Unpopular opinion: 10 man raids should make a return in Shadowlands.

[Relapses]

Never mind that this argument is ludicrous due to the correlation v.s. causation fallacy, particularly due to the simple fact that people can continue to play the game despite certain changes they don't like, but it doesn't even work from a correlation standpoint. That expansion you keep using as a model of success? It lost all of those new subscribers and then even more within a year of release. By quarter 3 2015 that sub count had nearly halved and reached levels not seen since classic WoW. It was so bad that they permanently stopped announcing sub counts. As for raid participation: the figures were similarly bleak. I remember having this discussion at the time. You were looking at something like 50% less guilds doing the highest difficulty.

As for the 10 man model: there's not much else to say other than the very peak subscriber count of WoW was reached in a time where 10 man raiding was an option.

I suspect you know all of this full well, however, and this is why you carefully word your way around it by referring only to how expansions did on launch and not how they did over time.

You also seem to subscribe to the opinion that 10 man was the easy, casual mode, which demonstrates your cluelessness. 10 man was often the harder of the two. There was no room for carries and individual mistakes and carries mattered a lot more. It also limited your choice in composition. Garrosh, the last boss to ever be available on the highest difficulty on 10 man, was drastically harder on that setting compared to 25 man. It did depend on the raid and boss, but there were plenty of instances throughout the expansions where 10 man was absolutely the more challenging choice.

It is impossible for anything you just wrote to be more incorrect. You have the audacity to mention the correlation vs causation fallacy in a fucking post where you're intentionally trying to shade the argument like 10M raiding is the only fucking thing that ever made WoW successful. Do yourself a favor:Check out of arguing on the internet. It's not for you.

[Advent]

Lols in FFXIV.

FFXIV doesn't have multiple specs per job(class), and it's not very difficult to obtain needed buffs and classes since people aren't spread across 36(?) different specs in the game. In order for wow to reach the same or similar level of parity they'd have to remove a lot of what many people (Like myself) love about spec design. I'd rather not have my shaman be stripped down to "The healer class", and lose enhance and elemental just for raiding.

[Saltysquidoon]

As for the 10 man model: there's not much else to say other than the very peak subscriber count of WoW was reached in a time where 10 man raiding was an option.

Holy disingenuous argument batman.

In wrath 10 man was explicitly the easier mode that dropped a lower level of loot (you know exactly like 10 man heroic literally right now), 25 man heroic was considered the 'real' endgame and dropped better loot (almost like mythic).

[Greyvax]

10-man raiding is technically an option, people just don't do it (except for n'zoth which the 2/2/6 setup works incredibly well).

Problem with 10-man raiding in guilds, is that you have multiple 10-man teams that look like this:

Group 1: GM, Officers, and the elite players in the guild (Enjoying great success)

Group 2: An officer designated to lead, mix of mid-tier players and some good players who couldn't meet the schedule of Group 1 (Enjoys moderate success)

Group 3: Led by an officer's alt as a courtesy. Includes the bads and maybe some mid-tier players who couldn't get into Group 2. Regularly experiences fails and has a hard time filling up. Often gets raid night cancelled unless people from Group 1 or 2 are bored and step in on an alt to help (Enjoys little success, maybe downs the first couple bosses in the raid)

Eventually there will be sour feelings about the setup above, leading to guild drama.

[gblSweet]

Raiding 10-man in Cataclysm and first patches of MoP were the best times I had in WoW.
The people I raided in Cataclysm, most of them became friends of mine 'til this day. Most of them don't even play anymore and we still keep in touch and even go see each other in special occasions.

[Dommie530]

Looking through all the pages i have not yet seen 1 good reason why 10 man and 20/25 man can not co-exist. All i have seen is that people like to compare apples with oranges, though they might both be round, there not the same guys.

[kaminaris]

10-man raiding is technically an option, people just don't do it (except for n'zoth which the 2/2/6 setup works incredibly well).

Don't join guilds with multiple raid team, it's like a common sense by now.

[kappalol]

You can 10 man raid.

[Cracked]

Looking through all the pages i have not yet seen 1 good reason why 10 man and 20/25 man can not co-exist. All i have seen is that people like to compare apples with oranges, though they might both be round, there not the same guys.

No gameplay reason, the good reason is that split resources will probably result in lesser quality content overall. I don't want to imagine what the state of patches would be if they were to double the cadency of raid releases.

[kaminaris]

FFXIV doesn't have multiple specs per job(class), and it's not very difficult to obtain needed buffs and classes since people aren't spread across 36(?) different specs in the game. In order for wow to reach the same or similar level of parity they'd have to remove a lot of what many people (Like myself) love about spec design. I'd rather not have my shaman be stripped down to "The healer class", and lose enhance and elemental just for raiding.

That's absolutely not a problem. Technically you would need one DH and one Monk. Regardless of specs.
Could also use one priest, one warrrior and one mage but these can be somewhat substituted.

M+ shows that none of the class buffs are actually mandatory. No matter what community thinks.

[Dommie530]

No gameplay reason, the good reason is that split resources will probably result in lesser quality content overall. I don't want to imagine what the state of patches would be if they were to double the cadency of raid releases.

Thats a weak argument, they can easly get more people to work for blizzard. Increase in game systems will mean more people have to work for it. And how is the current system of any good quality?
Sure if blizzard had 10 people work on raid and split in to 2 raid sizes but not have more employers, clearly it will suffer, but i can also attract more jobs ashwell, problem solved!

[gblSweet]

Thats a weak argument, they can easly get more people to work for blizzard. Increase in game systems will mean more people have to work for it. And how is the current system of any good quality?
Sure if blizzard had 10 people work on raid and split in to 2 raid sizes but not have more employers, clearly it will suffer, but i can also attract more jobs ashwell, problem solved!

Not only that, it seems the population that wants and will actually play 10-man, will be playing even if it's overtuned. Like it was in Cata.

[Bepples]

It is impossible for anything you just wrote to be more incorrect. You have the audacity to mention the correlation vs causation fallacy in a fucking post where you're intentionally trying to shade the argument like 10M raiding is the only fucking thing that ever made WoW successful. Do yourself a favor:Check out of arguing on the internet. It's not for you.

It would be great if you could, you know, actually respond to a point in the post rather than going on an unhinged rant. You think it makes you tough and intimidating but it really makes you obnoxious and laughable. You're the one who started arguing that WoD's "success" (ignoring, of course, the dramatic failure of that particular expansion to retain subs) is somehow an indictment of 10-man raiding. You also argued that 10-man raiding was the easy casual mode despite many bosses in WoW's history including the likes of Ragnaros and Garrosh being much harder on 10 man. Both were extremely terrible arguments and you lose your damn mind whenever anyone calls them out... so maybe internet arguing isn't for you. Go figure: looks like you have a projection problem as well.

Holy disingenuous argument batman.

In wrath 10 man was explicitly the easier mode that dropped a lower level of loot (you know exactly like 10 man heroic literally right now), 25 man heroic was considered the 'real' endgame and dropped better loot (almost like mythic).

I should have been more clear in my post: I wasn't saying 10 man raiding was the reason they reached the peak subscriber count. I was using that example to point out how his correlation argument doesn't make sense. He was trying to argue that high sales and initial subscriber count of WoD was some damning indictment of 10-man raiding. Of course that's fallacious because a) WoD saw a dramatic loss of subscribers after that and b) if we are going to agonise over subscriber counts, the highest subscription count we ever saw was when the game had 10-man raiding.

Yes, 10 man was originally a literal easier difficulty. However they added the normal/heroic switch on the side and by Cataclysm they were tuned to be the same (although it never really worked out that way). Cataclysm did lose subs, but nowhere near as much as WoD and both expansions primarily lost subs due to the low amount of content outside of raiding. I will say, however, that in WoD you saw a huge reduction in raiding participation as well.

- - - Updated - - -

No gameplay reason, the good reason is that split resources will probably result in lesser quality content overall. I don't want to imagine what the state of patches would be if they were to double the cadency of raid releases.

It's worth noting that the majority of arguments against the 10/25 raiding split are centred on the laziness and ineptitude of Blizzard's developers. Not a great look when this is your big "gotcha".

[Lurker1]

10 mans are still a thing but what is the cut off point heroic raids or Mythic raids anybody know?

[Dommie530]

Not only that, it seems the population that wants and will actually play 10-man, will be playing even if it's overtuned. Like it was in Cata.

Hell ye, Their plenty more fun then mythic 20 man raids will and can ever be in my opinion, I'd pay big time for it in fact. But people believe 10 man and 20 man should be balanced, even tho both are already diffrent in size, it's like saying a +15 should be balanced with a +30 because they provide the same gear, it's nonsense

GIVE US 10 MAN RAIDING BACK (u can keep your 20 man ashwell, pick what u want)

[Dudenoso]

FFXIV doesn't have multiple specs per job(class), and it's not very difficult to obtain needed buffs and classes since people aren't spread across 36(?) different specs in the game. In order for wow to reach the same or similar level of parity they'd have to remove a lot of what many people (Like myself) love about spec design. I'd rather not have my shaman be stripped down to "The healer class", and lose enhance and elemental just for raiding.

I think you probably missed some context. That other dude was talking about fight mechanics and how you can barely make interesting fight mechanics with only 10 dudes in a raid. In fact, he said 20m is barely enough!

And how the amount of mechanics they can design with 10m is extremely limited.

Which leads to loling in FFXIV. Watch the latest savage raid guide. Watch the latest mythic raid guide. Go and tell me that you can't make interesting mechanics unless you got 20 dudes going around and how you can't design great fights and mechanics with only 8 (even less than 10!) dudes in a raid.

[Lei]

I think you probably missed some context. That other dude was talking about fight mechanics and how you can barely make interesting fight mechanics with only 10 dudes in a raid. In fact, he said 20m is barely enough!

And how the amount of mechanics they can design with 10m is extremely limited.

Which leads to loling in FFXIV. Watch the latest savage raid guide. Watch the latest mythic raid guide. Go and tell me that you can't make interesting mechanics unless you got 20 dudes going around and how you can't design great fights and mechanics with only 8 (even less than 10!) dudes in a raid.

How serious the FFXIV raiding scene is tho? Does it have their min-maxers, number crunchers, class nerds with their discord caves, "clever use of game mechanicsers"/guilds that are on esport level, esport part as a thing, addon writers, damage meters, raiding addons like dbm, rotations like snapshotting was? Does it have the culture to be that serious? Just how hard is the highest difficulty compared to wow's hardest difficulty (mechanics, coordination, execution, healing/dps/position requirements)?

[cirdanx]

I absolutely agree, I miss when 10man heroic (now mythic) was a thing.

Making it straight 10 man raids, and balance around that number, with 2(!) modes, as in normal being the more casual road and heroic being the progress one, would do. This of course would have to come with real loot and not RNG. (sounds familiar doesn´t it?)

[Relapses]

It would be great if you could, you know, actually respond to a point in the post rather than going on an unhinged rant. You think it makes you tough and intimidating but it really makes you obnoxious and laughable. You're the one who started arguing that WoD's "success" (ignoring, of course, the dramatic failure of that particular expansion to retain subs) is somehow an indictment of 10-man raiding. You also argued that 10-man raiding was the easy casual mode despite many bosses in WoW's history including the likes of Ragnaros and Garrosh being much harder on 10 man. Both were extremely terrible arguments and you lose your damn mind whenever anyone calls them out... so maybe internet arguing isn't for you. Go figure: looks like you have a projection problem as well.

I reacted that way because it's such a completely inept and meaningless rebuke that it's barely worth addressing. If you actually think that 10M raiding was so fucking important that millions of players returned and left the game because of this singular feature you are so unfathomably out of touch with reality it's amazing they let you out of your padded cell long enough to formulate this response. Not only that, you completely took the purpose of me even mentioning this information completely out of context: It wasn't to illustrate that the expansions continued to be successful, but rather that obviously people are still willing to pay for a game that doesn't list 10M endgame raiding in its features. And they did it for not one, not two, but three whole expansions. The biggest problem that threads like these have are bad faith arguments like the one you're trying to push where 10M raiding is the most important feature ever released by Blizzard and they're somehow intentionally ignoring some invisible silent majority of players who want this feature. This is a garbage line of reasoning.

It's also rich that you mentioned Garrosh 10M Heroic when I already mentioned that encounter in a post prior to that. It's... mind boggling how terrible your argument is.

It's worth noting that the majority of arguments against the 10/25 raiding split are centred on the laziness and ineptitude of Blizzard's developers. Not a great look when this is your big "gotcha".

The biggest argument against 10 and 25M isn't that Blizzard is "too lazy" or "too inept," to create two different raid sizes. It's that two expansions worth of raids where they tried to do this proved unequivocally that the types of encounters they could produce were far less interesting than ones made for fixed raid sizes. Blizzard obviously agrees because we've now had that same singular fixed raid size for Mythic carried over for four expansions, longer than any other raid size format they've ever introduced.

- - - Updated - - -

Well I am sorry it was so old, I dont know why I found it but I did. Thats fair enough its your opinion, but you need to understand if we went by that measure, WoW would have barely any players at all raiding. It would completely destroy the raiding scene if only the most hardcore raiders were playing mythic.

I'm not sure if I understand the point you're making here. Right now participation in Mythic is around 5% of the playerbase. If we use broad strokes and say that maybe 50-55% of the WoW playerbase ever bothers to raid in the first place then you're talking about 45-50% of the playerbase still having one of three difficulty levels to raid with.

You dont need to underline opinion like im attacking you Ota, you dont need to go on the defensive, I agreed with 95% of what you said, I just differ on the last part.

That's fine -- and I apologize if my tone is hostile but I've been attacked multiple times in this thread by people who seem to equate me saying that the current system is fine is on the same level as simping for Blizzard. (We've also had some choice exchanges in the past... notably on the topic of flying which isn't too much different from this one.)

What I disagree with you about is that raid teams have to be formed with the intention of completing the instance. That really is hard hard core. Many mythic guilds enjoy the fact that they will clear heroic, and half or so of mythic before they cant continue without huge commitments both in time and effort which they may not have. Many of us have busy stressful lives and dont want to continue that in game. And to suggest that they shouldnt even enter mythic without intending to clear it in my opinion is ridiculous. Like I said, it would ruin the raiding scene completely if only guilds capable and willing of completing it even attempted it. Thats not just elitist, thats extremely elitist. And im not trying to attack you, there are lots of people who will fall in that camp and each to their own, but that part I dont like to accept is that you are suggesting we should all follow your intentions.

I'll agree that it's a bit of a stretch and I understand that not everybody wants to raid for the same reasons. I think that the real issue is that 10M Heroic raiding enabled players to actively form groups with the intention of never actually challenging themselves. The ability to toggle bosses between Normal and Heroic also added to this, imo. Accessibility is important but the crux of this issue is whether accessibility to 10M-only Heroic raiding is important. If you were a player who preferred 10M Heroic raiding then you obviously would feel displaced by the change to 20M Mythic. There are doubtlessly many players who felt this way. But the real question is how much of the playerbase was specifically only interested in 10M raiding. Players who preferred 10M like to say these players simply quit the game, never to return. My gut tells me that most then-10M Heroic players simply sucked it up and transitioned to a 20M Mythic guild. (I use the example of my 10M Heroic guild in MoP which raided from 2:30 AM to 6:30 AM four nights a week as an example because I think you'd be hard pressed to find a guild with shittier raid hours yet we still managed to successfully migrate to 20M.)

If you say "I dont want to be in a raid team that is formed without the intention of completing the instance" that is completely different to "I dont think any raid teams should be formed unless they intend to complete the instance". Every team has the desire to complete it, but the intention to push and do it isnt something I think every team should have.

Id also strongly disagree about Blizzard never intending this to be a thing, 20M was standardised to make end game fair competitive and significantly easier for them to develop. Not because they dont want 10 man guilds having fun playing it more casually. I think you're imagining the part where they share your opinion Ota, having 3 difficulties and multiple sizes of groups in NO way suggests they dont want casual guilds at mythic.

It does strongly suggest that if you prefer smaller groups, you still have two raid difficulties available for your team to tackle. If you want to tackle the hardest difficulty, you have to deal with the logistical requirement of managing a 20M roster. This brings about the age-old debate about whether logistics is an actual difficulty or an artificial one and that's why we always see Flex raiding brought up as the "easy fix" to all of WoW's raiding woes. Personally, I think it does have some place and there's no doubt that managing a larger roster is more difficult than a smaller one. (Hello literally every stupid fucking 10v25M debate from Cata/MoP.)

You have to ask then, exactly how much of the playerbase was displaced by the change and how now -- after four expansions with the same system -- suddenly Blizzard needs to go back to the drawing board and increase accessibility to Mythic. I just don't see the inherent chaos and general bad taste it'll leave in the mouth of currently raiding Mythic players being worth the trade off of making some unknown number of players who would only come back if 10M Heroic raiding were made available again. (There are so many things to do in WoW, I can't imagine that the number of people who only want to raid and only want to do it in a 10M group represents a huge demographic.) And when faced with that question, my personal opinion is that if the current system which isn't inherently broken is doing a good enough job, why is such a change necessary?

Id remind you how Blizzard have been on a quest for accessibility for god knows how many years now, to suggest they want to push people out of mythic just because they dont like the way they group together to complete it, just isnt true. The only reason they have made 20 mans a thing is to standardize their systems. You simply cannot balance the end game between 10/25 and thats a big issue in a game that revolves around the end game.

We agree here but I think the main thing I'd like to re-emphasize is that a 5% participation rate in Mythic raiding content is fine as long as sufficient alternatives exist. The existence of three other raid difficulties, to me, indicates that such an alternative is there -- whether ex-10M Heroic players want to accept that as their option is, of course, a key factor in this debate. Regardless, I think that a lot of people incorrectly try to position the argument in favor of 10Ms as: "popular equals good and 10M Heroic was popular...therefore 10M Heroic was good." I find this to be an overly simplified generalization of a far more nuanced topic.

[Bepples]

I reacted that way because it's such a completely inept and meaningless rebuke that it's barely worth addressing.

You reacted that way because you don't have the matury to handle people disagreeing with you. Simple as that. Don't blame it on other people.

If you actually think that 10M raiding was so fucking important that millions of players returned and left the game because of this singular feature you are so unfathomably out of touch with reality it's amazing they let you out of your padded cell long enough to formulate this response.

It's a good thing I never said anything of the sort, did I? What I did say is many people are willing to continue playing the game in spite of changes they hate. For me there are a number of major differences in WoW today v.s. WoW of MoP that make the game drastically worse. Losing 10 man raiding for the highest difficulty is just one of them. I still play the game, though. Some don't, however, and I don't think it's a good development philosophy to push the players with bad changes as far as possible. I don't like this emerging trend of tug-of-war between the playerbase and developers over the direction of the game in these past few expansions.

Not only that, you completely took the purpose of me even mentioning this information completely out of context: It wasn't to illustrate that the expansions continued to be successful, but rather that obviously people are still willing to pay for a game that doesn't list 10M endgame raiding in its features. And they did it for not one, not two, but three whole expansions. The biggest problem that threads like these have are bad faith arguments like the one you're trying to push where 10M raiding is the most important feature ever released by Blizzard and they're somehow intentionally ignoring some invisible silent majority of players who want this feature. This is a garbage line of reasoning.

See above: you're using a strawman argument. I don't think millions of people quit over 10-man raiding. We don't even have millions of players raiding at the highest difficulty so obviously millions of people wouldn't have quit over a change to the highest difficulty. I do think millions of people quit over what they perceived to be the game getting worse due to a number of.. let's say "compromises" Blizzard forced on the playerbase, and for many of them losing 10-man raiding may have been one of those compromises.

On top of that, I do think it contributed to many guild collapses and the further imbalance in realm populations. It further incentivised poaching and transfering to popular realms. My original server, Silvermoon-US, had plenty of heroic raiding in MoP even as the server was already a small one. The server took a beating with WoD and the 20-man mythic change to the point where raiding activity on the realm is basically nil at this point. The same thing has happened to all the Oceanic realms where you are seeing all the servers dying as everyone transfers to Barthilas or Frostmourne in the hopes of maintaining a roster, and now even Barthilas is struggling. I doubt you even took a passing consideration to these issues because you're too focused on a) defending Blizzard's laziness and b) forcing your ideal vision of raids on everyone else.

It's also rich that you mentioned Garrosh 10M Heroic when I already mentioned that encounter in a post prior to that. It's... mind boggling how terrible your argument is.

I didn't see where you mentioned Garrosh and I don't really care to check because it's in all likelihood part of a terrible argument given 100% of the rest of your posts being terrible arguments.

The biggest argument against 10 and 25M isn't that Blizzard is "too lazy" or "too inept," to create two different raid sizes. It's that two expansions worth of raids where they tried to do this proved unequivocally that the types of encounters they could produce were far less interesting than ones made for fixed raid sizes. Blizzard obviously agrees because we've now had that same singular fixed raid size for Mythic carried over for four expansions, longer than any other raid size format they've ever introduced.

Oh, OK. So it's not because of Blizzard being too inept: it's because of Blizzard being unable to make good bosses with the 10/25 split. Totally different things. Good to know!

But never mind that doublethink: it's a nonsense point. Are you seriously trying to argue that they never made good encounters for 3 whole expansions? WotLK, Cata, and MoP included some of the most stand-out bosses and raids in WoW's history: the likes of Mimiron, Yogg Saron, Lich King, . WotLK in particular saw a huge step-up in encounter design over the prior expansion and that's the one that added 10-man raiding (a feature that got a standing ovation when it was announced, by the way). It's not like there was any significant appreciable difference in encounter design going into WoD or later expansions. There have been great bosses, for sure, but again: there were great bosses beforehand too. It's also not like they became immune to bad encounter design, either. Remember in HFC when almost every single boss had some sort of priority add burst component? Or Tomb of Sargeras where every boss required a wealth of immunities? What about the ever-present trend of BFA of having bosses where you have to stop DPS for extended periods of time? This is all not to mention constant issues of class stacking e.g. funnel cleavers.

I, for one, am sick of hearing that Blizzard is suddenly incapable of doing something they did for years because it's just "too hard for them" despite their having more money and resources than ever before. 10-man at the highest difficulty was removed in the same expansion that had no new races or classes, only 2 raid tiers, next to no content outside of raids, a year-long content drought, and an untold amount of cut content including entire story zones and raids. It was a clear cost-cutting measure and here you are shilling for it with fervour. I wonder how much self-loathing you have to have as a consumer to ardently defend this kind of thing.

That's fine -- and I apologize if my tone is hostile but I've been attacked multiple times in this thread by people who seem to equate me saying that the current system is fine is on the same level as simping for Blizzard. (We've also had some choice exchanges in the past... notably on the topic of flying which isn't too much different from this one.)

LMAO don't even pretend to be sorry about it. You revel in it. Hell, I revel in it. Own that shit. This weasely "oh I would be civil but everyone's being too mean to me sob sob" is utterly unconvincing.

I think that the real issue is that 10M Heroic raiding enabled players to actively form groups with the intention of never actually challenging themselves. The ability to toggle bosses between Normal and Heroic also added to this, imo. Accessibility is important but the crux of this issue is whether accessibility to 10M-only Heroic raiding is important.

This will continue to be a stupid point every time you repeat it. 10-man was a challenge. Beating the raid on 10-man was beating the raid. It was often MORE challenging than 25-man. It was not "accessible mode". We had that and it was called "normal mode". It's good to have an option for smaller raiding. Some people prefer the more closely-knit, individually-dependent, and class-agnostic style of 10-man raiding. Some people like the grandiose, epic atmosphere of having a large number of raiders at once. Yes, there needed to be more incentives for 25-man raiding. That's why they invented warforging, which was originally a good and fair system for solving a real problem and it actually worked pretty well. But the issues associated with the 10/25 split were far more minor than the issues removing that split caused. Too many guilds and servers died to make it worth it.