In the early days of EQ, raids were usually around 30 people, both due to technical limitations (lag) and the mechanics of the fights. In later expansions, Shadows of Luclin saw raid sizes creep upwards of 50, and again in Planes of Power raid sizes swelled to nearly 70. Much of this I'm sure was a conscious decision on the part of the designers who knew their content was limited by competition, so they felt that upping the raid size requirements would be a band-aid fix to allow more players access to the content. With instancing, this is no longer an issue since there's no longer competition for content, which allows the designers to set raid caps at any level they choose.

I remember when Blackwing Lair was released how all the non-raiders, or people in smaller guilds that couldn't field 40 bitched and complained that raids should scale to group size. That I disagree with, but I do think Zul'Gurub and AQ20 have proven that smaller raid sizes can be both innovative and challenging. I would love for the expansion to have more 20-man raids as staging grounds and gateway farming for a few upper-tier 40-man raid zones.

I used to believe that 40-man raids could never be so intensive such that one retard would wipe you. Enter C'thun, and all that's changed. But at what point does this become excessive? As much as I enjoy large raids, there will inevitably be a few "special childrenz" that screw up. When 20-mans are the norm, this becomes much less of an issue. With fewer people, I feel the designers can get away with demanding that every single person play at 100%.

In whatever the next big game is, I would like to see the designers make a conscious decision to reduce raid sizes down to somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 players. At that point, I believe you get an optimal balance of small-group social interaction and demands on player skill.


So, two questions:

1. What do you believe is the optimal raid size for WoW, or future MMORPGs that will undoubtably emulate WoW?

2. Would you prefer more 20-man content as gateways and gear farming to fewer, more intensive 40-man zones?

I think 25-30 is a nice number. Even on poor attendance nights, we seems to get around that many consistantly (ussually the same players).

40 isn't bad by any means. I enjoy current raids, but dropping 10-15 people would feel pretty good and allow you to keep a really honed team ready to raid. My biggest problem with WoW is that the biggest challenge in raiding isn't the content, but the attendance. Getting a consistant 40 people on some servers isn't easy. Lowering the raid sizes allows you to have more end game guilds, more suited to their individual players, and puts more focus on the content.

1. What do you believe is the optimal raid size for WoW, or future MMORPGs that will undoubtably emulate WoW?

WoW is my first raiding MMO, so I'm not exactly experienced, but I think 20-25 people or so is an ideal raid size; like you said in nicer words, every guild has some people that just aren't really good, because they have to shell out their rosters to consistantly fill 40 man raid zones. It would be incredibly difficult to have 45-50 of the best players on your server at any time, let alone keep them all happy in your guild. If raids were cut down in size, I think the overall skill of most end game guilds would go up, because they'd get to play with their 25 best players, not their 25 best and 15 filler people that are "okay".

2. Would you prefer more 20-man content as gateways and gear farming to fewer, more intensive 40-man zones?

Personally, I'd like 20 man raid zones to be challenging as hell, and also rewarding. I wouldn't mind seeing 20man raid zones with fights that are on par with Naxx in terms of difficulty, because I play this game to beat difficult encounters, not farm shit. Can you imagine how fun a fight like Twin Emps would be if the numbers were scaled downwards for a 20man instance? Instead of awesome stuff like that, what's the most difficult 20man encounter now, Ossirian? He's not even as hard as Huhu.

Maybe I'm just burnt out on 20man instances, but it gets so boring when every run is the same, and you're just going through the motions to collect the loot at the end. ZG/AQ are both such cake in terms of difficult, and it's pretty disappointing; even when they were released they were a breeze. I don't know why Blizzard can't make sub-40 man raid instances that are actually difficult for that number of players. I have my fingers crossed for Kharazan though!

I disagree. If you're looking at the mechanics and concept of the fight, Ossirian is harder. It requires a greater overall awareness from everyone in your raid. It requires tank switching, aggro control, movement around environmental threats, a great deal of moving the boss itself, and an interesting gimmick (the crystals).

Huhuran on the other hand, is an example of what happens when the designers sit down and say "Okay, we need a gateway mob, and we're going to use math to design this encounter, rather than thinking about what's actually fun to play." And that's just what Huhuran is. It doesn't require any great movement or coordination, nothing like C'thun, or even the Twin Emps where people have to constantly move and dodge environmental threats. It's just a gear check.

Ossirian could just as easily be the boss of an "uber" 20-man raid zone. Buff up his DPS output, add more or faster-moving sandstorms, and give a time limit before he goes berserk. It would still be a better encounter than Huhuran.

I want 8 man or 16 man Dungeons with difficult encounters, cockblocks to progression like Drakki's Blood and Onyxia Scales, and lockouts.

Digo, I think the 'optimal size' depends on which direction you want to go with the particular MMO. If you intend to attract 'core gamers' like the classic EQ guys, then you've simply got to have a raid game and that raid game has to be a large number of people. Obviously, this doesn't mean it has to be the only type of play available. The large numbers in my mind, at least, seem to do exactly what's already been mentioned here. They simply give the encounter designers more to play with in terms of demanding things from your group. They like this because they can demand that X number of rogues dps the entire time or you lose the encounter. They like this because its a great deal harder to have X number of on-the-ball crowd control raid members than to simply have one or two. This is 'good' because it makes failure of your group, your group's fault. It just makes it easier to demand certain things from the group in order to beat an encounter.

On the other hand, if you want to be a more accessible MMO, you've got to (also?) have smaller content. 20-man content, especially ZG, and a few of the encounters in AQ are more accessible, while, as you've said, not significantly diminishing the coordination and ability required. I am of the distinct opinion that these encounters aren't really 'easier' as we think they are, whats 'easier' is that there are only 20 people there. Its just easier to get the cats herded in the right direction when there are only 20 of them there. Furthermore, if the CC drops the ball or the priest 'forgets' to heal or sucks at it, its a heck of a lot more noticeable and people will find someone next time who doesn't suck to bring along.

Personally I would like to see more, smaller, 'raids' as opposed to a few larger raids. Accessibility, I think WoW has shown, is where the money is. And, also in my opinion, the fun isn't in conquering things with explicitly a large number of people. In fact, its downright frustrating to have my enjoyment of the game dependent upon some retard we (the 50 other people in my guild) failed to realize was a retard before we got to AQ. I just don't enjoy having my personal (or in connection with my 5-10 real friends in any guild/group) fun for the night/week/month in any game determined by some retard I barely know. But, hey, thats just me.

As we've all seen, though, accessibility isn't necessarily where the 'fun' is. People go for all kinds of different things. I, for instance, hate PvP. I wonder whether we'll see things like we see in the television industry lately. The 'nichisation' of the MMO market. We're already seeing games that focus on non-item based (largely) group PvP or that focus on small group or dynamically-sized group/individual content. So, I really think we’ll see MMOs develop more fully with numerous varied types satisfying numerous types of game-play. The “best” MMOs will find ways to accommodate multiple styles, thus grabbing multiple niches.

The raider v. "casual "debate" raging on the forums seems to seize onto this issue often without realizing it. The real issue is WoW expected to be a mini-EQ with a focus on raid-content at the end. They made the learning curve short (leveling, skilling up) with the expectation that those who played would want to raid at the end of that. They developed content with that in mind. Content that we’re just now seeing. Turns out that the early playstyle is appealing to a huge, huge by any prior MMO standard, number of gamers. But, those people burn content like mad and the raid game doesn’t satisfy/work/appeal to them. The “next” MMO that capitalizes on that playstyle and market if WoW fails to do so effectively in the expansion (I’m still not sure they care to try.), will find a large market as well.

In short, I think for raid game, you’ve got to have large numbers, 25-30+ for it to make for the kinds of encounters that “raiding” should feel like and that “raiders” would enjoy. I think for a mass market, 25 is probably the top, in terms of an end game. After that, organization of the group becomes a burden that, over time, many gamers just won’t care to bear. And, I think WoW has shown, as you allude, viable, end-game, complicated encounters can be created at the 20 person level. I have a feeling (and am hoping against hope) we’ll see similar content in Khazaran, proving you don’t even need 20.

Thats interesting that you used the term 'core gamer'. You probably know that this is how Brad McQuaid defines target audience for Vanguard. And VG will mostly about single group mechanics, not raiding. So you statement contradicts with the author of the term.

Now, back to original question

1) I think 30 ppl is optimal. 20 man isn't enough for really complex encounters, like C'thun. Scale him to 20 man and he will became much, much easier. 40 ppl on the other hand is slighty bigger than needed, so 30 seems optimal to me.

2) In a current state of WoW - no way. The guilds are build around 40 man raids. I know that not a single raiding guild on my server isn't able to field more than one 20 man raid with reasonable constistency. If 20 man raids became required for 40 man raids - guilds will have to recruit and restucture.

You're right, I know. I think, with the game he's apparently made, he's wrong. Small group game isn't going to attract the "classic" MMO player. The guy (or girl, lets not be sexist, here) who enjoys the complicated, large-scale encounters, only conquerable by a large, consistently organized group of people. Perhaps... I'm wrong. I do, definitely, think that the "MMO player" is changing, and I think its changing more towards a smaller scale style of play, so I think trying to appeal to smaller groups is smart.

I think he did hit onto something in that my favorite times, ever, in playing WoW were in small 5-man groups as I was levelling or in my first few times in, say, Strat or Scholo. I think there is something to be said for feeling like you're a part of the group and that your contribution matters. As Digo pointed out in his intial post, he didn't believe this was possible in an encounter until he saw C'thun. I think thats interesting. Its like, he knew, as we all kind of do, that people slack and people suck in those 40 mans and other's pick up that slack. The first time that didn't happen, for Digo at least, was C'thun.

So, I think Brad is right in that small groups are where the fun is at for a larger number of gamers. I think that a real "core gamer" of MMOs isn't (or at least hasn't been yet) that large number of gamers. It seems, though, he designed a game for the core gamers without a raid game. I'm betting thats a huge mistake... but we'll see.

And this relates to the thread's intitial question in that, like I said in my prior post, I think the raid game appeals to a good segment of gamers and is very important to them. I think there are multiple other segments developing thanks to the ease of use of WoW and I think the more successful games in the future will cater to, at least, both of those play-styles (30+ raid game and 20 or less "raid" game), probably small and large-scale PvP as well.

I think 40 mans are good.

I like 20 mans as well as it is a very different dynamic and allows for some different things and everyone needs to be much more on their game.

The only problem this discussion has is raids cant change in the middle of a life cycle of a game. There was a lot of backlash in EQ when SoE made us inflate our guild sizes to 72, then dropped them to 54 two expansions later.

I think bigger is a little better, leaves small room for error, but not to the point where EQ went before shrinking down again. At that size I didnt even feel like a cog in a machine, I was like an ant in a colony.

With 35 to 40 you can still feel somewhat important to what is going on while allowing your guild leaders more flexiblity in raid composition. 20 mans have smaller room for mix and match classes once you get past the requisite tanks, healers, CC.

In my opinion, size of a raid doenst matter as far as design goes as long as the number they have in their head when making it leaves everyone with a job and something to pay attention to instead of brainelessly moving along (MC v. AQ/Naxx).

Obviously, the bigger it gets the more strain it puts on Devs to give everyone something to do and strain on guilds to make sure they have enough online every raid night to fill those jobs.

40 men covers this well, its not a terribly unwieldly number and it means to have 7 or so of every class puts you around 60 men in a guild. Again, not an unmanagable number. Not too small to have to make cuts all the time and never allow any one to have a friend tag along, not to big to have to start delving into the "you gotta pulse, can you push 2 over and over for 10 minutes?" range so you can just fill your raids.

Personally, i think WoW has done well in making 5, 10, 20 and 40 man content. Each is its own dynamic and, if properly balanced, can be very, very fun.

The size of the raid really doesn't matter so much for me. What matters most is that the encounters are designed to be challenging and engaging for their raid size. It pisses me off when encounters in MC were obviously designed for less than 40 people and when even as a main healer I can go afk mid fight come back and we will have still won. I mean take a boss like gehhenas, he has his rain of fire which serves as a "HEY PAY ATTENTION" spell but losing players to it really doesn't hurt your raid that much. On the other hand take a 10 man boss like valthalak and if you lose more than one person during phase 1 and you're in serious trouble, and all of the death in his fight can be prevented by paying attention, hell he even has a check at the end where if you are on the edge of wiping before he hits 10% you're not going to kill him either. The groups that win the fight are the ones that understand what they are doing and do it.

I don't want to sound too harsh, but a lot of what is being said really shows lack of experience in many other MMOs. In EQ it was "36 is perfect, these 70 man raids suck!" Let's not forget that the raids were 60+ as soon as velious. First NToV clear was with just over 60 people.

Then you get WoW with 40 and now it is "20 is perfect. No 25!" Of course you could go to EQ2 where there are 24 man raids only and there you hear the cries of "24 is too much! I want 12 man raids!"

It is all relative. If you went 6 man only it would be cries of solo.

However, if there is one MMO that has the resources to try and meet the desires of everyone it is WoW. I would love to have nearly equivalent progression paths for 10,20, and 40 size groups and just see what ends up the most attractive. I think the bigger raids are still the best bang for the buck as far as development costs go compared to how much use they get.

For my own part I love 40 person raids.

I suspect that if the raid size was 25, people would make the same complaint about wanting to raid with only their "best" 16.

As long as you've got multiple people working in the same role, the perception will arise that some of them are better than others, true or not.

Probably, sure, but I was going for a number that was big enough to still house a large number of people, but small enough that you could fill every spot with a very good player. Maybe it's just my standpoint based on past experiences, but I don't think you can fill a raid with 40 very good players that are going to stay aware when they need be, and perform flawlessly with what they're supposed to be doing. I do think you can do that with 25.

Instead of start talking numbers right from the get go, consider what it is that makes a fun raiding experience and what is it you would like to see in your raid group. Personally I think 40 man raids are a bit too much, however C'thun really is a great fight and many agrees on this. There could be several reasons for it and one of those reasons are in my opinion very important and I'm pretty sure this is something everyone would agree on.

The perfect raid group would have a size such that you would be able to see and notice the majority of the other team players in action, encounters would be tuned to a level where it would require complete attention and focus from everyone. All these characteristics would be obvious to anyone and every raider could be proud of being part of the raid group, having achieved a level of cooperation that allows you to beat these encounters. In 40 man raids it becomes a bit too much to keep an eye on everyone and know how everyone is performing. I'm not saying you should be a raid group benchmark nazi.

Razorgore is an early encounter of this sort, people are spread out in their respective corners and work together as a team to overcome a bigger task. Sartura does so as well, the raid group is spread out with their own goals to come together in the end to kill the final boss. C'thun is a good example, everyone is spread out across the room and have many different people and objects to watch as the encounter progresses. It allows you to watch your team mates work together and see their performance and the labor of your hours together come to fruition.

I feel these encounters are good for those reasons and that a 40 man raid is a bit too much to keep an eye on. However, I might be off on that, I mean ... there are encounters that are just plain dumb when looking at encounters in the way I just described. All of MC for example and a good deal of the encounters in BWL. Tank boss, heal tank, dps boss - simple as that. So it may just be that encounters are not constructed in a way that support this way of looking at raid groups. However, cutting the number of people down from 40 would at least help get the more tight knit cooperative feel to the surface.

For that reason I would have to say 25 to 30 people, maybe even 20 people. ZG and AQ20 were never meant to be on the difficulty level of AQ40 and BWL and as such I don't feel they are valid arguments against 20 man raids.

I don't think you understand him, or maybe I don't but whatever :P I think what he means is that he wants to cut down raid sizes so that he can constantly evaluate the performance of each raid member and rest assured in those seeing that the entire raid group is solid. That may not be possible in 40 man raid groups and that can be annoying.

I think its very telling about the number of people "necessary" for a fun encounter when your two examples of fun 40 man size encounters are encounters specifically designed to break you into smaller working groups. This "feel like what you do matters" and "what each of your team members do matters" feeling is one of the greatest things I see in any content. So, to the extent you use these encounters as examples, I agree with you. But, if all a 40 man encounter does to make you feel good about your group as a whole is to break you into groups of 5-10-15 or so, why have the 40 there at all? Its fun!

That said, I agree. If you're making 40 man content or 74 man content or 24 man content, for Pete's sake use all of the people you're "requiring" for the encounter and I don't mean DPS roadblocks or FR roadblocks. Everyone, in any content, wants to feel useful and like their contribution matters, along with feeling a sense of satisfaction for the coordination and the "of-one-mindness" that was required to beat the encounter.

I'm of the opinion, thus far in WoW, there have only lately been encounters where that is the case. Its certainly doable, look at Razorgore. I haven't experienced Naxx at all yet, but lets hope that its the case there as well. Things have certainly been getting better.

So, whatever the number:

1. Make the player, individually feel useful.
2. Make the accomplishment require a high level of performance from each individual.
3. Make the accomplishment valuable as a group effort, for having required those individual performances.

Edit: I'd suggest that each of those goals are accomplishable in any "size" content. They're simply easier on the individual players to organize in smaller content (and thus, my thesis, that smaller content appeals to a larger playerbase).

On 1) you dont really give any reasoning for 30 being better then 40, it just seems to be your personal feeling, which is ok, my personal feeling is that 40 is optimal. At least as you say in 2) by this time, since guilds are formed around it, if there in a 40 man group of your raiders, are fucktards that cant do their job worth shit, then you've got the wrong people. (ok, a bit stronger words then needed maybe, but have 2 people wipe you 10 times in a row on c'thun like another guild I know, and I'm sure strong language will be pulled out). Reducing it to 30 wouldnt be removing the 10 freeloaders, it would be removing 10 very competent people. Though, I know you were talking about future games, so would just be to not recruit those last few guys.

I am not sure if it is right for the game but I find that I really enjoy the 20 man instances. The 20 mans allow for more social time on ts/vent and just seem overall pretty enjoyable. I still think the ZG 2.0 (when they removed excess trash) is the best effort they have put forward to date.

i disagree that numbers are necessary to increase difficulty.

The only thing that higher raid number increase, is the possibility for you to have more members that aren't really good gamers, because on any server it is really hard to get in a guild 40 hardcore skilled gamer.

You always have to 'fill your raid' with some less skilled people that can only do their task.

That's what makes 40man raid challenging, because after your core of 15ish 'best' member already have figured out the encounter you need to work and work on it to get the rest to understand as well and finally do what they are supposed to do, perfectly.

I'd personally love to see the raid force go down to 20 people. I don't see why high end content necessarily mean high raid numbers. I think in a 20man environement everyone is more important to the raid, and you can have a much better guild dumping all the raid fillers.

I'm sure most of you could in their head imagine their 'perfect' 20man setup from their roster and not cry too much about loosing deadweight for more hardcore people.

Then designing technical encounters for 20 people isn't really harder than with 40, you can have very complex 20man encounter, it's just tuning the numbers accordingly. I find much more challenge in the 5man early days before all the repeated nerf, and before the epix influx than any 40man raids.

I really wish and dream that in burning crusade, 5 men content will be challenging again, and raid would be limited to 20man, because in most 40 man i am bored as hell most of the time. Sure figuring out an encounter is fun, dumbing down explaining repeatitely and making everyone understand what you figured out while wiping over and over is not in my book.

I'm sure you all have uber guilds where all the 40man are perfect raiders of great talent, i'm impressed, although in more than 10years of online gaming i've never seen any guild like that.

Anyway you wouldn't reduce the number of high end raiders, you'd just have twice more guild, but individual skill would make a much bigger difference imo, and guild achievement would be scaled accordingly.

You've done something wrong long ago if you invited less skilled people to begin with (unless of course, they are able to learn what it takes, cant expect everyone to be raid experts before their first raid) but by this time in wow, your guild should have 40 more then competent raiders. I personally couldnt think of 10 people from yesterdays raid I'd not mind dropping, much less 20.

...Except for Bob. Nobody likes him.

Personally, 20 is the best raid size to me, it's large enough to be epic and have unique strategies, but small enough that individual members become more powerful compared to a 40man counterpart in terms of the encounter. Losing a single member is going to be more unforgiving than in a 40man raid if tuned right, without using death penalties. Honest to god I love AQ20 minus all of the tuning it needs. The only reason I hate ZG is because it's not fun killing even more trolls. STV, Hinterlands, Arathi, ZF and ST and of course, Horde Trolls. Enough trolls already.