Patch 6.0 - Bonfire of the Guilds.

[Deleted]

It's already started - the push for glory as every single ten man tries frantically to remake itself into a 20 man Mythic capable outfit.

Rather obviously, only half of them (probably less) can do it.

I'd like to ask what you think this massive change to wows community is going to do to the game?

Personally I can see one bonfire now as the guilds who are flattered by their HC progress try to make mythic siege happen and then another bonfire when WOD launches and those who survive that process realise actually they aren't mythic capable after all in the regular 3-4 month patch cycles. These lasting, year long tiers flatter to decieve, they make people think they are better than they really are.

The other thing I've noticed is a lot of griping about "carrying the bads" i.e. well established ten man groups bloating up and feeling like they have recruited the semi useless just to raid at all.

Thoughts?

[Lochton]

For us, seems to go fine, really. We get to cut away 5 lesser geared/Expeirenced players, and have a rotation when later ready.

Nothing bad with mythic at least for us.

[MrExcelion]

At least they gave 10ms plenty of time to upscale. If the expac had come out when they originally planned (6 months earlier per interview), yeah, might have been rough. We're also getting cross-realm raiding for the equivalent for MoP Normal (WoD Heroic), which is cool

[fixx]

Thoughts?

This was discussed to death year ago after previous Blizzcon and about 238097239805 times since.

[Huehuecoyotl]

It's a bizarre idea, from where I am sitting. They come up with the sensible approach of allowing a flexible size of raid, something that I suggested years ago. Then ruin it by making it flexible up to a certain point, where it suddenly becomes a rigid number that is different to anything seen in the game since Vanilla.

I swear it's like watching a Dilbert cartoon seeing some of the decisions they are making.

If a flexible raid size is a good idea (and I think it is) then make it flexible all the way. If it ends up with Mythic raids having a "sweet spot" of numbers, then all of the world first guilds will use that size, of course. But it won't stop the rest of the guilds from running their raids the way they want. With the roster that they have used for all the raids on the way up to Mythic.

I can see this coming back and biting them on the ass.

[fixx]

It's a bizarre idea, from where I am sitting. They come up with the sensible approach of allowing a flexible size of raid, something that I suggested years ago. Then ruin it by making it flexible up to a certain point, where it suddenly becomes a rigid number that is different to anything seen in the game since Vanilla.

WoW raid sizes has always been wrong, it should be 15 (3 tanks 3 healers 9 dps) so that it'd scale up from the fiveman groups. 20 is just better compromise than 15 at this point because it's easier for the 10man guilds to scale up instead of 25's to scale down.

I can see this coming back and biting them on the ass.

Nop. One raid size is what all heroic (soon to be mythic) raiders have been asking for since WLK.

[tss]

It's a bizarre idea, from where I am sitting. They come up with the sensible approach of allowing a flexible size of raid, something that I suggested years ago. Then ruin it by making it flexible up to a certain point, where it suddenly becomes a rigid number that is different to anything seen in the game since Vanilla.

I swear it's like watching a Dilbert cartoon seeing some of the decisions they are making.

If a flexible raid size is a good idea (and I think it is) then make it flexible all the way. If it ends up with Mythic raids having a "sweet spot" of numbers, then all of the world first guilds will use that size, of course. But it won't stop the rest of the guilds from running their raids the way they want. With the roster that they have used for all the raids on the way up to Mythic.

I can see this coming back and biting them on the ass.

You miss the point entirely. There should be one set raid size for Mythic so that it can be as fine-tuned as possible, so with one size that pretty much guarantees there are no missing raid buffs, they can tune with that assumption.

I'm curious, what are your guild's progression landmarks? Like how long ago did you down each boss?

[Wildo]

"the push for glory as every heroic single ten man tries frantically to remake itself into a 20 man Mythic capable outfit." - Fixt

[Deleted]

It's a bizarre idea, from where I am sitting. They come up with the sensible approach of allowing a flexible size of raid, something that I suggested years ago. Then ruin it by making it flexible up to a certain point, where it suddenly becomes a rigid number that is different to anything seen in the game since Vanilla.

I swear it's like watching a Dilbert cartoon seeing some of the decisions they are making.

If a flexible raid size is a good idea (and I think it is) then make it flexible all the way. If it ends up with Mythic raids having a "sweet spot" of numbers, then all of the world first guilds will use that size, of course. But it won't stop the rest of the guilds from running their raids the way they want. With the roster that they have used for all the raids on the way up to Mythic.

I can see this coming back and biting them on the ass.

I can as well.

Many ten man guilds have been running for years at this point, often very close knit mini communities of the sort that I am sure is greatly responsible for wows long term success. And now, at least half of them have to either abandon the idea of raiding top tier content, or change fundamentally.

I think sometimes that because blizzard work in the tech industry where things change radically all the time and that's normal, they think it's normal for everyone else. As much as they don't mind shaking their own game up and that can be good, they also don't seem to care about shaking the playerbase up to the same degree. Not too sure social groupings work that way, myself. Rapid changes of group size, personnel etc always seem to me to piss people off.

- - - Updated - - -

"the push for glory as every heroic single ten man tries frantically to remake itself into a 20 man Mythic capable outfit." - Fixt

Not really, because most norma guilds have also done HC stuff by now because the tier has been out so damn long. Guilds which would have maybe cleared TOT on normal and maybe got jinrokh HC down are now thinking they are hot shit and Mythic capable because after 12 months and double VP upgrades HC siege is doable.

Exact same thing was seen at the start of Mop - HC DS clearing guilds being stomped by elegon normal and collapsing. Only this time they'll have first entered a life or death battle with all the oher 10 man HC siege guilds to get 20 decent players together first.

[Huehuecoyotl]

You miss the point entirely. There should be one set raid size for Mythic so that it can be as fine-tuned as possible, so with one size that pretty much guarantees there are no missing raid buffs, they can tune with that assumption.

I'm curious, what are your guild's progression landmarks? Like how long ago did you down each boss?

I ran a casual raiding guild for 5 years. One of the biggest pains was getting 11 people turning up for a raid night, then having to sit one out. But even though we were casual, we got to the heroic bosses (eventually!). So all those type of guilds will be running along quite happily with raids that are flexible, then suddenly hitting a brick wall where they can't do the top end raids at all.

They are making Mythic raiding more exclusive, in the bad sense of the word. At least they are from where I am sitting.

[Super Kami Dende]

I ran a casual raiding guild for 5 years. One of the biggest pains was getting 11 people turning up for a raid night, then having to sit one out. But even though we were casual, we got to the heroic bosses (eventually!). So all those type of guilds will be running along quite happily with raids that are flexible, then suddenly hitting a brick wall where they can't do the top end raids at all.

They are making Mythic raiding more exclusive, in the bad sense of the word. At least they are from where I am sitting.

AS they should be, Flexible raiding sizes should be there for lower raid content like Normal and Heroic (WoD), but with Mythic being set at 20 they allow for fine tuning to be done with the assumption 1 of each class will be in there, 10 would be too few and 15 would require a larger amount of cutting from 25 man groups.

20man Mythic is the best number they could choose to have quality high end precisely tuned raiding.

[Deleted]

"the push for glory as every heroic single ten man tries frantically to remake itself into a 20 man Mythic capable outfit." - Fixt

Pretty much that. It's a non-problem.
The rest - normal raiders who occasionally dip into HC's at the end of expacs during content draught have until the end of 6.* cycle to recruit if they so wish .. that's at least another year away still

[Geckoo]

10 man guilds that have intention to raid in Mythic have been transitioning for months now, most of them have also cleared the content in 25 man already. The only ones that can have a problem are those 10 man guilds that are only clearing heroic content because they've been given a whole year to do it plus 4 gear updgrades... in other words: is not a problem for them, since they'll have plenty of time to get enough people in their new heroic flex 10-30 raid.

[Dangg]

It's a bizarre idea, from where I am sitting. They come up with the sensible approach of allowing a flexible size of raid, something that I suggested years ago. Then ruin it by making it flexible up to a certain point, where it suddenly becomes a rigid number that is different to anything seen in the game since Vanilla.

With the extreme affinity to min/maxing everything in heroic (now Mythic) raiding guilds this would be impossible to balance.
The result would most likely be that every boss will be done with a different amount of people because a certain number will be percieved to be optimal for the encounter.

[Deleted]

Topic has been beaten to death.

Guilds that want to transition and were doing heroic mode as 10mans before, will continue to do so and upscale. 25mans will either downscale or make no changes as substitutes are always welcome.

Yes - The long lifespan of the raid tiers does deceive players, and they think they're more competent than they are when they finally kill Garrosh in ilvl 580 gear, but i don't see tiers being shorter and naturally these players won't make the cut in high end guilds.

All difficulties should exist for all people - And gear should be better depending on the effort put in.

[Deleted]

10 man guilds that have intention to raid in Mythic have been transitioning for months now, most of them have also cleared the content in 25 man already. The only ones that can have a problem are those 10 man guilds that are only clearing heroic content because they've been given a whole year to do it plus 4 gear updgrades... in other words: is not a problem for them, since they'll have plenty of time to get enough people in their new heroic flex 10-30 raid.

You mean the only ones who have a problem are the vast majority of guilds?

And for some reason you are assuming all of them will be able to add more people - I have to ask where you think those extra people are going to come from? Surely half the current guilds must die in order for the remainder to flourish?

Hence - bonfire of the guilds.

[ThunderTaco]

I don't know how it will end, but i'm excited for mythic raiding.

We cleared SoO in early june, which isn't great when comparing to the top guilds but isn't that bad considering we raid 9 hours/week and lost players during progress. We also cleared ToT when relevant which didn't last that long so I feel we are in a good spot for WoD. We have a second roster wich is working on Nazgrim but raids less often.

We are going to merge the two rosters and will probably have to make a few arrangements in order to raid mythic, but I hope we can make it and kill mythic Garrosh, need those heirlooms !

For WoD, I hope that returning players will help us make a solid roster. As for the "carrying the bads", there is no easy answers, I feel it all depends on what you want.
I have been in "elitist" guilds that only care for performance and progress, with raidleaders not afraid to call out people and swap underperformers, it gave results as we did LK 25HC, but it was frustrating.

Now i'm in a guild that cares more for players than numbers, even if that means you don't raid or underperform. We try to go as far as we can with what we can, even if that means not clearing the tier (like the first tier of MoP) and I'm perfectly fine with it. Both "philosophies" are legit and , you just have to find the one that suits you.

[Deleted]

Topic has been beaten to death.

Guilds that want to transition and were doing heroic mode as 10mans before, will continue to do so and upscale.

How?

Where will the people come from?

The only way for it to happen is for at least half of MOP's raiding guilds to die off.

[Krazzorx]

Problem with this topic has always been: treating guilds as people. Guilds aren't people. It doesn't matter if half of the 10m heroic guilds die off if the raiders are still raiding.

Yes, you'll get some people who will take it very personally and get very mad, but that happens with every change.

[Deleted]

10 man guilds that have intention to raid in Mythic have been transitioning for months now, most of them have also cleared the content in 25 man already. The only ones that can have a problem are those 10 man guilds that are only clearing heroic content because they've been given a whole year to do it plus 4 gear updgrades... in other words: is not a problem for them, since they'll have plenty of time to get enough people in their new heroic flex 10-30 raid.

And that's exactly what we're planning.

No more problems with beeing unable to both recruit / test new players and keep the existing core raiding without too much sit outs, and when there's finally around 20-25 players that are both skilled enough and geared it's time to set out foot in mythic.
And if that time doesn't happen until next content patch, so be it.
Flex tech means there's room to grow, and i bet it's more the newly merged "mythic" guilds that are going to struggle when they find mythic to be out of reach until overgeared like now. Setting false expectations etc.