This really hurts close, smallish guilds such as DnT; do you cut 20 people or recruit 15 and have an "A" team and a "B" team? And deal witht he drama/hurt feelings that is going to result in? :|

There is more to that article than just 25 player caps too.

The mention of dynamically scaling instances is extremely intrigueing to me. To be able to go back to old content, albeit TBC content only as of now, on 'hard mode' for the possibility of better loot ups replay value alot.

Shaman finally getting bloodlust, even if it IS at level 70 is a great thing. Maybe I'm biased, being a shaman and all, but it was our class defining ability in the WC games.

And the overriding issue for most of us 'raiders', the new 25 player cap. I guess I am inclined to wait for some more info befor passing judgement but I will say that I wouldn't be overly upset at the prospect. I mean, it does put alot more honus on the individual to execute and play their toon well. No more slacking.. or not as much i guess.

This frustrates me as a player because there are many excellent players in my guild, and I really enjoy playing with them -- but some of the only times I get to play alongside them are in 40-man raids. I won't see them in ZG or AQ, and I don't see why a 20-man raid would be different. I enjoy their company and they make it fun to play on these raids. It's disappointing.

On top of that, it basically screws with the entire current guild establishments. Having 2-4 mini raiding groups within a guild is probably the best way to breed inequity and bitterness. It'll lead to a situation of haves and have-nots within a guild and to decrease the ability for everyone to feel on equal footing. This isn't a "slippery slope" argument of any kind -- you can see this type of situation in every large raiding guild with more than one raid group already.

I'll probably have more to say later.

It's a shame.

All the 20 man content they have put in the game so far was beaten the day it was released. I have a hard time believing that adding 5 more people will somehow make the content challenging enough to compare to the current 40 mans. Are we just going to see every zone defeated in the first week?

I dislike the changes, that being said I think DnT is better set up to whether these than most guilds. One of the major keys to success was keeping our raid force around 55-60 active skilled players, and with our reputation I'm fairly certain if we decided our optimal scheme was 70 or 80 raiders to fill 2 groups, we could achieve that based on name recognition. That being said, I know many higher tier guilds who field only 40-50 raiders, and I think this will cause a major schism amongst their members.

This will hurt the raiding game. I was excited with all the Naxx encounters. Most of them were difficult, complex and demanding and that's just not doable with a 25man raid. For proof, see aq20 and zg.

This is a plus for the average end game guild with a skilled core of 15-20 members, since they can trim the fat and in doing so get rid of the scrubs that are just fillers. It's not so good for the top guilds who have less scrubs.


Edit--the PvP changes will be welcome. It seems people who don't want to pvp 10+ hours a day can still get the top gear, but it will just take longer. 2v2, 3v3, 5v5 "arena" fights are something I've been waiting for.

I think they're capable of consciously making the new 25-man encounters more like the previous 40-man encounters than the previous 20-man ones.

I'm personally ecstatic for the very reason that every one else is unnerved; where as everyone else see's the threat of having to cut good, hard working players from the nightly raiding roster, I see myself, and the 15-20 other dedicated, competent players in my guild free of having to hog tie monkeys to their keyboards in the hope that they can contribute something without screwing up. It's become a regular observation that many guilds attempting to clear end game content have around 20 active, core members, and up to 50 other people of varying skill and dedication more or less riding coat tails. This change is probobly the only thing that would keep me playing wow after trying to herd cattle through AQ and Naxx.

Stop comparing the new 25 mans to the old 20 mans, neither ZG nor AQ20 were supposed to be extremely difficult.

EDIT: Clearly this change was made so naxx wasn't too easy after the expansion.

Even if Blizzard really does feel that they can make better content out of 25capped zones, I'm really curious if they understand just what they're risking. This isn't going to sit happily with more then just the top-tier of raiders, and I'd be very interested to know why they feel the change is really needed. (Also, MMO's are about social interaction no? how can reducing a long-standing group size be a good thing?) Really interested to see what, if any, further info they have in store.