Legion Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Lorentz]

I guess DKs are as close as it gets (Mythic Xul/manny)

And mages/rogues for Xhul.
Then couple warlocks for Tyrant.
Disc priest/paladins for Iron Maidens.
Blackhand that required 3 hunters/boomkins/rogues.

[Arbs]

I'll just say it: I don't really understand why people have strong opinions on the 20-man Mythic size. It seems like there are a lot of appeals to nostalgia for the good old days without any particular reasoning behind it.

Why can't people just deal with the restriction? It seems like such a non-issue.

I'm sure my opinion is different, but alot of people who prbly raid now didn't start playing or raiding until Wrath or Cata & their stuck in the Cata mindset of less people is easier. Ya you get less gear, but the most common thing that happened during Cata was your guild was 10 man or 25man. If you couldn't kill anything as 25man group than you switched to 10man which created cliques. An it was a good chance those 10 people were the only ones raiding & you had to leave the guild to find another group.

10man got popular for that reason & 25man started to die as they were on a shared lockout (Worse design decision ever), I remember each guild I was in or other on the server I knew about had a goal to do 25man, but most of those guilds never got there.

People want to do the raid content that is fine, but if they really want to do it, they should stop whinning & find a group that can do the content.

[Arbs]

10-man wasn't always easier. There were many instances where having fewer people led to a significantly smaller margin of error.

I would agree that shared lockouts was horrendous. It hurt the community at the time and it just wasn't fun. At all.

But we all know that was the intent, 10 man had the small margin for error which made it much easier than it would be on with 24 other people.

If a group could down something with 25 people Guild or pug they didn't switch until they couldn't.

[Deleted]

But we all know that was the intent, 10 man had the small margin for error which made it much easier than it would be on with 24 other people.

If a group could down something with 25 people Guild or pug they didn't switch.

Which was fixed by 3 vs 1 BR. And if someone died in 10 man you lost more healing/DPS potential than you'd in 25 man.

[Arbs]

Plus 25man gave more loot per person and in in ToT and SoO better loot since there was a higher chance for warforged.

I still hate the warforged system, I think they could do it better.

[Smaxy]

25 man was perfect.

20 man is okay.

[emilylorange]

It's 2016 and we're having the 10 vs 25 man difficulty argument still, for some reason.

10's easier to organize and harder to coordinate on specific fights for those who want to nitpick.



Raid community still has not recovered from the damage the shared lockout did to it - which is a far, far more important thing to argue about going forward.

[Nuckels]

It's... really not quite as easy as that.
I'm not confident that 10 man mythic would reinvigorate the raiding scene, but your post is a fairly dramatic oversimplification of player dynamics.

That or your idea of a succesfull 10man guild is different to mine and that is why you believe it won't work.

If the basic premiss of the two raidgroups of 10players is the same, and that motivation is strong enough then it will work, its just rare for this to occur. The above is one of the core reasons that most guilds die right now.

[Baconeggcheese]

I'll just say it: I don't really understand why people have strong opinions on the 20-man Mythic size. It seems like there are a lot of appeals to nostalgia for the good old days without any particular reasoning behind it.

Why can't people just deal with the restriction? It seems like such a non-issue.

Coming from 25 dropping down to 20 it was extremely restrictive on the number of people we could keep happy and just made everything about guild management harder. There were a lot of shrinking pains at the start of the xpac, and even still we feel that restriction when recruiting etc.

It also made it substantially harder to actually have the roster for.. all specs being represented, due to simply not having room for more players.

On the other end of the coin, managing a large guild is a huge task. It's basically running a small business, which many people simply won't be capable of even if they wanted to try the larger size and many people don't.

Personally I don't really see what blizzard gained by switching to 20 man only, I don't think the benefits offset the hurt it caused on both sides.

[emilylorange]

It really hasn't. It was a huge blow to guilds, pugging, the community as a whole.

In Wrath we raided one (sometimes two) teams of 10-mans and we would team up with a partner guild/pugs for 25, if/when we had the time. When we had to choose we simply stuck with our guild and didn't pug anymore.

In wrath the guild did ok - I was the 10 man raid leader and we were actually able to clear 11/12 and get everyone their drakes (and even sell a few) before the change happened, so when the change came we were able to just jump into helping the 25 group get their cheives and work on heroic LK there.

When it killed the guild was about a month into firelands - and the steady attrition of 'we don't have enough to raid 25, so we're going to break into two 10s were either both groups does medicore or one group does well while the other struggles' turned in to 'only enough people log on for one 10 group' to 'lol the guild leader stole the bank and transferred to a better server'.

Haven't had a guild worth being in since. lol

I'll just say it: I don't really understand why people have strong opinions on the 20-man Mythic size. It seems like there are a lot of appeals to nostalgia for the good old days without any particular reasoning behind it.

Why can't people just deal with the restriction? It seems like such a non-issue.

Having every other mode be flexible and putting in a hard cap for 20 means I see many, many struggling guilds who can field 17-18 people in a night clear Heroic, and get stuck there because no one wants to be recruited to a guild that 'can't quite' make it to mythic (especially on small servers where you can't get reliable pugs or until recently you had to transfer to even TRIAL) - and while you're recruiting you get 4 people and 4 people who get tired of waiting quit or leave without any warning

so you are perpetually stuck at 17-18 people growing impatient and mad because you couldn't see into the future and guess which classes weren't going to show up this week.

PS never going to be recruit officer again

[Krom2040]

Coming from 25 dropping down to 20 it was extremely restrictive on the number of people we could keep happy and just made everything about guild management harder. There were a lot of shrinking pains at the start of the xpac, and even still we feel that restriction when recruiting etc.

It also made it substantially harder to actually have the roster for.. all specs being represented, due to simply not having room for more players.

On the other end of the coin, managing a large guild is a huge task. It's basically running a small business, which many people simply won't be capable of even if they wanted to try the larger size and many people don't.

Personally I don't really see what blizzard gained by switching to 20 man only, I don't think the benefits offset the hurt it caused on both sides.

You're still not really explaining why it made things harder. Obviously it was a challenge for some guilds to cut 5 people from a roster, but that's a relatively short-lived problem, especially since people are constantly quitting the game as it is, requiring more recruitment basically all the time.

If anything, it seems like having two 10-man raid teams lines up pretty well with a 20-man raid group.

Basically I just get this strong vibe where people somehow think raiding was better "back then" for reasons that are largely independent of the raid size, and they're projecting their feelings about that onto the raid size debate.

[emilylorange]

If anything, it seems like having two 10-man raid teams lines up pretty well with a 20-man raid group.

Only if people don't care what role they play and who's giving orders.

Guild mergers are a disaster, every single time, because you're trying to mush two cliques together while re-organizing the leadership and 'pecking order'.

There's a reason everyone at a company feels their stomach tighten whenever they hear the word 'merger' - they anticipate six months of hell and wondering if they even have a position anymore. Same rules apply, just with lower stakes.

Making a 20 man guild is not as simple as 'math!'

[Lucrece]

It made it harder in a social sense, at least to me. The 10 man raiding was intimate. With 20 it feels like a crowd. On a 10 man we could field our inner group of friends and simply raid heroics (mythics) without drama.

Now it's a robotic recruitment mill to keep up the 20 man roster, and the fact is that the more people you introduce, the more potential tensions and annoyances and conflicts. Loot was easy to sort out on a 10 man, on a 20 man we need to change to ridiculous EPGP systems with loot council since we are no longer dealing in a group of friends who trust each other.

It's basically the difference between a relaxed raiding clique having to grow up into a raiding enterprise. The logistical problems start to erode enjoyment of the game.

[Krom2040]

Only if people don't care what role they play and who's giving orders.

Guild mergers are a disaster, every single time, because you're trying to mush two cliques together while re-organizing the leadership and 'pecking order'.

There's a reason everyone at a company feels their stomach tighten whenever they hear the word 'merger' - they anticipate six months of hell and wondering if they even have a position anymore. Same rules apply, just with lower stakes.

Making a 20 man guild is not as simple as 'math!'

Why would this problem be any different with a 25-man raid instead of a 20-man raid?

[Baconeggcheese]

You're still not really explaining why it made things harder. Obviously it was a challenge for some guilds to cut 5 people from a roster, but that's a relatively short-lived problem, especially since people are constantly quitting the game as it is, requiring more recruitment basically all the time.

If anything, it seems like having two 10-man raid teams lines up pretty well with a 20-man raid group.

Basically I just get this strong vibe where people somehow think raiding was better "back then" for reasons that are largely independent of the raid size, and they're projecting their feelings about that onto the raid size debate.

Never said the raiding was better, I don't think the raiding has changed much at all. The biggest difference was the size, which is largely arbitrary. Which is again why I said that I don't see what blizzard gained from restricting it to 20 only.

As far as harder... it made it harder on social dynamics, different problems if you were a 10 man guild or a 25 man guild, but either way problems. If you don't know how a guild is run to be able to understand why the constraint creates issues on both the 10 and 25 man end... I'm honestly too lazy to try to explain everything that goes into running a guild and the problems people run into trying to maintain a large roster and then having to shrink or grow that roster.

[emilylorange]

Why would this problem be any different with a 25-man raid instead of a 20-man raid?

Well #1 I'm speaking from a position of 'if everything else is flexible, mythic should be too'
and #2 you're removing the conversation from the context it exists in to ask overly simplified gotcha questions instead of having a discussion.

20 and 25 wouldn't make a difference if it weren't for Blizzard's asinine decisions leading up to this point, I agree - but that's a fictional situation that doesn't exist so the question is objectively pointless.

[Krom2040]

Never said the raiding was better, I don't think the raiding has changed much at all. The biggest difference was the size, which is largely arbitrary. Which is again why I said that I don't see what blizzard gained from restricting it to 20 only.

As far as harder... it made it harder on social dynamics, different problems if you were a 10 man guild or a 25 man guild, but either way problems. If you don't know how a guild is run to be able to understand why the constraint creates issues on both the 10 and 25 man end... I'm honestly too lazy to try to explain everything that goes into running a guild and the problems people run into trying to maintain a large roster and then having to shrink or grow that roster.

It seems like they offered flexible Heroic raiding so that smaller guilds could have an opportunity to participate in challenging content. Are you saying that Mythic raiding is the only type of raiding worth considering, then?

It seems like they attempted to offer one "really hard" tier with very precise requirements, because it's really hard to do a lot of fine-tuning if you can't do a reliable number of players. They also offered multiple flexible raiding difficulties so that people who aren't on the razor's edge could still have difficult challenges. Are you basically saying that the flexible raiding just isn't working, or that they should have 10-man as well as 20-man Mythic content as well as flexible raiding, or what?

It seems like there are a lot of miscellaneous complaints bundled up into a big blanket statement of "things were better back in 10 vs. 25".

[Drekmar]

Meh, no build this week.

[Pandtar]

The wait is real

[Krom2040]

Well #1 I'm speaking from a position of 'if everything else is flexible, mythic should be too'
and #2 you're removing the conversation from the context it exists in to ask overly simplified gotcha questions instead of having a discussion.

20 and 25 wouldn't make a difference if it weren't for Blizzard's asinine decisions leading up to this point, I agree - but that's a fictional situation that doesn't exist so the question is objectively pointless.

Which asinine decisions? Do you disagree with the premise that it's hard to have really tightly-tuned content when you can't make assumptions about how many players there are?

I'm sorry you think that I'm asking unfair questions, but I'm just not seeing persuasive arguments for why 25-man raiding needs to make a return. I'm just seeing a grab bag of issues that people feel justify their opinion without really backing it up one way or the other. "You just don't understand raiding" isn't really an argument on its own, for that matter.