I think Tinwhisker is correct, if Blizzard don't implement a way for players to be able to see how awesome they are and how much others suck (and vice versa) then the addon 'epeen' will launch 30 minutes after cataclysm does.

Like it or lump it, many players see wow as a vanity toy, they get off on knowing/thinking that they are better than everyone else in dalaran (or in the top 95th percentile at least). perhaps it's an extension of feelings of inadequacy in the real world where they are perhaps unhappy with their life and how it turned out, but one way or another the behaviour exists.It's the same reason why players cry so much that 'raids are too easy now wah wah wah, gear is too easy to get, etc' it's because inside a little piece of them dies every time they see someone in the same gear as them or raiding the same content as them they're now just that little bit less special.

As for the death of 25m, I don't see it happening, my guild is a medium sized guild on an RP server, we raid 25 man content as our bread and butter, we have recently had issues over easter and various holidays where we have not had enough signups to extend a 25m raid id and have had to run 2 10 man runs. The ability to run say 25M ICC on a thursday with the intention of resuming on tuesday only to find we only have 20 signups for tuesday and being able to downshift to 2 10 man runs sounds great and I'm sure it would help our guild leadership and raid leaders out a lot, we will still be seeing 25M as our default raid set up, with 10 man as back up, in fact this change will mean we wont even be raiding 10 man first to learn encounters and get gear, why bother when 25 man drops more loot (per person) and 10 man is equally as difficult?

Balancing the difficulty of the two will be tricky but very doable, the main difficulty difference between the 2 in my experience is:
a) Less places to stand in 25 man (for abilities wich require raiders to run out or be minimum 10yards apart, etc)
b) Bosses hit harder and have more HP in 25 man
c) More adds in 25 man

of those 3 (I am aware that I am massively oversimplifying matters) a) should be the hardest to resolve, but that could be a case of making the environments smaller or increasing the size of void zones, thereby reducing the excess room on 25 man, b) & c)hould just be a case of Blizzard turning some dials until it balances out.

That behavior exists in everyone because it's hardwired into us. It's the people who aren't competitive at all that are the unusual ones.

My point is that even if you're perfectly happy in the real world you still have countless generations of genetics pounding on the back of your head that you should be the alpha male in everything you do (alphas get the girls and pass on their genes). It's not some deep seeded feelings of inadequacy that make a person want to be better than the next (and be able to prove it), it's just human nature. Go look at any social creature in nature, the alpha male still continually challenges the others in the pack.

The whole point of games is so that we can play this out amongst ourselves without actually having to physically harm/kill each other. Take that away and we'll either find/create a new game or revert back to killing.

Do not assume that essentially the same thing won't be true in Cataclysm.

People fear the death of 25-man raiding. One way to avoid that would be to recreate the old UBRS days in part -- ensure that by bringing 25 people, the encounter is easier. If 10-man is the difficult configuration (but easier logistically) and 25-man is the easy configuration (but harder logistically), 25-man raiding will not die. It'll live on forever, even if only via PUGs.

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.

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).

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.

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.

Tinwhisker had the short version of why it's a Bad Idea some pages ago;

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.

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.

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.