Then you'll discover yourself in the same plight you are now. Turn over is inevitable, some of your core will always move on from the game, life progresses and sometimes people need to step away, this may seem like a good idea for you in the short term, but in the long term it will circle back to the way things are now. See post #202 in this thread for an elaboration.

I think that player trends are difficult to ascertain based on the one lone server you're on. I would agree with you - On Mal'Ganis there are something like six or eight c'thun killing guild, with a spread of lesser guilds going down the pipe and several making progress in Naxx. That's tons of players, a big chunk of the server population is clearing out raiding dungeon for loot.

But I have no idea how this effects the crappier servers that are supposedly ghost towns. I've heard many horrible things about some of those servers, but frankly, I think no one has any idea. Including Blizzard.

These groups are the ones who have been having to recruit frantically to keep 40 players as people quit or move on to other guilds, constantly. Waiting a few months and leveling to 70 will do the winnowing for them. If you take a typical guild that is working on, say, Huhu or Emps right now, maybe playing with Anub or Raz, churn and teetering on the edge of implosion due to attendance issues probably constitute the story of the past year for them. I don't think trimming down to 25, or not having to pressure players to maintain the same attendance, is going to be too difficult for them. Nor will trimming the fat, if they go that route. EJ has 7 warriors who could MT for pretty much any guild out there, and several more who are DPS machines that could be great tanks if they were needed to be. We don't have any fat to trim, so multiple raids are the only option.

I never said it was a GOOD idea, but its not the end of the world. I'm not looking forward to it, but I'm probably not gonna cancel over it either. But I'm coming from a smallish guild where exactly 24 of our current members were there for our first Rag kill one year ago (We've got 7 bosses down in Naxx now). If we kept a steady 24 for over a year, I think this won't be so bad. In our history we've only lost only ever had one player leave for another guild. Filling the last 5-8 raid slots every night has always been hard because we're a small guild, and we only raid 3-4 nights a week. What I think will end up happening for our guild is that we will finally be able to raid 7 days a week (10-15 of us could easily raid 6-7 days a week) in the expansion without cutting anyone, and people won't have to feel bad for not showing up one night. From that perspective, I really don't see how you could say this is THAT bad for a guild like mine.

Our warriors actually asked our resident dwarf priestess to not use fear ward on them on gluth, but instead let them stance dance, worked well (this wasnt "lookit us" stuff, but what they genuinly felt was best on theencounter. So 3 priest of whichever race?

Well, you could also split your guild into PvE and PvP focused players, with PvP players subbing in for the others when needed. According to the Kaplan interview, Arena Seasons will have the same gear progression as 25 man raid content, so both halves of the guild can stay equally geared. I doubt it'd be hard to convince your excess rogues and mages to go kill people to progress their DPS gear. :P Who knows the shape of things to come, but it does seem that with multiple viable progression paths, the most flexible and talented guilds will still remain on top.

I've gone through ZG on a new server with people in blues/greens in 1 reset. The hardest thing was keeping a lowly geared warrior alive on tiger boss first phase before he was nerfed. Now I imagine it would be quite easy. We also didn't know the encounters from our previous servers beyond snake->spider at the time either. The encounters just aren't that hard.

Your methodology is incorrect. The game designation for AQ40 is simply "Ahn'Qiraj", regardless of what /raidinfo tells you.

It seems to me that people think they are going to jump straight from 40 man dungeons to 25 man dungeons as soon as the expansion hits, and nothing else is going to change. Yes, if that were true, changing from 40 man to 25 man changes little besides the opportunity to make encounters require even more precision from each individual and wreaking havoc on the administration of well established guilds. But this isn’t just going to be a patch adding a new instance for hardcore guilds to move onto.

Like someone said, it feels like I’ve been playing a 2 year beta, and about to get the real game. The only thing I can say with utmost certainty is that Blizzard wants their game to take as long as possible, and last as long as possible, but try to make it as fun and rewarding as possible to keep people interested. Almost everything as we know it is going to change, new skills, more levels, new talents, socketed items, a new profession, pvp changes, an extra class on your faction to work with and who knows what else.

That being said, I don’t think many people will be getting far in the hardest 25 man instances for a good long while once the expansion comes out. If your guild is hell bent on being world 1st, you have 25 people that power level to 70 as fast as they can, you recruit paladins/shamans (assuming they are both needed in end game raiding) and power them to 70 and gear them, you get a jewelcrafter to 300-350 (assuming they raise profession caps), you farm all the new recipes that come out (assuming they are needed for instances, onyxia cloak, resist gear, etc), you get the gear you need from the level 70 10mans that are better than tier 3 and get them enchanted with new enchants, you all get flying mounts, then more power to you, you may be able to progress in the high-end content as soon as you do all that, I wish you luck and hope you have fun.

I may be wrong, but I feel safe in saying Blizzard doesn’t want you jumping straight from 40 man to 25 man in a couple weeks when the expansion comes out. I for one sure as hell wont be, I’m going to buy the expansion, level up at a reasonable pace, explore the new zones, check out new quests, conquer the new dungeons, test out my new skills on an innocent level 60, try out the new pvp system, and try and enjoy whatever else they throw out there. If after a while, the absolute only way to progress is by the 25 man dungeons, and you still have 40+ people in a guild meeting all the requirements they set to progress, you did get the short end of the stick. Call me optimistic, but if they do good with the new pvp system and it has equal to raiding gear I don’t think people would mind sitting out to kill other teams of people, especially if there is good matchmaking of different gear levels.

How well will Blizzard balance PvP and PVE? Raiding is pretty much the only way to go currently, the gear between the two is too huge. Is it possible for them to tie it all together and deliver it all? I hope so, if anyone can only Blizzard can right now, since no one else is trying to. If they fail, can always goto a different game that concentrates on more of what you like.

please dont cut me :(

What if a certain boss encounter requires a first phase where many tanks are needed, and a second phase where more healers are required? I'd say having Druids and pallies wearing hybrid type gear would be very important.

You can make them adds like sons of flames, where there is lots of adds who do mana burns. Then you tank them for that and once they're done change back.

What a thread to toss a first post into.

Speaking from the perspective of a relatively new raiding group (8-9 months working as a team) which has only just started their BWL forrays, we found AQ20 to be both challenging *and* fun. Encounters such as General Raj (pre-tweak), Buru, Moam and Ossirian introduced (at least to us) entirely new encounter mechanics that were far more 'out of the box' than what we had encountered in both ZG and MC. Perhaps it was due to the fact that we walked in there wearing tier 1 and ZG gear...but even had we been sporting Tier 2/AQ 40 gear I cannot see us describing AQ20 as 'boring'. To this day it remains our most popular instance.

Blizzard did what they had to do. The 40-man raid endgame was not tenable past Naxxramas. The cap needed to be lowered. Ergo, it is. The number of people this will be tough on is lower than the number of people this benefits. End of story.

Parts of this thread infuriated me beyond belief, but I'll save my nerd rage for... nowhere, really.

You could have the boss put a debuff on each tank that lasts 30 seconds where that player is unable to generate any threat during that time. Thus making swapping tanks out vital. Or do a Fankriss style debuff with a much longer duration, or even like the debuff from Naxx from the Raz trash where the player becomes immune to healing effects, only its not removable and has a long duration. There's lots of ways that they can force fights to take advantage of hybrids.

On second glance, I don't think the 25 man limit will be a huge problem for 99% of guilds.

As your most hardcore players (the ones with 3 level 60 alts) hit 70 first because they don't work full time / don't go to uni / don't go to school / etc. They'll group up with each other and start running 5 mans. As more people hit 70 you'll start running 10 mans and progress to being able to run 25 mans. Judging by the amount of time it's supposed to take to hit level 70, this could be over the course of a few weeks. By this stage, the people who hit 70 later on start making their own groups and doing the 5 mans and such.

Going from a raid of 40 to a raid of 25, once everyone eventually hits level 70. The main thing I can see is trying to keep the same player base, and having something for everyone to do. You'll have members who prefer to run off and have their fun in the pvp arena. Others who would prefer to spend their time world pvping. The people who play the game for fun, not to be the best. I can only see a very small number of guilds where they all play to be the best, rather than to have fun. Sometimes these must be one and the same.

Ultimately, as long as you either:

a) Let everyone do what they want, and have people find what they enjoy the most, or

b) Rotate around who gets to do the most popular stuff - if everyone wants to do 25 mans, make sure it's not the same people who can't get in and have to do other stuff.

I can't see guilds having massive issues. If there are people that tire of this and quit, in the end as long as everyone's been treated equally and fairly you can't really feel bad about the situation you've put them in. The people who feel bad about what they're doing are going to be the ones who regularly don't invite certain people because they aren't good enough to cut it - hasn't this been going on for 2 years and more now anyway?

Edit:

I think that's more likely to mean that a warlock or hunter gets left out for an extra warrior who can dps when needed and tank when needed, rather than let a druid do it. Or, drop a healer (the druid who would have been in bear) and bring an extra warrior. Unless these kinds of things are random and needed dynamically during the encounter, in which case the druid is either going to be in gear that sucks for healing, or gear that sucks for tanking.

I said this before but it bears repeating: it is a mistake to take today's raid and class balance and project it 10 levels forward. Who knows what Blizzard has in mind?

There are three basic roles in the game and then an array of skills and talents that make each class unique. One of the biggest issues facing all classes today is that Blizzard makes skills and talents practically useless in the end-game. What separates mages from warlocks are these skills and talents: frost nova, sheep, deathcoil, banish, enslave demon. What separates rogues from dps warriors are things like kick, gouge, sap, vanish. The problem to date has been that Blizzard makes raid bosses immune to most of these talents except in isolated fights. Consequently, the most important things characters end up bringing to the table are the three basic roles. And of course this is where the problem comes in because if a dpser can't be top 10 on the damage meters he may as well go home. If his damage mitigation isn't absolutely top of the line we dont' want him.

If Blizzard introduces encounters that actually make use of a wide array of these other skills and talents (and they started to do it in Naxxaramas) then suddenly different classes that fulfill the same basic role suddenly become necessary. They don't have to be gimmick fights, Blizzard just has to ensure the new talents they give to the classes from 60-70 are fairly unique and are actually used in the end-game raids. If immunity to human mind control and polymorph, feral charge and other bear talents make an encounter easier, is it really the "best solution" to stack your raid with warriors? Of course not. Some people will try to do it anyway because they are stuck in the pre-Burning Crusade mindset. If all you have is a hammer then everything looks like a nail (and up until now Warriors have been pretty effective hammers - I would argue "too effective" but this isn't the place to start a discussion on current class imbalances). But in those situations you can bet it will be the outside-the-box thinkers who progress first and fastest.

Edit: having read this over, I guess the best summary is to say that I actually agree moving from 40 man to 25 man making hybrids more viable is bs. I don't agree that hybrids can't be viable (as hybrids) in a 25-man raid. But for it to work Blizzard needs to design raid encounters that are not just about the holy trinity of tanking, dpsing and healing - they need encounters that draw upon all the unique abilities that classes have.

But thats just as silly to propose having a warrior both tank and DPS in the same encounter - he's either wearing tanking gear or dps gear, or a mix of the two, and at the very least he's in beserker stance while DPSing and isn't helping the healers out at all - in which case he's no better off than a druid in the same situation.

This bears re-repeating. As a warlock who's become increasingly disenchanted with endgame raiding in general (especially since learning Loatheb), my kneejerk reaction was to predict one- or two-warlock max raids with the numbers change. It's perfectly natural for people who feel undervalued now to assume the same will hold later. However, in this case I feel it is not a valid - or productive - assumption.

MC gave us some neat things to do, mainly Banishing Garr adds and elementals in lava packs. That was interesting, a break from the norm of DPS, and added some diversity to what we were expected to do. Then came BWL, where we're basically mages with imps again for the whole zone. Only worse, because we can't go as all-out on fights like Broodlord without pulling aggro. So that was rather frustrating. Then came AQ and the awesome, enjoyable, stressful Twin Emperors fight. That was perfect. It required us to use our abilities (relatively high hit points, inherent shadow resistance and SR self-buffs, higher-threat spammable spell) in a way that we hadn't considered before. We got to TANK, and the raid leader wasn't even mad at us for doing it!

Any dev team that can come up with a fight with that kind of dynamic deserves the benefit of the doubt when it comes to adjusting raid sizes. Until I learn more about the expansion, in fact probably not until I've played my own character up to 70, I won't make a final judgement on warlocks' place in raids.

That doesn't mean I haven't formed any opinion on this change. In fact I don't care for it, not one bit, for the reasons already touched on by my esteemed colleagues. I like raiding with 40 people because there are significantly more than 39 people in my guild whose company I enjoy on raids. This change will make it much more difficult to enjoy raids with all of them, and that disappoints me.

You get to banish stuff in BWL, too, don't you?

I couldn't disagree more.

Let me give you an idea of what my guild (and many others like it) deals with. At any point in time, we have about 20-25 dedicated and skilled guild members on our roster, with another 20 so-so members in the guild, and then maybe 30 casual players with delusions of being hardcore. A lot of times we begin clearing trash 30-35 people and hope to have 39-40 by the time we reach a boss. If someone has to go, rarely will we have the luxury of filling his spot with a class of our choice, if we can even fill it at all. Compare our raid-time numbers to what I would consider ideal numbers: about 45-50 people. If anything, moving down to 25-man raids instead of 40-man raids is a blessing for guilds like mine, not a curse.

The simple fact of the matter is that, on most servers, there is a very limited number of decent players to recruit from, and they are all spread out among various guilds. Unless you're one of the very top guilds on your server or you have a very high pop, it's tough to get 40 dedicated raiders together in one guild, and nigh on impossible to get more than that so you can fill empty spots. We simply don't have a big enough core to drag the rest of the guild through 40 man raids with real consistency. The smaller the maximum raid size, the easier it is to consistently get desired raid attendance. Why? The logic is simple: because you are required to come up with a smaller amount of hardcore players. Whereas before having 20 dependable members didn't cut it, now it's pretty damn good.

Now, you might continue to say "Your core won't be there forever" like you have been, but really, just what's that supposed to mean? I take it you are assuming that all guilds of this type have had the same exact people making up their core membership since forever, and that the second they hit level 70, these members will have to stop playing and the guild will be up the creek without a paddle. Once gain, this is wrong. The names included in a group of core players of a guild change with time. They always have in the past, and guilds expect them to continue to do so in the future. Lastly, I don't understand your point these types of guilds will be ill-prepared to handle the drama associated with these types of changes. Au contraire, I believe they will handle this drama the best because guilds that have teeter-tottered on the edge have a lot more experience dealing with fluctuating member-bases than guilds who have been going strong all along with the same people. And it's not like there will be some sudden cut of 15 people out of nowhere. The journey from 60 to 70 will eliminate quite a few casual members from these guilds, and the rest will gradually and naturally be pushed out when they are repeatedly left out of raids while the core members and decent members of guilds get the invites.

In the end, this is just a change.

Changes work differently for different people. For every guild that was doing just fine with 40 people and dread the change to 25 people, I can probably show you two or three guilds who were suffering with 40-man raids and will likely thrive with 25 people. You had this to say on the front page of your guild's website:

These are the same/similar questions and problems that many guilds have already been dealing with under the current system. You haven't had to deal with these problems so you haven't thought twice about that fact. There are two sides to every coin, dude.

That is kind of what I was getting at. If it's an encounter where two roles are required, both classes would do it in a mediocre fashion, equally badly. If it's an instance where different encounters require different roles then a warrior can fill two of those better than a druid can by shape shifting and swapping gear sets.

Of course, as has been pointed out, this is assuming current abilities and levels of proficiency in multiple roles. In current 20 mans, having excess warriors is almost never a bad thing, beyond loot competition.