If you're like the majority of the WoW populace and don't play 40+ hours a week, trying to be a part of a guild doing 40 man content either means you're at the bottom of the DKP food chain forever, or you're in a guild that has 80 members to fill 40 slots because you just don't know who shows up. This will make the raiding game far more accessible to Joe Paladin, since he only has to find (at most) two dozen more buddies to go do something any given night instead of another 39. If their focus is on 10 man instances, it means that the majority of the game is going to be very accessible. It also means that if you are starting a new guild, you don't have to find the extra 10-15 "deadweight" bodies that seem to be terribly common. I like Gurg is right on: this change is the McRib of WoW. The more I think about it this is a clear play at the massive demographic that complains about the end game being too much of a change from the 5/10/15 man instances at the end of the leveling curve. Those 5/10/15/20 man instances are going to become the norm across all levels of BC.

The problem of the "deadweight" 10-15 people in a 40man raid is that you still need those 10-15 people to fill required class slots or whatever. If you cut down the raid size to 25, the reality is you're just going to end up with 17 or so good people and have to fill up with 7-8 deadweight.

I fail to see how this will make a difference except piss off the skilled core people.

Edit: in other words, I think the number of deadweight is a function of the raid size, not that you'll necessarily end up with less deadweight by cutting raid size to an arbitrarily lower limit.

I think this is a great change for the game and for a large percentage of guilds. The number of elite guilds out there that never worry about attendence or having a few scrubs is extremely small, probally between 10 and 20. This change will not cause massive turnover. The average high end guild will be cheering about 25 man capped content and will already be forming their lists of scrubs and assholes that need to go. The guild I was in on my old server had every first horde kill all the way from lucifron to the twin emps but even we had a massive turnover. When we dropped the Twins we had maybe 5 ppl still there from when we dropped Luci and we were the best horde guild on the server. Like so many guilds we always managed to have 20 to 25 really good players that could play in the elitist of elite guilds and then the rest complete and utter scrubs. Having 25 man content would not only have saved our guild but we would have been able to compete with the EJs and FoHs of the world. I have to believe that the majority of high end guilds are structured just like mine was and will only be strengthened by this change. There will be drama when you cut down to 25 raiders but lets be honest here, most ppl know exactly who is freeloading in the guild whether they are your friends or not.

From a Blizzard perspective and the game as a whole I beleive this is an amazing change, a breakthrough. It is going to save the average high end raiding guild that is recruiting 10 ppl a week to stay afloat and it will also please the casuals. Its a win-win. Not everybody is going to be happy with any change but the number of ppl that are going to be hurt by this is extremely small compared to the number of ppl 40 man raid content was screwing.

I imagine that the 25 man content will be just as challenging from a skill perspective but you are going to see alot more guilds suddenly jump onto the bleeding edge. Its not because the content will be easier than 40 man but because, like many have said, you dont have to push the 10 to 15 retards through the scrub net. The guilds with 20 or so amazing players are no longer going to be held back by all the random ppl that are recruited only to fill a slot and nothing more. So 25 man content will have the appearence of being easier because every player in a 25 man raid is going to be a badass.

Edit: I do think we are going to see a large variety of raid content now. Even though casuals will be able to field a 25 man team they probally dont have the time or experience to run through a 25man instance if its tuned to a naxx difficulty. So we will probally see some 25 mans that are relatively easy from a skill and time pov but we will also see 25 mans that are as intense and time consuming as we have all grown acustom to. The one thing Blizzard has always had going for it is an amazing dungeon design team, they might be slow but they put out some great content. Because of that I am very excited for what they will cook up.

See the proposed WF change. Or the fact that honor went in before BG's. Some significant percentage of WoW designers are fucktards. From the evidence, most of them work in PvP and class mechanics.

While these encounters are set in stone, there's nothing that stops them from going back to 40 around the caverns of time. As mentioned, Mt. Hyjal would be pretty dissappointing with less then 40. The 1-2 months it will take to level to 70 will provide them a chance to start working on those, if the general community is as negative on the change as we are.

Unfortunatly, by the time that happens (if it happens) the damage to alot of guilds will be done.

Going back up to 40 after going down to 25 would have disastrous effects.

Since hitting C'thun back in January/Febuary vodka's raid attendance has been going down. The people I killed the Twin Emporer's with almost 8 months ago, half of them have quit the game or are on extended hiatus. Fast forward to Naxxramas, one out of four people in the raid are applicants. While we have managed to kill 12 bosses, it has been a struggle and continues to be a struggle. I have been recruiting since the beginning of AQ, and today I am actively recruiting so we can continue to fill raids. Stacking raids isn't something we have the capability of doing, our Loatheb kill this week was with 7 Hunters and 4 Warlocks.

My first impression of this change is thank you Blizzard.

What I believe separates my guild from other top guilds who have been working on the Four Horsemen for weeks is attendance. You may disagree, but I believe what holds us back is not being able to field 40+ every single night. Some weeks we go on a string of days where we barely break 30. The game loses it's apeal to me when I can't field 40+ people to raid every night, and I struggle to do this every single night. Yeah I know, a headache is incoming when we have to deal with splitting the guild into two raid groups or downsizing to only support one raid group, but in the end I think this change will be a great one for my core group of players.

I don't really think the terms "casual" and "hardcore" have any place in this discussion. They only serve to obfuscate the issues, while simultaneously conjuring visions of the WoW forums. Not a good thing.

A 25-man dungeon is not necessarily any more casual or hardcore than a 40-man dungeon. If Blizzard made a 10-man dungeon that had a 7-day reset timer, took 8-10 hours of flawless raiding (no wipes, no delays) to clear, had fights with little margin for error that required optimal performance from all 10 people for 5+ minutes at a time, required massive consumables prep, etc., that would be a "hardcore" dungeon. Molten Core, by constrast, is a pretty casual dungeon. People can and have done Org/IF PUGs of MC and gotten reasonably far. It isn't hard in the slightest, and it takes less time than Z'G to fully clear.

"You only really need one or two dwarf priests per raid" sayeth the masses.

You only need two or three priests per raid sayeth the expansion. Discuss.

Yes, and it's utterly frustrating from the perspective of a guild well-balanced to handle 40-man raids (meaning 50ish online all the time). We can't simply split in two - that's not very practical. Nor can we really continue on with raiding as normal, having 25 people sit on the bench. So where does that leave our guild?

Honestly; I looked at the PvP content of TBC and it looks great, and I'm very excited. But this new decision by Blizzard really leaves me questioning them. I absolutely have on desire to deal with all the problems this will cause, and it's going to suck to have to cut 15 people out of the raid rotation.


On a rather irrelevant note; anyone find it silly we had to 40 man Kel'thuzad but Illidan and Arthas only need 25?

Just have a draenei shaman drop tremor totem -- it's just as good after all. :lol:

That article says nothing of the Black Temple, which tells me that Blizzard didn't show it to them, probably because that's one of the last instances they're doing. Which makes sense.