Some numbers:

1. Current raid set ups require MT/MT/OT for 25-mans and MT/OT for 10-mans. The OT needs to be fully geared for both tanking and DPS and needs to be interested in doing both. Essentially, tank scarcity is greater for 10-man organizations than for 25-man organizations.
2. Healing is a bit more fluid. Starting into content requires 7 healers and 3 healers, about 2.33:1, versus 2.5:1 as might be expected by the size. This means more healing is required in 10-man than 25-man.
3. Hybrids are essential to a successful raid group. Lower utility "pures" will have less value to a 10-man than to a 25-man. Magelust addresses part of that issue for mages, but rogues will need to borrow some utility in Cataclysm.
4. When our guild has only 21 people show up for raid night, we don't have enough to do 2 10-mans, since we are most likely missing tanks, too.

What I'm starting to understand is that the most rare spec in the game will become even more rare, as demand from 10-mans will only put more pressure on them.

I do not know if it has been brought up yet, but the "guild talent system" may include talents that are designed to make the different size content more rewarding.

Perhaps if 'spec'd' into 25 man raiding, the members of the guild would get additional Valor points, or a higher Valor Point cap, (or both) enabling them to get more than 1 or 2 Valor items per week.

That's just a benefit a 25 man guild has over a 10 man guild. Because they have geared up 25 people, they can pick the top 10 (maybe top 10 by encounter) for that kill. Also, if it turns out dropping down to 10 people for a kill is bad guild management, then it is bad guild management. I'm not sure Blizzard should build their game to protect against bad guild management (especially at the cost of a change which many people have been very positive about).

That actually sounds like a good idea. But what do 10man guilds get for spec'ing into 10man raiding? And what's to stop the guild from re-spec'ing week-to-week to drop size and complete hard encounters like I outlined above?

First off, that isn't an advantage to 60% of the guild that does that.

And I'm not sure you can characterize that as bad guild management. The alternative to not dropping those 15 raiders for a week or more is that the guild continues to but their heads against a single encounter while other guilds progress past them. Infighting and resentment against raiders seen as "lower class" will often begin and then you have the makings for a guild break-up.

Ok, so the end result that the guild splits is likely to be the same no matter what the guild leader and officers do. Does that mean that when a 25man guild reaches a boss that they have trouble beating the simplest and most reasonable route is to disband and split? When raid guilds hit a road block something will happen; they can either but their heads against it or split, Cataclsym brings a third poor outcome.

Edit: If I sound a bit inflammatory or something else it's on purpose. I want as much discussion to go on about this as possible because as I said before this kind of change can't be reversed. If Blizzard is intent on this change, there's really only one chance to get this right. If 25man raiding is destroyed by this change in 4.0 there is likely no coming back in 4.1.

A cooldown on re-spec'ing seems like a good idea but the idea of a guild-wide penalty seems like the ultimate in griefing if some GL or Officer gets upset about something. "Tad-da! I just removed 20% of the Valor points of 35 other people."

On the topic of guild killing:
With BC, dropping from 40 to 25 man raids theoretically meant people could bring their best 25. This didn't exactly happen as a fair number of people stopped when BC hit, so guild membership winnowed itself and there may only have been a roster deep enough for 25.

Best case you did reduce to your best 25 people. Over time people leave (spouses, children, new work schedules, ennui, whatever) and replacements are found. Unless a guild is a meatgrinder (taking in tons of people, spitting a lot back out as they burn out or are proven less than perfect) it's extremely difficult (not impossible, some guilds appear to do it) to retain a cutting edge roster for 25man. You wind up with that core of great players, some good players, and a few okay players. It works to kill things, but it's not the best raid possible.

It is hard for a new 25man guild to truly get rolling. To initially raid you need raw headcount - PuG or PuG quality membership will be a portion of the raid. This leads to less than ideal progression. A significant percentage will bust as individuals are unhappy with progression. A vicious cycle - the raid isn't good enough, so cannot recruit people good enough, so remains not good enough. People leave, guild may eventually collapse. A small portion slowly overcome this and can step by step work their way into reliable and stable guild status. I would argue that all raids being 40 back in Vanilla helped guilds - it was form a group or do not raid. Enough wanting to raid would accrete, it would persist.

I wouldn't want to go back to 40man raids (especially as the only option). 10 and 25 has been a good idea. All I'm saying is that it puts different, and possibly harder, stresses on a guild.

Now if it's 10 or 25, but not both, a 25man guild can (temporarily or permanently) drop down to the best 10 and roll through that content. However, upsizing would be extremely difficult and hit the same present difficulties. Or even more, if 25man doesn't hold different loot, why suffer poor progression when you can run with a more successful 10. Better chance at loot item A off early boss and no chance at loot off late boss vs low chance of loot item A on early boss and low chance of item B on late boss. With the progressing 10 at least you have a chance at B, the stonewalled 25 has no chance. Time would win the RNG game and you would get your loot from both.

Once a 25man guild does take the step to drop to 10, if someone has a life change (spouse, child, work, etc) and has to leave, your guild is unlikely to have a large replacement pool. Let's be honest, such a guild would have 10-12 raiders (and a handful of other casuals) - why would multiple good players be happy sitting unraided much of the week when they could go elsewhere? With only 10-12 raiders, a single loss is significant. Suddenly you're back to recruiting dubious outside talent. All it takes is 1 or 2 more to go "I could join Bob's raid, instead" and your guild is suddenly crippled.

The whole "1 person dead in 10man is a bigger swing than 1 dead in 25" goes the same for 1 person unable to log on (no power/net/etc) or deciding to stop raiding.

Smaller and smaller raids of static size (must be exactly 10 or 25, no other number is possible!) actually lead to less stability. Yes, organizing large guilds/raids has headaches. Reducing size will reduce the quantity of headaches, but when they occur they'll be migraines.

I hope this is something Blizzard is considering. My alt/pug raid runs every time - with moderate success. My guild 10man has canceled more than once due to absence of one or two people. We run two 10mans, I cannot backfill unless I destroyed the other 10man and caused it not to raid that week. Smaller is not guaranteed to be easier from a guild/actually-going-to-raid perspective (as opposed to difficulty of boss perspective).

I completely agree, I was just trying to give options. I don't think they would actually implement that, though there would be various ways of tweaking it. I think the re-spec cooldown would be much more likely, as well as not having any talents to boost 10 man. At this point, they could even put in a talent to allow multiple raid IDs, or perhaps that could be something that they end up adding if the '1 lockout' plan does not work.

When they say they want to make 10 man and 25 man be equal in difficulty, perhaps instead of making 10 mans "harder" (if you agree with the general consensus that 10 mans are easier) they are going to make 25 mans "easier" -- on the level of 10 mans.

There are typically differences between 10 man and 25 normal modes, such as 1 person being bone spiked in 10 man, and 3 in 25 for Marrowgar. What if they just have only 1 person bone spiked in 25? It would be the "same" difficulty in that sense, but it would be "easier" because you have twice as many people doing the same job, so you wouldn't have to worry so much about things than you usually would. Maybe that would be what influences people to keep running 25 mans because 25 mans will be the new "easy" raid.

This might seem like somewhat backwards way approach to the issue, but bear with me.

Guilds in WoW is a more or less an artificial construction only minorly backed by game systems. I join a "25 man raiding guild" to raid, I get a tag under my name, a tabard and theoretical access to a guildbank, except the system for access is so inflexible that the utility provided is fairly minor. On the planning side, the calendar - guild independent - still holds most of the useful raid related planning stuff. Most of the other things guilds may need to manage is done out of the game, using other tools - DKP, forum posts for recruitment.

What will cause 25 man raiding guilds to split isn't so much the loss of 25 man raiding as a character-progression driven motivator for being in the guild, as it is that 25 man raiding is the only motivator for being in a guild of that particular size - short of already having established a social matrix of the sufficient number of compatible people, but since there's no real way to get that matrix without social activities involving 25 people we'll hit a Catch 22 (which is why Exemplar is absolutely right; They can't undo this change by waving a wand).

There is absolutely nothing in game, currently, that actually encourages the formation, membership and loyalty to a guild. There are player created tools, like DKP, but they end up adding logistical overhead.


But in Cataclysm, we'll have a guild system with a larger impact. In theory, that system could be set up so that there's a clear benefit for two 10 man raiding to band togheter under one common flag, and then the step from ten to twenty-five won't be so steep. Guild-bound recipies and gear also leaves a significantly larger room for creating incentatives for being in a guild. Not only do I think this system could off-set the "loss of guild cohesion" caused by raiding, coupled with the reintroduction of larger scale organized PvP, I'd argue that we should - unless Blizzard does something horribly wrong with the guild system - see a larger amount of formations of guilds that actually strive to work togheter. Just in more areas than 25 man raiding.


(But in general, I think there's a lot of room for improvement when it comes to providing in-game community managing tool. Tools that in many cases could cut down more on the logistical problems per development time than the last few iterations on the game design side.)

Or Guilds become tools. Joe average runs with his 9 friends. Bob average runs with his 9 friends. Suzie average runs with her 9 friends. Currently each could be a guild, or it could be 30 unguilded people.

All three groups could together be in a guild that is just a glorified nametag. Still 3 separate groups running their 10mans, maybe some extra socializing on channels or 1 vent server instead of 3. They teamed up just for guild perk benefits - guild only items, guild talent points, whatever. 30 people will earn guild points more rapidly and have 3 times the chance of someone earning an achievement (which feeds into guild points somehow, based on our current limited understanding). Economy of scale. Best 10 contributing to guild points means nothing if the guild only has 10 people - 30 people and you actually see benefits.

Are they encouraged to do 25? Not really. Would they want to do 25? Probably not. Joe just cannot stand Suzie's best friend. And the 5 extra people who would have raided in the 3 10s suddenly do not raid. They didn't join and form a social network, they joined for the bulk discount rate.

A guild just becomes the source of a new buff of some sort granted by the guild talent tree. This is a worst case scenario, but hyperbole serves a purpose.

I know Blizzard's current policy is to "let everyone experience everything", but if they were to take one step away from that policy i can see some intresting options to make the "hardcore" people happy while not making content too hard for the average raiders.
If they were to add a hardcore raid every tier(think sunwell) that has nothing to do with the "main" story of the expansion but that raid will keep the hardcore people busy while they also do the "normal" raids. This ofc doesn't mean that they should make all other content roflstomp easy but keeping the current model.
It doesnt need much lore, just say: superevil villian is planning to destroy the world, this is his/hers stronghold and you will have to enter it and kill everything in your way. Making one extra raid per tier that will make alot of people happy and will also give them abit more variation in the tiers.
It is usually the hardcore people that get burned out/bored with content because it is the same instance they run every week, an extra hardcore raid would give these players a "reason" to stay in the game and keep playing at a competetive lvl.
Make this instance drop some sweet extra loot that is a few stats ahead off the current tier as reward. I think that you can't make one raiding path for the whole community anymore, you need to make one easier tier and one tier that is very hard and will offer better stuff.
I think it is the ground rule of what an mmo should be, if you invest loads of time, perfect your skills you should get better rewards than everyone else. It gives the satifaction that you have something that is hard to get and you can show it off to people. That extra reward needs to be there for the top players, so that you don't loose them and the game slowly looses its competetive touch.