Patch 6.0 - Bonfire of the Guilds.

[Osmeric]

Surely not.

I'm afraid you may not have the most accurate understanding of what a median WoW player is like.

[The Kao]

Well if your guild starts struggling now then you've probably waited too long. When WoD finally launches you had had one full year of time to recruit enough people for a 20 man raid. Fair enough. We've started opening recruitment early this year since we're on a medium server with not many 14/14 HC guilds so we figured we had to start early in order to get anywhere, and we are now already taking on 25 man HC raids. Still people want to join. With the release date announcement it seems there are even more people now than in the past few months, so if you want to stock up that'll probably be your last chance before disappearing into oblivion.

[Pann]

Flex is tough enough for the median player. So there will be a population of players, probably a sizable one, for which this could be a real issue.

I don't think that difficulty will be the major stumbling block with flex I think the need to schedule and organise your time rather than logging on doing what you want and then logging off will be the greatest hurdle.

[Mahourai]

I'm afraid you may not have the most accurate understanding of what a median WoW player is like.

Well the "median" WoW player is a gold farmer bot.

Seriously though, who's progressing in Flex? If people who are progressing and having a difficult time are such a huge portion of the players in Flex, where are their recruitment ads? Where is their LFM spam, especially since adding people to the group would be hugely advantageous if they're having problems? I've seen one guild, total, advertising on US-Arthas and the connected realms that US-Ysondre is a part of the entire tier (granted I've been unsubbed most of the last several months).

It's too convenient for there to just be this huge, silent majority of players in Flex who are vexed with their progression status in it while the majority of players in the in-game raid finder, openraid or oqueue blow through it in an hour.

[Paula Deen]

Proudmoore US here, been recruiting for about 2 months now, I came back to raid just to help recruitment, we are already running BASICALLY a full team, with a few open spots. It is not the end of the world, and it isn't difficult to find people.

[Usagi Senshi]

Only a fool would argue current facts with "what ifs" that are over 2 years away.

If you've been paying attention to how Blizzard works since 2002 like I have then maybe you'd understand why i said what I did. They almost always renege and go back on design decisions like this.

So yes, I'll stick to my what ifs that will eventually transcend to actuality thank you very much.

I must be a fool then.

The entire reason they don't have flexible mythic is not only the class issue, but the tuning issue.

Heroic is tuned far far more tightly than normal or flex. It would be an insane feat for them to figure out balance of classes AND tuning of raids to such a fine degree that you could bring in variable amounts of players.

Further reducing the number of players would again impose the same issues that they're removing the smaller raid size for. Which means it would only make sense for it to be able to flex up to a larger number of players but absolutely not down even if they could get past the tuning issues.

None of that is to mention how insanely unforgiving mechanics would flex. I just don't see it happening.

Thank you for the unnecessary raid design lesson I already knew. They can still do it, they just choose not to and you lack the imagination of how it can be done re-tuned and executed. Shit does not have to be 100% tightly tuned to be hard at all.

[Huehuecoyotl]

What? its been rigid numbers until they added flex in MoP

A rigid 20 man raid. There haven't 20 man raids since Vanilla.

[cabyio]

So you can set up a 25 man team and ensure that everyone gets to raid in normal and heroic. Then you hit Mythic and you will be asking 5 people to sit out at any given time. And you don't see this causing the slightest bit of friction within a guild? You would have to have a group of saints and angels in your team for there not to be problems.

You just make it very clear that the 20 best performers will get to do mythic (at least at first). Give them an incentive to kick some ass.

[Axelond]

So you can set up a 25 man team and ensure that everyone gets to raid in normal and heroic. Then you hit Mythic and you will be asking 5 people to sit out at any given time. And you don't see this causing the slightest bit of friction within a guild? You would have to have a group of saints and angels in your team for there not to be problems.

I guess you haven't raided with a 25 man guild in the past. First of all, Everybody raiding in a 25 man guild knows that in WoD there will only be 20 raid spots instead of 25 so staying at your A game is very important. However most successful 25 man guild already have around 30 full raiders minimum. My guild has 32 people who respond to the calendar invite every week and most farm nights we have 28-30 people expecting a raid spot. If we were to stop recruiting now we will probably struggle to fill a 20 man raid in WoD just because of people quitting or joining other guilds.

Every expansion there is always a few people that just go "Fuck it I am not leveling to 100" They might have showed up to almost every single farm night for the last months but they decided that they can't be bothered with progression raiding and leveling so they just quit the game or they just wanna play causally in WoD.

Most 25 man guilds will just keep recruiting and maintain a stable raid team and when WoD hits rotate raiders more heavily until some can't be bothered anymore and leave and you just end not recruiting someone to replace them. Do that 5 times and you got a strong WoD team.

[MoanaLisa]

Yeah I was going to say... While what I was talking about was more about raid design specifically.

There's pretty much 0 way to avoid this conversation having some bit of 10 v 25. You may as well lock the thread now if you're gonna play that card.

Discussion of how guilds of varying sizes will adapt to new conditions is fine.

People didn't like 25 man over 10 man due to 10 man generally being tuned more leniently than 25 while yielding the same rewards per player.

This is not and was the source of the warning.

[Blur4stuff]

you're overlooking the fact that many guilds have multiple raid groups and even hundreds of members

mine has multiple groups and we'll be combing forces for mythic while maintaining our more casual groups that won't do mythic

[Mahourai]

you're overlooking the fact that many guilds have multiple raid groups and even hundreds of members

mine has multiple groups and we'll be combing forces for mythic while maintaining our more casual groups that won't do mythic

Most guild mergers are not successful. Most raid group mergers within a guild are not successful. It's going to be great for your guild if you succeed, but the odds are against you and your experience will not be typical.

[Baconeggcheese]

Thank you for the unnecessary raid design lesson I already knew. They can still do it, they just choose not to and you lack the imagination of how it can be done re-tuned and executed. Shit does not have to be 100% tightly tuned to be hard at all.

Clearly you need said lesson repeated again if you still think that it would be such an easy feat that they just don't feel like it.

I look forward to the raids you design where you can back your statements.

[Kickbuttmario]

How on earth will this bite them in the ass? They have been continuosly improving raid mechanics, and have been proving that the whole 10/25 man difficulties are just too damn difficult to tune to be equal. Not to mention, they have been losing subs since Cataclysm and MoP when they made this stuff equal. If anything, ever since they started trying to make 10 and 25 man raids equal, that is when it started to bite them in the ass.

Besides, I did raiding in RIFT and I assure you, depending on how well tuned the fights, 20 man could be the best raiding difficulty for their game.

[Usagi Senshi]

Clearly you need said lesson repeated again if you still think that it would be such an easy feat that they just don't feel like it.

I look forward to the raids you design where you can back your statements.

The exact same thing can be said right back to you, bro!

Yeah, your opinion is pretty much useless and welcome to the first spot on my ignore list. You should feel honored.

[Baconeggcheese]

The exact same thing can be said right back to you, bro!

Yeah, your opinion is pretty much useless and welcome to the first spot on my ignore list. You should feel honored.

My opinion isn't my opinion, it's just regurgitating the information the devs already gave us.

Think they have a long history of making raids for a certain game.

Nice try though.

[Marrel]

WoW raid sizes has always been wrong, it should be 15 (3 tanks 3 healers 9 dps) so that it'd scale up from the fiveman groups. 20 is just better compromise than 15 at this point because it's easier for the 10man guilds to scale up instead of 25's to scale down.

I agree that the 15 person raid size would work better than 10 or 15, but 3 Tanks?
You need to look at the population of available tanks, as well as what 3 tanks implies --encounters having enough NPCs to require 3 tanks -- and if that were the case each fight would just turn into a stack and cleave fest.

[Blade and Soul]

I have not been in a hardcore raiding guild since the Burning Crusade, but that was the last time they really changed up the raid dynamic. We had the introduction of 10 man and 25 man. Our guild had ~50 raid capable people at the end of Classic WoW. We would swap members out as needed to keep the gear level of the guild somewhat even.

What happened in the Burning Crusade caused me to finally throw in the towel with hardcore raiding in a guild.

As an officer and founding member I was part of the "clique" of the first 10 man raid team for Kara. Due to the clique nature we rarely let other people join our team (was usually when we were down a person or so from the first team clique). I felt this was wrong. The first team should have split and formed a second team after we had the raid close to farm status. That way the second team wouldn't have to start from scratch.

I reminded the other officers that before TBC was released, we made sure we had a balanced guild and kept all members of the guild as raid ready as possible.

However, they refused to let go of the clique and my suggestion went upon deaf ears. Their philosophy was that the other members of the guild should make their own groups and, here's the key, not depend on being carried by them.

This pissed me off, so I took matters into my own hands. I left the first team and started the second 10 man group. Yes, it was like starting all over, but if we were going to raid 25 man content we were going to need it, and at least 5 more people raid ready as well.

However, by this time the damage had already been done. The guild was fractured and people began leaving. Even people part of the so called "A" team began to leave one by one.

What was left was a shell of what the guild used to be. That was the end for me. Now I only raid every so often with other guilds or PUGs so I don't have to relive what happened in the past.

Anyways, that's my story to add to the bonfire.

I fully believe we will see the same thing happen for mythic raiding guilds. Five or more people are going to get cut and cliques will form once again. Although the number difference is smaller (25 to 20, or 10 to 20 instead of 40 to 10, or 40 to 25), I see it still happening.

[Mormolyce]

It's already started - the push for glory as every single ten man tries frantically to remake itself into a 20 man Mythic capable outfit.

*Every single 10m HM guild.

So like, 1% of all guilds.

[Spotnick]

You are aware that 25 man guilds will cut players in the next few months making a pool of available players bigger don't you?

They might not do it from the start because you can bring up to 30 people in heroic, but as soon as they jump in mythic, a lot of players won't be happy to see bench actions when they had a guaranteed raid spot before.