Expansion news: Smaller raids, Honor rehaul

[Modern Angel]

*I'm* stoned? I know who I'm married to.

I was responding to HRose. I like Righ. He makes sense. I'll try to make liberal use of quotes to avoid any confusion next time.

[Merusk]

Yes, because making a design decision for the betterment of the game is Bad Fucking News and the important thing is HRose having something to gripe about in overly long broken English. You dizzy fucking bitch.

Posted right after Righ posted.  Signe wasn't the only one who figured you were calling Righ the dizzy bitch, she's just the one with a personal interest.   :-D

[HRose]

Yes, but I remember when HRose was a fanboi for WoW, back in beta days. 

And I still am.

In fact I'm complaining:

1- About endgame PvE
2- PvP

Both of these weren't there during beta. I never wrote off the game, it's just that it cannot get PvP right.

[Signe]

At least my brain won't get fat and lazy while I'm sitting at my computer trying to figure out what the hell you people are on about!

And, yes, I have a personal interest.  That Righ makes my heart go boom boom.     Poor heavily bearded HRose... not so much.     (though he does seem to have a pretty face under that massive mess)

[Zane0]

This is technically still raiding, and no one has ever argued or proven to any degree that more than 30% of the playerbase have embarked on anything after UBRS- although who can say at this point?  The change will definitely benefit those guilds that find 40-mans intolerable (justifiably so in many cases), but it is still not "raiding for the masses".  What this will do is make it easier to form a competent raid guild, but there will still be lots of coordination, time, and piles of virtual gold involved at the top end.

If, however, this new PvP system turns out well and if Blizzard can improve instance longevity through balanced multiple difficulty settings, there's probably little need for anyone to be very unhappy.

[Modern Angel]

At least my brain won't get fat and lazy while I'm sitting at my computer trying to figure out what the hell you people are on about!

And, yes, I have a personal interest.  That Righ makes my heart go boom boom.     Poor heavily bearded HRose... not so much.     (though he does seem to have a pretty face under that massive mess)

Given my almost pathological aversion to sweaty man with an overabundance of body hair I'm not seeing it. I was confused for a minute... I thought you'd run away with HRose to do... well, whatever it is he does.

[Paelos]

Here's all I know, there are 6277 level 60 alliance on my server. There are basically 22 uberguilds who have conquered MC and BWL. Most of them have an average of 60 level 60 members. That means 1320 of those 6277 are in defined uberguilds. That's 22% basically.

If you count member who've conquered AQ as well, that's only 7 guilds with about 80 people a guild, which is only 9% of the total level 60 population.

Either, way, that's WAAAAAAY less than a majority of people who are in "uberguilds" and as such, at the very minimum, more than half the 60s on my server will feel better about having to bring less people to raids, regardless of guild politics.

[Calantus]

Ok. So you cut down to a lower size. For arguments sake you have all of your core best players stay with you into raiding BC and times are good. Those people who were cut will make new guilds so they can raid so the available player pool will again be reduced to very low. Things will be good for a while definately, raiding with just a pure core of raiders is pretty sweet. Eventually though you're going to get attrition and your core will need to be replaced. What's to say that you'll be recruiting core members every time you do? Nothing. 25 players or 40 players it will eventually revert to the same ratio of core vs retards every guild had before BC unless they change policy along the way to better combat it. 6 months after the expansion you'll be wishing you could just bring your 18 best players and piss off the retards.

[El Gallo]

I'll have to see how it really plays out before judging it.  At first glance, it looks like it might reduce barriers to entry for raiding but it is also pretty damn rude to change the game from 40-man raids to 25 raids after 2 years.  A lot of people will get kicked out of their guilds or demoted to benchwarmer status.  Lots of hurt feelings, drama, etc.

I'm not even really sure why people think this will open raids to people who can't raid now.  People who want to, but can't, raid in WoW now seem to fall into two categories:
1.  People who can't say "OK, I'll be at raids from 8-12 on Tuesday and Thursday, and from 12-4 on Saturday" for whatever reason.
2.  People who can't or won't play as a member of a tightly coordinated unit.

They say that the raids will stay as hard or harder, so this doesn't help people in #2 at all.  Raids may be shorter because they are supposedly going to be winged, but they won't be shorter because of this change, so I'm not sure how it helps people in #1 either.  Not that there are not other benefits, but I don't think this changes anything re: the casual v hardcore conflict.

[Sogrinaugh]

I thought we'd established in some other ten page thread that most people were raiding and loved raiding, and that the people who wanted smaller groups were an irritating vocal minority? In theory this change should start a popular revolution against the developers for attempting to destroy the game.

What i hope they continue to do, but likely will not since developing raid content seems to take so fucking long and cost so much money (LOL at that excuse now considering their subscriber base), is make onyxia-style 40mans where loot and farming isnt the emphasis or impetus for success, but rather deciphering the strategy and just doing it once to say you've done it.  I mean their could be some kind of reward (maybe opening up exclusive flightpaths or portals or something, maybe a 20 slot bag or whatever) but that wouldn't be the point of it all.

25 ppl raids definately reduces metagame overhead, but i also wonder if it reduces how complex of encounters blizzard can design.  Considering they need bulldozers to push around their stacks of cash at this point, i hope they allocate at least some of it into hiring enough dev's/programmers to continually make innovative encounters.  C'thun was so fucking fun (once u ditch the scrubs), and had given me alot of hope that WoW was finally realizing their is life after tank n spank.

The most important out of all this expansion news is definately the pvp system changes though.  Their were quit a few people in my guild who enjoy bg's more then raids, but avoided the grind since a) the loot isnt as good (this was before they updated the sets) and b) the grind becomes exponentially more difficult the more hardcore everyone is about it.  The current pvp system was very obviously designed by someone who has a passionate hatred for the gamers who would participate in it.  The possibility that this person(s) is still working at blizzard kinda sullys any future games they might produce, kinda sad since up to this point every fucking game blizzard made was a work of art.

[Modern Angel]

Exactly, El Gallo. The WoW forums are full of people screaming, "F U RAIDERS! CASUALS GETS PERPLS NOW!" when they don't get it: if you cannot raid now you will not be raiding at 70. There will be no pick up Illidan runs.

Someone very aptly said they feel like they've been paying to beta test the game for two years. While I like the changes (I love 40 man raids but the time investment is such that I'll be damned if I do it for another two years) I feel sort of the same. This isn't some small change; the stuff announced from pallies/shamans to 25 mans to pvp changes to hybrid functionality changes just about every single fundamental assumption about the game up to this point. I'm excited and optimistic but I don't blame the people ticked off one whit.

[Merusk]

The current pvp system was very obviously designed by someone who has a passionate hatred for the gamers who would participate in it.

That's some nice hyperbole there, son.   No, I'd say the PvP ladder simply reflects Blizzards early misunderstanding of MMOs.  It's a rookie mistake, because they underestimated just HOW LONG the 'hardcore' people play these games.  If everyone PvP'd for 3-4 hours  a day it'd work out ok, and reward the people who won the most.  However, since some folks play 10-12 hours a day, anyone else who wants to hit that shiny R14 title needs to do the same.  That's the failing.

As to the raid complexity, I wouldn't think it'll affect much.  It'll just scale-down the players required to do the complex manuvers.  Instead of having a whole group to offtank something, it's just one guy and a healer. (Or perhaps a Paladin on his own, if it's easy enough.)  Instead of 5 or 6 folks kiting things, it's 3. Things like that.  Yes, it might reduce the meta-complexity of 'idiots who don't pay attention' but there's nothing stopping them from adding-in more manuvers that need to occupy more people or precise timing just because of the smaller size.

Cal:  You're right about that attrition factor with your core group.  Shit happens, life intervenes, etc.  But it's much easier to find 1-4 quality replacements every few months than to have to find 3-5 every month the way you do with a 40-person raid.  My guild ran ZG for several months before finding an MC alliance and had to deal with that attrition.  It is a LOT easier with the smaller raid size.  Plus, even 2-years later without an expansion you still have new players coming into the game.  Or, you can recruit someone away from a larger guild who may be a quality player, but doesn't get to go along on raids because of their size. 

Raiding:  Yeah, folks are misunderstanding what raiding entails. It's always gonna be time, 25, 40, 72, or 15 man groups.  The question is, will that 25-man instance take as long as UBRS, less time, or longer?  Folks PUG MC and ZG/ AQ20 on my server a lot.  Some are successful, some are not, the same as any other PUG. Hell since the changes ot UBRS/Strath/Scholo, I undersand a lot of groups fail at Drak, Baron and Gandling. That alone boggles me.

[bhodi]

Xi- from death and taxes weighs in:

So here I am, once again, hijacking our front page for my own personal soapbox. As we know, there was a recent announcement regarding the size of raids in BC, and I've spent the last few days trying to quantify in words why it bothers me so much, why I am so disapointed by the change. Eventually I came to realize that what really bothered me about it was the people. The people are the reason I log in every day, the reason I'm willing to throw myself against impossible odds, to do things as mindnumbing as farming potions for hours. Loot will come and go, and be outdated by the evolution of the game, world firsts will come to be long forgotten in the sands of time, but the people we play with, the people we experienced the game with, will we ever really forget them.

Raiding guilds were designed around 40 people, plain and simple. It's been that way for 2 years, and to change it now is so ridiculously shortsighted. I've been raiding with the same core for nearly 2 years, the same core of people necessary to facilitate 40 man raiding, and now I'm supposed to tell a good portion of them to what, fuck off, get on the bench because you pompous pricks arbitrarily decided to change the fucking rules.

Tigole, you say that with the entrance of BC there will be a high turnover on raid guilds. What the fuck do you know. You expect me to believe that the same people who poured hours of time and effort through your arrogant fucking cockblocks at Ragnaros, at Chromaggus, at Nefarion, and at the mother of all fuck ups C'thun, will suddenly turn their backs on us because it's a convenient time to bow out of the game. Suddenly people who devoted the time to the rest of us to throw themselves multiple days a week at a C'thun we didn't have a fucking prayer of beating are going to say, sorry I have better things to do just because the expansion comes out?

So what the fuck are we supposed to do now. How do we look at our guildmates, our friends, the people we've known for a year, two years, maybe longer and tell them, "Sorry, you aren't good enough", or "Sorry we don't have room for you". It's not about raids being 40% smaller, it's about us having to tell 40% more people sorry, you're going to have to sit outside and hold your dick every night.

Now you'd say, well why not use 2 raids. Who decides who goes in each raid, who leads the raids, how many people do we need on standby for each raid, what kind of class stack do we need for the encounters, how many people do we recruit to deal with the challenges ahead, what happens when group B's tanks are online, but they don't have enough priests, and A has priests, but no tanks. And by the time we're done separating people into 2 categories, we might as well be 2 completely fucking separate guilds. Why the fuck should we have to endure this bullshit because you decided you wanted to change the rules halfway through.

Let me leave you with a final thought, one you may see repeated in the upcoming days, because it was included in an article I was asked to contribute to. When Death and Taxes kills Illidan, and we stand over his corpse for our screenshot, will our first thought be: Where are the other 15 people who stood together with us for Onyxia, for Ragnaros, for Nefarion, for C'thun, and finally for Kel'Thuzad.

These are my thoughts, for now.

There are a bunch of people in my guild who are agreeing with him. I don't, but I can see where he's coming from; frankly, I don't have 39 friends or even 100ish friends in my guild (our guild roster). I have maybe 10-20 people I talk to and the rest are just other groups of people that are also there. I think smaller is better for coordination, friendship, less idiots, more accessable content, more PUGs, and easier raiding.

In short, fuck you tigole. I'm glad they got rid of everything you stood for.

[Paelos]

I see where they are coming from with this, but the guilds are worried about change that didn't go their way. We all know they would have been MORE than pleased if the change was to increase the size to 80 man raids, thus cutting the knees out from all the medium sized guilds, raiding alliances, and smaller groups.

They make it seem like it's this unholy impossible task to set up two raids, when in reality it's not at all. Sure, it's difficult and it requires some more effort, but we've done it in my raiding group to support two seperate 40 man runs. When you get to that high level there are certain people who like playing with each other inside the 40 man raid, and those people will split off into the 25 man raids. My guess is you'd need a group of 60-65 people to operate two independant 25 man raids with the correct standbys. There are people who have alts who can play two characters on two different raid timers. If you really enjoy the people you game with, there are solutions to the problem. Thing is, I think a few of the raiding guilds know that it's people don't enjoy them, and that's cause for concern.

[Merusk]

Tigole, you say that with the entrance of BC there will be a high turnover on raid guilds. What the fuck do you know. You expect me to believe that the same people who poured hours of time and effort through your arrogant fucking cockblocks at Ragnaros, at Chromaggus, at Nefarion, and at the mother of all fuck ups C'thun, will suddenly turn their backs on us because it's a convenient time to bow out of the game. Suddenly people who devoted the time to the rest of us to throw themselves multiple days a week at a C'thun we didn't have a fucking prayer of beating are going to say, sorry I have better things to do just because the expansion comes out?

This is so rich with comedy, I can't put it into words.  Watching a 'next-gen' uber yell the same vitrol at a 'first-gen' uber. Oh irony.

They make it seem like it's this unholy impossible task to set up two raids, when in reality it's not at all. Sure, it's difficult and it requires some more effort, but we've done it in my raiding group to support two seperate 40 man runs. When you get to that high level there are certain people who like playing with each other inside the 40 man raid, and those people will split off into the 25 man raids. My guess is you'd need a group of 60-65 people to operate two independant 25 man raids with the correct standbys. There are people who have alts who can play two characters on two different raid timers. If you really enjoy the people you game with, there are solutions to the problem. Thing is, I think a few of the raiding guilds know that it's people don't enjoy them, and that's cause for concern.

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing.  All the things he cites "waht if there aren't enough tanks, what if there aren't enough healers.."  That's shit you have to deal with at 40 man already. What do you do if there aren't enough NOW?  Oh right, you find a replacement.. surprise!  Only now you don't have to find as many. Gee whillakers, my heart bleeds for them.

It's change, and people are bitching because it's different. Same old story.  They'd bitch that they had to let-in noobs if it were 70 or 80-man, or they'd bitch that the encounters weren't any more varied if it had stayed 40-man.

MMO players: Bitching IS the meta-game.

[Threash]

You know, i understand where hes coming from but i still think hes full of shit.  I seriously doubt the 40 people DnT is taking through naxx right now are the same 40 they took through ony 2 years ago.  Lowering guild size is as simple as cutting off recruitment for a while, say a month before the expansion.  By the time you have everyone at lvl 70 your raid force will be down to a manageable size and you can start recruitment once again with the new numbers in mind.

[bhodi]

You know, i understand where hes coming from but i still think hes full of shit.  I seriously doubt the 40 people DnT is taking through naxx right now are the same 40 they took through ony 2 years ago.  Lowering guild size is as simple as cutting off recruitment for a while, say a month before the expansion.  By the time you have everyone at lvl 70 your raid force will be down to a manageable size and you can start recruitment once again with the new numbers in mind.

Yep; it's exactly what the officer response in our guild has been. We're stopping recruitment, and normal attrition will make our guild a more reasonable size come expansion time.

D&T is different, I completely believe they are the exact same people. It's like a party any time they open ONE slot. They, however, are not even CLOSE to being a small subsect of the offshoot of the norm.

[Delpheous]

Hey hi, new guy, been lurking for a bit, but have felt compelled to post on this topic.

I've been playing WoW since last summer, but I cancelled in late April/May mainly for school and the fact I didn't like exactly where the game was going. 

Anyway, I remember when 1.10 was about to go live, and Blizz released the news about the new Cap on the 5 and 10 man dungeons.  All hell broke loose on the forums, mostly with people who had close knit guilds of seven or eight people, or smaller guilds of twenty or so.  People who'd have on average seven or eight people online at the time (arguably the majority of most casual/non-raider guilds)  The changed kicked them in the balls, but there was very little sympathy from raiders.  In fact most raiders said:

"Run two groups, and if you don't have enough, invite/recruit more people."

So honestly, when I saw the first raiders bitching and moaning about this change, and I continue to see raiders do so. . .I'm very surprised that no one remembers or has said anything about that cap that hurt a greater majority of the guilds in WoW.  Then you realize. . .well hey, they adapted to the change, either people left, or they got over it and went with it. 

Online games are all about adaptation, going with the flow of things, so I just find it really funny seeing these big name guild leaders complaining about this change.  Past that, how many of these guilds will even be the same by time they get to lvl 70 to begin with?  You don't need a guild to level. . .so while everyone's out doing there thing, some will get there faster then others, thus splitting the guild apart regardless of this change or not.  There would've been turnover either which way with this expansion, and only the core members of the guild would've stuck together anyway. . .and I've yet to see a big name guild with 40 tight knit, best of friends in it.  Most have 15 to 20, if even that, the rest are filler for them to get through the content. 

So I don't know, I'm of the opinion this has more to do with epeen then raiders truly upset about "breaking up" guilds.  They could care less when it happened to the smaller family style guilds, but the moment it happens to them. . ."OMGZ GAME BREAKING!!1"  Guess it's just human nature though.

[Righ]

I'm not even really sure why people think this will open raids to people who can't raid now.  People who want to, but can't, raid in WoW now seem to fall into two categories:
1.  People who can't say "OK, I'll be at raids from 8-12 on Tuesday and Thursday, and from 12-4 on Saturday" for whatever reason.
2.  People who can't or won't play as a member of a tightly coordinated unit.

3. People who want to experience and learn the fights but who don't want to repeat them endlessly until everybody in a fucking enormous guild has a dozen bits of loot.

Reducing raid size from 40 to 25 is a help, because it reduces repetition. I don't believe that you folks didn't get that.

[El Gallo]

You are right that I hadn't thought about that (I can't speak for my folks), but now that I have I'm not sure it holds true.  Repetition is only indirectly related to raid size.  It's directly related to the #drops/#players ratio.  That ratio, in turn, is related directly to Blizzard's content-creation rate.  I don't think Blizzard wants people to farm shit to the point they hate the zone, Blizzard just wants people to farm shit until they can get the next piece of farmland out the door (it is just a sad coincidence that Blizzard can't generate more farmland until long after you are sick to death of the current one).

Unless Blizzard can make 25-man raids much faster than they can make 40-mans (possible, but it doesn't seem obvious to me and it certainly won't be nearly twice as fast), they will still need each 25 man to hold their playerbase's attention for the same amount of time a 40-man holds their attention now.  That means the same amount of repetition, which could be accomplished by decreasing the number of drops or (even better) increasing the number of required drops.  It just so happens that they are introducing socketed items with TBC, which makes me suspect you'll need to farm your tier x items AND your tier x sockets for each new raid dungeon to give Blizz the time to make new ones.

Now, I hope they can up the content creation rate without sacrificing too much quality, but that's a separate issue.  I also don't care about the change in raid sizes, as it won't affect me personally.  I think they may actually make raids a bit more fun.  But I remain convinced that about 49.9% of the cheering for this change comes from "wow, this means every TBC encounter will be as easy as UBRS" people, who I think will be unhappy when they see the actual results, and 49.9% comes from from "this makes people I don't like sad, and I love that" people, who are just disgusting.

[Jeff Kelly]

Well I like this change. After suffering another week of severe raid drama(TM) I am glad that the new raids will be capped at 25 players maximum.

We are already running several Zul Gurub/AQ20 Raids and the time needed for raid setup is orders of magnitude smaller than that required for our 40 man raids.

Often we do the 20 mans as some sort of pseudo pick up raids where we just ask people on our friends list or in our raid alliance chat. It usually just takes half an hour to find enough people to do AQ20/Zul and you can finish the instances in 3 hours.

Also what you people seem to forget, if everybody is level 70 even MC, BWL and AQ will be 25 player instances, at least for level 70 players.

[lamaros]

I'm not even really sure why people think this will open raids to people who can't raid now.  People who want to, but can't, raid in WoW now seem to fall into two categories:
1.  People who can't say "OK, I'll be at raids from 8-12 on Tuesday and Thursday, and from 12-4 on Saturday" for whatever reason.
2.  People who can't or won't play as a member of a tightly coordinated unit.

3. People who feel like doing things in big groups is boring and unfun!

25 is still big, yes, but it's not as boringly big as 40.

[lamaros]

You are right that I hadn't thought about that (I can't speak for my folks), but now that I have I'm not sure it holds true.  Repetition is only indirectly related to raid size.  It's directly related to the #drops/#players ratio.  That ratio, in turn, is related directly to Blizzard's content-creation rate.  I don't think Blizzard wants people to farm shit to the point they hate the zone, Blizzard just wants people to farm shit until they can get the next piece of farmland out the door (it is just a sad coincidence that Blizzard can't generate more farmland until long after you are sick to death of the current one).

Unless Blizzard can make 25-man raids much faster than they can make 40-mans (possible, but it doesn't seem obvious to me and it certainly won't be nearly twice as fast), they will still need each 25 man to hold their playerbase's attention for the same amount of time a 40-man holds their attention now.  That means the same amount of repetition, which could be accomplished by decreasing the number of drops or (even better) increasing the number of required drops.  It just so happens that they are introducing socketed items with TBC, which makes me suspect you'll need to farm your tier x items AND your tier x sockets for each new raid dungeon to give Blizz the time to make new ones.

Now, I hope they can up the content creation rate without sacrificing too much quality, but that's a separate issue.  I also don't care about the change in raid sizes, as it won't affect me personally.  I think they may actually make raids a bit more fun.  But I remain convinced that about 49.9% of the cheering for this change comes from "wow, this means every TBC encounter will be as easy as UBRS" people, who I think will be unhappy when they see the actual results, and 49.9% comes from from "this makes people I don't like sad, and I love that" people, who are just disgusting.

I think the scalability that will introduce with the expansion might help with this. Because if they do it right and make the easy and hard modes a little more than superficialy different then you'll get two areas for the price of one.

Plus it has to be at least a little easier to design areas for smaller groups than big ones.

I quit WoW due to high end pointless PvP and raid-centric (compounded by the fact that all the gear one needed to 'achieve' as I like to do had to be gotten that way) gameplay.

Less huge raids; meaningful, fun, and balanced pvp (arena); different ways to get equipment; and more option for smaller groups to run instances are ALL good things in my book.

So much so that I'm reinstalling WoW right now...

But I remain convinced that about 49.9% of the cheering for this change comes from "wow, this means every TBC encounter will be as easy as UBRS" people, who I think will be unhappy when they see the actual results, and 49.9% comes from from "this makes people I don't like sad, and I love that" people, who are just disgusting.

I don't care if they have 40 man raids. As long as they have a comparable way for me to get equipment while playing the way I enjoy playing, which is not in a big mindless group where only one or two people really exert any influence, then I'm happy for them to put in 800 person raids. I think most people are like this, really.

I think those who like this and play that game are happy because it means they'll have more FUN playing their way and not have to play another way. I think those complaining are those who are in big groups that might get broken up over the changes. I think only those who are in really good friendly guilds have a real reason to complain about that, and even then it'll pass within a while once new groups get sorted.

[Kenrick]

No, to Righ.

I did not know that.

Wow, you really can learn something in the WoW forum!

[Riggswolfe]

I have a friend who is in a large raiding guild and according to him there are people in his guild talking about splitting the guild and/or quitting the game because of the raid size change.

It'll be interesting to see if it affects WoW much.

[Ironwood]

Then they're a bunch of fucking drama queens who should get a fucking grip.


Seriously, too much vagina in these games.  Waaaaay too much.

[Kenrick]

Vaginas are okay as long as they're on women.

When they're on men, well... that's when I just call them pussies.

[Calantus]

3. People who feel like doing things in big groups is boring and unfun!

25 is still big, yes, but it's not as boringly big as 40.

I don't think anyone is saying 25 doesn't have its positives. Infact I think I already said that 25 is probably a better number than 40, so long as they can make the encounters right for it (which I think they can). But it's certainly not the silver bullet some people are looking for or the cure-all to casuals everywhere. It's still going to be raiding and everything that comes with that.

I liken the change to if they suddenly changed priests into a dps class and warlocks into healers. There's nothing really wrong with that, but it's been the way it has for almost 2 years and the change would undo a lot of what people have been doing for those years.

[lamaros]

Yeah. But they can't all of a sudden have heaps of new content for everyone, too much work it seems, so they've tried to scale a point in between. And, hopefully, build on that with more diversity.

[Signe]

Pussies are wonderful and I love mine very much but I do not use it to talk to people.  I talk enough rubbish around here.  I don't need bollocks falling out of my pussy.

[Furiously]

For a minute as I was scrolling through this thread ignoring 90% of the posts I was a bit worried I somehow had linked to the vaultnetwork.

Usually playstyles colliding is entertaining. somehow here it's a friggin trainwreck.

[Paelos]

I don't think they will have any problem making the newer instances with less people challenging. Admittedly, ZG is much more challenging than MC ever was due to the different types of strategies and mobs in one place. I mean Jindo is a ridiculously complicated fight that takes a good while to learn. Outside of the Razorgore fight, I'd say ZG encounters are harder to grasp than many BWL encounters, which have a few gear cockblocks unrelated to strategy. Things like the Broodlord and the Drakes are all fairly simple if geared correctly, and Vael is really just an FR cockblock...again.

[Glazius]

It'd be nice if they could figure out a rough way for raid bosses to scale in challenge and reward to the size of the raid group, from like 10 or 15 up to 40.

--GF

[Zane0]

I keep on wondering how Blizzard will keep up with content consumption since the logistical and organizational barrier has been effectively nearly halved.  What I can only conclude is roughly that which El Gallo gave mention to- there's going to essentially be less strategizing and more playing.  Instead of spending days or weeks ironing out what 40 people have to do, new 25-man bosses will be much easier to understand but far harsher in terms of the gear and/or consumables required.  Each new instance will likely require an absolutely airtight, fully-gemmed set of gear from whatever area you were farming previously.  This is at least mitigated -perhaps aided- by the token system that Blizzard claims to henceforth be sticking to.

Fully geared characters will be very valuable; hardcore guilds will treasure every single one of their members dearly.  One won't be able to casually bring their friend in greens & blues along to Illidan like they could to an extent in MC/BWL.

All speculation of course, but I would not be surprised.

[Jobu]

I like the raid changes, for a lot of reasons people mentioned.

- Organzing and yelling at 40 people sucks. You have to explain strats way too much for the guys who are taking a piss, or smoking, or just showing up. 25 reduces the overhead of that to be slightly less annoying.
- Less people to compete against for loot=less time running the instance over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over again. Hopefully.
- In *my* guild, this means we can split out normal raid crew into two. So people like me (and there are lots of us) can run "late night" raids that fit our schedule better. The biggest problem with raid attendance isn't the time requirement, but the actual time. So now the late night, West Coast/Australia folks can start up full raids instead of completely throwing away our sunny weekends to fight Rag. And think about it... two raid groups in a guild. That's gonne be some serious competition in there to brag to the other one, and lord knows the fucking poopsockers love motivation like that.