Indeed, casuals will remain casuals. At least they won't whine over the fact that they can't even get inside the zone. "Zomg I play for l0rE buT I Dunt Have 39 pPL pLix makE arTHas a FiVE man Raid".
To sum up, I agree that the top-end raiding guilds will be damaged by this change, but in the end it will be a good thing since it will allow many more people to experience the real end-game.
How many casual players are going to spend 20+ hours a week raiding and 15 hours farming for fucking consumables and repair costs?
A lot more than before because their guild broke down when they hit vael/huhu/whatever. Maintaining a guild for 25-man raids is much easier than maintaining a guild fr 40-man raids.
In addition, a an equally difficult encounter designed for fewer people (especially where one mistake = wipe) will have a shorter learning curve since the group will have a tighter cohesion, fewer idiots falling asleep, going afk, etc. You'll have more efficiency since time recovering after a wipe will be shorter. A group is as strong as its weakest link, and you'll have greater control over that with fewer people (not necessarily in having better players, but in communicating the strat and coordinating so everyone is doing the right thing).
Balancing repair costs is something Blizzard will deal with; I'm just putting my faith in them on this one.
As far as consumables...15 hours a week? Maybe on Mal'Ganis with their 80 post-patchwerk guilds scouring the land of all dreamfoil/plaguebloom as soon as it sprouts, but I farm maybe a couple hours each week and I'm good to go.
To sum up, I agree that the top-end raiding guilds will be damaged by this change, but in the end it will be a good thing since it will allow many more people to experience the real end-game.
How many casual players are going to spend 20+ hours a week raiding and 15 hours farming for fucking consumables and repair costs?
In addition, a an equally difficult encounter designed for fewer people (especially where one mistake = wipe) will have a shorter learning curve since the group will have a tighter cohesion, fewer idiots falling asleep, going afk, etc. You'll have more efficiency since time recovering after a wipe will be shorter. A group is as strong as its weakest link, and you'll have greater control over that with fewer people (not necessarily in having better players, but in communicating the strat and coordinating so everyone is doing the right thing).
Or they'll logically ratchet up the encounter to the point where it requires more precision to account for less people. Eg. things happening faster, less time to move, etc.
Right. I think that there are limits to the expectations Blizzard can fairly place on each individual out of 40 players. They've done a decent job of having fights where everyone has to do something simple: Thaddius, Heigan, Grobbulus, etc. And there are fights where your fate rests in the hands of a smaller number of people doing something more complex: Gluth, for example.
But if Blizzard made a fight where all 40 people had to simultaneously do something as involved as kiting Zombie Chow, the net result would probably be frustrating and near-impossible.
25-mans, if designed properly, will make individual player skill matter more.
Also, obviously, this is a hard issue to discuss objectively. If, like Zwink above me, your guild is hovering around ~30 showing up for every given endgame raid, and you have a core of 20-25 members and lots of recruitment churn in the other slots, this sounds good to you. If you're in a 30-man guild that has to form a guild alliance with a group of douchebags in order to run 40-man content, this sounds great to you. On the other end of the spectrum, if you have 45 solid people showing up to raid every night, and you don't have to recruit much, you probably feel different. EJ is probably as far on that side of things as a guild can possibly be. When we killed Loatheb (or Thaddius, or whatever boss) last week, 38 of the 39 people in the raid with me are people I was doing 5-mans and UBRS with 18 months ago. For the people who are just saying "this is great, now we can drop our dead weight," put yourself in those shoes for a moment.
I think we could field two raid groups if we wanted to (we've done so in the past for Onyxia/zg/aq20 or our marathon UD Strat days) by the same token we could stop recruitment and with the inevitable real life nature of our guild (we're mostly older and if the baby is coming, you get to stop playing) it might shrink us naturally.
In either event, I don't think this is a guaranteed guild breaking event. Yes, in the worst possible case, it's catastrophic, but the problems are so obvious that I imagine there has been some thought put into it. If you choose to believe that Blizzard is a raging incompetent, feel free, but you are playing a brilliantly (in some areas) designed game made by a raging incompetent. Maybe he'll get lucky again.
I'm not sure I want to deal with the logistics of it - the real question is never "can you find 25, 40, 80, 200 people to do this?" it's always "Can you find enough people to handle the logistics of managing 25/40/80/200 and organizing/motivating/directing them." Recruiting sucks, but it's doable and you can, if you are willing to invest the time, teach anyone to play wow. There is no 7ft tall requirement to be a warrior/priest/mage in wow. There's a time requirement, but that's going to go down some simply because you don't need to find as many people with open holes in their schedule. Regardless, I think we all agree that admin work sucks. However I also think we agree that on the whole we do like playing the game, so maybe we'll put up with more silly tedium.
As I said, I intend see how it plays out before jumping to conclusions. As a simple example of a piece of information that would make any assumptions invalid I offer lockouts. We don't know anything at all about their lockout scheme for TBC. If they lock the _guild_ to x raid groups per week and each _raid's_ instance is held open for the duration with people able to come and go from each other's raid inside the same guild? It solves quite a bit of the "I want to play for the blue team" issues. I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt - I've enjoyed their design so far, and I suspect I will continue to in the future.
The things that are likely to burn me out are administrative in nature. I don't really want to hold kixx's hand while he cries that aishiya is a meanie. 25 or 40 or 300 or 10 man instance caps don't matter. I have fun in dire maul east with 5 paladins, I'll have fun in tempest keep with 25 Rebirth, particularly if I can hassle the other 25 Rebirth that are in Bizzarro Tempest keep. As I play wow as entertainment (I find my personal worth to be held up more by continuing to play the piano or excelling at work) this is acceptable. It's still much much much cheaper than the movies, and far less hassle. You can make it into doomsday, but nothing mandates that response except adrenaline and impedence to change.
Looking beyond all of that - It's really easy to imagine having interesting 25 man instances. Just because it only takes 25 people to get it done, doesn't necessarily mean only those 25 effect the outcome, or that it's 25 people stand here on the rock, grats you win. I can easily see designing two instances meant to be run in paralel and having that be "fun". I wouldn't mind playing 25 person Legend of Zelda for an instance. There's a huge amount of design space that's available still. Until blizzard stops innovating in instance design, I'm not going to bury the game. I'll cancel the day I have to do golemag but reskinned though. Fuck that giant.
Far too soon to judge it. Wait until it's in our hands and we can break it before you do anything drastic. After all, maybe you have to leave bigglesworth alive to kill kel'thuzad and be able to level to 70. If that's the case, we'll all be 60 for the next 5 years.
I really want a tier 5 instance to have a critter at the start that when he gets shot he turns into vael and wipes the raid. Just because I'd fall out of my chair laughing
First star to the right, and straight on till morning. in BSG 15
Or they'll logically ratchet up the encounter to the point where it requires more precision to account for less people. Eg. things happening faster, less time to move, etc.
I posted a while ago on the WoW boards about how I hoped the end-game raids in TBC would be tests of player skill rather than tests of guild organization. One I find fun the other I do not. I truly hope this is the way it is in the expansion.
And let me reiterate that I honestly think that many players today who are currently not raiding do indeed have the ability to raid but don't for reasons I've mentioned previously.
The one issue that stands out to me is time. Even if the 25-man TBC encounters are as difficult as Naxx, they will require much less time to learn and put on farm status than the raid zones we currently have. The result will be guilds that are used to raiding 20 hours a week will learn them at a much faster rate (not blow through them because (hopefully) they are still difficult, but simply master them faster). I don't see this as a bad thing. While it may lessen the elite/exclusive status that many top-end raiding guilds have since the more people will be doing the content, it will result in me not having to devote my life to the game in order to "master" it, and I can do other things like seriously PVP *while doing end-game content*! Talk about something unheard of. Hopefully the allure and prestige that being a member of a top-end raiding guild brought will be moved to being a member of a top arena team or something else. Whatever. I just hope that the prestige comes from something dependent on player skill rather than time invested or the organization skill of my guild leader.
The one issue that stands out to me is time. Even if the 25-man TBC encounters are as difficult as Naxx, they will require much less time to learn and put on farm status than the raid zones we currently have.
Why do you think that? There's no reason that the developers can't make 25-mans more difficult than 40-mans, and make them require just as much time to learn and clear.
EDIT: In fact, Gurg already addressed that in this thread:
Originally Posted by Praetorian
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.
But if Blizzard made a fight where all 40 people had to simultaneously do something as involved as kiting Zombie Chow, the net result would probably be frustrating and near-impossible.
The one issue that stands out to me is time. Even if the 25-man TBC encounters are as difficult as Naxx, they will require much less time to learn and put on farm status than the raid zones we currently have.
Why do you think that? There's no reason that the developers can't make 25-mans more difficult than 40-mans, and make them require just as much time to learn and clear.
They can make them more difficult, but you will likely still have less total man hours to get it done.
Lets say you can learn a new encounter in 5 hours with 40 people - that's 200 man hours.
The same encounter, for 25 people, if it took 7 hours instead of 5 is only 175 man hours.
It's less time, and easier to "find" time. It's much easier to coordinate 25 people's schedule than to coordinate 40, just as 40 is easier to coordinate than 72.
I don't think difficulty has anything to do with time. Time mostly is a function of size, and if the size is going down, then the time requirements will be less. That's a good thing, because while I enjoy having stuff to do, I don't enjoy having to manage the scheduling.
*edit* - I'm obviously wearing my raidleader hat here and my guild leader hat above. It's less time management on a raid leader's head, which is entirely different than the load on the guild leader (the difference between recruiting and picking what days to raid what)
First star to the right, and straight on till morning. in BSG 15
They can make them more difficult, but you will likely still have less total man hours to get it done.
Lets say you can learn a new encounter in 5 hours with 40 people - that's 200 man hours.
The same encounter, for 25 people, if it took 7 hours instead of 5 is only 175 man hours.
It's less time, and easier to "find" time. It's much easier to coordinate 25 people's schedule than to coordinate 40, just as 40 is easier to coordinate than 72.
I don't think difficulty has anything to do with time. Time mostly is a function of size, and if the size is going down, then the time requirements will be less. That's a good thing, because while I enjoy having stuff to do, I don't enjoy having to manage the scheduling.
*edit* - I'm obviously wearing my raidleader hat here and my guild leader hat above. It's less time management on a raid leader's head, which is entirely different than the load on the guild leader (the difference between recruiting and picking what days to raid what)
I understand what you're saying about scheduling - still, you're making this conclusion on the assumption that it will take less man hours. The numbers you give are pure speculation.
Lets say you can learn a new encounter in 5 hours with 40 people - that's 200 man hours.
The same encounter, for 25 people, if it took 8 hours instead of 5 is 200 man hours as well.
The point you seem to be making is that difficulty has nothing to do with time, while the point I'm trying to make is that time has nothing to do with raid size, something that Genjuro implied in his post.
Lets say you can learn a new encounter in 5 hours with 40 people - that's 200 man hours.
The same encounter, for 25 people, if it took 8 hours instead of 5 is 200 man hours as well.
The point you seem to be making is that difficulty has nothing to do with time, while the point I'm trying to make is that time has nothing to do with raid size, something that Genjuro implied in his post.
I think my point is that the available solutions to "we need 200 man hours out of our raid by next reset" are easier on a 25 person raid than a 40 person raid, even though each member contributes more hours. It's easier to find those 8 overlapping hours between 25 people than it is to find 5 between 40.
So in a way "finding the time" becomes simpler. I think it's going to be a lot easier to schedule meaningful attempts with only 25 people you have to work around dogs/kids/in-laws/work etc. I'll agree with the poster a few pages back that the size of the raid doesn't really change recruitment/turnover/retardation complaints. You're still going to have to work to find quality people who's schedules mostly coincide and desires to play at the same level are there, but you can stop when you get to 30 instead of being only halfway there.
Difficulty of content doesn't make something take longer or shorter. They're unrelated and both can be set arbitarily by the dev team. The difficulty of finding time to accoplish content inside a reset on the other hand scales with the size of the content. It's much harder to find 400 people for an hour, than 40 people for 10 hours. It might even be harder to find 400 people for an hour than 40 people for 20 hours. By the same token, it will be easier to find a time when 25 people can raid for however long it takes, than it currently is to find a time when 40 people can raid for however long it takes.
First star to the right, and straight on till morning. in BSG 15
I understand what you're saying about scheduling - still, you're making this conclusion on the assumption that it will take less man hours. The numbers you give are pure speculation.
Lets say you can learn a new encounter in 5 hours with 40 people - that's 200 man hours.
The same encounter, for 25 people, if it took 8 hours instead of 5 is 200 man hours as well.
The point you seem to be making is that difficulty has nothing to do with time, while the point I'm trying to make is that time has nothing to do with raid size, something that Genjuro implied in his post.
My point was that that given two equally difficult encounters in terms of player skill, one for 25 players, one for 40 players, a group of players would learn the 25 man encounter faster than the 40 man. I don't think anyone is debating that. So if the new 25 man raid zones come out and are of similar difficulty to Naxx, they're going to be mastered in a shorter period of time by the top guilds, and in a reasonable amount of time by many other second-tier guilds, thus lessening the appeal and glamor, if you can call it that, of end game raiding by making them less exclusive. I wasn't saying they couldn't increase the amount of time required to learn these new zones by increasing their difficulty and demanding more from each player, which is certainly possible. I probably should have explicitly stated this, my bad. But to comment on it, I doubt Blizzard is going to make most, if any, new encounters that much more difficult so as to make them require as much time and consumables we see going into learning Naxx. I don't think they see it as a good business decision considering their playerbase. They might, but I doubt it. Personally I'd like to see a few such zones since I'm a pretty hardcore player. But my theory is that Blizzard wants to put a bigger emphasis and importance on PVP to the point where participating in it at a high level is considered as "serious" as end-game raiding is now. To that end I don't think they want players spending 30 hours per week learning raid encounters.
There's another point I'd like to make. Today, you see Blizzard releasing very difficult 40 main raid zones as their "premier" content. Upon release, very few guilds are equipped in both gear and skill to deal with these zones, so they have a long shelf-life. Less hardcore players might see and enjoy them a year after they come out them so Blizzard is getting a good value for it's time. But when they do release them, they must make them extremely difficult at the time so they last this long. With TBC, the zones are going to scale in difficulty with level, and given that the levelling curve is expected to consume a significant chunk of the expansion's lifetime, these dungeons should last a while based on that aspect alone. Therefore they don't need to be overly difficult in order for Blizzard to get good value. Of course when you hit 70 and the dungeons can no longer scale, yeah, then you need some new harder content. But I don't think Blizz wants the playerbase to be stuck at 70 for a very long time before the next expansion. They realize that making content for a playerbase with a widespread range of gear is difficult, since there's no easy scaling mechanic like level, so they have to revert to releasing very difficult content. I think they'll be ready to release a new expansion not too long after the majority of the playerbase is hitting 70 so they don't have to deal with this issue for very long.
Edit: Oh yeah the point. This is the main reason why I don't think the TBC dungeons will be extremely difficult so as to require massive amounts of time and consumables like you see in 40 man zones today. They'll simply scale with level to provide a uniform challenge and use that to get extend their shelf-life.
But if Blizzard made a fight where all 40 people had to simultaneously do something as involved as kiting Zombie Chow, the net result would probably be frustrating and near-impossible.
So I think everyone can agree a 25 man raid is easier logistically to run than a 40 man raid. However running two 25 man raids is much harder than a 40 man. I really do wonder how many bigger guilds will successfully be able to do the 2x25 main raid thing. As for what it means on raiding itself. It's either:
1) Does nothing for casuals since tomorrow's 25 mans will be as tough as today's 40 mans and they still won't do it.
or
2) Kills end game raiding as we know it by making raiding puggable.
I guess the only silver in this cloud right now is possibly the difficulty ratings on dungeons. Could an encounter be epic for 25 man on the toughest difficulty while being puggable for 25 on the easiest? What could they do to make it that harder for the top level guilds? Would scaling the damage be enough? Adding new abilities, new/more adds? I don't think the two instances would have different mobs, since that would be difficult to do. Like having easy mob for ezmode instance and badass mob for hc mode.
Difficulty of content doesn't make something take longer or shorter. They're unrelated and both can be set arbitarily by the dev team. The difficulty of finding time to accoplish content inside a reset on the other hand scales with the size of the content. It's much harder to find 400 people for an hour, than 40 people for 10 hours. It might even be harder to find 400 people for an hour than 40 people for 20 hours. By the same token, it will be easier to find a time when 25 people can raid for however long it takes, than it currently is to find a time when 40 people can raid for however long it takes.
This also reaches into a point I made in my deleted post. Smaller guilds/raids make it easier to find a "clique". With less dependance on numbers, you are more likely to come to a functioning group of Australian players on X server, or people you've met in real life through the course of your life, or a Christianity based guild. With smaller numbers, niche playstyles/mindsets become more viable
I guess the only silver in this cloud right now is possibly the difficulty ratings on dungeons. Could an encounter be epic for 25 man on the toughest difficulty while being puggable for 25 on the easiest? What could they do to make it that harder for the top level guilds? Would scaling the damage be enough? Adding new abilities, new/more adds? I don't think the two instances would have different mobs, since that would be difficult to do. Like having easy mob for ezmode instance and badass mob for hc mode.
I think you could make the instances interrelate without too much trouble. If the cap on an instance is 25 people, but it takes 2 teams of 25 to unlock the hard version with the best loot? It's even easier to just segment the instance so that killing the bosses in a different order changes things. etc etc etc. You've played zelda/metroid, I'm sure you can figure out that there's ways to make the exact same game harder just by doing things differently. If you incentivize the different paths, then people will do them.
There is quite a bit of information missing from "the instance cap is 25" and until we actually see it in practice, I wouldn't jump to any hasty decisions.
Designing epic 25 man dungeons is easy, I have no doubt that blizzard will design encounters I enjoy.
My only gripe is the administrative side, and I won't jump to conclusions about that until we're closer to the day it's relevant. If I need 3 teams of 25 to unlock the sacred crystal of mofastafoo I will probably have a guild of 90+ people. If I need only 1 team of 25 to do the content, but it's winged content with 5 choices I could explore on any given day and I already have 60? I'll run two raids and hit different wings. Etc.
There's a lot of creative administrative solutions available that really depend on what they actually give us. Until all the information is on the table, it's not worth sweating over.
First star to the right, and straight on till morning. in BSG 15
I just love all the supposed 'casual' people clamoring over this change. As if magically everything will be within their reach. I am more willing to bet taht the number of people willing to lead guilds with everythign that entails is basically saturated.
You will still have all the issues you have with 25 people that you do with 40. Same attendance problems (more so since raids won't be quite as flexible), same burnout issues, same recruiting issues, same idiot issues. Trust me. I know. We went from WoW to EQ2 and thought we would have plenty of people to fill 24 person raids. I mean we have this awesome core of 30 people, right? Right?! Nope. We ended up doing everythign we did in that game with 18 people. Where did they all go?
Go back to WoW and we are back to 30 core members. Actually more at this point as we picked up about 8-10 new people that are just great. This change will simply let them avoid upgrading servers and still serve the same number of people. Quite possibly the end of a lot of the lag problems. There are a ton of quadratic algorithms out there which will vastly reduce the requirements on their servers by cutting down to 25 people in raids. Basically cutting raids to 25 will nearly halve the resources required even when you are servicing the exact same number of people, just more smaller groups instead of less larger groups.
I am sure the raids will be fun. I am sure they will be hard. I am sure the 'casuals' will still feel screwed. I am just wondering who we are going to lose on our roster in the coming year. A lot of very good people are going to get very bored sitting out each night.
Beyond the fact that I absolutely pissed off about the fact I have to cut 15 raiders, I think the change could really be a positive thing, at least for a while.
In my opinion, a big problem with WoW lately has been you're locked into the 40-man raids if you want to progress. I personally never bought WoW to raid and only do so because I enjoy the raid content. For me, the most fun of the game is seeing the new stuff. I had every zone fully explored 2 months after I got the game, and I honestly cannot wait to see Kel'thuzad. But if TBC manages to deliver legitimately difficult 10-mans, good PvP with good rewards, and good raid zones, how will you find time to do it all?
Of course, not everybody can raid anymore, so I guess it's time to get that Arena team together, or get a a Karazhan run going. That's the big if though - can they deliver progression content that isn't in the form of 40 man raids? Maybe guild PvP night or running 10 mans will be just as rewarding and enjoyable, and if that's the case I cannot complain.
A few points I want to touch on that seem to get reiterated here.
1. My guild has X good people, X dead weight. Who's fault is that. It's not Blizzard's and it's sure as hell not EJ/DnT/Curse/etc's. It's your own fault, and nothing will ever change, because you aren't willing to make the change. Discordia, and later DnT didn't magically spring out of the ground one day with 55 talented players. As a matter of fact Discordia probably only had 10-15 good players, and the way we dealt with the rest of them was one of the reasons I left. DnT long ago got fed up with this crap, and decided to tell people, you know what, you aren't very good, and we're willing to find someone who is. If you're telling me that as an MC/BWL/AQ guild you can't find anyone willing to put in the time and effort willing to be good, and dedicated, you're kidding yourselves. You will have the same problem if the raid size was 5, because you aren't willing to tell those people who aren't up to the task, sorry you aren't good enough. This is a problem of guild administration, not a function of raid size, or any other factor you can imagine.
I'd like to take you up on that statement. For starters, and really, I'm not crying my eyes out here, but my faction is Horde. Playing as Horde on a small server was a neverending spiral downward with regards to recruitment, up to the point where it was either bringing in shit people with good enough gear and pray for 30 minutes of clarity in an end-game encounter, or degrade to MC levels with hopefully decent people in crap gear who wouldn't leave or quit after 6 months declaring a burn-out. I admire your level of play to no end, but I ask a bit more vision from you here.
My old guild was a top 5 Horde EU guild in terms of Naxxramas progression and thankfully, we had little to complain about when server transfers had gone live in terms of quantity in cross server applicants. Sadly our GM and MT was so fed up after 6 months of cracking the whip over the backs of our resident morons that he took Nihilum up on an offer to join them as one of their tanks and more or less shattered us. Noone was gonna take up that whip and try and continue the guild, and I can't blame them in all honesty. In that aspect, making it only 25 required for a raid is a huge relief for me even if it is nearly 4 months away. I've been there as well, sitting at Kargath, CH and LHC praying we'd get at least 4 more on so at least a decently stacked raid could be fielded. I was there on voice comms when idiot #1 still didn't get that the debuff swap meant move to the other side at Thaddius, idiot #2 was recovering from another game/pc/router crash and idiot #3 was taking another unannounced break when we just took all buffs to start a bossfight.
I've found a new guild who were willing to take me in and imagine my surprise when I see no less than 144 people in the guild tab. Drop the bank accounts and the lowbie alts and we'll be down to like 100 active lvl 60 characters and alts. Yet, at raid hours, there's still only around 46-50 people online because this guild as well has focussed and aimed for an active 50 man core over the last 2 years.
What do we want to do, recruit 10-15 more and start Team A and Team B? Never mind how we name the teams it's always going to be the "good" team and the "second" team to some people and there's been plenty of explanations above what happens next. So, cut the fat and stick with around 35 of our most active, capable and best-geared guys? I've only been in this guild for a few days and I've already figured out how many people are friends with each other. I really wouldn't want to be the guy that makes that call.
So, cutting the fat at the expense of friends as a sacrifice for end-game progression? I don't like it one bit, and I'm appalled Blizzard would try and force this down our throats. No to mention the hilarity that they actually dare announce this will promote class diversity and hybrid attractiveness in raids. If anything, there will be MORE min-maxing for TBC fights, bar the odd gimmick thing like extra tranq'ing or for example that joke I read about Hateful Strike doing less damage to Druids because Patchwerk "wants to play" and likes the cuddly bears.
Extra debuff slots? I'm sure the 1, maybe 2 warlocks in a raid will be more pleased they actually got a raidspot that night. Oh wait, they're just there because they have an extra stamina buff. And that's just one of classes who're not part of the warrior-priest-mage triangle. Yes, yes there will be more class spells. Blizzard will save it all. How many of Blizzard's decisions and changes announced over the last year have been welcomed here? Let's not forget the one that they're now reverting because THEIR old hardware can't take it "right now" but all will be better "in the expansion".
I suppose I'm coming off a bit like a hater. I hadn't considered myself how much I'm addicted to this game until I saw the new expansion news on Gamespot and thought to myself how I'd love to play it. Like always, I guess I'll make due with whatever happens. I'm liking Warhammer Online a lot as it stands right now, I've seen the video on Curse where they talk to the lead developer IIRC and at the very least this guy was saying all the right words that I've been missing from Blizzard so far in these past few years. I don't know if I'll switch, but what I do know is that quite a few of the friends I've made are looking at that game as well. Blizzard's saving grace so far is that there's no real alternative to fill up the void, yet. I'm curious to see what happens when an alternative does show up and see how many of the forumwarriors like me actually switch :)
Originally Posted by genjuro
I just want to remind everyone that while bitching about TBC changes is fun and the complaints about the damage it's going to do to top-end guilds are justified, the hardcore raiders on this board represent only about 1% of the WoW population. The vast majority of players are not 5-hour-a-night raiders, haven't set foot in Naxx, and won't for some time to come (perhaps never, since by the time they're ready the expansion will be out and it will be old news).
Even if the 25 man zones are "harder" than the current 40 man zones in that they demand a higher level of execution from players than, say, C'Thun phase 2, the new zones will *still* be much more viable and accessible to the playerbase because they don't have the logistical demand which is the primary barrier of entry to raiding. Keep in mind guys that as much as some people would like to think, the skill level of most members of elite raiding guilds isn't *that* much higher than the skill level of an average WoW player. It's certainly not what's holding most people back from raiding. The primary advantage top tier raiding guilds have is in their organization and team focus that allows them to keep playing at a high level. Seriously...high-end raid encounter aren't that hard, certainly not as hard as an old school 5v5 PVP battle against an opposing group of skilled players (ah, memories of closed beta PVP..). I think most people who play the game could probably handle the raid game if it weren't so time consuming and difficult to organize.
To sum up, I agree that the top-end raiding guilds will be damaged by this change, but in the end it will be a good thing since it will allow many more people to experience the real end-game.
I'm going to be a blunt asshole here, but I'm revolted at the people who are going "LOL NO-SKILL RAIDERS GOT SHAFTED" even though I know I'm talking about the Wow General Forums. When the expansion hits, and their 5-hours-a-week asses gather 24 other folks and hit an end-game raidinstance, I'll be the one laughing though.
This won't break open the game for the current non-raiders. This will give them the illusion they now can get the easy epics the no-skill raiders are flaunting with in Orgrimmar and Battlegrounds, and this will make them buy the expansion. And then it will hit them. Waaah I have to gather potions. Waaah I have to farm for repair money. Waaah this boss doesn't drop dead after 3 hours of throwing myself at it.
Don't get me wrong, I will welcome every player for who this lowered threshold means that they can be a more suitable recruit for my end-game guild. But please don't try to feed me this bullshit about non-raiders who can start enjoying the end-game raids because one of the limits from the original game is now basically gone. That's straight up marketing talk to make a good game sell more and nothing else.
When we killed Loatheb (or Thaddius, or whatever boss) last week, 38 of the 39 people in the raid with me are people I was doing 5-mans and UBRS with 18 months ago. For the people who are just saying "this is great, now we can drop our dead weight," put yourself in those shoes for a moment.
As another Guild Leader / Raid Leader who has this very same problem, I feel your pain. I've been pondering since the announcement how exactly to take care of the situation, but I think you would agree that any decision made will result in some sort of extra work, extra drama, or otherwise something else that removes a little bit of fun out of the game.
My guild is small, we run about 45 active members, fielding 40 people 6 nights a week, clearing 11 bosses in Naxx so far. To assume that I'll have to cut 15 people out of a raid force that are like best friends to me is just a slap in the face.
I have no doubts that 25 man content will be fun and challenging, that is not the issue to me at all. The issue is that the game has been out almost 2 years now and such a dramatic change will undermine all the hard work 40 people have put into the guild. It goes beyond raiding, despite what might be said it is a complete social environment they are changing.
So, I sit here hopeful that because we don't have all the facts, things do not make complete sense. Perhaps they have it all figured out so that guilds won't have to change their ways. Maybe the rewards from a 15 man zone will be on par with those of a 25 man zone, enabling you to have 40 people raiding 2 different places getting the same benefit.
Hopefully the beta test for the expansion will be out soon so we can get a clearer picture of what is to come.
So, I sit here hopeful that because we don't have all the facts, things do not make complete sense. Perhaps they have it all figured out so that guilds won't have to change their ways. Maybe the rewards from a 15 man zone will be on par with those of a 25 man zone, enabling you to have 40 people raiding 2 different places getting the same benefit.
My intuition says that winged dungeons might make fielding two teams of 25 less irritating, particularly if the lockout applies to the entire place so you take 25 to wing A and 25 to wing B and then next day a mix of AB to C etc.
As long as it's "where do you want to go" not "who gets to go" I think it'll work out. Of course they could make us play blitzball, so who knows.
First star to the right, and straight on till morning. in BSG 15
I'm wondering how the 10-man dungeons fit into this equation. If 10-man, 25-man, and PvP stuff are all the same level of gear, difficulty, and lockouts, this actually could be not that bad. You take the 40ish people you have, split them up into the two instances and the rest go PvP in the arena.
What annoys me about this situation is that Blizzard creating this whole problem with how they developed the instances. It's not current 40 man raiders fault that Blizzard has mostly catered to them from release. If Blizzard since day one had practiced a balanced instance plan where all sort of levels of instances had been released, then none of this would be an issue. (Imagine a world where since release 2 new 5 mans, 1 new 10 man, 1 new 20 man and 2 40 mans had been released at staggered intervals instead of 1 pre 60 5 man, 2 20 mans and 3 40 mans) Well that is if you're accepting that these changes are happening to appease the people who can't or won't do 40 man raids. The problem wasn't that they can't or won't do 40 mans, it was that Blizzard released virtually nothing but 40 mans since the game came out. So yeah Blizzard created the "raid or die" monster and now that they realized it wasn't a good plan, they screw over raiders.
I'm wondering how the 10-man dungeons fit into this equation. If 10-man, 25-man, and PvP stuff are all the same level of gear, difficulty, and lockouts, this actually could be not that bad. You take the 40ish people you have, split them up into the two instances and the rest go PvP in the arena.
Exactly. My first thought when I read this was "oh no, this is going to be a mess." Now that I've seen all the possibilities, it doesn't seem like a bad idea at all. If the PvP system is legitimately as rewarding as raiding, and 10 mans are challenging enough, there will be so much more to do nobody will mind sitting out of a raid.
08/12/06, 2:26 PM
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