Okay guys and gals, I'm thinking of posting this to the official forums when I renew my account and am able to do so, I wanted to come here first and see what the community at MMO-Champion thought of it before I pursued. From what I understand, the end game has lost a little of it's feel with the shared lockouts for 10 and 25 and this is my suggestion to invigorate the raiding community! Let me know what you think!!
"Dear Blizzard,
I was thinking about one of the issues with raiding that you mentioned when you decided to merge 10 and 25 man raid lockouts. If I remember correctly, your biggest reason for making this change was so that players did not feel like they had to complete both 10 and 25 versions every week to stay competitive with gear. You also felt that 10 man guilds were being punished by not being allowed access to high end gear, and also being punished for being in a small guild. People who wanted to raid only 25 man content were being forced to do 10 man versions of dungeons in order to badge farm and keep up with the normalcy of the raiding community.
Now, to raise my topic of interest, it seems as though there is a lot less to do in the raiding community now that only one lockout can be performed each week. It sounds, from the general concensus of the WoW population that the game has lost a little bit of it's fun factor. It sounds like the majority of people feel there is less to do in Cataclysm. I'm thinking has to do with the limitation of raiding each dungeon only once per week.
Some of the flavor of raiding has gone down since this change, as some people in 25 man guilds would like to be able to drop down to 10 man versions and have fun with possibly a tight knit group within their guild, or to do dungeons with just friends, rather than a large guild and raid group. Some people also just like to do 10 mans as a less serious endeavor, while still being challenging.
My proposal to you is that you separate 10 and 25 man lockouts once again, but keep each boss dropping the same loot at the same item level. This would solve a few issues:
1. This will give guilds who want to remain small and only do 10 mans the option to do so, WHILE maintaining the option of doing a 25 man pug or pugging members for a 25 man if they wish.
2. The gear being the same item level for both 10 and 25 man versions will make it unnecessary to do both versions of a raid per week. You have an equal chance in 10 or 25 man of getting the gear you want, and seeing the content.
Finally, a point that could make it feel like even less of a necessary evil of having separate lockouts. Make it so you only gain Valor Points for killing a boss the first time in the week. What I mean by this is.. If you decide to do 10 man BWD and kill Omnitron Defense System, you gain Valor Points for killing the boss. Later in the week, if you decide to pug 25 man BWD and kill Omnitron Defense System, you still have a chance at receiving loot, but your Valor Points are limited to one version of a boss per week. This way, people will not feel like they MUST run both 10 and 25 man versions in order to farm VP, but can do so if they want another shot at drops for the week. This would cause:
3. 25 man guilds will not be forced into doing 10 mans as well if they do not wish to.
I feel like a system similar to this would give the most flexibility to the community to choose which level of involvement they want to pursue without punishing people for not doing both versions of each raid every week."
TL;DR: separate 10/25 lockouts, same ilvl loot, VP for first version of boss you kill each week. No grind for VP doing both versions, and no feel of having to do both lockouts to maximize benefit if you don't want to, because technically, you aren't losing anything.