Cataclysm for my guild has been very rough. We have honestly lost ~30% of our experienced raiders since January. We pick up at least one new raider every week, without fail, just to fill the holes (we're a 25 man guild). And trust me, when you're desperate just to fill holes, you don't always get the freshest fruit. We have some extremely good raiders and some not so hot ones. And, this week we FINALLY freaking finally hit 12/12reg 25 man progression.
I really tried thinking of why... Why have so many people gotten so burned out by Cataclysm and why can we not keep people around? Progression has been abysmal the past few months because of all of these factors:
- People are getting burned out
- People stop playing the game because of it
- Progress gets grinded to a halt because we lose experienced players, and have to start fresh all the damn time.
Now I can only speak for myself and most of my guildies that it is because of the shared lockout for 10 man and 25 man.
Because size does not matter, people are enjoying raiding far less. Half of my guild can only raid for 2-3 nights a week while the other more dedicated (generally more skilled) half are online 4, 5, 6, 7 nights a week, wanting to do something. When those 25 man nights roll around and we only get 16 people online morale drops. And when this happens over and over it gets under some peoples' skin enough that it makes them gquit, or stop playing all together.
Why do Regular modes and Heroic modes share a cooldown? I can under stand 10mans/25mans sharing one, but not regular/heroic. If I understand Blizzard's reasoning, they didn't want to force people to run as a 10 man guild or a 25 man guild because of loots' ilvl. They wanted guilds to be comprised up of either size, depending on how the guildies had more fun.
But, now that size doesn't matter, but rather difficultly matters for ilvl, I think blizzard should unsplice the locks outs for heroic content and regular content. Size shouldn't matter, but difficultly should. Both sizes are supposed to be balanced to one another...
My main reasoning is that they're forcing guilds, even more than in WTLK, to decide between being a 25 man guild or a 10 man guild. If you
can't get those 25 man people herded into heroic modes(for whatever progression reason), mostlikely you
can get 10 people skilled enough for them though. But of course, you can't. It's either 25 man regulars 2-3 nights a week, or 10 man heroics 2-3 night a week. When I would prefer 25 man regulars 2-3 a week, and 10 man heroics 1-2 nights a week, all in the same week!
[TL;DR]: Shame on you for not reading and if you post without reading the entire thread first.
But, I think heroic modes and regular modes should NOT share a lockout; size would still not matter. Sharing 25m and 10m lock out has literally cut available raiding material in half and in my case, successfully ruined my guild's overall progression.