Does anyone else have the feeling that 10 man raids will become redundant as more tier sets are released? Let me explain. At the current stage of Wrath (2 months since the release) there are a majority of servers who're able to pug Naxxramas (10 and 25 man versions), Obsidian Sanctum (10 and 25 man versions) and to a lesser extent, Malygos and Sartharion with Drakes (so far pugs have done Twilight Assist on my server).

If we except that 25 man raiding is puggable towards people who can ofcourse understanding basic mechanics of threat, moving, proper rotation as that is what entry level raiding requirements suggest - is future raiding content at risk? If a guild can pug 25 man Naxx as well as clear 10 man Naxx: say the guild is quite small, and thus only has 12-15~ core members. If such a guild is able to pug Naxx 25, which offers items with an iLevel of 213 is there any point in that guild steering away from such an easy clearance; no consumables required, no repairs required, to a harder instance?

For example:
10 man Naxx: offers iLevel 200, KT offers 213, Malygos offers 213, Sarth offers 213 (with additional Drakes).
25 man Naxx: offers iLevel 213, KT offers 226, Malygos offers 226, Sarth offers 226 (with additonal Drakes).

This is where the problem occurs
10 man Ulduar: (assuming it's harder than Naxx) offers iLevel 213, end boss offers 226
25 man Ulduar: (again, assuming it's harder) offers 239, end boss offers 252

Why would a guild who have few active/core members be willing to wipe in Ulduar when they can pick up 10~ players from trade and clear 25 man Naxx which will offer them the same loot as a harder instance, at less cost - with the ability to gain badges which will also give them the same gear?

Does anyone see this as a future problem? Of course, there are variables I am purposely missing out. I agree not everyone wants to be saved to a pug due to lock out issues and sometimes pugs are not always successful - but this argument still has some truth behind it and as great as the whole "10 and 25 man raids" look, they have many more problems that I think Blizzard will, ultimately, have a hard job getting past.

What is a viable option? The viable option would to make 25 man raids harder, on paper, than 10 man raids. Instead of multiplying damage by 25% and health by 2.5 they would have to make the encounters more complex, less forgiving and above all much harder. This though, would be a contradiction of their 'achievement system' for the Hardcores - if an encounter is difficult enough (imagine pre-nerf M'uru, 4HM at 60, C'thun) why would such a guild, other for epeen purposes, want to make that encounter more difficult.

Imagine if there was an achievement to keep a Sentinel alive after killing Entropius, or killing C'thun without having him enter a 'weakened' state more than once - or doing the old "And They Should All Go Down Together" at level 60... Would anyone have attempted them?

Hmmm, I think Blizzard has created a problem which will eventually snowball on them... It'll catch speed and it will ultimately have drastic repercussions. What do the community think?

One assumption you are making is that you can actually field a 25 man pug.

On Earthen Ring, that was possible in December, before the raiding guilds and coalitions started using their lockouts but it's unclear how easy it will be to really do that in future. There are also a lot of servers where a 25 man raid of any sort is just a pipe dream, due to low raiding population.

So even in worst case scenario, the 10 mans will be fore the guilds and worlds who just can't get the 25 people together to do nax25.

As BC didn't really have an entry level instance, nor 10 man progression after KZ, I think it will be very hard to predict what dynamics this new approach will cause.

I think that there is an error in thinking if you assume that guilds would rather do older 25 man content with 10~ pugs from trade instead of newer 10 man content with guild members. Perhaps the guild might do the 25 man raids to help them gear for the newer 10 man content, but I can't justify doing Naxx over and over again with PuGs of questionable worth when Ulduar is out and waiting for me and my friends.

I think that it was pointed out in another thread that the main challenge of raiding is recruitment and administration. If you are just going to pick up the extras from trade channel every week, why not just expand the guild and go for 25 man content exclusively?

You can't underestimate the difficulty in organization and leading 25 people versus 10 people. Having every dungeon available in 10 man mode VASTLY increases the accessibility of raid content and greatly increases participation. Anything that increases the amount of people consuming content is a win in Blizzard's eyes. I don't see it as redundant at all. Perhaps it is somewhat redundant for certain levels of raiding guilds, but not for the people its actually targeted at.

Aside from what is possible for people, don't forget that many don't even want to raid with a 25 man group. I suspect there are lots of people in this game right now that just want to have a good time in the latest raidzone with their handful of friends and don't particularly care about 25 man loots. There is also the consideration of how much time it takes to clear a certain zone. After trying it a few times, it turns out my spare time just doesn't allow me to crawl through naxx25 with a (partial) pug for hours on end.

For the exact same reason why I play in a 10 man guild. I like playing and learning fights with the same people as I have for years, knowing what they are capable of and having a blast on ventrilo at the same time. Extra points for no one being loot-centric.

Basically all the reasons why you avoid PUGs as the plague if there are alternatives.

I'm pretty sure 25's will provide gear one tier ahead of the equivalent 10's, not two. I expect many smaller raiding groups working on a progression 10 man to do the previous 25 in PUGs or alliances for gear and badges - but the guild focus will be on that 10 man for story, bragging rights and new content. Of the other gear sources I imagine PVP gear will keep up and heroic and non-raid crafted gear will relatively fall behind. I am curious what Bliz will do with Badges - presumably each new raid tier will see updates to the vendors but will we be buying the next tier of items with BadgeofTierEight or just more of the same?

I think my situation is pretty telling when looking the OPs point. I have been in successful (never cutting edge, but certainly serious) raiding guilds simply because that was the only way to actually see progression. Now that Wrath has given me the option to raid 10s exclusively, I do. We do kill Sartharion 25 with 13 people from our guild, but I don't think that really counts.

I happen to be in the position of having a group of friends who are by and large extremely competent players but all of whom hate the administration and idiot tolerance 25 man raids tend to require. We built a good 10 man guild and intend to beat through the content.

If the ilvl of the loot was our only concern, we would just join up with random 25 man guilds and raid with them. Given that anyone in a dedicated 10 man guild is already specifically avoiding the route of 'max ilvl gear' in the first place, I can't see why they would farm trivial content with a PUG instead of doing interesting content with their guildies. If all a particular player is interested in is maxing ilvl, they will join a 25 man guild. If they have a small group they prefer to play with, they will play with those people.

This cuts both ways. In December I was participating in 25-man PUGs (on Earthen Ring), because the other folks in my 10-man group weren't ready to raid in an organized manner yet. Now that they are, I've stopped even looking for larger groups -- I can see the content without having to deal with strangers now.

First off, the OP makes some rather aggressive assumptions about the iLvl of the loot in Ulduar. Why on earth would 25-man Ulduar be 2 full tiers ahead of 10-man Ulduar when only a single tier separates them currently? Furthermore, I would be pretty surprised if Ulduar-10 offers the same iLvl as Naxx-25; that would leave a sour taste in the mouths of MANY players out there.

As for 10- versus 25-man raiding, I can't add a whole lot to what others have already said. My guild is a 13-person 10-man guild, though we've hosted Naxx-25 PuGs just to give another night of raiding and just recently we started teaming up with another 10-man guild to make Naxx-25 an easy weekly clear. When Ulduar comes out, both guilds will be suspending our relationship to focus on 10-man progression, but perhaps when Ulduar is on farm and we have extra time in the raid week we can start joining forces again.

It's really not about the loot you get out of the instances for us. It's about the fun we having doing the raids, and for my guild, we all enjoy 10-mans infinitely more than 25s. We just do the 25s now because clearing all 10-man content takes about 5 hours total.

I raid mostly with a 10 man group these days as my schedule matches - it's 9 people from one of the 25 man progression guilds on the server + me (I'm close friends with several of them - used to raid lead for a raid guild several of them were in). A lot of the point isn't really loot, but badges, fun, and speed. Winding down and stomping content.