First, I wanted to say two things. I am one of two guild leaders of a 25 man guild that has survived since BC, and know full well what that has entailed the past few years and on a personal level I like this new system. From the perspective of the 25 man raiding point of view however, it is crap. I am going to explain in my own words, though I believe others have said similar or the same things.
First of all, for me personally, the idea of previous bosses still having a chance to drop loot that would be an upgrade to me is really attractive. The number of farm bosses that we kill each week that drop absolutely nothing for me and the raid make those fights in some respects rather average, and simply glorified trash fillers while we get to the boss we are trying to kill.
So my initial reaction as I was reading this post, was of interest and liking the idea. Then I thought about how this would affect the raid and I am very concerned. Two concerns really.
The first concern that I have is that this loot system is no different than the current system just with a higher item level. 25 mans have for some time now, and 10 man raiders will agree, had an easier time gearing people than the 10 mans. Many drops are simply easier to come by in the 25 man version and the number of loot drops has been tuned to make it more likely that 25 man raiders gear faster.
This new loot system, is exactly the same. These items still drop in both 10 and 25 and in the same case as the current system it will be somewhat easier to get geared in the 25 man version than the 10 man version.
What gets me with this is that this same system is one we have actually been using now since T11 - and it is quite clear that it has made no difference. Even the additional loot drop added back in for mists has not helped. So, if you could explain the reasoning you have that this will help the situation I am all ears cause frankly, at the very least case scenario, this does nothing at all to help fix the problem.
Now my second concern is an even greater one. It is this concern that I believe has now convinced me that no one in WoW development actually runs a 25 man guild. And I do not mean participate, but actually do the leg work in the organisational areas such as myself and fellow GL has done the past few years to stay afloat.
See in order to run successful progression oriented 25 man guild you have to maintain a floating roster anywhere between 35 and 40 people to cover the nights things happen, and let's be honest, real life tends to take precedence. In order to keep this roster viable, and this is by the way one of the most time consuming aspects of running the guild, we have to ensure that those people not always in on a progression boss, still have opportunities to get gear. This is so that newer players just joined and maybe on trial, or current members still lacking gear, are able to rotate in to bosses where current members do not need gear.
In fact the call on vent for each and every single boss is "Who needs gear off this boss?" - get names then "who doesn't?" and then those people when possible get sat for those people coming in. This works quite well. It gives those players that may be raiding on every boss a break should they choose to do so, or at the very least an opportunity to help fellow raiders out by offering their spot on a boss that no longer drops upgrades for them.
This new system throws that out the window.
Now that there are rare drops that are significant upgrades that drop off these bosses, it is highly unlikely that during progression anyone in the raid is going to have "all the upgrades off that boss". This means that when it comes time to trying to rotate people through our farm bosses no one is going to want to sit for them.
This means that now as GL's we have to decide who sits. We are going to have to come up with some fair way to do so in order to alleviate the concerns of members missing raid bosses which means more work for me and my fellow GL and on top of that it also means that those that we do choose to sit have to have the situation where they have been forcefully sat on bosses that drop gear for them and be unable to choose to participate.
So As far as I can tell, this system will, "best case scenario" have no effect whatsoever on the raid size situation, and the worst case scenario, and one I do not see not happening to be frank, is that you have just single handedly made the running of 25 mans more difficult.
I have to give props to you guys. Never, after waiting years for a response to this situation, and now months of you saying you had ideas in mind, did it occur to me that the situation you were going to try would be so bad that you would actually make matters worse than they already are.