hits harder", maybe even a new boss which werent there in the normal version, and of course better gear than the existing 5 mans offered (or more badges if thats the way they want to go).

It would be close to zero extra development cost, while giving some sense of new and fresh 5-man progression.

 

frber

Letting the hardcore run out of content would also likely have huge positive effects on the game; or rather just balancing the content so that the hardcore does in fact breeze through the game. I mean essentially the connsumable madness and over tuned bosses of early expansion raiding were true hardcore content with a massive time investment required. Bet it would also be really long lasting content; but doubt anyone can argue that it was healthy for the game.

Honestly don't think it would have any negative consequences whatsoever if a few really hardcore players quit the game. If anything it'd let Blizzard tone down time sinks designed to keep those players with something to do; and the game would likely be alot more fun, and likely attract even more people, as a result.

 

Jaxtrasi

This I agree with. However, the critical point that wasn't the case when I wrote the initial post and I therefore missed is that 10-man is coming.

Compare 10-man progression in TBC with 25-man progression. 10-man has two tiers, and 25-man has threeish. The 25-man tiers are bigger, better and more rewarding, but not in the same way that 40-man compared with 5-man at 60. I'd say, by comparison to what we're used to, that the 10-man progression is "pretty good".

However, Tigole is unsatisfied. They plan in WOTLK to concentrate on 10-man content more. It would actually be quite difficult to have more or better 10-man content without bringing it up practically to the level of 25-man. This is apparently their plan. So that investment of resources is already intended, and while it may not be a very good idea (and it does have costs, as you've pointed out) it's something they want to do.

I'm proposing something which reduces the effort of doing something they're already planning to do, not suggesting that they do something wildly implausible which is completely out of line with the development of the game so far. This ought to free up more resources for the development of the 25-man content rather than less.

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

 

Leaflock

This was the point I was originally trying to make/agree with. (Some people instead seized on my throwaway sentence about lore. Lesson learned; I won't challenge the lore gods again).

Recycling old content for smaller groups makes each new iteration of an instance essentially "new content" for a progressively smaller, not larger, segment of the population each time. Though it may be disappointing to not get to see a particular boss from a lore standpoint, we're much more likely to see entirely new instances rather than recycled old ones. Magister's Terrace is a glimpse of how Blizzard can work around this-- a mini-Kael'thas with appropriate rewards. Blizzard also continues to recycle "creatively" with badges and dailies-- some heroics might not even be run if there weren't a daily quest as incentive.

I think the larger issue is that the OP and others are coming at this from the wrong angle. Some argue, anecdotally, that "me and a bunch of people I know would much prefer more 5-man content because that's what we find fun." Fair enough. We've seen heroics as one model of how this might work progression-wise (24 hour lockout, higher difficulty, sometimes better rewards), and with varying degrees of success. For Blizzard, though, too much of this content is either consumed rapidly or ignored entirely by some players. Raids, on the other hand, offer long-term goals to a lot of players. Longer lockouts mean you can only kill X boss once, have a shot at X loot, and/or attempt Y new boss a certain number of times in a fixed, lengthy span of time. Players and guilds have goals that span months of time-- we'll get that boss next week, try again for that new sword, continue to help guildies that got you to the point you are at, etc. This keeps a lot of players renewing their subscriptions.

Put simply: Blizzard wants you to raid.

In this sense, TBC is a huge success. Many more players are able to raid than in vanilla WoW. I think Kara was a (pleasant) surprise, and a model they'll continue to follow in the future. It's an instance that's extremely accessible, allows a lot of time for groups to progress through at a moderate pace, provides excellent rewards vs. risk and time involved, is appropriately difficult, and keeps people coming back over and over, even on alts.

5-mans in the current WoW model are not intended by Blizzard to be anyone's endgame content, even if you've chosen it as such for yourself. Retooling old instances isn't compelling content for enough players to make it a worthwhile investment of development time, but new content is. I think more long-lockout, appropriately difficult 10-man and potentially 5-man content, along with 25-mans, could be the answer for WotLK. I don't know if it's possible to make 5-mans progressively difficult given composition issues, as some have already pointed out, but I wouldn't rule anything out just yet.

 

Tuhalu

From what I remember of the panels at the last Blizzcon, the Raid development team were planning on having 2 full 10-man dungeons with progression between them available at release of WotLK. Hopefully that implies at least one more dungeon after that, which would equal the 3-tiers of 25-man content Blizzard seems to like putting out per level cap. On a personal level, I find this extremely encouraging. It means my main can progress through 25-man content, while my alts can casually hit up 10-man content for upgrades (likely after my main speed plows them for all they are worth). But on a game-wide level, it means a lot more players will be able to find meaningful pve progression without essentially joining some form of hard-core guild. That would seem to answer the question of progression for everyone.

On the exercise of making a 10-man maulgar, I really don't see how it's "hard" to do. 1 tank and healer for Maulgar. 1 tank for Olm. Warlock tank or traditional tank is fine. A warlock tank just reduces the healing component by a bit. 1 DPS Tank/Interrupter for Blindeye. Any ranged DPS for Krosh (a mage would just reduce the healing component a bit by being able to spell-steal rather than being absolutely required). Kiggler you might have to adapt a little by taking away his sheep the current tank mechanic so that any 1 ranged DPS could tank him. Otherwise, it's another case of the raid taking a bit more damage. You'd use 2 healers for healing the add tanks and the raid. 2 random dps would be left over to kill stuff from the start. It's already possible right now to do Maulgar with as few as 15 players (with overgeared players, and likely possible to shrink that number even further if you really want to iron man it), proving that scaling down the fight is not really that hard. The only real difficulty there is that the amount of incoming damage tends to require a few more healers than the 3 you would see in a 10-man.

On the point of getting everyone in to see every part of the lore, I don't even see how that is a worthwhile goal. As a raider and a bit of a lore monger, I'm unhappy if I can't be in a winning boss encounter at least once to see what happens for myself. I certainly agree it is irritating for there to be content you just can't touch (I missed out on all of Naxxramas due to work). But I found it irritating on the level of a fight that I missed out on trying at the intended difficulty, not on the level of lore that I can't check out. I can find out the lore elsewhere pretty easily.

 

Jaxtrasi

Since this is an ad hominem directed at me, I'll respond to it. Your last post, like this one, contains a number of opinions you have (perhaps unwittingly) claimed as truths, with little further explanation. There's nothing wrong with accidentally or intentionally saying "this is the case" rather than "I think this is the case", especially on a discussion forum. You shouldn't, however, get snippy when someone chooses not to respond to it.

I would appreciate it if you could explain your logic here. Even in the current model where people are "forced" into 25 man from 10 man due to a lack of 10 man progression, and "forced" into 10 man due to a lack of 5 man progression, and even taking into account the extremely loaded statistics on jutsu (I can explain further if this is unclear), the percentage of the population rises as the group size expands and the tier drops.

This is your opinion, and I in fact agree with your assessment of the probabilities. I don't think WOTLK is going to be designed in the style of my proposal, and I certainly don't think TBC is going to be retooled. That doesn't really say anything about the merit (or lack of merit) in the proposal, and it doesn't engender discussion.

That's your opinion, and also neither here nor there. Blizzard want you to not quit. Blizzard want you to get your friends to subscribe. Tigole definitely wants you to raid. He's squee for raiding like an excitable little cartoon chipmunk. He's also gradually shifting his expectations downwards, it seems as he sees that smaller raid sizes appeal to a broader player base.

I call you on "stating the intent of the designers when you have no information to base it on". Blizzard have repeatedly said that they delight in the different ways people play the game. While this is obviously PR-speak, they would never dare to claim "raid (or PVP) or die". It may be what's in Tigole's head, and it may not. It was obvious at 60 that a massive proportion of the player base were simply never going to raid, and it's still true at 70. If 5-man content were an absentee endgame, Magister's Terrace would never have been conceived, let alone developed and released. ("Hey Jeff, why are we making content for a group of players 100% of whom have moved on to raiding or arena again?")

In your opinion. Saying "this isn't a good idea because, in my opinion, no one will like it" is a fine thing to say, and I wouldn't ask you to stop saying it, but it doesn't really engender discussion on the subject. I have made a flimsily supported case by saying "retooled old content is perfectly fine because for its intended audience, it isn't old content, it's new content". You have replied "no it is not fine". If you could provide me with some explanation of why you think it wouldn't work, why it's a bad idea, why my explanation of its validity is flawed, or something, then I'd be glad to discuss it with you.

You do seem to raise the point that you think 10-man is a world apart from 5-man. 25-man and 10-man are "raiding" with certain standards and complexities and difficulties and delays, whereas 5-man is a different beast altogether. I don't think this is necessarily, automatically true, it is simply the way Blizzard have chosen to design things. It may or may not be overly expensive to design 5-man content in the style of raids. I can't imagine ludicrous gear checks or resist checks are especially expensive in terms of design time, and whether your instance is divided up into bite-size chunks or ludicrous marathons which have to be defeated in short order (requiring long practice) in order to access the final boss is simply that; a design choice, not a constraint in either direction.

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

 

Myul

I've serious problems keeping my raid attracted to continue farming the actual content after three month of killing illidan. I hardly doubt we are something special minded so reclearing karazhan (or any other area) over years isn't an option for me regardless of what you are saying and what groupsize it would have. I understand that we aren't representing the whole gaming community, but lowering the access requirements and slowy tweaking the bosses down is the right way for me. Everyone addicted to this game and willing to spend a lot of time will get his chances to see allmost every encounter expect the newst ones before the next expansion hits.

And the green geared aunt of Joe Casual, recently dinged 70 after 14 month of leveling won't really need killing illidan tomorrow, will she?

If someone isn't willing to join a raiding group because he's happy in his five man real-life friends guild, he should be pleased with his reachable content. And if someone is willing to sacrifice his real-life to a certain amount, he should be able to reach allmost all content in a fair amount of time.

 

• Disquette

Let's look at your data a slightly different way. Look at "bosses per month put in game after release".

Let's assume WoW 1.0 had all of MC and Ony ready. This means that over the 24 months that WoW 1.0 was added, the developers spent time on, and added 32 bosses, or 1.33 bosses per month.

Now, Let's see how many bosses they've added to the game since burning crusade was released.

That would be 0 per month. With Sunwell adding 6, that 0 number is going to sky rocket to .4 bosses per month (assuming the game stopped in April, right after Sunwell was released).

This is not just a pacing issue. In 1.0, Blizzard actually worked on content to add to their raiding game while 1.0 was live. In 2.0, Blizzard didn't plan to add anything, and added Sunwell as a stopgap* because they suck at getting xpacks out on time.

That, to me, is the issue. if Blizzard really could get an xpac out every year, as they intended, then great, I have no problem with them neglecting to add raiding content beyond that which ships with each one. But they can't. I hope they've learned their lesson and don't repeat this. I'd contend that we wouldn't be discussing raid progression propositions and a whole host of other issues nearly as much if we had a game to play that was different than the same game that we've had the past 15 months. But, I could be wrong.

*This sticks out as a fact in my memory, but I can't source it. Apologies if my memory fails me.