20 Man Mythic: Success or Failure?

[Lilija]

What I don't understand is the I like bigger raids thus its the only way to play mentality. I prefer smaller raid sizes I raided 40, 25, 10, and now 20 and I by far enjoyed the 10 more than any of the others but I don't and have never wanted to block those that prefer larger sizes from doing what they enjoy. We had a system that allowed both that while it caused arguments between people trying to wave their E-peen around largely worked well for 2 xpacs.

What it looks like to me is there are a lot of people out there who were upset when 10 mans came about because some of their raiders left the 25 man guild they were in previously (like I myself did giving up an officer position on a server first guild) opting for the 10 man route because the raid size fit them better and that caused problems or killed their previously successful 25 man. These people had the same options then that they are spouting off now, merge or recruit to fill the roster and keep raiding the size you prefer but they ran into issues finding people to fill those slots however it can't possibly be because most of the player-base just preferred the smaller groups no it had to be because the 10 man was evil and easy and was stealing away their raiders blinding them from the true light of the larger raid sizes.

I have raided in every raid size this game has to offer and at the highest level in each and I continue to raid 20M today however my enjoyment in raids today isn't close to what it was the last two xpacs and that is 100% the fault of 20M

In the perfect world Mythic would be flex as well. But that perfect world doesn't exist. Blizzard was unable to balance the hardests content around around various raid sizes. They've tried for 2 expantions and each attempt to fix the issues existing there created 5 more issues. 20man Mythic isn't the perfect solution. But it's a working compromise. Yes, it wasn't supposed to satisfy everyone. It was supposed to create a stable foundation of hardcore raiding that works.

Unfortunately, the coexistance of 10 and 25 man for the hardest content ment the slow and painfull death of 25man guilds. Why you might ask? Before people are lazy and will ALWAYS chose the easier route. And 10 mans were the easier route for obtaining the best rewards. You think there weren't people stuck in 10man raiding because all of the 25man guilds on their server died off? You see, people who want to raid in bigger raids don't really have a potential to lead a bigger guild.

There was ofc one more issue. Lack of entry raiding content in Cata basicly stopped the flow of new raiders. That was the reason many guilds turned into 10mans back then. Cata was a 10man or die expantion. Only the best guilds survived that period because they still were able to live for few more month canibalizing dying 25mans below them. Imo, if flex didn't happen, any raiding above 10man would be gone by now. Flex was a breath of freshness into quite messed up raiding scene.

But as I stated in the begining, top difficulty cannot be optimized around various raid sizes because the challenges switch depending on the raid size. If Mythic were flex I can assure you, people would base their tactics around the most optimal amount of people a cheese the encounters to the maximum.

[voidillusion]

"Hardcore" is a question of attitude in my book, not time investment. We also only raid 3 days a week and do Mythic, but to describe any of us as "casual" would be silly, and we play way more than that during the week.

"Casual" to me simply means not to be striving to play optimally or caring about that (and there's nothing wrong with that) and generally struggling to get into, yet alone clear, the highest raiding difficulty. Whether that's due to inability or lack of interest, whatever.

Casual here|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|Hardcore here

Lots of space in beetween, not everyone needs to be labbeled.

Hardcore have always been the cutting edge guys that wait for the servers to open and go non stop until everything is dead. If you raid 2/3 days per week, around 3 hours per day and consider yourself hardcore, not meant to be a insult, but you're plain dilusional.

[markos82]

I can buy into a lot of arguments against 20m Mythic, this just isn't one of them.

If you have the desire to raid, there are a ton of guilds out there for you.

Not when you are on a " dead" realm and when many guild struggle to find players....

There can be a ton of guild, but when you are in a 11'/13M guild I dont think you will be joining guild that just started doing mythics... So nope...

[voidillusion]

Not when you are on a " dead" realm and when many guild struggle to find players....

There can be a ton of guild, but when you are in a 11'/13M guild I dont think you will be joining guild that just started doing mythics... So nope...

Or when you are limited in your schedule and can only raid in a set period, like late night, even on this department, the fragmentation of 10s allowed to easily distribute ppl according to their time availability and personal preference.

[Deleted]

20 men mythic IS a success - if you couldnt make it your not mythic material.

[Deleted]

You know what ticks me off the most? Because of 20 man mythic they put absolutely zero effort into balancing flex, effectively removing 10 man heroic as well.

Nobody in their right mind is going to struggle through a horribly designed 10 man heroic when they can just get twenty more warm bodies from trade and faceroll their way through it.

[Kyriani]

I was happy with my guild in MoP when 10 man was a thing. Mythic ruined that. The guild still exists and raids... they merged with another guild to meet the 20 man quota... but the heart... everything that made the guild a place I wanted to be basically disappeared. It's hard enough finding 10 people whose food I don't want to dose with cyanide in this game... telling me I need find double that and it's my fault if I don't is bullshit.

Basically I was happy with how things were... and now I am not. I had the choice to "adapt" to a change I didn't like or stop playing. I chose the latter. The biggest thing that's driven me away from wow is Blizzard's incessant need to reinvent the wheel every single xpac. There's something to be said about consistency and reliability which, frankly, we have none of anymore. It's a different game every friggin xpac and right now it's not a game I want to play. I didn't make the design decisions that drove me away. And any objections made by myself or others at the time were heartily ignored.

That's not my fault.

That's not up to me to adapt to.

It's not up to me to swallow bitter pills and "deal with it".

My responsibility is to myself and making sure I'm getting a good experience for my money.

It's Blizzard who has to make a game I want to play and they failed miserably at it with WoD for a number of different reasons including mythic. I'm fully capable of doing Mythic with 19 other people... I just don't WANT to. And that's not my fault or something I need to fix. But it did break the happy home that was my guild for near a decade.

[Osmeric]

Oh it's a Jaylock! Should I bite?

He's being provocative, but it's a reasonable question to ask.

[Raiju]

Perfectly summed up.

Still waiting to here a valid argument behind T11 causing the death of 25m guilds that doesn't sum down to 'half our guild preferred 10 man'

[voidillusion]

I do recall 25 man guilds suffering a lot at the time in the servers i played, can't provide real reasons other than that 10 was probably more enticing for the player base at the time.

I just don't see how you can solve a problem creating exactly the opposite one.

[miffy23]

Casual here|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|Hardcore here

Lots of space in beetween, not everyone needs to be labbeled.

Hardcore have always been the cutting edge guys that wait for the servers to open and go non stop until everything is dead. If you raid 2/3 days per week, around 3 hours per day and consider yourself hardcore, not meant to be a insult, but you're plain dilusional.

Blame people that regularly insert whatever they want "casual" or hardcore to mean.
You're right that not everyone needs to be labeled, but the amount of real "friends&family" guilds that "casually" clear Mythic is...ridiculously small. Those "small bands of brothers" that raid 2, 3 days a week and barely scratch former HC and now have no chance at Mythic, those are casuals.

Conversely I know plenty of players that spend absolutely absurd amounts of time playing fresh content, and usually clear within the first month or so of a Tier - and yet some of them are hardly what I would call excellent players

That's why time investment doesn't really describe a raider accurately in my book.

[babybopAF]

Believe it or not there are people who suffer from it. I had a couple of people with it back in an old guild but they listened and understood so tbh I don't give a fuck if they speak or not. If they perform well then that's good enough it shows they have listened to what is being explained or watched a guide extensively.

Right. I was offering a practical, on the ground solution they could employ to increase confidence. I wasn't saying they were shit raiders because they're afraid to speak. Lol

[Osmeric]

5.5m at last report, afaik doesn't include token buyers

June 2015 - 5.6m
Sept 2015 - 5.5m

No, it does include token buyers.

[Relapses]

Still waiting to here a valid argument behind T11 causing the death of 25m guilds that doesn't sum down to 'half our guild preferred 10 man'

Raid participation from T8-T15:



I've linked this a few times before but it very clearly shows that 25M HC raiding was all but eradicated in Cata. Also, please do not interpret this graph as showing 10M HC was more popular prior to T11 since 25M guilds had 1.5x more players so even at 5.5k the number of players raiding 25 in T10 nearly doubled those doing 10s.

[Osmeric]

Cataclysm also had no large sub drop in t11- it went from 12-11.4m over 3 months.

Cataclysm lost 600K Q1 2011, 300K Q2, and 800K Q3. Understand the Q3 loss includes China, which started on patch 4.1 in July.

[Bookofblade]

Raid participation from T8-T15:

I've linked this a few times before but it very clearly shows that 25M HC raiding was all but eradicated in Cata. Also, please do not interpret this graph as showing 10M HC was more popular prior to T11 since 25M guilds had 1.5x more players so even at 5.5k the number of players raiding 25 in T11 nearly doubled those doing 10s.

All this shows me is people were forced from 10 mans to try to save something that was obviously dying, maybe it should of been left to die as all great things eventually do

Edit: It does shed some light onto some of the venom from those that prefer the larger raid sizes tho. They saw their preferred size dying and they are upset knowing if the options were returned to the players it would likely die off completely. Just sad they get upset with those resistant to being forced into reviving what they enjoy

[Relapses]

All this shows me is people were forced from 10 mans to try to save something that was obviously dying, maybe it should of been left to die as all great things eventually do

...but how can you say that when the number of players doing 25M up to that point was fairly consistent?

[Raiju]

What exactly does this show that the difficulty difference between T11 and most of wrath doesn't? Surely if T11 killed 25man due to 10man you'd see plenty of 25mans in T11 that were gone for T12 - which means they either failed to even kill bosses, quit after the 'final boss' of warcraft, or quit in the content drought of wrath?

Unless you want to be a little more forthcoming with the details of your graph.

@Osmeric compare those numbers to the 25man drop - it's not even possible to argue that the population was the reason for lower raid uptake.

[voidillusion]

Wrath 10s had lower ilvl gear than 25s at the time, this is most likely the reason for the difference.

[Deja Thoris]

Raid participation from T8-T15:



I've linked this a few times before but it very clearly shows that 25M HC raiding was all but eradicated in Cata. Also, please do not interpret this graph as showing 10M HC was more popular prior to T11 since 25M guilds had 1.5x more players so even at 5.5k the number of players raiding 25 in T10 nearly doubled those doing 10s.

Theres no other conclusion to draw other than people preferred 10 man.

Or do you seriously think the thought process of everybody that switched was "We love 25 mans a lot more but lol path of least resistance!"

If you truly think this you're deluded. It's pretty common knowledge that people interpret data to support their own biases. No place more so than here.