Ghostcrawler tweet about 25 man, let the speculation begin!

[Deleted]

By responding with more unproven assertions of your own?



Such as this. Yes...the logistics behind 10s are easier than 25. So what? That doesn't mean players loathe the format in and of itself.

Put simply, if everyone who claimed to prefer 25 actually did 25s, then the logistics issues wouldn't exist to anywhere near the degree they do now. You claim entropy? Players had to get up and make an effort to create 10 man guilds; entropy would have had them remain where they were - in 25s - taking advantage of the loot system and the fact raid leaders did most of the work.

Most players prefer 10 man raids because most players don't give a hoot about about format. They want to raid, to see the content, to play with friends, to get gear for their characters. 10s give them all that. 25s don't. 25s require they raid with people who aren't on their friends list. It requires them to spend time and effort on the logistics aspect many players don't care about. And since Cata, 25s don't offer them extra loot as a bribe to put up with that.

The only reason most players had for 25s was because the aim of the game is gear acquisition for character progression and 25s provided that gear.



25s came into being with TBC. 10s were around in Vanilla.



Yes. But you want BOTH setups to be viable. More, you want both setups run by players who want to run that setup without being coerced into doing so.

Trouble is..25s don't have that. They offer everything 10s do...but require you raid with people you probably view as colleagues of guildies instead of friends, they require additional logistical effort many players aren't interested in (causing that to often fall onto fewer shoulders with a corresponding fall in players interested in leading such groups) and they require greater coordination out of raid meaning it is more awkward and time consuming to actually arrange it.



Actually, they are. They have every advantage going. 25s will require some degree of artificial support in order to bribe/entice players to actually run them. That can't really be said for 10s. About the one thing 10s have against them is that raids need to be designed around 25 mans and so, as a result, 10s can lose that epic feel in some cases. Even then, that's only for some players and some raids; lots of open space also gives rise to a sense of scale.




Should raiders A thru Z be rewarded because the Raid Leader does extra work? Should the group get extra rewards which will entice players into running both formats at a time when Blizzard are still concerned about (as an example) players raiding multiple times per week? Will QoL issues really be of value to those players who don't require them?

EJL

The fact remains that the harder things are the higher the reward tends to be.

[Soloz]

If they buff 25s then everyone will pug 25s. 25 mans were never unpuggable...they were faceroll. Ive been a 10 man raider since t11 sadly and I have to say when I did a 25 man in dragon soul I almost laughed at the difficulty differences.

Them dragon soul raid buffs can do amazing things you know. Trying doing ultraxion or spine on 25 heroic without your precious 35% buff

I remember facing rolling through 10m 8/8 heroic on shitty alts, does that mean 10m is much easier? not necessarily because we went in already knowing the fights so it only took a few attempts to adjust to the format. Things may seem easier in one raid size than the other because you already done them multiple times in the other but you'll never know cause you didn't start your progression there.

[Azrile]

Here is what it will NOT be

1. Higher ilvls for 25mans
2. Higher drop rates for 25mans

They have already said they do not want to do anything that makes 10s feel forced to do 25s.

I believe GC gave a clue a few weeks ago when he said something to the effect that it was only the LEADERS of 25man guilds that had more responsiblity. 25 man raids are not harder.. a normal joe-blow member of a 25 man raid is not harder than a member from a 10 man. ONLY the few people in charge of the raid have the added work.

My hunch is they are going to find a way to have 25 man raids indicate who the leaders are, and then give the leaders some perks.

[brunnor]

This thread has been an interesting read to say the least. It's funny seeing all the "this is harder than this" posts in a thread that shouldn't have any of it. The OP didn't ask if you agreed with what Blizzard was going to do, merely what you thought it could be.

As a 25m raid/guild leader, I would love some help to make things easier. A lot of people in this post, and else where, don't truly understand the difficulty of running a 25man guild, as I have for 7 years or so now. There are tons of issues we deal with, as an officer/GM, that could use some help as a QoL is concerned. The biggest issue for all of us is trying to find people who want to do 25m over 10m. There are exceptions to general masses, but most don't overly care if they raid 10s or 25s it seems. Pulling people to actually want a 25m guild over a 10m guild of the same progression level is nearly impossible these days. My guild is by no means a great raiding guild, but we do decently I think for what we have, so we have no real "top world" pull like a lot of the higher up 25mans have. We are stuck in a sea of 10m guilds that have an easier raiding style, logistically of course.

I personally would never stop raiding 25s, as would a good chunk of my raiders, but that doesn't mean it's that way for all of my raiders or is it the case for tons and tons of potential apps. The people who don't care never seem to want to deal with the added headache of the logistical end. These people don't have to do anything with it but they are punished by it like the rest of the guild. For example, my guild hasn't had a progression raid in 2 weeks now due to the holidays. We had 3 days off for xmas and that's it but due to needing tanks/healers/etc to show up and having some many different holiday schedules to deal with it was not possible to pull off anything new due to missing a few random key players here and there. This kind of thing is what 25mans have to deal with that makes them die off or not be "popular". If there was something that made scale balanced a little bit uneven to give people a reason to put up with the added issues of 25m logistics that would be great.

Personally, I would love it if 10m raids just went away. I don't think they are a true raiding style and shouldn't get resources wasted on them.

Knowing that it would be very unlikely that would ever happen, my next desire would be to split 10 and 25 raids up again like in TBC. Kara to SSC etc. They could be the same ilvl and the same "difficulty" but be different story/lore for each zone. Leave LFR as it is to give 10 man guilds the ability to see 25man content but leave them their own progression path. There would obviously be different server firsts and such since different zones. If a 25man guild could fully clear through 25man heroic and then clear a whole new zone and new bosses on heroic in 10s before a pure 10man guild, then they could achieve both server firsts, but if there was any serious progression guild in either 10s or 25s that would never happen. I think this idea is a logical one and wouldn't really cause too much issue with anyone but Blizzard due to the fact it would be double the content/story to produce per patch.

My final, and most likely, desire would be to give 25s time off of raiding when raiding is done. That means QoL things like giving us valor cap from just raiding, giving us coins from just raiding, flasks/food/pots just from raiding. Don't require time outside of the set raid schedule. Obviously if people like doing dailies/5mans etc they can still do those but they would be on a desired basis rather than a "I'm really hurting my guild if I don't" basis.

tl;dr - This thread is funny. 10mans should go die but won't so give different zones if not, give 25s QoL things.

[Calpal]

Im betting that they are going to allow cross realm raiding in 25 man. The only legitimate complaint that 25 man raiders have is that its hard to find 25 skilled people, especially on low pop servers. Allowing cross realm raiding fixes this issue, while not fucking over 10 mans in some way.(hopefully) They could even open up cross realm raiding in 10 mans, which i think would be a positive change to the game.

I don't see them doing anything that would put 10 man players at any sort of disadvantage (even just a perceived disadvantage) because the majority of the raiding population does 10 mans.

Any change they do should only be to naturally allow 25mans remain alive and kicking. Trying to push players into either 10 man or 25 man doesn't actually help anything. It just frustrates people that have gotten used to a certain play style.

[brunnor]

Im betting that they are going to allow cross realm raiding in 25 man. The only legitimate complaint that 25 man raiders have is that its hard to find 25 skilled people, especially on low pop servers. Allowing cross realm raiding fixes this issue, while not fucking over 10 mans in some way.(hopefully) They could even open up cross realm raiding in 10 mans, which i think would be a positive change to the game.

I don't see them doing anything that would put 10 man players at any sort of disadvantage (even just a perceived disadvantage) because the majority of the raiding population does 10 mans.

Any change they do should only be to naturally allow 25mans remain alive and kicking. Trying to push players into either 10 man or 25 man doesn't actually help anything. It just frustrates people that have gotten used to a certain play style.

Cross realm raiding would ruin what it means to be in a guild or on a server. It would take away what little community we have left anymore and turn this game in to, minus a few high end guilds, a massive LFR assholefest everywhere.

[notdryad]

If they buff 25s then everyone will pug 25s. 25 mans were never unpuggable...they were faceroll. Ive been a 10 man raider since t11 sadly and I have to say when I did a 25 man in dragon soul I almost laughed at the difficulty differences.

10 man:
2(1) tanks
2(3) healers
6(7) dps

25 man:
2(1) tanks
5(6) Healer
17(18) dps

in a 10 man 1 brez after that a brez needed is a wipe.
25 man 3 brez ...and sometimes its barely needed because dps can carry dps.

The differences is ridiculous and the fact people want more loot is even more ridiculous just raid the way you want f the incentives

There are so many things wrong with what you said so I'm going to be as nice as I can be: please stop talking about something you don't understand.

[Calpal]

Cross realm raiding would ruin what it means to be in a guild or on a server. It would take away what little community we have left anymore and turn this game in to, minus a few high end guilds, a massive LFR assholefest everywhere.

I don't really think cross realm raiding would kill communities in any way. It would just serve as a way for groups to find raiders when they lack a decent population of raiders on their server. Currently on my server there is a lot competition for good healers capable of doing heroic content, because there barely enough to fill the 3 10 man groups that are progressing in to heroics. Lately my guild has only been able to find healers that can't even do normal mode HoF. How is a 25 man guild that wants to do heroic content survive on a small server if a couple of 10 man guilds can barley survive. And before you say combine the 3 10 mans into one 25 man team, we all have different raid schedules because people have different time restrictions due to work.

Cross realm raiding would enable tight knit communities to survie on small realms while still raiding at a competitive lvl. And it wouldn't turn into a giant assholefest. In its current state, cross realm raiding is very civil (openraid.us) You have control over the people you raid with, so people cant be assholes. You even have more control over who you raid with because your not confined to the small population of raiders on your own realm.

[scadouche]

Cross-realm raiding would remove competition between guilds on each server. There is more to this game than just rankings compared to the "world". It would also remove any reason to have realms.

[Calpal]

Cross-realm raiding would remove competition between guilds on each server. There is more to this game than just rankings compared to the "world". It would also remove any reason to have realms.

Most people are less interested in their ranking among their realm, or the world. They just want to be able to successfully find a group that can raid at the pace they wish to raid at. Its not fair to players on low pop realms that want to raid at a higher level.

World of warcraft now, is vastly different than it was 8 years ago. Both from a community standpoint and a game standpoint.

[Glyphtics]

Remove it entirely please! Go to a single raid size and focus all your raid development time on making excellent bosses, tuned for a single raid size, rather than re-tuning for multiple raid sizes as well as difficulties.

Ideally I'd love to go to 15 man raids, which scales up perfectly from 5 mans (1 tank 1 healer 3 DPS - 3 tanks 3 healers 9 DPS), but that probably won't happen. So just remove 25 mans and let's all go 10 man.

Blizzard are just giving themselves way too much work trying to cater to a very, VERY tiny section of the playerbase. I mean, hell, the total number of raiders is a tiny, insignificant amount as it is... the number of 25 man raiders is even smaller.

How about we remove 10 mans and only do 25's o_O.

[brunnor]

I don't really think cross realm raiding would kill communities in any way. It would just serve as a way for groups to find raiders when they lack a decent population of raiders on their server. Currently on my server there is a lot competition for good healers capable of doing heroic content, because there barely enough to fill the 3 10 man groups that are progressing in to heroics. Lately my guild has only been able to find healers that can't even do normal mode HoF. How is a 25 man guild that wants to do heroic content survive on a small server if a couple of 10 man guilds can barley survive. And before you say combine the 3 10 mans into one 25 man team, we all have different raid schedules because people have different time restrictions due to work.

Cross realm raiding would enable tight knit communities to survie on small realms while still raiding at a competitive lvl. And it wouldn't turn into a giant assholefest. In its current state, cross realm raiding is very civil (openraid.us) You have control over the people you raid with, so people cant be assholes. You even have more control over who you raid with because your not confined to the small population of raiders on your own realm.

The issue that is held by smaller servers, mine included, is that they are small and lack the community. That fix is to merge them and not open up CRR(cross realm raiding). A tight knit community/guild/group is that way because they spend their extra time together and such. I hang out on vent with most of my guys all day and have for years, when not working obviously. That's the kind of thing that makes groups feel close to each other. I do agree that openraid is a very nice and civil place because if you are an asshole there people will point it out and said person wouldn't go to groups etc. If it was an in game wow feature, it would be horrible. It really would be LFR just in normal/heroic modes. There would be so many people thinking they are good enough for heroics or normals joining groups, dragging them down, then wiping the group and raging when kicked/removed. Normally the recruitment phase of a guild would weed out this kind of person but with nothing in place... it would be bad imo.

The problem for small raiding populations is fixed by merging servers. That is the only way it will be fixed and the only way it can be.

[Calpal]

The issue that is held by smaller servers, mine included, is that they are small and lack the community. That fix is to merge them and not open up CRR(cross realm raiding). A tight knit community/guild/group is that way because they spend their extra time together and such. I hang out on vent with most of my guys all day and have for years, when not working obviously. That's the kind of thing that makes groups feel close to each other. I do agree that openraid is a very nice and civil place because if you are an asshole there people will point it out and said person wouldn't go to groups etc. If it was an in game wow feature, it would be horrible. It really would be LFR just in normal/heroic modes. There would be so many people thinking they are good enough for heroics or normals joining groups, dragging them down, then wiping the group and raging when kicked/removed. Normally the recruitment phase of a guild would weed out this kind of person but with nothing in place... it would be bad imo.

The problem for small raiding populations is fixed by merging servers. That is the only way it will be fixed and the only way it can be.

I agree, i would love to see server mergers. The problem is, blizzard will never do those. Even though they would create a better gaming experience for everybody playing, it is a perceived sign that the MMO is dieing. Blizzard wants people to believe the game is alive and even growing, so they are unlikely to do something that shows the gaming community that they know the game is shrinking.

And blizzard wouldn't have to implement any sort of in game feature for cross realm raiding. They just have to flip the switch that allows you to do current tiers of raiding cross realm just like you can do old content on openraid.us.

They don't have to interven at all, like adding a LFD thing for normal/heroic raiding. Players would just use the already existing Openraid system/rules to seek out new players to raid with.

[Chief Brouhaha]

Mounts. Lots of mounts/pets. Maybe Guild achievements because that doesnt really help any of the individual players but helps the guild

[Calpal]

How about we remove 10 mans and only do 25's o_O.

Because there is a larger population of people that like 10 mans more than 25's. It would make more sense to remove 25's and only do 10's. Which i don't really agree with. I think we can easily keep both.

---------- Post added 2013-01-04 at 05:36 PM ----------

Mounts. Lots of mounts/pets. Maybe Guild achievements because that doesnt really help any of the individual players but helps the guild

I can see blizzard doing this. Especially the guild achievements. I don't really like the idea of 25's getting mounts/pets that are unavailable to 10 mans. That wouldn't be fair to collector people that enjoy raiding in 10's. I can still see blizzard doing it though.

The biggest mistake blizzard can make is removing separate 10/25 lockouts, followed by lowering the itm lvl of gear from 10s, including having 25's gear come pre upgraded.

[Ferocity]

GC must be removed before another batch of irrepairable damage is done.

So imagine 25-men were buffed reward-wise. Lots of people from 10-men leave their groups for "greenier" pastures, leading to gradual dissolution of 10-men. Idea of flexible lockouts wasn't welcomed back in time and caused massive destruction of lots of 25-men guilds. One could think that people will learn what changes not to do? Don't touch 10 and 25 - they must be left as they are.

Someone also pointed out hardware demands for running 25-men. We don't have light-weight client, which would be optimized around running in large group of people. With new character models, which some gfx-minded people are so much crying about, it will be even more heavy for PCs. Light-weight client should be priority, only then developers can seriously think of content tuned for more than 10 people.

Because there is a larger population of people that like 10 mans more than 25's. It would make more sense to remove 25's and only do 10's. Which i don't really agree with. I think we can easily keep both.

Yes, we can. Especially if to consider that 25-men are already somewhat more rewarding. I remember discussion of lottery system of rewards in raids: 25-men can't see the problem with it, while for 10-men it is quite common to give drops from first boss kill to offspecs and DE. 10-men bosses might deny specific drops for many monthes. If people want to gear through somewhat more fair lottery - they can go to 25, which is also like 10 times easier (only harder on logistics), because if 1 person dies on 25-men - it doesn't automatically mean wipe as in 10-men.

[Deleted]

Cross realm raiding would ruin what it means to be in a guild or on a server. It would take away what little community we have left anymore and turn this game in to, minus a few high end guilds, a massive LFR assholefest everywhere.

Well they could easily remove the ability to earn loot/achies cross realm resulting in after a "trial" you would move to them in order to get those things

[Calpal]

Well they could easily remove the ability to earn loot/achies cross realm resulting in after a "trial" you would move to them in order to get those things

That doesn't seem very appealing. A large part of why people step into raids is for the gear. People won't be motivated to raid if they know they won't get any gear or recognition for it.

I think its ok for people to raid cross realm without any restrictions.

[Tritone496]

This thread has been an interesting read to say the least. It's funny seeing all the "this is harder than this" posts in a thread that shouldn't have any of it. The OP didn't ask if you agreed with what Blizzard was going to do, merely what you thought it could be.

As a 25m raid/guild leader, I would love some help to make things easier. A lot of people in this post, and else where, don't truly understand the difficulty of running a 25man guild, as I have for 7 years or so now. There are tons of issues we deal with, as an officer/GM, that could use some help as a QoL is concerned. The biggest issue for all of us is trying to find people who want to do 25m over 10m. There are exceptions to general masses, but most don't overly care if they raid 10s or 25s it seems. Pulling people to actually want a 25m guild over a 10m guild of the same progression level is nearly impossible these days. My guild is by no means a great raiding guild, but we do decently I think for what we have, so we have no real "top world" pull like a lot of the higher up 25mans have. We are stuck in a sea of 10m guilds that have an easier raiding style, logistically of course.

I personally would never stop raiding 25s, as would a good chunk of my raiders, but that doesn't mean it's that way for all of my raiders or is it the case for tons and tons of potential apps. The people who don't care never seem to want to deal with the added headache of the logistical end. These people don't have to do anything with it but they are punished by it like the rest of the guild. For example, my guild hasn't had a progression raid in 2 weeks now due to the holidays. We had 3 days off for xmas and that's it but due to needing tanks/healers/etc to show up and having some many different holiday schedules to deal with it was not possible to pull off anything new due to missing a few random key players here and there. This kind of thing is what 25mans have to deal with that makes them die off or not be "popular". If there was something that made scale balanced a little bit uneven to give people a reason to put up with the added issues of 25m logistics that would be great.

Personally, I would love it if 10m raids just went away. I don't think they are a true raiding style and shouldn't get resources wasted on them.

Knowing that it would be very unlikely that would ever happen, my next desire would be to split 10 and 25 raids up again like in TBC. Kara to SSC etc. They could be the same ilvl and the same "difficulty" but be different story/lore for each zone. Leave LFR as it is to give 10 man guilds the ability to see 25man content but leave them their own progression path. There would obviously be different server firsts and such since different zones. If a 25man guild could fully clear through 25man heroic and then clear a whole new zone and new bosses on heroic in 10s before a pure 10man guild, then they could achieve both server firsts, but if there was any serious progression guild in either 10s or 25s that would never happen. I think this idea is a logical one and wouldn't really cause too much issue with anyone but Blizzard due to the fact it would be double the content/story to produce per patch.

My final, and most likely, desire would be to give 25s time off of raiding when raiding is done. That means QoL things like giving us valor cap from just raiding, giving us coins from just raiding, flasks/food/pots just from raiding. Don't require time outside of the set raid schedule. Obviously if people like doing dailies/5mans etc they can still do those but they would be on a desired basis rather than a "I'm really hurting my guild if I don't" basis.

tl;dr - This thread is funny. 10mans should go die but won't so give different zones if not, give 25s QoL things.

Well said Brunnor, I too have raided since vanilla and an sad to see what has happened to large format raiding. But was predictable. One thing id like to point out that nobody ever mentions is the same two tanks that raided in 25s also were required in 10 mans. What do you think happened the the 15 other raiders that had no place to raid after guild leaders got lazy and quit recruiting when cata was announced? Some went to other 25 mans if they could find them and some went to 10s - but alot of them just quit and never came back. There is just something different - more epic if you will about large groups and getting 25 people all on the same page at once and getting a kill. And to all you peeps who claim that most people preffer 10 mans say hello to my flaming middle finger

[eschatological]

You pretty much lose legitimacy in your argument when you say "10 man is not a legitimate format." I thought 40 mans sucked because I was part of the 15 or so people carrying the whole group, but I don't suggest 40 mans were illegitimate content.

I wouldn't mind 25s having different skins for their gear, but I don't think that'd ever happen as Blizz already thinks they spend too many resources on raiding assets which not enough people see.

I would mind a bit more with unique titles and achievements, but that's because I'm a title/achievement whore. It could probably work.

Better gear is right out.

I'm telling you, make the smaller heroic size the "hardcore" size, make the bigger heroic size easier by a discernible amount but still hard (by design, not just in an argument between 10s and 25s) but drop the same gear. So if you take the effort of organization, you get the epic feeling, you have a better chance of the shinies because it's easier.

The "competition" in WoW is completely player driven. So if they say "Hey, 10 mans are hardcore now, you need one person solo healing a phase while your other healers go solo heal something else, you need one person kiting without getting hit for the whole encounter, etc, etc," and basically dial up the things that can make 10s hard (individual gimmicks with wipe-capability), the competition will flow towards 10 mans. It's already this way in parts of Asia, where 10 mans are considered more hardcore, but I think us NA/Euro types would need it for to actually be unbalanced for it to happen.

The main critique of this might be that you lose some sort of "epic" feeling losing 15 people in the process, but I think 10 people performing ridiculous feats in symphony can keep that epic feel. Hell, you only have 11 in football. Encounter spaces can be smaller, there can be moving mechanics (platforming, etc) because you don't have to worry about more people probably failing it, etc.