Cataclysm Raid Progression Refinements

[SolidSnake]

This is the most bullshit thing Blizzard has done to date. So not only do the players that actually raid 25 mans lose the opportunity to have some fun in 10 mans, but there is going to be nothing to do for the entire rest of the week once all of the easy content is cleared? And taking out any and all incentive to do 25 mans is clearly the way to appease the casuals since assembling 25 people to not stand in fire is just too damn hard!

[Nejm]

Currently:

-Raid 10 and 25 on Main (VoA for badges, ICC and occasionally ToC for trinkets, Weekly raid quests, random heroic for emblems on daily bases)
-Log primary alt (clone class/role from main char) and do exactly the same runs both in 10 and 25.
-Log secondary alt (different class/role from main char) and do exactly the same runs both in 10 and 25 man.

In Cataclysm:

-Raid 10 OR 25 on main char.
-No longer need for clone alt
-Log secondary alt and raid 10 with friends or 25 PuG or something.

From hardcore PoV this change sounds like pretty good deal to me. A lot more free time for RL focus while still achieving and not falling behind on gear, progression, achievements etc. I absolutely dislike PvP, and when I am not raiding I am usually doing heroics, playing/raiding with alts and/or just farming crap while enjoying my favorite music. I believe there will be enough content to keep me busy on my main char for a few raid night per week, judging by the statement that there will be more than one medium sized raids simultaneously in Cataclysm opposed to one raid per tier of content we have now. I don't want to imagine running several raid instances on each of my character in both 10/25 man without passing out on the keyboard, so if they want to increase the end game content in Cataclysm the only solution is to change the raiding system if they want to prevent for dedicated and competitive players to burn out.

I've been reading most of the posts here and I think most of the people the casual and the hardcore are happy with the changes. The most vocal nay-sayers are those who are afraid of changes, despite the fact that the changes might be actually good they will always whine and defend the current state no matter how bad it is just because they are afraid to try something different. And I am sure if this plays out to be bad raid-system design Blizzard will change it again on the next content patch (and ofc another massive whine on forums will follow :P).

[Supercool1122]

Wow honestly? This is compleatly stupid, it makes 25 mans pointless. Its alot easier to get 10 people together and kill something than 25 not so much because of the amounts but because you do not have to rely on 24 other people just 9 and it is stupid to give the people who run 10 mans the same gear. Don't get me wrong here I like 10 mans, but I use them more as goofing off with friends and now i can't do that because if it happens to be the same raid I get locked out for running it with my guild. Two thumbs way down blizz.

[RumlyD]

As someone who is currently part of a fairly casual 25 man guild, but also raids 10 man heroic modes as part of a smaller core group within the guild... I approve of this change quite a lot.

10 man is my prefered format, just because I find it to be a heck of a lot more fun playing in a smaller team with a pretty relaxed atmosphere while still being able to beat harder content. I don't really give that much importance to the loot aspect because for me loot is just another part of the fun experience of progressing in a team, it's not what I play for and the same goes for my team mates.

The reason I like this change though is because it really removes the grindy aspect of feeling like you have to participate in multiple lockouts of the same raid in order to be the best you can be. At the moment, for example, everyone in my ten man group participates in the guild organised 25 man raids, in order to gain drops to help with 10 hc. The guild 25 man is nowhere near like anything as successful as our ten man team, and it just doesn't feel that great to go back to that same raidzone for the second time each week to acquire more emblems and loots. When both raidsizes share the lockout, it will be nice to just down the bosses once for the week, and be 'done' for the week leaving plenty of time to farm consumables and do some dailies or pvp or whatever and still have plenty of time to slack off irl.

Overall the nice thing about it I think is that by doing this, Blizz is going to be able to slow down the quite scary rate at which people are able to gear up in the game at the moment by doing multiple runs. When you get one shot a particular item each reset, rather than a shot at a 25 item or a similar 10 item, getting an upgrade might actually feel more significant. In today's loot bonanza sort of model with so many bosses spread out across raid sizes, items flow pretty easily, so naturally it's going to seem weird and different in the start, but in the end people will adjust and get used to the new style I think.

End of the day I think it's a pretty clever move from Blizz and something that will add some meaning and depth to the raiding game that is a bit lacking in the current scene.

[Canbie]

This is a giant slap to the face. 25man will be more or less pointless now and with only 1 lockout a week people will clear it in 1-2 days and then go afk for the rest of the week?

Good. I won't feel the need to play so much. Maybe you know, do real life stuff again?

[daburton]

Imo, the migration towards 10 man raids just seems logical to me. The playerbase is getting older and I think Blizzard realizes this. When WoW first came out they had "x" number of players that were around that they could try to tap into. It worked. The ranks swelled by millions but I would bet that as "x" is growing smaller (the player base) the retention of that player base is becoming more important. Early on in the game you could do some things that may alienate a 1, 2 or even 10 players and "force" them to leave the game because you had 10, 20 and 100 players to take their places. This isnt the case any more. I think retention for a lot of people isnt a matter of "making dungeons harder or a challenge" but that now retention is more like "Im out of school and working and have less hours to play or I have a wife or kids and have less hours to play but want as much bang for my buck in the games I do play".
Needing to get more bang for the buck, as it were. The "bang" in this case is the gear, so players who want/need to be more casual want to be able to gear up, maybe not as quickly, but at least to the same level as players that have more time on their hands.
I liken this to my situation. I started Wow almost from the beginning, about a month after it was released. To date, on all my toons, I have well over 600 days played in the game. Not as sick a number as some people, but still, 2 full years playing a video game (out of what is it now, 6?.... ) well thats just sad. To make matters worse, of that 600 hours, the first 500 of those hours were played within the first 3 years of the game. Yes, that equates into spending roughly 12 hours every single day of the week plugged into a video game raiding, questing or pvping. At that time I was in a more hardcore guild. We raided 5 or 6 nights a week, 4-5 hours a night. After 3 years, I burned out. I scaled back and started playing more casually. It wasnt until WOTLK that I was able to "raid" to any kind of measure. Now, I can pug a 10 or 25 man ICC and progress fairly far into it in 1 or 2 days tops. So my 6 or 7 day weeks are now 1 or 2 day weeks, with 2 or 3 hours each night tops. That means I can have a real life now, handle responsibilities but still come into wow and have fun and know that I can gear up fairly decently in the amount of time I have to spend in game.
I dont think Im alone in how my gaming has changed over the course of WOW. Myself, im looking forward to Catyclysm even more with these changes.

[treston323]

My desire to continue in cataclysm just dropped. Hopefully blizzard will rethink this. It doesn't matter how much they try to balance them, 10mans will always be easier by default.

[Caradinist]

Well. People posted more on the Celestial steed than on this change, so it can't be that bad.

I actually welcome this change.

On the contrary they can make the 10 man one fairly hard, however the 25 man will probably be the 10m version with more health and 15 extra people (almost as it is now).

Some fights were pretty hard on 10 man when they started this system. 10 man 3 drake Sartharrion was certainly harder than 25 man version, as an example.

Even before this information, the game already is getting many radical changes in this expansion, so anything is possible.

[Barrano247]

Hopefully this means that people cant use 10 man as a easy way to see content, either bliz will make everything easy and lose respect from all the original gamers (Warhammer is my next step if it happens) or bliz will restore stuff into being challenging, but not impossibly so (i.e. Kara, gruuls, SSC/TK, hyjal, BT before nerf of course) instead of having stuff being difficult relating to gear like in WOTLK, as when naxx was first released 25 man was just as hard as some of ICC, and uldaur being just as hard as icc.

[Arck908]

My desire to continue in cataclysm just dropped. Hopefully blizzard will rethink this. It doesn't matter how much they try to balance them, 10mans will always be easier by default.

On the contrary they can make the 10 man one fairly hard, however the 25 man will probably be the 10m version with more health and 15 extra people (almost as it is now).

[Octavious]

This has interesting implications for class balance.

A typical 25-man raid is going to have 3 tanks and 6 healers. A 10-man raid will have 2 tanks and 3 healers.

If 50 people are raiding 25-man content, they need 6 tanks and 12 healers.
If 50 people are raiding 10-man content, they need 10 tanks and 15 healers.

Ouch.

[Clay]

I feel the same anger now as I did when they made 40's obsolete.

[Lexoid]

Yap, this is the end I tell ya!
At wotlk release it started from a slight shift of game balance in favor of people who lack the time or comprehension to play the game. Making the "special needs group" into the "main costumer", while people who actually NEED a timesink, and want the game to be as challenging as possible became the said "special needs group", thus spawning "hard modes" to keep them quiet while busy people and retards swim around in gear.

And now this. "Let's make the game even moooore casual friendly! Let's make it for people who don't want or just can't play! DERP!".

[Bol]

erm qq, re 10=25, dont need to say more

[tilgare]

So someone sum up the last 104 (!?) pages for me.

"Blizz fails because I disagree with their decision. I have no basis for any argument."

"NOULOLFLAME."

"BADCOMEBACKLOLIMSOSMART."

Right?

Incidentally, I'm not terribly hurt by the changes... 5-6 night raid weeks just aren't for me. I don't mind the idea of focusing all your content progression in one lockout or the other.

[Thundercougr]

This is the most bullshit thing Blizzard has done to date. So not only do the players that actually raid 25 mans lose the opportunity to have some fun in 10 mans, but there is going to be nothing to do for the entire rest of the week once all of the easy content is cleared? And taking out any and all incentive to do 25 mans is clearly the way to appease the casuals since assembling 25 people to not stand in fire is just too damn hard!

I agree, it is bullshit. WHO THE HELL IS BLIZZARD TO BASICALLY SAY WE SHOULD DO SOMETHING WITH OUR LIVES OTHER THAN SIT AND PLAY A VIDEO GAME ALL DAY?!

If you have nothing better to do than incessantly raid, I feel sorry for you. Seriously. You say "players that actually raid 25 mans lose the opportunity to have some fun in 10mans". If you're not having fun in 25s, why are you playing? You play a video game to HAVE FUN. You guys are blowing this WAY out of proportion. It's not the end of 25man guilds. If a guild is capable of running 25, they will continue to do so. I would say that 99% of the guilds that run 25 AND 10, only run 10 on Heroic for the "2nd chance" at gear. This inherently goes AGAINST the game, as I'm sure it was NEVER intended for someone to basically have two tries at gear in a week. They might as well just allow you to reset your 25 lockout in that case.

Actually, they shouldn't allow that. What they should allow, however, is what they are doing in Cataclysm. It is an AWESOME system, and it in no way will kill this game or guilds as you doomsayers are professing. If you're leaving the game over this change, then goodbye. I'm sure you will NEVER experience any other kind of disheartening, maddening change in ANY other MMO you play. Only Blizzard does this to WoW.

[Lumocolor]

I don't like the change because we won't be able to sell 10 man mounts and achievements for insane amounts of gold to the "more gold than skills" population on the weekends

[Sanchopancho]

Well. People posted more on the Celestial steed than on this change, so it can't be that bad.

Well the point of this forum isn't people to riot or flame, is to see how these changes will affect our gameplay. It's just sad that people care more about a damn mount than the game itself. We all started playing cause we liked the game and it seems that people care more about a way to show off ... If u want attention go to a reality show or something !!!

[khh]

man i wonder if anyone still reading this rather than just QQing, still no one realized how insanely much better 25man are in that format

theres a small detail that everyone missed, bosses generally don't drop repeated loot

think about that

[TheSenator]

I would like to go on record and blame Gearscore for this. I also think Obama is partly to blame.