Something that seems to be overlooked by players who prefer large raids (IMO) is the fact that 25 or 40 people rarely ever get together in meatspace and do something. That level of complexity isn't normal, and it doesn't map well on to social experiences.

I think one reason many players prefer 10 man raiding is that smaller group size mirrors real life social connections much closer than 25 man raiding does. Basketball is played with 5 players. American football has 11. I can't think of a sport that has anything close to 25 players on the field, all working towards one goal.

This might be a result of limitations of meatspace, but humans are still hardwired by those limits. I used to do a 10 man raid with folks from work. When we transitioned to 25 man (because we we wanted the biggest challenge and best loot) the social activity of it took a huge dive. The quiet guys got quieter. Sometimes we didn't hear from them all night. It was impossible to have a conversation on vent as we killed trash or did corpse runs. There were people in the raid that i didn't interact with outside of raid time, and who I didn't even really like.

I love the announced changes. I recognize that these will probably have a negative impact on 25 man raid guilds. I'm sad that what you love about the game isn't there for you anymore. But this absolutely saves the game for me. I'm a grown man with a job, wife, and a life outside of WoW. Between the random dungeon changes, extending raid lockouts, and now "big boy" 10 man raids, Blizzard has guaranteed my subscription for the foreseeable future. I suspect there are a lot more players like me out there than there are people who genuinely prefer 25 man raiding over 10 man, and that from a business perspective it makes sense to take the game that way.

Is it as farfetched as you claim? They are moving the WoW playerbase to what is tantamount to a Blizzard IM client. They already get you on their website for their forums. They have a splash screen before you log in. They have unbelievable opportunity to promote their new new things to you and me. Starcraft has already been heavily promoted to me through my WoW playing. I don't come from the Strarcraft world, but I have to say if I'm looking for any game at all to complement WoW, the first thing I'll check out is Starcraft.

Also, let's not pretend this isn't an unusual time and place for WoW. This is a bit of an "until now" moment for WoW. The third expansion is coming -- i.e. the game is getting awfully "mature" -- and the game is 5 years old. While I don't doubt that the original WoW crew had visions of the game having 5 years worth of "legs", I also don't believe that anyone expected the party to last this long and to rock so far into the night.

There's an interesting conundrum here for Blizzard and I think they are absolutely aware of it: It's nice that people play WoW 5 days a week and don't give our competitors money, but they can't possibly give us more money either. Thus, you see the in-game pets and the flying horse (which probably will gross more than the new Nightmare on Elm Street and cost probably single-digit thousands to design and implement). Blizzard knows better than you or I what the WoW attrition rate really is. But if I'm guessing, the number of players quitting each month is rising. And that really has nothing to do with WoW being bad. It has everything to do with it feeling "played out" for some people. They've been there, done that -- and not much in Cataclysm feels like it's going to change that.

In business, when you are sitting there milking the cash cow, you have two choices: 1) Just do that and hope the milk runs a long time and try to discourage people from seeking options (crowd out their time, for example) or 2) What they call "eating your young" or "creative destruction". The most successful MMORPG of all time (by an order of magnitude at this point) is owned by the company that thinks it's designing the only game that will "knock off WoW". When is that game coming? I haven't a clue. But Cataclysm is coming in October and that always brings people back or in -- at least for a while.

What if, and yes I'm speculating, the "new MMO" gets announced in early 2011. And in the meantime people are settling into the easier schedule of WoW -- less time raiding / playing. Now, of course they could go play Eve Online, but they've already largely ignored it. They have also -- in varying numbers -- tried and largely ignored Age of Conan, Warhammer, Aion and now Star Trek Online. Yet all those games have a player base. And many of those players used to play WoW.

Now, Blizzard wants to keep your WoW dollars coming in forever. What's a way to do that? Make it easier to stay on the cutting edge of WoW -- less time -- but keep it new and fresh all the time -- constantly progressing raid content as we saw in Wrath. And in the meantime, they are planning their own new, new thing. Everything in this paragraph is probably not arguable. Is it really farfetched to suggest the obvious reduction in time required come Cataclysm could be secondarily motivated to free up some time for their new game, which will be promoted to WoW players incessantly, for years, and might be the game to "knock off WoW"?

All this said, we're far afield of the raid progression discussion, so I'll only continue these replies if something new is said here that seems worth discussing.

Humans are hardwired on a progressive scale by a power of 3 with 4 levels. There's the basic 5-6 man groups which is your inner core - the people you turn to in case of emotional distress (family, real close friends usually). Then the 15-18 group which are friends - the guys you're going to help anytime they need it. Then you get to 50 of so "friendlies", people you "like" - but aren't going to get out of your way to help as soon as they need it. Then it's the 150 people you know. Then it's over - beyond 150 (give or take 5-10%), those people aren't people. They're abstractions.

(anthropological data knows this very well. Prior to the invention of town/cities social organisation, any time a group of human grew over 150, it always split in two. Once people stopped knowing everybody in their tribal band, the tribe always exploded)

Every time you transition thru one of these limits, organisation has to change. The 10-man raiding guild can be friends. The 25-man guild is NEVER friends - they're colleagues, and you need a lot more officer work. And the 40-man raiding guild of old was usually above yet another limit - people in that guild were, for the most, merely acquaintances. "Entities" you'd consider people, but that's all. Which is why creating a cohesive guild able to raid 40 man was genuinely hard.

People suggested a 15-man raid, but a 15-man raid faces exactly the same social problems as a 25-man one. You're in the same social space: people you'll help, but only if that suits your own agenda. You will never see a guild of close friends doing a 15-man raid - that's simply not possible, humanly speaking.

(aside from that, this is a general limit. "Good" friends in WoW-space "use" the same good friend place in your mind as in meatspace)

This is what I find most difficult about what is happening, the immense uncertainty. I feel like Blizzard knows it is there with the "well if it doesn't work we'll change it for 4.1" statement but as others have noted it will be too late then.

As someone who has been a part of leading a guild going back into Vanilla I feel like we could plan to deal with anything - except the uncertainty. If Blizzard justs aid "10 mans are now the supported" format we would evolve to field 10 man raids. Maybe it would be a multiple 10 mans in one guild, maybe we would re-size the guild for a single 10 man, who knows but at least we could plan.

Interesting. I found Dunbar's number, but not any reference to the powers of three progression.

But anyway, you said the progression goes (roughly) from 5.6 to 16.7 to 50 to 150. Wouldn't that mean 10 and 15 are within the same interval? And so are 25 and 40?

I definitely understand and agree that 10m and 15m feel very different as raids, and also definitely 25m and 40m, but how does this fit into the Dunbar's thing?

Just as a reminder: there already have been 15m raids in old - make that olde - wow, and I'm thinking of UBRS. Blizzard proceeded to take those out, so I guess that, while it isn't at all impossible that they could change their minds (10m also existed), it isn't something they plan on doing.

I wonder who they're really trying to protect with this change. The top-end guilds might be running the 10-player version for a while to pick up the extra added loot and badges in the short term, but after a few weeks, there's little incentive to keep going back unless you're doing it for fun/achievements. Likewise, the more casual guilds don't really feel that compelled to run 25-player, other than perhaps grabbing the occasional pug from time to time. So really, other than the fiasco of normal/heroic modes in ToC, what's the harm?

The guilds that this change is most going to hurt are guilds like mine. We've been a raiding guild for four years now, but we've never been at the forefront of progression. We're a low-progression server to start with, so with most of the "top" guilds still recruiting, our own recruiting efforts often brought us a wide variety of players - some who could easily be in one of the top guilds on the server if their schedule/raiding style fit better, to those who get lost in Ulduar despite months of raiding there. None of them are necessarily bad players, but reaction times vary and efforts to improve their characters outside the raid vary as well. After years together, we've grown accustomed to the range of skills of our players and while we might wish for better progression, most of us are content with what we've been able to achieve so far. The change to having both 10- and 25-player raids was a godsend for us. Suddenly, our "better" players had another outlet to satisfy our desires for progression, but the slightly inferior gear prevented any sort of hard feelings of the "haves" and "have nots" type.

Now that we've gotten used to the availability of both sizes, however, the change to a single lockout is going to severely hurt us. There is a small subset of our guild who've been running the 10-player version with RL family and friends who are unlikely to give that up just to keep raiding with the rest of the guild. Likewise, there are definitely several players who feel that the "weaker" players are holding the guild back and are likely to gravitate towards 10-player raids given that the gear is similar (the "more" loot isn't a huge incentive if you can down 2-3 more bosses in 10-player). Whether they drop guild or not, they're still not going to be available for 25-player raids. We're already having enough of a challenge recruiting, and this is just going to make it worse. Eventually, I predict we (and most of the guilds outside the top two or three) will slowly hemorrhage raiders until we become a de facto 10-player guild. And that's just a shame for a guild that has such a long history.

That's a pretty good point too. If you can kill more bosses in 10-man because you can select the better players and that it's easier to manage (not because the fights are easier), then the extra loot incentive does disappear. Hadn't thought about it that way.

Aside from that, I'm in the same boat you're in, which kinda worries me. We don't have 25 "core" players, but we certainly have more than 10. Hell, a 10-man group can almost be filled by my officer roster.

One point is that in a 10 man you generally run the risk of a considerable amount of loot being either sharded or going to offspecs. A run wiithout a Paladin or Rogue isn't terribly unlikely, but in that case healing plate and daggers will feel rather stupid (of course Hunters could potentially grab the daggers, not that many would).

But progression generally does take a lot more attention than immediate loot. While you might shard a lot, a consistent 10 man group will know that next week the kill will be there again. Meanwhile the 25 man group can't always be as certain.
In essence it is a 'lottery now' vs a 'lottery then' scenario. And I think people will take the first, more chances at something cool trumps something a little more certain but not as often.

You're missing the point imho

Initially a 25 man raid has a much slower gear build up. More gear is initially going to more people per kill but no one person is actually gearing any faster (discounting good fortune) than in a 10 man spending the same time raiding. I'd argue much slower. initially at least, given the ability requirement of 10 man raids.

Also players that do gear up in dedicated 25 man guilds are far more likely to be rotated or missing a few times than those in cosy 10's for many of the reasons already stated many times in this thread which slows them and the rest somewhat if new guys are being brought in.

The difference between 10 & 25 is that any one of the key drops (that trinket or that blade) you "need" are realistically also going to be "needed" by any one of perhaps 6,7 or 8 of the other 24 players. In 10's it's going to be 1, perhaps 2 others or shard/OS. In 10's you have a much higher chance of getting it even if the chance of actually seeing it is a bit less.

Blizzard really are going to have to come up with something spectacular to save 25 man if they push ahead with equal loot.

Higher quality 25H loot would just about do it imo but then it would just create the same scenario all over again unless they implement a solution (which might have already been mentioned) that gear ilevel should perhaps act as a lock to raid instances where any equipped 25H gear locks out normal mode 10/25 admission and visa versa.

It's not about what you'd argue. It's about statistics. Assuming every new piece of gear improves a player's performance by an average of 5% (arbitrary number), two pieces off a boss in 10m --> 10%/10 people = 1% raid improvement. Six pieces off the 25m boss --> 30%/25 people = 1.2% raid improvement. In 25m, if holy plate or caster mail or daggers drop, they will almost certainly improve someone. In 10m, it is extremely easy for no holy paladins or rogues or ele shamans to be in the raid. Hell, a raid could very well turn out not to have a SINGLE cloth wearer; certainly not having leather or mail (or anything but prot plate) wearers is common. What's more, in 25m, when you get the same drop the next week, most of the time someone else can use it. Your raid still gets better. In 10m, if it drops again, even if it's BIS, it'll probably just go to offspec. 0% raid improvement.

This is not really a debatable point. There are definitely upsides to the loot structure of 10m compared with 25m (for example, if you assume 10m would kill significantly more bosses than 25m), but the diversification of loot risk is not one of them.

What item is "realistically" needed by 9 people in a raid? I don't think even DST had that kind of widespread appeal; certainly no weapon falls under this category. In any case, you're being shortsighted. Let's say, charitably, that you have 4 other people to compete against for this trinket. In 10m, you have 1 other. Assuming a 20-item loot table, the chance per kill that it drops is 19 nCr 5 / 20 nCr 6 = 30% (I can't believe I did this without realizing it's just 6/20 = 0.3). The chance per kill that it drops in 10m is 10%.

• The average number of kills you would have to participate in in 25m to get it (assuming you're #5 in line) is 5/0.3 = 16.7.
• The standard deviation for the # kills is 6.236
• The probability that you get the trinket within 23 kills (~mean + 1 sigma) is 86.44%
• The average number of times the 10manner would have to kill him to get the drop (assuming he's #2 in line) is 2/0.1 = 20.
• The std dev is 13.42
• The probability that within 33 kills (~mean + 1 sigma) he gets the trinket is 85.58%

So the chance that your guild sees its FIFTH within 23 kills is about the same as the chance that his guild sees its SECOND within 33 kills.

Now let's examine something a bit more reasonable, i.e., you're competing against 1 other person in 25m and he's alone in 10m:

• Mean number of kills in 25m for second to drop = 2/.3 = 6.7
• Sigma(25) = 3.94
• Probability that within 10 kills you get the trinket = 85.07%
• Mean number of kills in 10m for first to drop = 1/.1 = 10
• Sigma(10) = 9.49
• Probability that within 20 kills he gets the trinket = 87.84%

In conclusion: The chance a 25m guild sees two copies of any particular piece of loot within 10 kills is about the same as the chance a 10m guild sees it even once within 20 kills. There is no need for Blizzard to create any further incentive to raid 25m. 6 pieces vs. 2 pieces already makes it significantly faster to gear in 25m.

Using your own assumption of a 2/6 split from 20 possible drops, that means a 10 man sees any one item on average once every 10 kills and a 25 man sees the same item on average 3 times every 10 boss kills. 10 man has 2 wanting that item, 25 has let's just say 6 which is very reasonable since for some pieces like OH, boots, cloaks etc. it can be more.

All things being equal the 10 man group has at least the same chance as the 25 player group of any one player getting any one item with a 2/6 split.

What proof do you have that people would go against this specific statistical analysis in their perception? I find it more plausible that player perception would actually match the math. However, if many people decided to not believe the math, it still might not justify designing the game to match that wrong perception.

Also, just because an item can drop more than once, that does not change the chance of having it drop. It still would be 6/20. So 10s would be a much worse place to go to find that 1 specific drop (even when considering a reasonable level of competition.)

You are correct that the chance of any 1 item dropping in 10 man would be 2/20, where as in 25 the chance of any 1 item dropping is 6/20 per each kill. However, what forklift is calculating is what number of kills will give you a reasonable chance of seeing a specific item drop.

Look at it this way, if I have a 6 sided die, I have a 1 in 6 chance of rolling a 3 each roll. But, how many times will I have to roll it to have a really high chance of being assured that one of those rolls was a 3?

And that's what some people have said but that's dependent on Blizzard implementing a more loot per player (ie, greater than a 2/5 split) model which they've since said may not necessarily be the case. The current model is also a 2/4 split which ends up swinging it the other direction by quite a bit.

Couple that with the fact that any 25man group which cuts 15 or it's weaker performers could produce faster progression and more reliable week-to-week kills and it's easy to see why there's a lot of fear that 25man raiding is going to face troubled times. Many are saying that the increased progression alone outweighs the chance at slightly faster gearing.

The only reason for more loot in 25s is to (at least partially) off-set the increased logistical costs. So, if many people are saying that progression is driving their decision, they will have the opportunity to make their decision based on that fact alone. Blizzard is not making this change to motivate people to do 25s that would prefer to do 10s for other reasons, so you can't argue that it should.

I think Blizzard is saying that they recognize it is harder to get 25 people together than it is to get 10, and that the rewards should reflect that (and only that). I also think they are specifically saying they do not want to setup a reward structure that encourages people to do 25s beyond any other reason than that is the format they prefer.

That was where I wanted this to turn. The loot itself isn't so much of a problem, 25s will indeed gear faster, if we are working with the 2-6 and 1-3 models. But that requires equal progression.

My theory is that the majority of people will accept a lesser chance of gearing now, in order to get a chance at more loot because of progression. And progression itself is always a great incentive (depending on people this might be the driving matter).

Now then the argument becomes "well if people do that it is a guild issue", and yes it is. The problem is just that the guilds that might not even fall prey to this will be affected in a negative way. Their recruitmentpool will drop. The good people they actually want have collected themselves into 10 mans and are satisfied there because they are now doing better than ever. The poorer raiders might seek out the 25 guilds in the hopes of getting in, but either won't make the cut or eventually cause a shift inside those guilds trending towards 10s again, as the remaining old raiders see themseves carrying a lot of new and relatively poor raiders.
There will naturally be people that just want to raid 25s no matter what, but most people are in a bit of a wash as to what they prefer, given all else is pretty much equal. Those people would most likely shift towards 10s because of progression, and other factors such as feeling equal to the task. That is something I have personal experience with. My previous guild was less impressive in terms of personal skill, and while I loved the people to death, it grated me more and more. I didn't belong there and I didn't fit in, but I could have taken the best 11-12 people of said guild and created a world I could easily have raided with. My current guild fits my abilities much better and I feel considerably more at home there. And that is why I think if I had been able to take the best of my previous guild and create a 10 man group I would have felt better, and I even prefer 25s in basically all aspects.
I expect to see quite a few people in that situation. And as soon as they are content in 10s they are quite unlikely to go back to 25s, but would rather seek other 10 man groups/guilds if a requirement to change came up.

Personally I do not think that the inherent preference of one over the other will offer much advantage either way, unless it is a die hard attitude, and that is a very uncommon one.

Let's imagine that 25 man raiding doesn't work in Cata for the majority of existing raiding guilds. What guild structure might replace it? Anything beyond a guild based around a 10 man raid?

Guilds based around a 10 man raid seem awfully small and vulnerable to me. Guild chat won't be very robust, subs for raids won't be there, etc. Is there a realistic alternative out there? How could we structure a guild based around 2 or 3 10 man raids?

Short answer, multiple raid groups in a single guild is not realistic for most any circumstance.

There have been some (not many) guilds that have been able to survive as multiple 10mans but just like Blizzards proposed system for Cataclysm they are based on the idea that everyone is benevolent and kind and no intra-guild conflict will ever arise (and we all get ponies that fart rainbows). But the truth is that this is a game and one of the largest parts of any game is to create competition, competition with the game itself and competition with other players. With a single raid group the effect of intra-guild competition is diminished because you're all on the same team (this diminished competition is still enough to split some guilds though). Multiple simultaneous raid groups in a single guild amplify this though and a house divided...

People are arguing about different aspects of the raid changes. The loot equalization seems to lead towards 10-mans, unless you have 25 good players (plus a bench). For many guilds, the loot equalization won't make a difference. 10-man-strict guilds got almost exactly what they wanted, excepting legendaries.

The mutual raid lockout will benefit non-intense guilds. Solid, stable 25-man guilds with a good bench get a number of 25-man raids that they can run. As long as the players remain solid and stable, and real life does not intrude, they should be fine.

Everybody else got less:

- 10-mans will have to compete harder for tanks, because there will be more tanks needed. A number of guilds are going to "slough the 15 baddies"; the 15 "baddies" will now be looking for tanks to help them out. Those 15 will pare down to 10, leaving 5 "baddies" to team up with another 5 and look for 2 more tanks. All in all, the three tanks in the old guild will have to turn into 5 tanks in the 3 new guilds.

- PuGs will be more careful about joining raids because their raid IDs will be a more precious commodity. No more falling back on a 10-man if the 25-man PuG fails.

- PuG raid leaders will raise the GS requirements because the cost of failure for everyone just went up.

- Guilds that fall just short of 25 some nights will have to change the raid to a 10-man, leaving 14 out in the cold. When they are out in the cold, they don't have an option to PuG.

- If you aren't the top DPS in your guild for your pure class, you will likely have to PuG, which removes you from the bench. Removing yourself from the bench may mean removing yourself from the guild.

Pick up groups (PuGs) are comprised today of free-lancers and the bench from many guilds. What proportion of raids that occur each week are PuGs is known only by Blizzard. I suspect that PuGs form a third of the raids on my server, although it might be as low as a tenth. The mutual raid lock out hurts the PuGs the most. So, in contrast to the stated aim of "reducing player burnout" by reducing the number of raids that are required, I think the players most damaged by the lockout will be the ones with the least opportunity to raid.

Things that have to be addressed:

1. Duration of the experiment must be short, very short. The 5 months before Ulduar came out, for example, is still too long if the experiment fails.
2. Alternate content without alts. I love my alts, but not everyone enjoys leveling, or wants to play other classes. Without raiding, what else do they do?
3. Alternate tanking mechanisms. With an imminent shortage of tanks, with poaching and interguild drama on the horizon, perhaps allow 10-mans to field one MT, with the OT being a DPS plate or feral spec.
4. Raid ID griefing counter measures. There are too many horror stories about raid griefing; mutual raid lockouts just add a new tool for the sociopaths.
5. PuG management tools. Raid ID queries, anti-griefing mechanisms, perhaps even cross-realm raiding for certain raids as long as the raid ID lockout is addressed properly.
6. Raid ID merging/splitting mechanics. This is potentially a nightmare, if not in the implementation, then in the explanation to most people in the game. However, if A Team and B Team have both been raiding, and you add 5 more people, you might merge the raid back together into a 25-man.

I've seen it suggested before that Blizzard try this new experiment out on the Ruby Sanctum but the reality is that this won't be an accurate test. Ruby Sanctum is the consolation prize for sticking it out through WotLK and ICC; it will never be progression. Ruby Sanctum will be as relevant to raiding as the new Onyxia was.

The 25man guilds that might be split by the new Cataclysm mechanics won't be split by Ruby Sanctum because it's not important to progression. The gear isn't going to be any better than what ICC hard modes offer and even if it is, who cares? It will never be needed for a progression fight and the day after it comes out it will be garbage anyway.

Everyone will go, get their kill, maybe the achievement if there is one and then never go back. It will never have any relevance or impact to raid guilds because they are actually progressing through ICC raid content.

That probably won't be the only reason. Assuming the distribution of drops is the same in 10 and 25-man runs, tanks will gear up much faster in 25-mans because there will be more tank drops per tank due to the smaller number of tanks relative to the total number of raiders combined with the larger number of drops per raider described by Blizzard, which means tanks will prefer 25-man runs, at least for gearing purposes.

Even without the extra drops, tanks will still come out ahead in 25-man runs just because of the improved odds. Assuming, for example, that there's one drop per 5 characters for both sizes, 20% of drops are tank gear, and there are 2 tanks on 10-man and 3 on 25-man, quick and probably flawed math gives each tank a 19% chance of at least one piece of gear per boss on 10-man and a bit over 29% on 25-man.

Historically, tank gearing has often had a larger impact on progression rate than dps or healer gearing, too, and if that continues to be true, 25-man runs will have a natural progression advantage due to the tank gearing difference.

I suspect it's the reverse: 25s will certainly be able to have multiple drops of the same items. We've seen this in the past where double set items would drop from Ragnaros. It's most likely going to be something like 'X drops from table A, Y drops from table B' where X and Y would be 1 for a 10-man raid, and 2/4 or 3/3 for a 25-man raid.

That's not to say they might not decide to make a boss that just drops one trinket, and five random armor items. They could do that. I'm just saying that it's unlikely they're going to make a loot algorithm that looks to see what already dropped and eliminates duplicates.