Ghostcrawler tweet about 25 man, let the speculation begin!

[Tziva]

I hope it isn't higher ilvl. Although I am a casual(ish) raider, if I'm going to spend the time, I prefer to do it in the most competitive environment. Not because my raid has ever been on par with the best raids, but because we like to be challenged on that level, we like to be viewed as more serious raiders. People are already dismissive of 10s despite several years of them being a viable avenue for progression; I can't imagine the size will recover if 25man goes back to rewarding the best loot or giving sole access to legendaries or whatever. And let's be honest, people care about gear. You may not personally, but there's bound to be a few people on your raid team that does.

I loved when they switched to make 10 mans on par with 25 mans because I love the social environment of 10mans much better. Both as a raider and a raid leader, I was tired of raiding on a team where I really liked ten members of the raid, was indifferent to ten more, and actively disliked five but had to bring them anyway because we needed [healers, particular buff, etc] and that's who was available. After raiding 25man all the way up to the Frozen Throne, I was delighted to switch to a 10man with my best in-game (and real life) friends, where we could take the best parts of the team that worked well together. Although some in the raid prefer the larger size, several of us can't fathom going back.

I understand the logistics of a 25man means that there are probably less raid leaders willing to lead than there are raiders willing to raid and that's unfortunate, but I would hope they continue to push things like the 25mans dropping more loot (rather than better loot) or earning legendaries faster, or something like the ideas proposed in here like pre-upgraded items or split lockouts, and not something that pushes 10mans further into the "LOL CASUAL" reputation it's still struggling with.

As some people have mentioned, I'd love if they implemented a 15man one-raid-size-only compromise. It would suck for 25mans that had to trim or split, but there's really not that many of those left. Most 10mans could probably swing an increase to 15. It puts enough bodies that Blizzard isn't quite as limited with encounter design as they are now due to body shortage (something like Lady Vashj would be nearly impossible to implement equally in 10man as 25man) while preserving an intimate feel for the people who like 10s but a large enough size to hopefully "get all your friends together" for a 25. I don't think that will actually happen, but it would be a good change.

Regardless of what they do, though, I really hope they don't implement it until the next expansion. I think it would be really fucked up to change things up mid-expansion after people have already build their raid teams.

[Deleted]

Blizzard evidently do considering the shift in MoP is more towards the "focussed" raiding scene as opposed to the "casual" raiding scene. Believe me, these changes will be benefiting 25 man. Awaiting the tears from 10 man guilds already. Is this a late Christmas present from daddy Blizzard?

How is LFR and charms, which you get from dailies, a shift towards the "focused" raiding scene. Its quite clearly towards the casual player.

[mmines]

controversial.... that's the key word. I am guessing its higher ilvl items again. Which would suck.

Doing that would be controversial and I personally think a bad idea. That's forcing people into doing 25 mans. Unfortunately that's what it sounds like though I really really hope they aren't gonna do that. Maybe they'll put a tiny 5% buff in 25 mans to alleviate some of the problems with coordinating that many people. Though I always thought that the capability to be able to lose a few people and still be good would make up for that.

[burek]

I dont see how any of the changes proposed in this thread would be able to push people back to 25 mans

Dropping upgraded or more items or giving flasks, food buffs, charms or whatever in 25s wont make people suddenly drop what they are doing and leave their guilds, especially since there's barely anyone out there willing to run a 25man guild. Back in wrath when they introduced 10man modes of all raids, the gear was worse and everyone was already running 25s from tbc, so it felt kinda lame to switch to 10s. Since the gear was equalized, and most went to 10s, just making the gear difference again wont push enough people back to 25s and it would only irritate a large number of players

Raiders (or, at least, me) raid to kill bosses. Dunno what incentive might there be to change to 25s, unless there are more or better bosses in there

[Cybran]

Having 10 man and 25 man gear the same while striving to balance both to the same difficulty level thus not needing different levels of gear is a valid progress path as well.

Why do you need a gear incentive if most people here are saying is they prefer the "epic feel" and the "social aspect of 25's" then the only incentive you need is finding 24 other like minded people and gear should not have anything to do with it at all. The incentive to 25 man raiding should be that you are with 24 other people that think the same way as you... not "hey we got 24 other people because they want better gear!".

If better gear is all they care about then just toss better gear at 10 mans (the most popular of the 2) and then only the ones that really do care about "epic feel" and "community" will remain!

Have you ever done a 25 man raid?

[Adzy]

I think its quite obvious about the type of things its not going to be :

• Higher Item Level(s)
• Removing the Shared Lockout
• 15man Raid Size

Higher Item Levels and Removing the Shared Lockout (between 10 and 25) just causes people to feel that it is required to run both if they want to play competitively (which alot of people do).
15man Raid Size will just generally annoy everyone. 10man guilds will have to recruit more players. 25man guilds will have to lose players.

I personally hope that the difference is something more "appealing" rather than mandatory. But also not something gimmicky like crappy Bags which give Flasks / Potions.

I think to begin with they should try and improve some of the Game's Interface.
For example, the In-Game Calender could do with improving. Being able to select role(s) when signing up is one small step forward to helping Raid Leaders and Officers with organizing raids.
Not just for current content either. The option to invite RealID friends through the In-Game Calender to an event.

Other than organizing raids, officers also have issues with recruiting players for 25man. Sometimes this means having to search on different realms for new decent recruits, however not everyone can afford to Realm Transfer willy-nilly. I think it would be nice to allow players to raid content cross-realm (currently you cannot raid current content cross-realm. I feel this should be removed).

[katta]

Having 10 man and 25 man gear the same while striving to balance both to the same difficulty level thus not needing different levels of gear is a valid progress path as well.

Why do you need a gear incentive if most people here are saying is they prefer the "epic feel" and the "social aspect of 25's" then the only incentive you need is finding 24 other like minded people and gear should not have anything to do with it at all. The incentive to 25 man raiding should be that you are with 24 other people that think the same way as you... not "hey we got 24 other people because they want better gear!".

If better gear is all they care about then just toss better gear at 10 mans (the most popular of the 2) and then only the ones that really do care about "epic feel" and "community" will remain!

The point is wrong.

The point you are trying to make was the exact opposite believe of 10 man raiders that caused this whole problem. Remember if you wanted to run 10 ans you could but if you wanted the best gear you had to run 25 mans. That was unfair, but now since its a solution because your side (10 mans) have the better deal out of it.

Also to add. Having 25 man drop better gear did not kill 10 man raiding. Having them drop the same gear is killing 25 man raiding.

They should just go back to seperate raids for 10 and 25 and have 25 mans drop the better gear, so if people want to get the best gear then you have to do 25 mans. 10 mans are still there if you want to do them. Its obvious that the majority 95%+ of the best guilds are 25 mans so just go back to the way it was. All the 10 man guilds can merge and do 25 mans since there are 100,000 10 man guilds that can join together, that are all elite players and have no dead weight players and are killing all the heroic content.

[Deleted]

On paper, the idea of dropping 1/2 or 2/2 upgraded items seems like a good idea. But it would create all sorts of balancing problems. How do you tune fights?

Obviously you would tune fights in 10 man towards 0/2 upgraded items. But how do you tune 25s? There are a few possibilities:

1) Tune them for 0/2 upgrades. If the boss then drops 1/2 or 2/2 upgraded items, 25 man becomes *significantly* easier than 10 man. Probably ruins 25 man progression.
2) Tune them for 1/2 or 2/2 upgrades (whichever the boss drops). 25s and 10s have the same relative difficulty in their own difficulty, but 25s can easily drop to 10 and farm 10 man heroic kills in their 0/2-tuned fights with their 1/2 or 2/2 tuned gear. Whereas 10 mans will have trouble if they ever want to run a farm 25 one week, because all the fights are tuned for higher ilvls than they have. Ruins 10 man progression
3) Tune them for 1/2 upgrades but the boss drops 2/2 upgrades. Same problems as 1.

I think the "controversial" solution would involve the following steps:

1) Separate the realm firsts for 10 and 25s.
2) Make 25s the "casual mode". Drops the same loot as 10 man, is easier, can race quickly to the 25 realm first.
3) Make 10s balls hard (in heroic mode). I'm thinking a difficulty progression of: 10 man normal (for the super casual) < 25 normal (casual) < 25 heroic (casual heroics), < 10 heroic (hardcore progression). Make the 10 man realm first *the* race.

Why this works: 25 man raiders suggest that the reason they raid 25 mans is because they like the epic feeling of 25 people downing a boss. Still achievable, and in the same gear as everyone, full BiS. If they are being truthful, and aren't in 25s solely because it's mindless on their part and they can be the tunneling DPS they've always wanted to be, the fact that 25 H Sha of Anger is easier than 10 H Sha of Anger shouldn't bother them, because it should 1) still be hard-ish, and 2) still be epic. Let's be honest, no serious 10 or 25 progression raider thinks progression raiding is "hard", it just involves a lot of head-bashing and practice. In this model, 25s would just have less of that. This model also puts to rest the whole argument about the "legitimacy of 10 man heroic raiding." A problem it exacerbates is farming 25 mans to feed a 10 man - but that problem exists now, and I don't think there's any feasible way to do it except to legitimize the 25 as actual farm mode for serious 10s.

Heroic 10 mans then become balls hard. The 10 man raiders who are looking for legitimacy rejoice. The 10 heroic man raiders who are in it because they think it's easier (lol) join a 25 man. The 10 man heroic raiders who can't raid 25 mans because of their computer - well, they're screwed if they don't want the harder content. Someone has to be screwed. The 25 man players who enjoy a challenge then go to 10s for their challenge and prestige, and don't have to carry around dead weight. The 25 man raiders who are dead weight continue to be dead weight and get their shiny purple epics.

The 25 man raiders who enjoy the challenge specific to 25 mans...well, these are an odd breed. As someone who has gone from 25 man progression to 10 heroic progression and back to 25 man heroic progression, I'd say the people who like the challenge of carrying dead weight (as opposed to the challenge of actually doing the boss's mechanics) are masochists and gamblers. The only (general) mechanic which is harder on 25 man is spreading out to not chain something - which is a trivial mechanic for "good" raiders who are constantly aware of their surroundings and not tunneling like a retard. The space issue is only an issue for bad 25 mans.

IDK, it's a rough sketch, but I'd say it's possibly the only workable solution, and is plenty controversial.

25 man is allrdy alot tighter tuned so that won't be a problem atleast.

[lockedout]

The Idea is to make 10 man have 2 resets per week.

[Asmalya]

I guess so far we can say difficult wise there is not much difference. One boss challenge 25m more..the next 10m.

So the strongest argument i always read is "its so much harder to organize. And its true. It is.
But why should that guy that logs on 5minutes before raid, gets ported get higher ilvl for not doing anything more then that guy in 10m?
Nah they should make the life of 25m easier somehow. But i guess they cant. The real problem is its harder to find 25 good people. And by good people i mean good enough to not hold back the 10m core of very goof guys most 25m has. Else they get just annoyed with scrubs and go 10m.
Sadly blizzard cant fix bad players.

[Draeblin]

Well there isn't really anything they could do without pissing of people. At the moment the situation is fine. People who want to raid 25 can do that, and the ones that want to play 10m can also do that. Both without any pressure to do the other one (achievements, items). Simply leave everything as it is and don't fuck it up in your next game.

[McTurbo]

i dont see anywhere they can do massive changes. they can go the 15 man route.. and the only ones that survive will be the 25 man guilds that cut down to 15.. its not like every 10 man raiding guild is going to find 5 quality raiders over night.. which means people unable to raid. so i doubt we see that.

higher ilvl.. no i think that wont happen either. if so they will loose alot of players who just dont want the hassle of switching guilds and revamping back up to 25's i think youll see more leave than the 15 man solution. as for a 10 man rebuilding back to 25.. sorry the game no longer has the support for that or an increased playerbase for it. thanks to guild levels people are more reluctant to change guilds than they were in BC

recruiting... where are 10 mans which is a larger population than 25's going to get all these new players to revamp up to 25's.. some of you mentioned mergers.. but its well known that they rarely work.. not that they don't work.. but that it takes a pretty strong guild leader to make it work, to smooth over ego and attitude issues.

i don't know what they are gonna do.. but the only solution i see is for MORE loot and a lowering of the difficulty. its the least painful way of changing the 25 man scene. without the chaos that the other solutions would bring.

[Exorte]

controversial.... that's the key word. I am guessing its higher ilvl items again. Which would suck.

Seriously doubt it since he also tweeted

Could you give me a reason as to why 25man raids don't just straight up drop items that already are already 2/2 upgraded?
Because that would cause progression-oriented 10 player raids to feel like they had to switch to 25s to benefit from the ilevel.

[Hedleyazg]

There never was a problem in wotlk with the ilvl difference the problem was 25m all the sweet items while 10m got the leftover shit, toc and icc are perfect examples.
If higher ilvl from 25m is what Blizzard is planning I will welcome the chance.

I guess you don't know some of the BiS stuff for people was from 10 man HM ICC fights.

[Exorte]

- More gear drops per person
- More battle resses
- Less personal accountability per person

The only (and admittedly big) drawback to 25 man raiding is gathering the people. Seeing as how groups are already able to do so, I don't really see why they need anything else to make it easier / more attractive.

Well true, 25 men raid are harder to spread out, and organize. You can't call out everything is there is 25 men talking on vent, etc.
I really don't feel on average 10 men and 25 men difficulty is have any big difference.
With that said I do think Blizzard design around 25 men than scale down to 10 men.
10 men difficulty curve is bad compare to 25 men. Some fight too easy, some too hard.

[Wondermine]

My crazy thoughts are that they are creating the 25 vs 10 controversy to get everyone to argue about them so they can be switched to 15 mans next expansion. Blizzard will stir this pot until everyone gets the idea that one raid size is the best way to go. Most of the time our 10 man guild has to sit some guys cause there are like 16 raiders anyway. It would be so much better if we could get one raid size IMHO.

[McTurbo]

Exorte

it comes down to progression when players are butting their heads against the wall and not making progress the will stop showing up.. or drop to 10 man with their best players to get down what the 25 mans couldnt because of lack of quality players who just cant do the difficulty curve any further then where they are. the problem isnt the raid format. its the lack of alternative methods to gear up so that as a whole the raid can progress pass the parts that are giving them difficulty.

HC raiders can yell L2P all day long but even they have issues when they find it easier to drop to 10 mans so they can keep getting those world firsts (or competing for them)

this is a skill issue.. its one that we will always face. all of us have only so much we can handle on any given encounter. once you pass your point of information overload your more than likely going to die or wipe a raid due to something youve missed. the bosses we face now this tier have more things going on than before. the abilities are more focused so that everyone has to do their job to do. tanking is more involved with swaps and intercepting boss abilities on top of moving or repositioning and mitigating damage. healers are adapting to the limited mana pool and regeneration methods that changed yet again this expansion. dps are required to be higher and dodge more stuff than before while maintaining that high dps.

i think we have hit the saturation point in wow.. how many abilities can you stack on a boss before only a few guilds can progress. i say this because of how many have dropped down from 25's to 10 simply due to the players who couldnt handle it and were causing repeated wipes.

ill give you organization issues is a problem for 25's. but its a problem because no one wants to show for a wipe fest because 3-5 people cant handle the content and hold back the other 20ish. their is only so much you can make up for another players mistakes after a certain amount the raid dies.

now lets look at the problems that are an issue for 25's
organization.
recruitment
difficulty (per individual)
Resources (flask pots.. so on)
Gated Valor Gear with no alternatives to get raid level gear to progress pass difficult spots that do no require multiple weeks (per piece)
Raid Level Crafting gear. Blood Spirits are to difficult or to expensive to get. they should have been on the valor vendor.
Valor, Harder to Cap than previous expansion.

i think that despite all that.. in the end the reasons for the drop in 25's to 10's there is a fundamental design flaw caused by blizzard, instead of fixing the issue they will attempt to band aid it which will cause more problems than it fixes. look at thier fix for bosses that were to difficult in LFR for your average raid to get through (Garalon pre patch) they took away your ability to see what bosses were down forcing you into accepting a raid thats repeatedly wiping... instead of adjusting the boss to the point where your average raid could get by. they would rather the individual player suffer through their bad design. its this type of thinking thats hurting wow.

[Immitis]

There never was a problem in wotlk with the ilvl difference the problem was 25m all the sweet items while 10m got the leftover shit, toc and icc are perfect examples.
If higher ilvl from 25m is what Blizzard is planning I will welcome the chance.

actually it did cause problems it caused stat inflation

[Auberdeen]

talked to Daxx yesterday and they are doing 40m LFR only. no more pre making raids.

[Deleted]

I think its quite obvious about the type of things its not going to be :

• Higher Item Level(s)
• Removing the Shared Lockout
• 15man Raid Size

Higher Item Levels and Removing the Shared Lockout (between 10 and 25) just causes people to feel that it is required to run both if they want to play competitively (which alot of people do).
15man Raid Size will just generally annoy everyone. 10man guilds will have to recruit more players. 25man guilds will have to lose players.

I personally hope that the difference is something more "appealing" rather than mandatory. But also not something gimmicky like crappy Bags which give Flasks / Potions.

I think to begin with they should try and improve some of the Game's Interface.
For example, the In-Game Calender could do with improving. Being able to select role(s) when signing up is one small step forward to helping Raid Leaders and Officers with organizing raids.
Not just for current content either. The option to invite RealID friends through the In-Game Calender to an event.

Other than organizing raids, officers also have issues with recruiting players for 25man. Sometimes this means having to search on different realms for new decent recruits, however not everyone can afford to Realm Transfer willy-nilly. I think it would be nice to allow players to raid content cross-realm (currently you cannot raid current content cross-realm. I feel this should be removed).

The thing that has the most chance to happen is removing the shared lockout and increasing ilvl. 100% sure the ilvl WILL get boosted for 25m.