Blizzards 25 man mistake.

[spectrefax]

I'm writing this as if it were to be posted on the official WoW forums. I'm not currently subscribed, but I do still like to follow what's going on with the game for if/when I return.

With the new announcement of Thunderforged weapons, it becomes obvious that Blizzard has finally admitted that the 25 man raiding community is dieing.

Naturally, the player base understands that this "incentive" will not bolster the 25 man raiding community.

The problem is...

Blizzard did not listen to their players, the guys in the trenches raiding and playing for hours and hours. When they first announced that they were going to normalize gear for both 10 and 25 mans, every single person I knew echoed the exact same sentiment, "Well, 25mans are going to die now." And, surprise surprise, the players were correct.

Here, players are already telling Blizzard that this new "idea" is not going to help anything (and will most likely cause additional headaches and problems instead), yet, so far, it seems Blizzard isn't listening...again!

Without speedy corrections, I think it's safe to say that the 25 man raiding community will dwindle down to an extremely small niche group. The danger of this is that if the community becomes too small, it is no longer cost effective for Blizzard to create or maintain 25 man content. This is just a fact of business. Without corrective action, it won't be the players who end 25 man raiding (as there will always be some who will keep it alive) but Blizzard, because, let's face it, money talks.

Many, many players seem to be in agreement that the problem with 25s is a logistical one. In that it is simply more work to maintain a 25s raid roster/guild than a 10s. I don't think this can be disputed. As such, it seems to be common sense that there must be some extra incentive in order to compensate for the extra work. The enjoyment of the 25 man scene is simply not enough compensation for the 25 man guilds who are semi-hardcore/casual as they spend more time recruiting and managing then they do raiding (I've seen many 25m raid leaders/guild leaders who can attest to this).

The problem for Blizzard here, is that they think the correct solution is one of loot. I think this simply shows how out-of-touch they are with the 25 man raiding community as I have never met a 25man raider who was after "loot." However, the one thing almost all of them seemed to be after (perhaps some more than others) was the prestige associated with 25 man raiding. They didn't get the gear because it was better than 10 man gear, they got it because of the prestige. This is the same reason server and world first titles are competed for so heavily. It's simply prestige.

Having said that, it would make sense to think that the solution should be one that addresses a 25 man raiders core desire... prestige. This could be done a number of ways, but I think it is the correct solution.

Such as (some of which have/are already present):

- Exclusive mounts. *Not* reskins! Completely unique models designed specifically for this purpose.
- Exclusive Tabards.
- Exclusive Titles.
- Exclusive armor/weapon models. It can have the exact same ilvl and stats, but if it makes you look amazingly cool, it's highly desirable. Again, NOT recolor/reskins! Completely unique models.
- Exclusive transmog gear. Same as above.
- Exclusive companion pets.
- Exclusive heirloom pieces. This may be cried about as "game breaking" for low level BGers who do not 25 man raid, but it's just an example.
- Anything that reduces the load of managing a 25man roster, such as flasks, foods, group teleporters, etc.
- And on and on.

I think it's great that Blizzard has realized their mistake and is looking to take corrective action, but unless they do it in the right way, I fear the worst for 25 man raiding.

Here's to hoping you 25'ers keep fighting the good fight and a real solutions is found soon that brings back the prestige for all the extra work being put in to keep 25s alive.

[Lustobject]

tbh, splitting the achievements would be a great start. Also realm first achievements.

Also, server merges would be great, its hard to keep a 25man guild active on dying servers. It forces you into 10mans most of all reasons imo.

[Holyshnikies]

I have a core I5, 8 gigs ram, 660 ti video card, 2x ssd hard drives. With that said. I still wont raid 25 man lag fests. Its bad enough doing Sha with 10 fps. In 10 mans, i hover around 30. Thats sad. And I can only imagine other peoples computers having to deal with 25 man and world bosses.

25 man raiding is dead and will stay dead. Hmm lets see. Do I want to depend on 15 other people, make things more difficult for the same rewards. Or do it with 10 people where I wont lag as heavily, have less stress and easier management including pugging. Yeah, Ill stick with 10 man raiding forever lol.

[Burritaco]

I have a core I5, 8 gigs ram, 660 ti video card, 2x ssd hard drives. With that said. I still wont raid 25 man lag fests. Its bad enough doing Sha with 10 fps. In 10 mans, i hover around 30. Thats sad. And I can only imagine other peoples computers having to deal with 25 man and world bosses.

25 man raiding is dead and will stay dead. Hmm lets see. Do I want to depend on 15 other people, make things more difficult for the same rewards. Or do it with 10 people where I wont lag as heavily, have less stress and easier management including pugging. Yeah, Ill stick with 10 man raiding forever lol.

You're playing on a 50" TV what do you expect?

[Sfr528]

I wish that Blizzard would create separate titles for 10/25's as well. I don't see why they don't; it could only increase the replay value for those seeking every title the game has to offer. Aesthetic differences could certainly help with establishing what kind of raider you are. I would agree that most 25 man raiders are doing so for whatever prestige they feel is associated with such a thing.

However; what I would really love to see is a return to the old model; back when 25 man and 10 man raids were completely unique raids. Wouldn't it be nice if every tier came out with a 25 man only raid and a 10 man only raid; with encounters tuned and tailored specifically for those formats. I sincerely believe that designing encounters between two separate mediums is hurting the creativity of the encounters.

[Gantzie]

25 HM Raider here.

I do agree with you. Incentivising gear isn't the path that will solve this problem. Not enough incentive, and things will stay the way they are. Too much incentive and there will be this huge swing from 10 to 25s because of the mentality of "quickest to gear" or fast tracking to BiS.

I do 25 man content not for gear, as you have noted. I personally do it because it is a unique form of raiding. The idea of "prestige" that you mention I can totally get behind. I enjoy being able to cooperate with a large group of people to overcome challenges.

I would like to see a separation of 10 and 25 man with some other form of reward. I agree with some of your suggestions OP, but some I feel would require too much Dev time, such as the unique gear. The separation of achievements to be 10 and 25 would be an excellent start imo.

When it comes to recruiting, I personally feel that the barrier preventing a number of players from changing servers and factions to raid is the cost. Our 25 man is CONSTANTLY recruiting. One of the most common barriers with attracting players is the cost of faction / server changing. With the prolific love for alts, that is another reason people are unwilling to transfer. Personally when I transferred to my current guild, it was difficult for me to keep up. With the profession requirements of a HM Progression Guild, I didn't have the professions to farm for food / flasks / pots etc. I had to wait a couple weeks before I could transfer my bank toon as well as my dedicated farmer. This meant that I was investing myself in this guild. Luckily for me it has paid off and we are doing well in current content. Some players are afraid to make the investment when transferring servers / factions. Offsetting this could also help the 25 man scene.

Sorry if this seems unorganized ans scatterbrained. This are just a few of my thoughts while I have a couple minutes.

Also, to the guy with the great computer who can't run 25s. I play on a pretty basic laptop and I can gt 30+ fps in effect heavy 25s. You need to do some work.

[spectrefax]

I wish that Blizzard would create separate titles for 10/25's as well. I don't see why they don't; it could only increase the replay value for those seeking every title the game has to offer. Aesthetic differences could certainly help with establishing what kind of raider you are. I would agree that most 25 man raiders are doing so for whatever prestige they feel is associated with such a thing.

However; what I would really love to see is a return to the old model; back when 25 man and 10 man raids were completely unique raids. Wouldn't it be nice if every tier came out with a 25 man only raid and a 10 man only raid; with encounters tuned and tailored specifically for those formats. I sincerely believe that designing encounters between two separate mediums is hurting the creativity of the encounters.

I didn't think this model was very good. It encouraged guild hopping as your toon progressed and higher progress guilds would scalp players from the guilds that were struggling to transition to 25 man model for progression.

I was in a guild that never progressed past the 10 man raids. Just as soon as we would get close to having toons geared enough to start the 25s we'd lose long time raiders who were sick of waiting to guilds already doing the 25s. This cycle continued throughout the entire expansion and we never progressed. Luckily, they were all great people so I enjoyed it anyway.

[Kaiarra]

- Exclusive mounts. *Not* reskins! Completely unique models designed specifically for this purpose.
- Exclusive Tabards.
- Exclusive Titles.
- Exclusive armor/weapon models. It can have the exact same ilvl and stats, but if it makes you look amazingly cool, it's highly desirable. Again, NOT recolor/reskins! Completely unique models.
- Exclusive transmog gear. Same as above.
- Exclusive companion pets.
- Exclusive heirloom pieces. This may be cried about as "game breaking" for low level BGers who do not 25 man raid, but it's just an example.

While I hate that they gave into 25-man raiders by giving them better loot, and this on top of them already enjoying far less RNG due to their massively increased amounts of drops/specs... as a collector I would hate it even more if any of the above were added; it would highly pressure me back into 25-man raiding, which I do not enjoy.

This seems to be the point in general with these sort of topics - force the people who are quite happy to raid 10-man and don't want to raid 25s to switch, by adding something they feel a need to acquire... rather than getting people switching to 25-mans because you know, they enjoy it more. If 25-mans require so many carrots to keep people raiding them, then maybe Bliz need to take a seriously look into whether it's worth keeping the format around outside of LFR.

- Anything that reduces the load of managing a 25man roster, such as flasks, foods, group teleporters, etc.

These ideas would be acceptable IMO, as long as HGWT is brought back for everyone and not just the 25-man raiders.

Personally... I would adore it if they just gave up on 25-man raids and spent the time it would free up on more content / balancing, rather than constantly trying to add carrots for a minority of 25-man guilds, that won't piss off all the 10-man guilds (and failing).

[Woobels]

While I hate that they gave into 25-man raiders by giving them better loot, and this on top of them already enjoying far less RNG due to their massively increased amounts of drops/specs... as a collector I would hate it even more if any of the above were added; it would highly pressure me back into 25-man raiding, which I do not enjoy.

This seems to be the point in general with these sort of topics - force the people who are quite happy to raid 10-man and don't want to raid 25s to switch, by adding something they feel a need to acquire... rather than getting people switching to 25-mans because you know, they enjoy it more. If 25-mans require so many carrots to keep people raiding them, then maybe Bliz need to take a seriously look into whether it's worth keeping the format around outside of LFR.


These ideas would be acceptable IMO, as long as HGWT is brought back for everyone and not just the 25-man raiders.

Personally... I would adore it if they just gave up on 25-man raids and spent the time it would free up on more content / balancing, rather than constantly trying to add carrots for a minority of 25-man guilds, that won't piss off all the 10-man guilds (and failing).

There's people who feel pressured to do 10-man raiding while they do not enjoy it over 25-man raiding because they don't have much of a choice because of so many realms being dead.

Anyways, you know what would possibly help 25-man raiding the most? Cheaper transfers.

[stuck4cash]

The problem for Blizzard here, is that they think the correct solution is one of loot. I think this simply shows how out-of-touch they are with the 25 man raiding community as I have never met a 25man raider who was after "loot." However, the one thing almost all of them seemed to be after (perhaps some more than others) was the prestige associated with 25 man raiding. They didn't get the gear because it was better than 10 man gear, they got it because of the prestige. This is the same reason server and world first titles are competed for so heavily. It's simply prestige.

If that were the case, then they would never have left as the prestige is the same now as it has always been.

[Syio]

I like how a lot of people go, "DON'T FORCE US 10-MAN RAIDERS TO DO 25s!" while completely forgetting that the same applies to us 25man raiders.

Do not force us to raid 10-mans.

While this situation may seem absurd to some, allow me to explain:

I live in Asia and work full-time. Therefore I cannot raid with most of the servers (Americas). My group of servers (Oceanic) are few in comparison. There are some 25man guilds, yes, but do not forget that each guild has different timings, philosophy, leadership. Just because some exist NEVER means they're automatically appropriate for you, vice versa. I've spent so much time searching for a 25 man guild with a similar timings I can actually meet for raiding and have come to realize there are all but only 3 in all of the Oceanic servers.

Let me say that again: THREE 25-man raiding guilds that raid during the time I can. And mind you I'm only considering the timings issue. 2 of the guilds are the opposite faction. The other is the one I'm currently in.

Tell me, 10-man raiders. How would you like to have no other 10-man guilds fitting your raiding times except 2 on another server on an opposite faction? You do not understand the effects Blizzard's brilliant change has had for us 25-man raiders. The amount of guilds have dwindled to the point we're either forced to pay for transfers, quit or raid a format we don't want nor like (10-mans). This disparity among 25-man guilds and 10s is so enormous it's ridiculous.

[Kaiarra]

Well I think low pop server merges and/or free transfers would be great idea; cross-realm guilding would greatly help if they must insist on refusing to merge servers.

I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for either of those to happen though.

If you all think free server transfers would fix your issue with 25-mans, then by all means I pray Blizzard grants you that option; I don't think it will fix the problem myself - as has already been said, I'm not on a low pop server, and we still have hardly any 25-man guilds; cross realm guilds might help people who want to raid 25-mans more, if you guys are so few and far between.

[SaltLakeAtrocity]

My honest opinion is that everything would be fixed if we just made 15-man raiding the norm. I can't see any real downside besides some petty "well that's slightly less epic feeling than 25man".

[Kaiarra]

My honest opinion is that everything would be fixed if we just made 15-man raiding the norm. I can't see any real downside besides some petty "well that's slightly less epic feeling than 25man".

Only issue I see with this is that those five extra players will have to come from somewhere - going to cause a lot of 10-man disbands and drama as guilds try to take players from another guild to make up their numbers. There aren't enough 25-mans needing to axe 10 players to provide five new members for the 10-man guilds.

Still, could be an interesting way to go once the drama settled down.

[Forsedar]

Let me say that again: THREE 25-man raiding guilds that raid during the time I can. And mind you I'm only considering the timings issue. 2 of the guilds are the opposite faction. The other is the one I'm currently in.

Tell me, 10-man raiders. How would you like to have no other 10-man guilds fitting your raiding times except 2 on another server on an opposite faction? You do not understand the effects Blizzard's brilliant change has had for us 25-man raiders. The amount of guilds have dwindled to the point we're either forced to pay for transfers, quit or raid a format we don't want nor like (10-mans). This disparity among 25-man guilds and 10s is so enormous it's ridiculous.

This sums it up for me. I came back to the game with some friends, and upon returning my motivation to do hardcore raiding once again burned in me. I made the decision to devote myself again to Heroic Progression so I went guild hunting. Of course, I went to WoW progress and looked for the top 25 man guild on my server... there were 2. One was doing extremely well and the other was just existing. The rest of the guilds were all 10man. While I don't regret joining the top 25man guild on my server, I do not like that every other guild was 10man. If I were to be denied, that means I would have to go looking through different servers (which I actually did beforehand) in hopes of finding a 25man hardcore guild that was recruiting my class.

Now, in order to enjoy the game the way I want, I would have to pay for server transfers and/or factions changes. The amount of 25man guilds is going downhill and most of our new recruits coming in are from entirely different servers- some even from the opposite faction on a different server. Now, people saying that they don't want to feel pressured to do 25man... well just like someone has already stated, we don't want to feel pressured to do 10man. To keep up a stable roster and cohesion within a 25man guild can be stressful and it doesn't help when a low server population comes into play.

[mvaliz]

The first time they announced there was a problem was when Paragon shifted to 10 man.

But yeah, the problem with Blizz seems to be they completely ignore a problem and don't believe it's a problem until it festers out of control and becomes severe enough where they NEED to do something before it Hemorrhages.

Of course, by now the damage is too severe - and now they have the reverse problem of not having to make 25 mans too reward-heavy to force the 10 mans to upgrade.

I think many aspects of Cataclysm were treated like that too...

[spectrefax]

Only issue I see with this is that those five extra players will have to come from somewhere - going to cause a lot of 10-man disbands and drama as guilds try to take players from another guild to make up their numbers. There aren't enough 25-mans needing to axe 10 players to provide five new members for the 10-man guilds.

Still, could be an interesting way to go once the drama settled down.

I agree. I think Blizzard agrees that having conflicting raid sizes was a massive mistake. It's been said that any future MMO will only have 1 raid size (which makes complete sense).

However, for this discussion, they've made it pretty clear they want to keep 25 man raiding around. For those affected by this decision, the players, it's up to them to really let Blizzard know the best way to do this without them making massive mistakes.

And, if that is their position, the unfortunate reality is that the *only* way to give 25s more incentives is to make something exclusive to that format... be it better gear, vanity items, titles, whatever. Obviously, because of the exclusivity, 10 man raiders will hate it, but there really is no way around it.

[Orangetai420]

My honest opinion is that everything would be fixed if we just made 15-man raiding the norm. I can't see any real downside besides some petty "well that's slightly less epic feeling than 25man".

If the change came with a new expac I would be really happy.

[Syio]

While I don't regret joining the top 25man guild on my server, I do not like that every other guild was 10man. If I were to be denied, that means I would have to go looking through different servers (which I actually did beforehand) in hopes of finding a 25man hardcore guild that was recruiting my class.

Now, in order to enjoy the game the way I want, I would have to pay for server transfers and/or factions changes. The amount of 25man guilds is going downhill and most of our new recruits coming in are from entirely different servers- some even from the opposite faction on a different server. Now, people saying that they don't want to feel pressured to do 25man... well just like someone has already stated, we don't want to feel pressured to do 10man. To keep up a stable roster and cohesion within a 25man guild can be stressful and it doesn't help when a low server population comes into play.

This is precisely why 10man raiders complaining/ threatening Blizzard not to force them to raid 25s make me so pissed off.

Fy a kite, fellas. While you complain about something that may never happen, us 25 man raiders are already being forced into the that situation.

[spectrefax]

If the fun of raiding 25's alone isn't enough and people need better/exclusive items, than they didn't like 25's enough in the first place and don't even deserve to raid them.

I see this posted a lot and it makes it really obvious that anyone who has posted this has never been in a management or recruitment role for a 25 man (or any) guild.

The problem is not that they don't enjoy it enough, the problem is that, for the majority of 25 man rosters, they spend two times as much time recruiting and managing than they do raiding! Which means, if that particular 25 man guild is running 10 hours a week, it means they are recruiting/managing up to 20 hours a week.

It's not that they don't enjoy the 25 man raiding scene, when they are raiding. It's that the massive timesink of recruiting and management is such a royal pain in the ass that it becomes less desirable to deal with without incentives. Incentives obviously make it easier to do both jobs.