http://www.1up.com/do/previewPage?cId=3152830

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-general&t=9467359&p=1&tmp=1#post9467359

Anyone who's raided in WoW would know the main difference between raiding there and in Everquest is that content is pretty difficult unless you have a full 40 people. In Everquest, you can raid with as much as you got (at least you could up to a point) and I remember raiding Phinny with 30 and with 50 - it didn't matter. All encounters in WoW were tuned to the 40 man group, generally 5 of each class.

Then they add Blackwing Lair, and 1 fight in particular is cake when you have 8 of a specific class: the priests. So you recruit 8 priests to make sure you can always do this encounter successfully, and scale back other classes - but still retain 40 men.

Just recently they release another extremely difficult raid zone that requires 40 people to do.

Then, in the expansion, the announce that all of these guilds which were tuned for 40 man raids, spent the past 2 years with doing 40 man events (or 20 man events on off nights or 2x20 man events on other nights) ... are going to have to reduce their rosters down to 25 folks for the "top" raid encounters in the game.

Vanguard, anyone?

Hah, you guys may be despairing, but the mid-sized guilds I raid with (not to mention my own guild) *love* that it's going to be a 10 man/25 man game from now on. Now that the shoe is on the other foot... why don't you just run 2 25-mans? That's what we were told when we got *no* new 10 man instances since release and all the ones we *had* access to were capped at 5... and we had ONE dungeon left to go to.

I for one am glad to see WoW heading back a bit towards its smaller scale/more casual roots (I love the difficulty scaling) because that is what we were promised nearly 2 years ago when the game came out; I've had 4 generations of semi-casual players come and go because there was nothing to do (except make more alts). This is a breath of fresh air for us, and I'm glad Blizzard has finally done something to accomodate the smaller scale players, even if I suspect if it's simply because they crunched the numbers and saw what was going on with their subscription base.

Regards,
Nydia

Running 2x25 man runs would require us to recruit a lot more than we'd really like. If you do that, and say raid A makes it to the 3rd boss and raid B makes it to the 2nd boss on the first day - people in raid A are locked into that raid info the entire time. They can't just help raid B catch up.

Its just poorly implemented. I remember when Everquest went from 72 to 54 it hurt a lot of guilds. I also don't expect it to help casuals at all, but rather hurt them dramatically. Guilds no longer have as much margin of error in to let less skilled folks to take on the bosses. My guild lets in people of any talent spec and has no attendance requirements short of raid once every 5 weeks OR tell us why you can't. We have feral druids who tank bosses in MC, we have shadow priests melt faces in Blackwing Lair.

But now, when you only have room for 25, you need to be far more selective. Its hardly casual, when you need the same 25 folks every night for a week to learn the amazingly more difficult encounters. If it followed the Everquest model, making it so now these "casual" gamers had a few legs up and could do Naxx and other older content faster (while yet still experiencing it) and having a bunch more 20 man instances as well as the 40 man instances most of the raiding population have gotten used to ... it would have made a lot more sense.

If its hard for a casual guild to find 40 people (and I honestly believe 40 monkeys sitting at computers could finish Molten Core now) it'll be a lot harder for them to find 25 skilled and geared people. Molten Core today is a lot more PUGable than any of the content they're talking of releasing making every player have a greater impact.

I mean, my guild started on a server released more than a year and a half after the others and none of our members aside from myself and our raid leader ever experience anything more than the first 2 bosses in MC - and we've already cleared all of MC, ZG, AQ20, and half of BWL in the past 6 months.

Do you remember Blizzard's "casual content" patch. They scaled all the raids down from 10 man to 5 and 15 to 10. Done the 45 minute Baron run? Its really fucking hard even in full MC gear, I can't imagine doing it in earlier gearsets. In those 5 man runs, how much room is there for a bear tank or a shaman healer? Would you use a druid in catform or a rogue? Its Priest, Warrior, Mage, Rogue, 5th person - almost always. Cutting the size doesn't make it easier for casuals or harder for raid guilds - it just makes it harder for everyone, especially now with 1 more class to fit in. If you aren't the "best" the guild (any guild, casual or otherwise) has to offer they probably won't have room for you OR your guild won't be able to do shit in the instance.

It just seems like a very poor model to change everything in an expansion pack vs just releasing more content. "We're gonna change the raiding model, we're changing pvp, we're changing the factions" but they haven't really added anything other than 5 new zones and some flying mounts. Doesn't seem worth the $49.95 to me.

Actually, the main reason we are still (the guild I raid with) in MC and haven't made much progress in BWL (downed Vael twice and stalled) despite having Ragnaros on farm all spring is that we *have* 25 well-geared, competent people; it's the other 10-15 'have nots' that keep us stuck in place. The mid sized guilds I've spoken to (on Alleria at least) *love* the change, as we're not stuck filling in with pickups or sub-par geared folks anymore. And more 10 mans, with scalable difficulty, means that there's finally something for the legions of casuals, who *do* monetarily, pay most of Blizzards expenses by sheer numbers, to do.

I'm sorry that you guys feel that you're getting the shaft, but after getting BWL, AQ40, and Naxx, while the small end got nothing, it was, simply, our turn. I'm sure they will introduce more 40 mans at some point in the future. And, for the record, I don't think it's poor game design at all, they had to stop the bleeding of accounts as well as allow a scaleup path. It *sure* beats the 'casual content' patch, which clearly hurt casuals, but is not germane to this discussion - in that case, they *reduced*, not increased, the options available to small guilds and took dungeons that folks had already exploited for over a year and then made them almost impossible to new folks coming up based on the erroneous perception that the nearly impossible to obtain Tier 0.5 gear (without gimping by raid-equipped ringers) would make up for the complete lack of new content since release for 10 man groups. We didn't give a shit about that - we wanted to play with our families! I'm hopeful that this expansion will address that vacuum and if you don't think the expansion is going to be worth the 50.00 to you, wait until something that comes out that is. I can assure you that it is eagerly anticipated by the 40+ folks in my guild that have come, burned out, and back-burnered WoW because there was nothing left for them in it...

Regards,
Nydia

http://www.1up.com/do/previewPage?cId=3152830

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-general&t=9467359&p=1&tmp=1#post9467359

Anyone who's raided in WoW would know the main difference between raiding there and in Everquest is that content is pretty difficult unless you have a full 40 people. In Everquest, you can raid with as much as you got (at least you could up to a point) and I remember raiding Phinny with 30 and with 50 - it didn't matter. All encounters in WoW were tuned to the 40 man group, generally 5 of each class.

Then they add Blackwing Lair, and 1 fight in particular is cake when you have 8 of a specific class: the priests. So you recruit 8 priests to make sure you can always do this encounter successfully, and scale back other classes - but still retain 40 men.

Just recently they release another extremely difficult raid zone that requires 40 people to do.

Then, in the expansion, the announce that all of these guilds which were tuned for 40 man raids, spent the past 2 years with doing 40 man events (or 20 man events on off nights or 2x20 man events on other nights) ... are going to have to reduce their rosters down to 25 folks for the "top" raid encounters in the game.

Vanguard, anyone?

Actually, I'm a senior member on the Vanguard forums and if you check through Aradune's (Brad McQuaid's) posts, Vanguard will not be a Raid heavy game. I believe the ratio they are aiming for is 20% Solo, 60% Group and 20% Raid with the top loot in the game coming from numerous sources, namely raids, groups, solo, diplomacy and tradeskilling. Yes Raiding will be important, but no it will not be the end all, be all that is has become in WoW.

Yeah, I'm looking at Vanguard SOH since the most recent news about Age of Conan (delayed release until Mar/May 07). I'm sorry, but I just can't wait that long. :p

Maybe I'm missing something here, having not been through any of the raiding content in WoW due to personal preference, but if this is anything at all like EQ's expansions, the content will be more difficult and require the top of the line gear to make it work. By cutting down the number of people able to be in the instance at a time, that simply excaberates that, it doesn't alleviate it, and I doubt the "casual" players will be able to really get into this new stuff.

My reasoning being thus: I highly doubt that any *online* game will be able to keep a single gear baseline and still hold subscriptions, there'd only be different variations on the same gear "ideas" so to speak, and I imagine the lion's share of people who play, casual or raider, want to see bigger and better in a visible form of 1 stamina vs. 10 stamina, 10 hp vs. 100 hp, whatever, as opposed to 1 stamina vs 1 stamina and 1 spell damage, or similar ideas that are not "leaps and bounds" ahead.

That means, by satisfying that need to keep people feeling like they're improving, the content created has to be raised in terms of damage output and hitpoints to compensate for the higher gear standards now available, to keep it to a challenging level of play (all mechanics of the actual fights aside), and keep people interested.

However, what this requires is that people will have to have (in general, since I do not make any claim to knowing a whole lot about WoW's raid game) the best equipment available, especially considering the fact that the former 40 person standard is being cut down to 25.

I guess what I'm attempting to get at in this long rambling, meandering post is that it seems like you'd need the 40 man "launch" gear just to make a good run at the 25 man expansion stuff, because the room for error is decreased even more, the gear standard (even with the level cap raised) will still be high for the "end game" content.

Take that as you will though, given the fact that I don't really know every in and out of WoW's raiding game.

Raid size in EQ2 is only 24 and people get by pretty well, I just think it's so different than what you're used to it seems hard to swallow right now.

True top end raiding guilds in EQ2 have short rosters of about 36 and are very elite in their classes and needs of players. To me this is the same thing and if you want to be the creme of the crop you'll adjust to it and run with it.

And precisely what Mdana said is what I see in EQ2. If you're not in that elite corps then you don't have the flashy shiny armor and goodies. It's a tradeoff and IMO how things should be. But then I think reward = effort. The thing that kills raiding for me in the newer genre is that items and gear have no staying power and become inept so quickly that all those hours just doesn't make it worth it to me.

Vanguard, anyone?

Haha, no thanks.

If I could play again I would have an extremely hard time choosing between EQ2 and WoW..... I guess it would depend on where my friends were. But during EQ1 Casus Belli was the most potent when we did things that required 24ish people (Ntov) and when we had to go to Luclin/Pop and needed the multitudes we just didnt have the hard core numbers ......

Sounds like a dream to me. WOW you could literally just hook up with 10 of your friends and never have to worry about the outside world. Or in EQ2 you can instance your way for years..... All with a hand full of peeps you like to be around.

/sigh sounds like a lot of fun.

Yeah, that's fun - but you gotta admit (esp. coming from CB), that there is something very thrilling about being with a group of 70 people facing off the uber mob you've wiped to a zillion times, and then finally getting the kill.

There's some GREAT 20-man content in World of Warcraft as well, and all of it has far better gear than the first 40-man instance (Molten Core). Why they couldn't have done that, made 2 instances with equal chances to get equal gear - just the 40 man drops the gear twice as fast since its for twice the number of people.

Luckily, as things start to drift down, you're noticing Blizzard going back on the statement. Their internal team sees the expansion 4 months away, and hasn't even started testing, and can easily tune any of the instances from 20 to 40 folks - just right now they're set at 25. I'll wait until the release until I pass judgement.

Has wow even had an expansion yet or is still the first one they're talking about?

First expansion, but they've released 3 40-man dungeons and 2 20-man dungeons. The 2nd 40-man's boss mob was only recently beat, and most guilds still havent beat it, and the 'uber' guilds are still working their way through the latest 40-man.

There was a 5 man released 3 months after the game released, but other than that there hasnt been a single new <20 person dungeon since the game released.

I for one am very happy about this new direction the game is heading. I honestly cant say that I feel that the 40-mans I'm currently doing are all that 'epic' feeling to me. I MUCH more enjoy 20/10/5 man content where I actually matter, instead of browsing the web on my other comp, or watching a movie while I play whack-a-mole in the 40-mans.

Edit: Just to add, switching around the cliche mantra that the end-game raiders have been saying for over a year:

"There's STILL 40 man raids you can participate in! The smaller dungeons are just going to get preference for a while since they've been neglected."

I honestly cant say that I feel that the 40-mans I'm currently doing are all that 'epic' feeling to me. I MUCH more enjoy 20/10/5 man content where I actually matter, instead of browsing the web on my other comp, or watching a movie while I play whack-a-mole in the 40-mans.
I keep hearing people say this, and it makes no sense to me. The only thing I can figure is you guys have run Ony and MC and think the rest of the end game content is similar. The idea of watching a movie and reading websites while fighting in AQ40 or Naxx is ridiculous.

This is a terrible change either way it goes. If they make the content easier so scrubs can handle it, then we have no challenge left in the game. If they make difficult 25 mans that are comparable difficulty to AQ40/Naxx, then the "casuals" will still be unable to put a dent in it, while forcing current guilds to alienate 40% of their membership.

Dear Sanchek:

Believe it or not, there *are* a lot of competent mid sized guilds out there that this will be a great boon to. All three guilds that I raid with on Alleria are elated about the change; we have great people, and ZG (mastering Ossirian in AQ20) on farm, but can't fill out a solid 40 man (so we're stalled in BWL), and aren't willing to recruit/take people of questionable or unpleasant character in order just to be 'big enough'.

As you put it, you *have* AQ 40 and Naxx (and Naxx *just* came out!). Isn't it time to throw a bone to the not-so-big? They pay their 15.00 a month too, and have a right to decent quality small-scale play (my own guild prefers a challenging 10 man instance, but after 2 *years*, we're a bit sick of UBRS). Very little is being said about the fact that the lion's share of instances in this expansion will be 10-man, where the game was *sorely* lacking.

I have no doubt that Blizzard will continue to accomodate the very loud large scale raiders in the future... :)

Regards,
Nydia

Copied from my guild forums:

They have 7 million active subscriptions in the United States.
Everquest peaked out at 550,000 subscriptions.

If Sony is able to create the equivelent of 4 raid zones and 8 group zones PER expansion, releasing expansions every 9 months or so (compared to the 2 years its taken Burning Crusade) you have to wonder why Blizzard hasn't released maybe another 5 group or solo instances over the past 2 years. It shouldn't be a "5-man" vs "raid" argument, they have the capabilities to make both - yet don't. This isn't even a "5-man" vs "raid" discussion anyway, its about 25 vs 40 men in raids.

If they keep changing the number, guilds have to keep adapt - which in our case will mean (if attendance stays the same) up to 20 people in the queue per evening. Then next month they release 50 person content - and we have to recruit heavily, only to put 20% back in the queue when they switch to 30 person content. There's just no logic behind it. They could have EASILY made 20-man raids with the same calibur loot as the 40-man raids, just the loot is awarded at 50% of the rate (to accomidate that there are half the people there). But 25 is in the middle and just screws everything up Smile

They even could have made all of the raids like LDoN or CoH, where the difficulty (ammount of hitpoints and DPS) scales with the number of folks in the raid, and allow anywhere from 20 to 40 to accomidate anyone. But they opted to not do that either.

Everything they do is reactive instead of proactive, and they wonder why it frustrates or upsets people.

Believe it or not, there *are* a lot of competent mid sized guilds out there that this will be a great boon to. All three guilds that I raid with on Alleria are elated about the change; we have great people, and ZG (mastering Ossirian in AQ20) on farm, but can't fill out a solid 40 man (so we're stalled in BWL), and aren't willing to recruit/take people of questionable or unpleasant character in order just to be 'big enough'.

As you put it, you *have* AQ 40 and Naxx (and Naxx *just* came out!). Isn't it time to throw a bone to the not-so-big? They pay their 15.00 a month too, and have a right to decent quality small-scale play (my own guild prefers a challenging 10 man instance, but after 2 *years*, we're a bit sick of UBRS). Very little is being said about the fact that the lion's share of instances in this expansion will be 10-man, where the game was *sorely* lacking.

I have no doubt that Blizzard will continue to accomodate the very loud large scale raiders in the future... :)
I'd have no problem with more 20 or 25 mans. They can be fun. I like AQ20 a lot. But, not at the expense of the entire end game.

20 mans are a joke difficulty wise. If 25 mans are easy enough for the majority of people running 20 mans currently, there will be no challenge at the high end anymore. If they are as difficult as the current end game, but only require 25 people, they will crush the vast majority of people currently running 20s anyway. No one wins!

Seeing as how both 20 man zones were cleared within 24 hours of being patched in, I'm not very optimistic about having much challenge left in the game beyond Naxx.

Naxx is great today, but it's not relevant when talking about level 70 content. If anything, it's the opposite. Let smaller guilds hit Naxx at 70, when it's doable with lower numbers.

I keep hearing people say this, and it makes no sense to me. The only thing I can figure is you guys have run Ony and MC and think the rest of the end game content is similar. The idea of watching a movie and reading websites while fighting in AQ40 or Naxx is ridiculous.

This is a terrible change either way it goes. If they make the content easier so scrubs can handle it, then we have no challenge left in the game. If they make difficult 25 mans that are comparable difficulty to AQ40/Naxx, then the "casuals" will still be unable to put a dent in it, while forcing current guilds to alienate 40% of their membership.Did you copy/paste this from the WoW forums? It's the exact same condescending speal that I see there, ripe with baseless assumptions.

I've downed Nefarion and am currently working through AQ.

In NO place have I seen Blizzard say 'we're making it 25 man so it'll be easier for casuals'. You're assuming that just because it's less people, that they'll make it as difficult as similar-sized dungeons. What I HAVE seen Blizzard say is that the end game dungeon of BC will be the hardest dungeon yet created.

You also imply that casuals are somehow innately inferior to uber raiders like yourself. I have no idea why this opinion prevails. It's the same line of thought that makes people think that all hunters are loot whores just because a couple of hunters have looted off-key items. Just because there's some idiots in a PUG doesnt mean that all people that dont want to do 40-man dungeons are incapable of raiding.

There isnt anything in WoW that is THAT complicated that most reasonably intelligent people cant comprehend.

From your posts on this message board in the past I've gotten the impression that you're a reasonably intelligent guy - how have you let yourself get mired in this stereotype?

Besides, as I said above, if you want 40 man stuff, there's 4 40-man dungeons you can play in. The next few (at least) will be smaller size. If you say 'but I want new 40 man dungeons!', then I retort that many people have been saying 'but I want new 5/10 dungeons!' for over a year and a half, and have been told 'you have plenty of 5/10 mans, go play in those'.

The fact is is that this decision is completely made because Blizzard is looking at the bottom line. They didnt say "WOW! Our 40 man raids have been so successful with the majority of our playerbase that we'll stop making them!". What's more likely is that they have noticed a lot of people quit, and in their quit statements said 'I had nothing to do but 40 mans, and I didnt want to do that because X'.

Decisions like this dont spawn in a vacuum - you say they're making a terrible change, but I'm certain that they had some heavy discussions backed up with hard data that said that they stood to lose more money if they stuck with the current raid paradigm than if they changed it. They are a business after all.

The fact is they originally thought they'd make more money with the current raid setup, so they neglected the so-called casual playerbase. Somewhere along the lines they decided they'd make more money if they changed, so the decision was made to make the raiding guilds "alienate 40% of their membership" in favor of increased revenue.

Copied from my guild forums:

Those numbers make me giggle. Not that I doubt the WoW numbers b/c I don't but it's a well known fact that SoE doesn't publish sub numbers so it's based on assumptions. Personally I wish they would publish them just so we'd know but they don't.

As for the content in WoW....


There isnt anything in WoW that is THAT complicated that most reasonably intelligent people cant comprehend.

is spot on.

The fact is MMOs have to change or they die. It's really sad to see how slow the content is for WoW though and it's a huge reason EQ2s numbers increase monthly. I don't know this from pure numbers but simply from hearing it from the horse's mouth of former WoW players.

This argument is dejavu as it was the same ones heard on the EQ2 forums before release. Now the consensus is that most people prefer the intimacy of 24 vs the 72+ raids of EQ1. You guys will adapt, just the idea of change sucks. Oh and if I had to guess I'd say there are far far FAR more casual players in that sub figure than hardcore ubers....developers know this and they know in order to keep their subscribers they must change things.

They have 7 million active subscriptions in the United StatesI skimmed this and didnt catch it earlier, but this is incorrect.

WoW has 7 million active subscriptions worldwide. (actually the last number I heard was 6 million, but I may have missed a press release). The last press release said that there was 3 million active subscriptions in the US.

Not that it really changes the gist of the point he was attempting to make, but just adding for clarification. :)

www.mmorpgchart.com

www.mmorpgchart.com (http://www.mmorpgchart.com)

Yep, that's where I thought you might point. Sadly that guys sources are not accurate. His info is based on insider info not "official" announcements other than maybe the ones Blizzard tosses which I believe the last one was from Feb. and it states 6 millino ;). Someone show me an official press release from SoE that is "recent" (since EQ2 came about) talking about it's numbers :) You won't find one, they don't do it whle Blizzard does it allot.


If you do happen to find one I'll totally eat my toe.


guh i'm giong to eat my toe there is one for may that says 6.5mil...

But while perusing I found this and while this is just some joe blow poster he does have a point.

http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/board/message?board.id=gameplay&message.id=2499

sorry for the derail but the numbers thing always makes me chuckle :D

But, but its on the interweb therefore it must be true!

We can safely assume Everquest never broke 1 million and Warcraft broke 6 million then. Its still at least 6x as large. It should be 6x better?

Nitpicking numbers on a thread about video game subscriptions - you should spend a little less time here and more in the RL thread. Here your comments are entirely irrelevant.

No I don't think we can assume that b/c no one knows the exact numbers. But are you talking about EverQuest or EverQuest 2? B/C they are different games and I do think EQ1 had some numbers posted for a time but once Station Pass came into being it effectively stopped which makes sense since as someone with Station Pass, I have all the games but rarely play them....should I be included in their sub numbers?

But....

If having different pricing models allowing people to download the game in an Asian cafe having pay as you go (and no subscription) makes it "better" for you then I guess so Kelraz. The fact is without hard and true numbers it's anyone's guess. And, as to whether or not one game is better or worse than another.... considering that it's completely subjective is quite fruitless much akin to stomping ones foot and proclaiming that coke is better than pepsi when it's just one's opinion.

But the point is the game is changing and players don't like change. I see Blizzard taking a page from SoE making smaller raid sizes. It's a good move for their larger player base which I'd bet that toe I had to eat....is most likely a larger percentage of casuals over ubers.

And I'll make my opinions where ever I choose unless I am told by an admin or another mod my post is inappropriate. I invite you to report my post if you think it doesn't belong but don't openly bash me or I will return the favor.

You're just ruffled b/c I called you on your bogus numbers. The fact is no one knows the numbers and this is a board full of opinons. You do realize that when you make posts you open your thoughts up to critique from others replying to you? You surely don't think everyone will just agree with what you're saying?

Everquest, if I meant Everquest 2 I'd have said that. Having worked on EQ1 as a GM I can assure you we never had 1 million subscriptions. Blizzard has more than that in North America.

The POINT, which is what this topic is about - is that if Everquest1 was able to maintain small group content AND raid content enough that there was plenty for everyone - why can't Blizzard. I never played Everquest2 more than 2 weeks and don't even care to discuss it when its irrelevant.

Dear Kelraz:

is that if Everquest1 was able to maintain small group content AND raid content enough that there was plenty for everyone - why can't Blizzard.

I think that's exactly Fildien's point: You do realize that three new 40 man raid areas have come out, and *no* new 10 man areas have come out (and only one 5-man, while 10 man access was removed from multiple dungeons), since release? Blizzard is, in my opinion, simply addressing the area in which new content has been most lacking. You guys in the raid guilds may be apprehensive that you are going to beat Naxxramas and be left twiddling your thumbs, while those of us on the small end (the majority of my guild members are stuck in 5 and 10 mans) have been twiddling our thumbs for a year or more already (or have already quit). Making the new 'raid' dungeons 25 mans does a couple of constructive things, in my opinion: it allows mid sized guilds a reasonable scaleup (which I've already mentioned), and allows uberguilds to cherrypick the best of the best in order to crank up the difficulty and get the 'best' rewards from them (and bragging rights for such). While it may frustrate some in your roster for a while, I suspect it will spur some healthy challenge for you guys as well...

/leaves the poor dead horse alone)

Regards,
Nydia

Also 25 man instances - should they yield the same award as Naxx ones, will allow to survive summertime-like periods :)

Lani

p.s. dont mind me, I am playing EQ, played WoW only for 4 months.

Dear Anonymous negative rep tenderer whose hit size is 3 :):

I've read every post in this thread throughly, the links, the press releases on Gamespot, ete, and much of the wailing and gnashing of teeth on this issue on Blizzard's forums. My contention stands that this is a positive move for their subscriber base by Blizzard - you may disagree, but mine is not an opinion born of ignorance. FYI, the large scale raiders, who *are* outnumbered by those who are smaller scale/more casual were much more contemptuous and rude in the forums when we asked where *our* instances were last year when nothing came out but 20/40 man dungeons (that more or less required MC gear, no less), and we were completely excluded from the Ahn'Qiraj opening. Yes, it would be nice if Blizzard released a variety of content for everyone faster - but I have no doubt that the large scale raiders will get their fair share of love in the future if the demand for it persists.

And grow some cojones and sign your hits :)

Regards,
Nydia

Again, I'm all for there being more small scale content. I enjoy it myself.

What's not acceptable is forcing raid guilds to cannibalize their membership down by 40% in the expansion. Even if they did add 40 man content back later, no one would have a large enough guild geared for it after jumping through the 25 man hoop.

The cap was 40 from the start. Even in beta, there was never a question of how many people you would need to raid with. Now, hundreds (thousands?) of guilds are about to get shafted out of the blue, for building up an organization and doing well.

You can't compare that to the perceived lack of 10-20 man stuff. It's not as if they one day decided to make all instances require a minimum of 40 people to zone in, totally killing small guilds. Effectively, this is what they're doing to established guilds, in reverse.

When I was playing in beta, they said that the max size of a raid was supposed to be 25 people.

It's a shame that they went with 40 people up front and then decided to reneg later on. They should have stuck with the original plan, but I guess they will have to pay the price.

Nydia, my point was - why can't they add both? Why can't they have equally rewarding 40 man and 20 man content IF a much older game like Everquest was always able to provide that?

My guild is very tight nit. We are 4 groups of real life friends with less than a dozen others outside those original 4 groups. Over 50% of my guild attended my birthday party last month. Had we have known it was gonna be 40 for now 25 later, we may not have invited that 4th group of real life friends to join us. What happens next, after they go with 25 and YOUR guild gets used to it, then they drop it to 15 or up it to 35? They can't keep changing shit willy nilly - its just piss poor design. Especially when its a lot easier and wouldn't have upset anyone if they made both. I only wore 1 item ever from Molten Core (necklace from Lucifron, doable with 20 folks easily) when I had ZG and AQ20 items to fall back on. I prefer the 20 man content too - what I don't prefer is asking a bunch of my real life friends whom I've known since elementary school to either leave my guild or sit outside the instance while we play.

Dear Sanchek (and Kelraz):

You can't compare that to the perceived lack of 10-20 man stuff. It's not as if they one day decided to make all instances require a minimum of 40 people to zone in, totally killing small guilds.

I like your use of the word 'perceived' ;); the *total* lack of 10-15 man content is currently very real. Last fall, when they took all of the 10 man dungeons (excepting UBRS, which had been a 15 man for over a year, made into a 10 man without changing the difficulty) and excluded family guilds from them by cutting the cap to 5, it *did* effectively kill many small guilds (including mine :/). This may seem trivial to you ('Just take two 5 man groups!' the raiders told us, which is little help when you have 8 people who have waited all week to go someplace together on Saturday night and we have to leave folks home), but the aggregate effect of an extended period of *total* lack of content for those in the 'family sized' guilds (lets not bother discussing the abysmally badly implemented Silithus quests) sucked just as badly for us (if not worse, as content was taken *away* from us) as this upcoming change potentially does for you. I'm sure it can't have been great for you guys either, as many of your recruits now have had no experience in anything above a 5 man dungeon when they come to you (if they didn't solo to 60)...

I do agree that it Blizzard should continue to support the 40 man format, since it has committed to it; I just don't feel that that is an area of the game that is really hurting right now.

Regards,
Nydia

I didn't say 10-15. I said 10-20. They retooled ZG to a 20 man, instead of the 5/10 man it was originally intended to be, specfically to appease people complaining about 40 man raids being too large. Then, AQ20 which is just as well thought out and designed as the 40 man version. Not to mention tier .5 armor quests, silithus quests, and argent dawn quests. They've added a lot of content for less than 40 people.

40 mans since releae: BWL, AQ40, Naxx.

I do agree that it Blizzard should continue to support the 40 man format, since it has committed to it; I just don't feel that that is an area of the game that is really hurting right now.
Sure, it's fine for now. But, at level 70 there will be no relevant 40 man content.

When I was playing in beta, they said that the max size of a raid was supposed to be 25 people.
This was never the case. You're mixing up betas maybe? I was in beta since before they even had raid groups or zones. The number 25 never entered the picture.

Dear Sanchek:

I'm thoroughly sick of this topic, but I'll make one last comment in response to your post: BWL, AQ40, and Naxx, are lenghty, interesting dungeons, which take a while to master, and provide meaningful entertainment value to their consumers.

By contrast, endless rounds of bone chip (bug part, medal, what have you) farming is not interesting, not an actual quest line, and not 'new content'; it's a subsidy to the gold farmers.

Equating the two is ludicruous; while the 'best' gear should be the result of the greatest risk (regardless of scale), interesting content shouldn't be the exclusive purvey of the large scale raider, and the efforts directed at smaller scale players have been an insult thus far.

Right now, to continue to flog poor dead Bessie, there is exactly one instance to bridge the gap between 5 and 20 mans (and we fall in between these, alas): UBRS, which was a 15 man and has been in the game since release, and there are now no 15 person instances at all. How are guilds to 'grow up' from family operations, or even keep it together, in the face of this? I think that the expansion was forced to confront the very real problem of the disconnect between the solo/single group 1-59, and the large scale raid, game.

AQ40, BWL, and Naxx won't last forever, but at least you *do* have them - as far as what the future holds, it seems that Blizzard is still unaware of what the scaleup to 70 is going to do to their game (the lessons of SoE seem to be lost) and is still feeling that out. What I suspect will happen as a stopgap will be that some of the 40 mans will be subjected to a similar difficulty revamp (either capped at a much smaller number, which won't help y'all, or scaled up in difficulty and have additional quests added, which will, but will probably result in some of the same complaints that we've had for the past year). I agree with both of you that it would be nice if they could come up with decent content at all levels, but I suspect that the sheer size of their operation makes turning the battleship difficult, as it were.

Regards,
Nydia

What I find interesting is the idea that being in a guild that can put together 40 people means that you are playing the better game? This is what I have noticed about progression in the game. In a 40 man raid having skills has very little with success. It's is gear, take the gear away and failure on events still goes up. That being said, what does it matter if it's a 40 or a 25 person dungeon? If the 25 person dungeon is more difficult then the 40 man which one is more rewarding? Maybe Blizzard learned from the mistakes of EQ who designed their game for the end gamer, leaving the majority of the players paying for content that they could never access to. I for one find it silly to make people pay for all this code that they will never use just because they don't have time to spend in the game with 40 of their nearest and dearest friends. Maybe Blizzard is writing a game for majority of the player base instead of the top 5%.

This was never the case. You're mixing up betas maybe? I was in beta since before they even had raid groups or zones. The number 25 never entered the picture.

Actually, it was. Granted it was two years ago, but indeed they had infact used that number. Now, how concrete that number was leaves something to be desired, given the fact that raid content didn't really exist at release. Where is the number? LOL, it's been two years, and to be honest I don't care enough to dig it up, but I'm absolutely positive that was their initial intention.

I think the whole 40 man issue was a result of a quick, knee jerk fix. It was in tune with what was acceptable at the time as far as raids went.

To expect anyone, Blizzard included to forsee what's going on with the industry now, would have been unreasonable.

In a 40 man raid having skills has very little with success.

Bullshit. In BWL, AQ, Naxx, even Ony to a point ... and many encounters in ZG (Hakkar, Jindo, etc.) and AQ20 if 1 person fucks up its pretty much over in most of these encounters. You've just never raided before.

I'll cite examples:

ZG:
Jindo - if you don't kill shades your raid will die, if you steal agro your party will wipe. It doesn't matter what kind of gear your raid has.
Hakkar - if you don't sheep fast enough that amazing gear on your warrior will absolutely destroy your healers, if your healers can't swap healing fast enough those amazingly geared warriors will die to other charmed folks, if your people don't get the poison dot then he gains health and the fight goes on forever ... regardless of gear.

AQ20: Buru - if you can't kite properly or you break an egg early / too late you wipe. If you steal agro you wipe the raid to his DOT
Ayamiss - potentially just gear dependant, unless you are too slow assisting on grubs
Rajaxx - stealing agro will get you killed, and its very easy to steal agro
Kurinaxx - potentially gear dependant
Ossirian's guards - get too far away you wipe raid, get too close you wipe raid
Ossirian - potentially gear dependant, but stealing agro can easily cost you this fight

BWL:
Razorgore - if you can't kite, you die and get your healers killed. Can do this encounter 38 folks naked and 2 tanks in MC fire resist gear ... I've seen it done
Vaelestraz - not even worth discussing its so widely known how 1 person can cost you this encounter
Broodlord - the surpression room, 1 person screws up you wipe and have to start all over. Broodlord himself is very Avatar Of War-ish but doable in just MC gear with a Flask of the Titans. Call that gear if you want
Drakes - all too easy for words, regardless of if you have gear or not
Chromaggus - VERY easy to wipe your raid, never killed him personally though
Nefarion - ditto

On Skeram there's so much going on if 1 person slacks in their task you'll probably bite it too or die to the respawns because you aren't moving fast enough.

Honestly, how many of said encounters have you participated in? I'm guessing zero.

In a 40 man raid having skills has very little with success. It's is gear, take the gear away and failure on events still goes up.

While that is true, gear is in no way as important as you make it out to be. In order to maintain balance between PvE and PvP there have to be curbs on PvE mudflation. Look at MC gear. While it is an upgrade to 5 man blues, there are very few items that are groundbreaking. Many are - a few stats and + a couple others: hardly upgrades at all. In BWL and especially Naxx you begin to see a seperation, but still it's not the great leap you see in most games where such an equilibirum doesn't have to be maintained.

I prefer Everquest end-game over WoW. That said, WoW does rely more on skill than gear. For example, I just joined a gujild that has been around for about 3 weeks. We cleared MC and downed Ony first time. Our first time in BWL we couldn't beat Razorgore. The next day we went and killed Skeram in AQ40. This is with half of the members not even decked out in MC shit.

In Everquest you flat out needed gear from the previous content to progress. There was no skipping content.

As far as the move from 40 to 25... I think it is stupid to implement this far itno the game's life cycle. Guilds are either going to have enough members to have two full raids or they are going to have to downsize. It would have been much better had it been included with release. They will be harder though. With 25 you can't afford dead weight - the 5 or so people on each raid who just aren't paying attention or can't be bothered to bring their all. This is gonna cut out the shitty players so for that I'm grateful.

While that is true, gear is in no way as important as you make it out to be. In order to maintain balance between PvE and PvP there have to be curbs on PvE mudflation. Look at MC gear. While it is an upgrade to 5 man blues, there are very few items that are groundbreaking. Many are - a few stats and + a couple others: hardly upgrades at all. In BWL and especially Naxx you begin to see a seperation, but still it's not the great leap you see in most games where such an equilibirum doesn't have to be maintained.


I'll give you that BWL take a be more on paying attention to what you are doing. I would not call it leetness if you are doing BWL . As it stands right now you can't just do pickup groups to do BWL you have to know your Crew. If you call experiance plus gear skill then it's nothing that is beyond anyone reasoniblly intelligents capiblity to be doing BWL. If, let's say, put 40 hours into learning BWL on average you will get this far. Just because someone is doing the 40 hours in larger chunks doesn't mean they are leet. it means they are putting more time into doing BWL. It's a skill set that can be learned by anyone given enough time.

If blizzard looked at making a game that catered to the 40 man game vs 25 man game it decided to go 25. it was a choice they had to make. It not a person attack on the 40 man raiding guilds it was a design choice.

Bullshit. In BWL, AQ, Naxx, even Ony to a point ... and many encounters in ZG (Hakkar, Jindo, etc.) and AQ20 if 1 person fucks up its pretty much over in most of these encounters. You've just never raided before.

I
Honestly, how many of said encounters have you participated in? I'm guessing zero.

Umm ok I'm not fully dressed in purple and have half my bags fill with purple back up gear. oh look this not a Zandalarian Hero Charm and these are not leggings of transcendence and a halo of transcendence. Damn look it's not a dragonslayer's Signet. oh this must not be a Benidiction. Am I on the bleeding edge? no. but I have done a bit of raiding yes. I don't even raid with my with my own guild. I get invited from a larger guild to do raids. Not just fill in I get a seat before their less experances members do. am I the best out there no. Do I know what I'm doing yes. Why? Because of expericance and gear.

Well sounds like you're better geared than I, truthfully - better geared than most of my guild: www.havocwow.com

You said "In a 40 man raid having skills has very little with success. It's is gear, take the gear away and failure on events still goes up." I proved to you that gear is quite irrelevant in most of those encounters. Razorgore is very doable with 38 naked people and 2 fire resistant geared tanks. So what is your definition of skill then if its not gear and its not time spent? Because to the rest of the world:

1. Proficiency, facility, or dexterity that is acquired or developed through training or experience.

I'm just gonna guess you get the raid spots over their less experienced (see: skilled) members because of your mastery of the english language.

If you've been through Nefarian, you know that it's bullshit to say those encounters take less attentiveness and individual skill than 10-15 man stuff we've seen. If you value skill's importance in the equation, hopefully you'll check out AQ40 and Naxx before they're trivialized by level 70. They up the difficultly level greatly. By C'Thun and Naxx, every single individual can wipe the raid with one mistake. No skill involved? Right.

Now, think back to when the 5 mans were raidable and UBRS was 15 man. No one could ever even suggest with a straight face that those situations encouraged any level of skill. They were terrible in every way. If that's what you lament missing, compared to BWL, maybe try Sims Online?

If we're stuck with the 25 man stuff, I at least hope it'll be difficult. They've shown that they can make hard fights with less than 40 people. Valthalak and Jin'do come to mind. Except that current raid guilds will still have been forced to cut 40% of their friends due to an arbitrary mechanics change.

I could see it if the game were collapsing, like EQ, but it makes no sense in a game where you only see more and more new faces every week.

As someone who does 99.9% of my raiding blazed out of my mind - I will say Nefarian takes a lot of attention. The beginning I still have no fucking clue what goes on - I just heal warlocks for some reason. The phase 2 shit where they have class calls though? I really struggle sometimes to notice what's going on. It's not that easy!

My guild is really excited about the upcoming changes. We run two raid teams in one guild. One team (for the more hardcore, 70% attendance mandatory) is starting Naxx, have Twin Emps as our next target in AQ40, & BWL/MC on farm. The other (geared to the casual players in the guild) is starting BWL and has MC on farm with some members acting as alternates for the other team. This setup works really well for us. I suppose it may work too well, as I don't see the threat of having to split raids to accomodate the eventual downsizing of max numbers for encounters and instances.

Folks still play WoW even tho it's content is ass at the high end?

Ya'll are tried and true hero's, I didn't have the chuzpah to put up with that lack of fun in the game.

Raids are what you make of them...numbers matter not, tis the fun you are having.

Fandros Finglaflin
150ish days free of WoW and loving it!!

Been awhile since I've been around here, but good to see that even you guys are arguing about this, heh. I see it as a bad change for raid guilds, but good change overall for the game

The content in WoW at the high end was never ass, just meh in mc then a bit better in bwl. Till you get to middle/late AQ 40 and naxx. Those are some of the best designed encounters you'll see anywhere atm.

I agree completely that there needs to be new 5, 10, 15, etc. man content added to the game. It has been neglected for far too long. Likewise, new 20 and 25-man instances are good regardless of their difficulty level.

The whole problem here is blizzard is effectively punishing one group of subscribers in favor of another. I honestly don't think they thought this through very well at all: they've had two years to plan their expansion and I find it hard to believe they couldn't have implemented 30+ raid zones along with all the others and simply had equal-quality itemization across them to appease the critics of large scale raiding.

Guilds have recruited and formed friendships with the people they're going to have to cut from their guild or tell them they can't play with them. People have spent money to transfer their characters to new servers to play with guilds they're going to be kicked from, under the impression that blizzard would continue to support the 40-man raid cap.

There's no good excuse for it really. Did the smaller scale aspect of the game need attention? Hell yes and I'm glad it's going to get it. But why cut out 40-mans altogether, this deep into the game? Throw in a 40-man dungeon designed for level 70 players and you're fine. Some people may see this simply as a benefit to the 'casual' or 'family' guilds/players, but it's only going to force the 'leet' to be more 'leet.' The 25 man instances are not going to make end-game raiding more accessible to the casual gamer, it's just going to force guilds to be more selective and increase the gap between hardcore and casual.

I agree completely that there needs to be new 5, 10, 15, etc. man content added to the game. It has been neglected for far too long.Which is exactly what they're doing - paying attention to areas that have been neglected forever.

The whole problem here is blizzard is effectively punishing one group of subscribers in favor of another. They've been doing this for over a year and a half. They just decided to swap groups now.

But why cut out 40-mans altogether, this deep into the game?They arent cutting it out. They're just focusing on the above mentioned neglected portion of the game for a bit. No where have they said that they will never put out another 40 man again.

Also, the people that want 40 mans will still have them - MC,BWL,AQ and Naxx will all still be 40 man - have fun with them! (note that this is exactly what so-called casual players were told when they asked for content - "You have a bunch of dungeons! Enjoy!").

The 25 man instances are not going to make end-game raiding more accessible to the casual gamer, it's just going to force guilds to be more selective and increase the gap between hardcore and casual.Do tell - why exactly wont 25 mans make end-game more accessible to the casual gamer? Is it this perceived superiority that 40-man'ners have over "casuals"? To this I retort: I dont feel that you 40-man'ners are at all skilled. I was doing raids with 54 and 72, now THAT was epic content! More players = more epic!

Ok, WoW General Forum recreation done, how about the truth? The fact is that Blizzard has determined that they would make more money by going this route, which means that they dont feel that the amount that they will lose by having the die-hard 40-man'ners leave will be significant compared to the amount they will make by catering to other's tastes. Hence, an implicit acknowledgement that people who desire 40-man's are in the minority, according to Blizz.

Any other arguments about "Blizz is stupid!" or "Blizz hates raiders" or any such is gibberish. They're a business and they'll do what the bottom line dictates.

Do tell - why exactly wont 25 mans make end-game more accessible to the casual gamer? Is it this perceived superiority that 40-man'ners have over "casuals"? To this I retort: I dont feel that you 40-man'ners are at all skilled. I was doing raids with 54 and 72, now THAT was epic content! More players = more epic!
I wish I could find it again, but I read a developer comment that Naxx was originally planned to be a 25 man at the same difficulty level it is now.

If TBC 25s are similarly designed, they will be absolutely no more accessible to non-raiders than 40s are today.

They arent cutting it out. They're just focusing on the above mentioned neglected portion of the game for a bit. No where have they said that they will never put out another 40 man again.
That's just silly. The only thing worse than this 40% layoff would be letting guilds go through that process and then later tell them they have to re-recruit for new 40s.

Actually Jensae1 you brought up a good point.

WoW has been bleeding hard core players for sometime now. As far back as six months after release people were fed up with the end game and were leaving.

I think they see the writing on the wall. Between Vanguard SoH, Age of Conan and Warhammer Online, not to mention the countless others of lesser noteriety that are gunning for Blizzards business, they realize that the hard cores are going to move to something else as soon as they see it (Vanguard anyone?), in the same manner that people left EQ1 to go for WoW.

So, they need to keep as many people as possible. The hard cores will leave regardless, they want something new, fresh and challenging. This leaves the semi-casuals and casuals.

Personally I think it's good business sense on their part, though I agree it's pretty shitty to change a game so far into it's life cycle.

If TBC 25s are similarly designed, they will be absolutely no more accessible to non-raiders than 40s are today.Again I ask - why? There are many guilds out there that are filled with competent people that have time to play, but just not enough people to field a 40 man raid and arent willing to recruit lesser-quality people just to fill the raid. A 25 man raid will be within reach of many of these guilds.

Now, dont get me wrong. There's a bunch of dumbs**t's in WoW, just as there were in EQ and are in real life. These people wont be successful no matter what happens. But to group these people with the many that dont do 40-man raids (for a variety of reasons) is unfair.

And, still, back to the main point which is the business end - refer to Bin's post for more specifics about it (I kept my interpretation general, he went down some paths of reasoning that Blizz likely took).

Just a stab in the dark here, but I don't think it will open anything for casuals at that difficulty level because they won't have the gear required to do the content because all that gear was farmed (for the most part) in 40 mans. Sure there is some gear you can get in 20 mans, but to gear out an entire guild of what will be required, it's just too tall of a task for someone that's a casual to attain.

I think they see the writing on the wall. Between Vanguard SoH, Age of Conan and Warhammer Online, not to mention the countless others of lesser noteriety that are gunning for Blizzards business, they realize that the hard cores are going to move to something else as soon as they see it (Vanguard anyone?), in the same manner that people left EQ1 to go for WoW.
None of those games are going to pull a significant number of WoW raiders. If anything, the raid crew are the ones less fickle and prone to jumping from game to game.

Where was the EQ exodus when AC came out? Or DAoC? Or SWG? Or CoH? Or any of those games that were supposed to kill EQ? It took WoW to finally make good on that threat, and only due to Blizzard's reputation.

Vanguard is the only upcoming game that had any real chance of putting a dent in WoW, but the more of beta that's leaked the less it looks like it'll even beat DDO.

I would wager 80% of WoW players have never even heard of any of those other games.

Even if vanguard succeeds at what it wants to do, it will barely do anything to WoW.

"There will be another 40 man zone released in one of the first patches following the Burning Crusade launch for players levels 68 to 70." ~Chris Metzen

Source, Kelraz?

Hrm good question - let me try to remember where I found it. It was in some statement to the press somewhere.

lawl, you you guys crack me up. im up to naxx and i have to tell you that gear doesnt matter as much as experiece, however it does matter nonetheless. i see more and more fights where resist is more important then all out epic purple shit. end game is all about resists, you dont wear the same clothes from one boss to the other, once you get great gear to trivialize a zone (ie bwl gear makes mc trivial, nax makes bwl trivial etc) then experience doesnt matter as much.

this game is dull as hell now, same shit every day, all the instances are spawned the same way always, with the exception of minor things like chromag spawning with different debuffs, and neff's minions. you zone into a zone, the mobs are always in the same spot, the same way.

at least in eq you had guilds breathing down your neck so it was always different imo, which was exciting.

i hope vanguard fixes my lack-of-drive for mmo's, wow is becoming like a daily job once more, especially when youre all epiced out and just come because you have to come cause the guild needs you. I havent gotten a single peice of loot in months, so its pretty much show up and whipe on new mobs, or plow through to gear out some jackass who will leave in 1 week anyways with a full t2 gear (happened manytimes before)

the big population makes for a load of bullshit players who cant distinguish a hole in the ground from their asshole. so its a infinate filtration of idiots through the guild. in eq everyone knew who everyone was, and the idiots got screwed (or stuck in a shitty guild - SoT anyone? j/k j/k)

anyways off to bed

/rant off

end game is all about resists

There is a total of 1 resist fight in naxx, and 1 that requires 20ish people in resist gear in AQ, 2 if you're horde. So no it's not.

It sounds to me like there isn't any major problem with the game, it just isn't fun for you anymore. (Unless yer up to loatheb. Hooray consumables)

The issue with Naxx is that half the fights require the server to not hiccup.

Though I can proudly say I have yet to die to a Heigan DDR. How people keep dying to that I will never know. Same with the Patchwerk-Grobbulus frogger slimes. 8(

Go back to flaming the retards on the FoH boards you lamer! :devil

I prefer having Gallenite PM me with sweet, sweet offers of hot cyber. That and trashing Minnesotans together, har har!

The greatest mistake I ever made while modding here was pushing to get the various local retards banned. Flaming people makes for fun posting and good reading. 8(

Told Ya!

Still planning on re-rolling a paladin vhex?

Paladins are gonna be sickeningly imbalanced pvp monsters. Well they are now too, but in the expansion it's bad enough that not even I want them in my team.

I wish I could find it again, but I read a developer comment that Naxx was originally planned to be a 25 man at the same difficulty level it is now.

If TBC 25s are similarly designed, they will be absolutely no more accessible to non-raiders than 40s are today.
After having cleared a few bosses in Karazhan, I must agree with this wise man. 5k+ hitting trash that comes in 5+ pulls is no joke.