http://www.wow.com/2010/04/26/cataclysm-raid-progression-refinements/

So going into a 25 –> 10 should be about the same.

But then again, I’m a very intimately social person, and the large groups are nowhere near as fun as smaller ones. I don’t like raiding with people I tolerate. I like to raid with people I *gasp* like. And I get far more of a choice in doing that in 10s than 25s or 40s.

If I go back to WoW with Cataclysm, I have no doubt that any raids I experience will be 10s. I will only go into 25s if my friends refuse to run the 10s, but I’ll be vocal about it being the wrong direction the whole time.

I would’ve thought 20-mans would be the more logical size – it is a double 10-man (though probably not for the tanks), but in the end I’m not fussed as I like the 10-man format. Though I do completely agree about the loot – it is weird that it is better than 10-man. You would have thought that if you scale up the number of people in the group and scale the boss health and dmg output accordingly – then they won’t need better loot as well. Ho hum!

Great article

So many good points.

I don’t know about the 15-man thing… certainly has merit. Seems to me that it’s just easier for Blizzard to say that all of 25-man instance is this item level. Not that it’s right, just easier.

But the advantage of 25-mans really should be a greater chance for that boss to drop your loot. If 2 items drop in a 10-man 10-item loot table for a boss (20% chance your item drops), then 5 items should drop for a 25-man 10-item loot table boss (50% chance). That in and of itself is probably sufficient enough reason to want to run 25′s. You still have the same chance in the raid to get an item (20% assuming one item per person), but it’s more likely your item will drop.

It was hard yes and slow but we were able to go up to Garr in MC and this was with 25 back in the day…before all the new talents changes and such. It just takes the understanding that this is for fun,and to just have fun and do your job.

As a tank while I love that 25-man bosses actually have a chance to completely mash my face in and have their way with me more than the 10s do, I much prefer the 10s and find them more challenging. 25s feel too much like a zerg to me. I’ve done many but enjoyed very few.

Not sure I could weather the storm of QQ from the hardcore about the smaller raid sizes, but it’s definitely an idea. I don’t mind 25-man loot being a little itty bit better, but I don’t like it being a lot better. :/

TBC came along and hitting 10 man and leaving out others who were slower to level was tough, and we saw attitrion, until we turned our guild into a alt guild and folks moved onto larger raiding guilds, however that only lasted 4-5 months and folks longed for the sense of community our guild offered so we reformed and to my surprise we had 25 folks ready to go and we hit T5 and T6 content with ease.

WotLK is great because it has allowed us to continue in 25 mans, but you are right it does require 30 or so active raiders to guarantee the raids happen, I would even say you need up to 35. Now some 25 man encounters do have different abilities than 10 man counterparts which does make them more challenging. However I never understood 25, I always thought 20 would have been more natural to be honest.

But if you are a casual guild, I can only stress, never compromise on your sense of community, that will keep you a long lasting guild, and it has kept ours running for almost 5 years now in retail, 6 if you include the original closed beta.

Great story!

However, I don’t necessarily agree with the 15 man raid proposal. Not necessarily due to scalability reason(that seems to make sense), but as a substitution of the 25-mans, I think it might actually remove some of the flavor. I can only say this after the Cataclysm discussions and announcements regarding guild benefits.

Most of the problems smaller guilds(even established larger ones!) have with 25 man raiding is recruitment. For now, the only draw you have to a given raiding guild is the talent the guild contains. Since the talent is inherently with the player, this makes for a very liquid environment. Players can come and go, quickly diminishing the guild’s status and attraction.

In the next expansion I do see a lot of that changing with guild bound benefits such as heirlooms, talents, etc. This adds a level of attraction that hasn’t been present before. All of a sudden the 10-man guild that has been established is more attractive than the 25-man upstart that only exists due to some wild disband scenario. Hopefully some of everyone’s recruitment woes may disappear as you search through the armory for that one guild that has all the goodies you’ve been looking for.

The “flavor” I referred to earlier in the 25 man raids, really balances on the idea of different combinations of race/class availability. Chaining together abilities(ie fire mages of old) and general creativity is limited along with the player base. This touches on another subject entirely as so many things tend to get hit with the nerf stick, but I’m definitely a fan of the 10/25 man seperation

For the Alliance.