I agree that it seems the only way to bring 10mans and 25mans onto an equal level is to make 25mans easier versions of the same encounter. However, this still doesn't address the real problem with the overall incentive structure. If 25mans in Cataclysm are, in fact, easier by design, then the resulting effect will be competitive raiders going to 10mans. Raiders are going to go where the prestige is, and if it turns out that 10mans are significantly harder than 25mans, then you're going to see top guilds competing in the 10man sphere. Sartharion 3D is a pretty good example at the start of this expansion. Sartharion 3D 10man was arguably a lot harder than the corresponding 25man, and as a result, people would judge your guild on the ability to complete both the 10 and 25man version of the encounters rather than just the 25.
If it happens that 25mans are easier than 10mans, a lot of guilds, mine included, are probably going to switch to 10mans or wherever else the competition and prestige lies.
I think it's far more likely that the current hardcore 25-man guilds would end up fielding a "progression team" for 10-mans, doing 25s as much as possible and then downsizing their lockout when they come to a boss that they need to kill for progression ranking. Given that 25-man bosses will be expected to drop extra loot / more rewards, allowing them to be easier would not deter motivated guilds from clearing them. If anything, they would clear 25-man first to learn the content on easy mode much as WotLK guilds did with 10-mans. The difference is, this time around you'd only kill the hard mode once because the easy way rewards more. Think of the various achievements in Ulduar which involve doing easy mode in a strange way. You only did them once, because you lost their hardmode loot for that kill.
But all that is predicated on the assumption that 25-mans would be easier, and I think we can agree that it's too soon to say that. My take is that balance will be imperfect, but if it leans too far in one direction there will be heavy-handed nerfs to make different fights easier in different modes. That way, they'd average out as equals.
If it happens that 25mans are easier than 10mans, a lot of guilds, mine included, are probably going to switch to 10mans or wherever else the competition and prestige lies.
It's not clear to me why anyone would consider that any sort of problem. The most competitive guilds would go 10-man for the challenge, and smaller guilds that wanted to play without making alliances would go 10-man, and less competitive folk and PUGers would go 25-man. That would keep both levels of raiding "alive". It seems consistent with Blizzard's intent. Where's the problem?
Under such a scheme, my own guild's behavior would depend on how many serious raiders we will be able to field in Cataclysm. Today, we're small (we do not recruit at all, our core is made entirely of real-life friends), so we form alliances in order to raid (even 10-man). But today there's no "guild advancement" mechanic, which (effectively) penalizes non-guild raids (by giving additional guild-based rewards to mostly-guild raids).
Unless things have changed: if we can bring seven people to every raid, then the 10-man raid encounters will "count" for the purpose of guild advancement for us. I'm sure we won't be able to field enough for the 25-mans to count. Our more competitive members will want to do 10-man anyway, and if bringing 7 of us helps with guild advancement, that'll probably be enough to persuade our less-competitive members to run the 10s instead of using alliances to run 25s.
If we can't field 7 of our own reliably, well, there would probably be a long argument between our more competitive and less competitive members, along the same lines as our fight about the ICC buff today (with some of our members wanting to turn it off, and others seeing no harm in leaving it on).
In general I think the guild advancement thing is another "reward vector" that may tweak things, and that we have insufficient information about today.
Psiven, another vein on what you're talking about - if 10 man was considered 'harder', the progression guilds would do 25 man to get their specific 10-man people geared faster while the others got leftovers, and then had the specific go for it. I think that would be the worst possible outcome for blizzard; strict 10-mans couldn't compete with that without doing 25-man gearing strategies, while the 25-man progression folks would outpace the 10-mans in terms of gear power at a rate of 2.5 to 1. I doubt that blizzard wants 10 man guilds to feel like they need to do 25 mans while 25-man guilds feel like they need to do 10s for the sake of a challenge.
My suspicion is that mechanically you'll see very similar raids to WotLK in terms of difficulty and tuning that we do now for 10 and 25 man. It's likely that incoming damage and boss health will increase relative to now due to blizzard being able to reasonably expect each group has full buffs and debuffs active or available, but otherwise difficulties are likely going to be pretty close to where they are now. And some times you'll see hard tuned fights like Sarth3D10, but most of the time you'll see mechanical inconsistencies like hardmode Anub'arak in 10 vs. 25 or hardmode Halion or LK, where the difficulty of something translates so poorly to a smaller raid they simply cut it (1 valk vs 3, or adds on flames vs. none).
I agree that it seems the only way to bring 10mans and 25mans onto an equal level is to make 25mans easier versions of the same encounter. However, this still doesn't address the real problem with the overall incentive structure. If 25mans in Cataclysm are, in fact, easier by design, then the resulting effect will be competitive raiders going to 10mans.
But how would that be tracked/compared? The gameplan as described to the populace (us) so far is that there will be 1 set of achievements - you can complete these on 10 or 25. No more "Killed boss X on 10" and "Killed boss X on 25" - it's just "Killed boss X." So if achievements are the same between the difficulties, gear is dropped identically... how does the competitive raider (or guild) distinguish their ability? From every external perspective (barring possibly armory distinguishing per kill in its details) the competitive raider doing that cutting edge 10man content is indistinguishable from the the guy who sleepwalks through a 25man PuG.
The incentive you lay out is that those who take the harder approach garner the recognition for their work. If there's no way to detect, then people will not be recognized. This incentive apparently would be removed. If 25 is easier, there's no way to tell if someone did it on 10 or 25, does this actually encourage either size? Rather than driving competitive to 10, does it drive competitive right out of the game to somewhere/something that does allow them to be recognized?
Regarding the guild perk system as incentive to run 10 (if it is indeed harder than 25) - remember PvP, questing, and other activities contribute to this "leveling" process. A small RL-friends-only guild can (probably after greater time) reach the same maxed out guild perks as a huge cutting-edge raiding guild.
Rock: "We're sub-standard DPS. Nerf Paper, Scissors are fine."
Paper: "OMG, WTF, Scissors!"
Scissors: "Rock is OP and Paper are QQers. We need PvP buffs."
The easiest way to track 25-man accomplishments is how it used to be done - screenshot or it didn't happen. More technical ways are to see people in a guild get the accomplishment on the same day and how many did, but that can be played with some.
The armory currently tracks your 10-man/25-man kills. It seems obvious that this would continue in the expansion. Determining whether someone killed the 25-man or 10-man version of a boss is trivial.
It's not clear to me why anyone would consider that any sort of problem. The most competitive guilds would go 10-man for the challenge, and smaller guilds that wanted to play without making alliances would go 10-man, and less competitive folk and PUGers would go 25-man. That would keep both levels of raiding "alive". It seems consistent with Blizzard's intent. Where's the problem?
Tinwhisker had the short version of why it's a Bad Idea some pages ago;
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Originally Posted by Tinwhisker
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...
It isn't so much about the people who'd go ten man, as it is about the people locked out of going ten man with their mates because what-do-you-know, being in the top 15 players in the guild isn't as useful when only 10 people are going anyway.
On top of that, I'd like to reiterate that large social networks are (from this particular layman's perspective anyway) the bread and butter of this genre. Setting the game up so that the only way Nick the Newbie can be slotted into a social network that is centered around this particular Blizzard product (or any Blizzard product given the way RealID is going) is if he already knows someone who plays the game is Bad. The game needs things that encourages social networking, and the bigger the network the better because it becomes more robust.
Exactly how you do it - because as you said, the guild leveling system has huge potential in this department - is a matter of taste and balance discussion, but ultimately, a situation where a server breaks down into small groups of real life friends who are entirely self-sufficient and have no reason to seek out anyone else is a bad idea. It makes it harder for new players to find a niche in a community, it makes individual elements of the community more volatile, more likely to move to a different game, and it lowers the distance between the service this 15 bucks a month game offers compared to much cheaper single-transaction games with extensive multiplayer capabilities.
The easiest way to track 25-man accomplishments is how it used to be done - screenshot or it didn't happen. More technical ways are to see people in a guild get the accomplishment on the same day and how many did, but that can be played with some.
This information would nearly require out of game research to determine. Looking at another toon in-game, they're wearing the same items and have the same achievements. That person motivated by competition and being better than everyone else would not be clearly visibly better. I know there has been plenty of complaints at various times about 10 and 25man gear visually appearing identical, this is taking the "issue" to the next stage. Gear and achievements would be literally identical.
Not to insult those who only run 10, or denigrate the skill of those who professionally play sports, but it's as if you could not tell the difference between a Major League sports player and a Minor League sports player. That guy blocked every goal, but was it against world class players or more average ones? That other guy hit every ball pitched, but was it against 100 MPH fastballs or 60 MPH fastballs? Raider A did everything on whichever version (10 or 25) is easier and Raider B did it on the harder setting, both completed more or less simultaneously. Both look identical until you go and do research?
Good? Bad? Not going to impact? Dunno. But it is different and could affect players motivated by glory.
Rock: "We're sub-standard DPS. Nerf Paper, Scissors are fine."
Paper: "OMG, WTF, Scissors!"
Scissors: "Rock is OP and Paper are QQers. We need PvP buffs."
Actually, I think you could be able to tell 10man from 25man accomplishments fairly easily if the 10mans wish to set themselves apart.
As long as the number of toons in your guild (or the number of toons with a certain kill) does not meet or exceed the number required to get the guild kill accomplishment for boss XYZ in the 25man, you can only be a 10man raid guild. Some player/guild comparison data and elementary school math is all you need to set up a tracking web site. So that being the case, 10man guilds who want to be known as 10man only have a clear mechanism to do so.
Actually, I think you could be able to tell 10man from 25man accomplishments fairly easily if the 10mans wish to set themselves apart.
As long as the number of toons in your guild (or the number of toons with a certain kill) does not meet or exceed the number required to get the guild kill accomplishment for boss XYZ in the 25man, you can only be a 10man raid guild. Some player/guild comparison data and elementary school math is all you need to set up a tracking web site.
You also need to know who is an alt of whom, remember. Guilds often work up alts to endgame raiding level so they can spend twice as long in each reset working on a boss with limited tries, or so they can fill in key roles if someone is missing. If a strict 10s guild with a roster of 13 does this, they can and probably will end up with 26 toons who have the kill.
You also need to know who is an alt of whom, remember. Guilds often work up alts to endgame raiding level so they can spend twice as long in each reset working on a boss with limited tries, or so they can fill in key roles if someone is missing. If a strict 10s guild with a roster of 13 does this, they can and probably will end up with 26 toons who have the kill.
Just don't put those alts in the guild. Remember, I said it was a way that 10mans could differentiate themselves if they chose to, I never said it was automatic; just like the 10man strict rating now it's easy to mess up if you start inviting into the guild all willy-nilly. The seven toon limit means that you can invite those alts (up to 3 of them) if you really need to and still get the guild kill and also means that a 25man raid group can't get guild guild kill credit without getting it for more than the 13-15 people a progression 10man group would have.
Back in vanilla, my own guild for a very long time had another partner guild called Gnomes of Destiny. Those people were in the guild and raided with us but weren't in guild proper because of uh, reasons that don't matter anymore. MAking your own chat channels that "sticky" pretty much takes care of any guild chat problems you might have by splitting the guild and the recent calendar changes make invites a snap.
I'm not disputing it's easy to externally track data via armory. This all still requires outside research. Yes, websites like WoWprogress and GuildOx can/will likely automate this, but this information is not displayed in WoW itself.
It doesn't void the change that in-game, just looking at people and even inspecting them, (based on what we currently have been told - it's always subject to change) there will be no way to differentiate between a player who killed things on 10, one who killed things on 25, or one who killed the easiest (or hardest) mixture of both.
In vanilla someone wearing T2 killed things in BWL. Visible bragging rights. In BC someone on an Amani bear cleared ZA in 30 minutes. Again, visible bragging rights. Now, someone wearing tier gear did at minimum some Heroics. You have to inspect to see if it's token upgraded. In Cata even an inspect wouldn't tell the difference.
From a general standpoint: looking awesome is great, having to tell people how awesome you are is not great. For those players seeking to be awesome, this could be a consideration. As Tinwhisker's has said, a lot of impetus in gaming is "to win", deriving from the caveman desire to be superlative to win better mates. The harder it is to recognize a winner or the more winners overall, the less prestige is attached to the win.
Also there's a lot of old-timer syndrome. We had to "walk 10 miles to school, uphill, in the snow, barefoot, while carrying our school desk - kids today have it easy." People recollect raiding as harder previously and believe it's easier now, which isn't necessarily true, but still influences emotional decisions.
Finally, I see a curious situation with meta-achievements. Currently some bosses are harder on 10, others harder on 25 - it's the nature of certain mechanics. With achieves shared between the sizes, it would theoretically be possible to take the easiest route to a meta. Perform achieve A on 10, achieve B on 25, and so on.
Rock: "We're sub-standard DPS. Nerf Paper, Scissors are fine."
Paper: "OMG, WTF, Scissors!"
Scissors: "Rock is OP and Paper are QQers. We need PvP buffs."
The harder it is to recognize a winner or the more winners overall, the less prestige is attached to the win.
I keep picturing Syndrome in my head saying, "And when everyone's super, [laughs maniacally] no one will be."
And I think you hit the nail on the head with the metas. Even beyond farming for metas by swapping raids and doing things the easier way there may even become a market for raid IDs. The ability for a 25man raid to get past a roadblock style boss and then drop to three 10mans to sell ride tickets could be quite lucrative. Or, since the gear they get is the same either way, selling off the entirety of the third raid ID to another guild is also an option.
On top of that, I'd like to reiterate that large social networks are (from this particular layman's perspective anyway) the bread and butter of this genre. Setting the game up so that the only way Nick the Newbie can be slotted into a social network that is centered around this particular Blizzard product (or any Blizzard product given the way RealID is going) is if he already knows someone who plays the game is Bad. The game needs things that encourages social networking, and the bigger the network the better because it becomes more robust.
This is why we have to keep a close eye on what's going on with the RealID stuff (especially once Facebook integration really hits) as we think through all this. I can tell you one thing I'm already observing among my friends is, there's a little less incentive not to jump on an unknown alt on another server for some of us, because our friends can still find us and chat with us. We no longer have to be logged into the same faction on the same server to engage in banter. Before this, if I or my buddies wanted to make sure we were available for dungeon runs or for quick VoA runs or whatever, we had to either be logged in on our primary server together or use an out-of-game channel to communicate. Now we have other options (even with other games -- chat between SC2 and WoW seems to work).
Sure, reducing the incentive for large groups to raid together may reduce the social cohesion of the more serious players, but if it's coupled with other things that increase the social cohesion of everyone else, I'm not ready to rule out that kind of change.
For some the current opt-in requirements for realID are too high (the other thread covered details). If realID eventually morphs into simply a unique identifier it would be possible to increase in-game and even cross-server socialization, which would again affect raids.
Currently we have distinct servers for hardware reasons. Bandwidth, physical location of hardware (affects latency), storage space, and so on. We know that it's feasible to at least link instanced battlegrounds for multiple servers, since any given battleground has an upper limit on participants. 5man instances were similarly linked with the new LFG functionality.
If genuinely unique identifiers were present, it becomes feasible to consider battlegroups (or more?) as basically Meta-Servers. Private channels could be shared across servers, whispers could jump across (as realID already does), and not just joint dungeons, but joint raiding would be possible. You may not be able to interact in town with someone on another server, but you could both enter your own server's instance portal and be transferred to the same instance.
If servers were continually linked and there was ease of communication, it would remove the barriers currently present around Looking For Raid. Blizzard has stated they are worried about issues like stopping halfway through an instance - there is no way to later contact people on other servers for a continuation. This is possible on server-only, so they set it up and turned it on. Expand communication and you can increase the ease of forming or continue PuG raids. The pool also expands - those people with a weird schedule could hook up with X times more similar folks than are present on their lone server.
Finally, it also allows the possibility of cross-server joint raiding. There are more guilds in the pool, so more options to raid together with like-minded and like-progressed groups. The risks involved in server transfer are also minimized - you could safely trial for any guild in your battlegroup before you server transfer to formally join their guild.
In short, increased ease of communication could lead to re-injecting the Massive into MMORPG, something many of us have discussed losing as raids (and guilds) shrink in size and some gnaw their nails wondering if Cata could cause 25 to collapse completely.
Rock: "We're sub-standard DPS. Nerf Paper, Scissors are fine."
Paper: "OMG, WTF, Scissors!"
Scissors: "Rock is OP and Paper are QQers. We need PvP buffs."
If servers were continually linked and there was ease of communication, it would remove the barriers currently present around Looking For Raid. Blizzard has stated they are worried about issues like stopping halfway through an instance - there is no way to later contact people on other servers for a continuation. This is possible on server-only, so they set it up and turned it on. Expand communication and you can increase the ease of forming or continue PuG raids. The pool also expands - those people with a weird schedule could hook up with X times more similar folks than are present on their lone server.
Finally, it also allows the possibility of cross-server joint raiding. There are more guilds in the pool, so more options to raid together with like-minded and like-progressed groups. The risks involved in server transfer are also minimized - you could safely trial for any guild in your battlegroup before you server transfer to formally join their guild.
Not saying it won't ever happen, but I'd be willing to bet Blizzard's real reason for not working on this, is as simple as $25.00 server transfers. The revenue stream from server transfers has to be huge. If you could simply trial with an off server guild without paying $25.00 its a big loss for Blizzard. Another $25.00 if you get turned down by said guild. I know some people who have spent hundreds of dollars transferring mains and alts back and forth guild hopping to raid. Allowing cross-server raiding, while it might make some people happy, is not worth losing the millions of dollars in future revenues.
That is pure tinfoil hattery. Blizzard is making plenty of money on WoW already without having to milk people for xfer money. They have gone on record multiple times about the cost being 99% a barrier to make people not do it frivolously. That's also why it has a cooldown, and why they offer free transfers off super high pop or imbalanced servers where they DO want people to do it frivolously. That cooldown also makes it a terrible source of revenue; if they suddenly needed to make a few million overnight, they could make another celestial steed or two without looking overtly money-grubbing or having any real effect on the health of the game. Cross-realm LFR has the possibility to do a lot for the health of the game and keep more people knit together, and therefore playing and subscribed. More than enough to justify some very minor loss of server transfer fees from people who DO transfer frivolously.
Whenever we recruit off server I always feel bad for the person. If they're as good as they think, all goes well (our luck has been good), but if they're truly bad we wouldn't guild them after they transferred and trialed. Not only did they spend $25, but they're locked on the server and prevented from trialing with that other guild on that server over there.
It's impossible to tell the impact on server transfers if communication were opened. As you suggest, fewer transfers could occur. Some could be content raiding from another server un-guilded. Others fail to transfer because they tried and didn't fit in after a run with the guild on the different server, so never paid to transfer. More transfers could just as easily occur. People could test a new server's guild(s) more easily and knowing they have a safe harbour the risk involved in paying for the transfer itself is minimal.
You could also see multi-guild server/world firsts. Those high end guilds have a lot of members, for good reason, but mechanics prevent them all from fitting in a single raid. Number one guild on your server and desperately need Class X and no room for that extra Class Y, this week? Number one over there could have the reverse issue.
Forgot a side benefit of being forced to a unique realID (that doesn't reveal your name) - people couldn't name/server transfer away from a bad reputation nearly as easily.
Tinwhisker - do guilds really still sell things? Gold is so plentiful and has little meaning anymore. Our guild bank has earned over 60k in the last few months just clearing out all the BoEs no one wanted (even for alts). What would a guild do with money earned from selling a raid ID? Fund unlimited grepairs until Wow closes the doors?
Rock: "We're sub-standard DPS. Nerf Paper, Scissors are fine."
Paper: "OMG, WTF, Scissors!"
Scissors: "Rock is OP and Paper are QQers. We need PvP buffs."
Tinwhisker - do guilds really still sell things? Gold is so plentiful and has little meaning anymore. Our guild bank has earned over 60k in the last few months just clearing out all the BoEs no one wanted (even for alts). What would a guild do with money earned from selling a raid ID? Fund unlimited grepairs until Wow closes the doors?
We're still selling bloods on occasion (granted we charge practically nothing these days, but it still boggles my mind). Our guild bank is well managed and the coffers should only increase in Cataclysm but while gold isn't really worth as much as it used to be and isn't really a goal in itself, what gold does though is grease the wheels and make other things more smooth. If taking the 10 minutes to sell off that extra raid ID pays for the weeks repairs and flasks then that saves the bank manager the trouble of working the auction house for a few nights. That's a couple hours work cut down to 10 minutes.
That is pure tinfoil hattery. Blizzard is making plenty of money on WoW already without having to milk people for xfer money. They have gone on record multiple times about the cost being 99% a barrier to make people not do it frivolously. That's also why it has a cooldown, and why they offer free transfers off super high pop or imbalanced servers where they DO want people to do it frivolously. That cooldown also makes it a terrible source of revenue; if they suddenly needed to make a few million overnight, they could make another celestial steed or two without looking overtly money-grubbing or having any real effect on the health of the game. Cross-realm LFR has the possibility to do a lot for the health of the game and keep more people knit together, and therefore playing and subscribed. More than enough to justify some very minor loss of server transfer fees from people who DO transfer frivolously.
These days the actual cooldown is 3 days which means you can actually transfer several times a reset. And the way some server populations have gone in the EU there has to be some reason for not implementing better population control measures. Raiding on my current server is basically less accessible than it was during vanilla, because the population is so low that 25 mans is completely out of the question, and 10 mans follow the same scheduling constraints as the old 40 mans: Primetime, when the maximum number of people are on.
If they're not making money from transfers out of our server, then there's no sensible reason not have fixed the problem. Given how long population has been an issue, they're either completely oblivious just how poorly some servers work or they're doing a financial calculation on transfer income gain vs income lost from people quitting over population issues. Granted, given how hard the design team works to make content more accessible, the former isn't entirely out of the question (because it's plain strange to make accessibility increases when there's servers where they do absolutely no good), but still, it doesn't seem as paranoid when you've seen a server's population drop way past the point where it has a viable population - where a viable population is defined as large enough for a new player to have a chance of accessing all content without changing servers, and without spending significantly more time doing stuff like finding crafters or putting togheter raid groups.
One server with a small raiding population does not a conspiracy make. Some people really do prefer smaller servers in the first place. Excepting that, there's only two ways to "fix" the problem of a small server: Locking people in to prevent decay, or getting more people to join to encourage growth. Having played most of BC on one, I can safely say I hated raiding on a small server and am glad that I wasn't locked in. And if I had been, I would have simply rerolled a new char (again), so you can't really lock people in anyway. As for encouraging growth, they try that fairly often with the realm transfers, but they're not always very successful. There may also be meta issues, such as hardware stability and relative severity that go into the mix.
I just don't see the logic that fits "my server sucks because server transfers have short cooldowns" -- even if transfers had a 10 year cooldown, everyone would have transfered off, once, and been done. Even a pretty large raiding server only has, what, 40-50 guilds that raid as their main thing (quick check: top US realm on wowprogress only has 55 doing >2 heroic icc25 bosses)? At ~40 people per guild, and $25 per person, that's only $50k for a large server's *entire raiding populaton* to transfer off, which is a pitiful drop in the bucket.
Comparatively, if they can make cross-realm LFR work, it would be deployed on all realms at once, not just your single server, and if it makes you keep subbed for two more months than without it, then they've made more money than by letting you transfer to a larger server. There's also some non-trivial subset of people who would just quit rather than transfer, who would almost certainly be willing to try a free cross-realm LFR tool and therefore stay subbed longer. It also opens up more options to people who want to play on a "small" server but still raid competitively and have some choice of whom to raid with.
Comparatively, if they can make cross-realm LFR work, it would be deployed on all realms at once, not just your single server, and if it makes you keep subbed for two more months than without it, then they've made more money than by letting you transfer to a larger server. There's also some non-trivial subset of people who would just quit rather than transfer, who would almost certainly be willing to try a free cross-realm LFR tool and therefore stay subbed longer. It also opens up more options to people who want to play on a "small" server but still raid competitively and have some choice of whom to raid with.
On the topic of cross-realm LFR: think there might be a correlation between the "Six bosses or less per raid" design paradigm for post-Wrath raids and the rising interest in cross-realm LFR?
If Blizzard's rationale against cross-realm LFR is "we don't want to create methods for a pugged cross-realm raid to reconstruct over multiple nights" then having a raid that takes no more than one night to complete removes that need.
Even without the shrinking number of bosses, I could imagine a design paradigm where some raids are designed for LFR and some raids are locked from LFR. To use Wrath as a model:
You could even mirror the gated attunement releases from BC: When a higher tier is unlocked, the raids in the lower tiers become LFR Raids (ie, when Ulduar is released, you can use LFR for Naxxramas). With the raid downshifting mechanic and the current freedoms of RaidIDs, allowing the longer raids to be puggable would be
a) feasible given that more people will have the higher tier gear from running new content and
b) valuable because the puggability of the unlocked LFR raids would briefly get more players into raiding who might not have been into it before. It's essentially an extension on the lifetime of the instance.
Bold highlighting is mine. 15 member raids? I hope it's not going back to the BC issue of mixed raid sizes. Going from 10 (Kara) to 25 (SSC/TK) did not work well. That was 2.5 Kara groups to make an SSC/TK group - 2:1 would have been fine. Going from 10/25 to 15 or 15 to 10/25 does not work well from either direction. Having raid X at 10/25 and Y at strictly 15 similarly doesn't work. It would have made more sense as a selectable size if raid sizes were currently 10 and 30.
Here's hoping it's a typo or idea that gets scrapped (or expanded to more fine grained size control).
Rock: "We're sub-standard DPS. Nerf Paper, Scissors are fine."
Paper: "OMG, WTF, Scissors!"
Scissors: "Rock is OP and Paper are QQers. We need PvP buffs."
07/27/10, 1:33 PM
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