And – as a 10man guild that has mostly only access to 10-man gear (at least in the beginning), the “server progression” gets totally skewed by the 25-man raiders blasting through 10s and then giggling “dude, your guild is like last on progression, l2play”.

Will it kill a few 25 man guilds? Possibly. But to run 2 10s, you need 4 tanks instead of 3 for a 25 :) AND you don’t have a full set of buffs/debuffs in 10s, so there’s still a reason to stick to your friendly 25-man guild. You just can’t swing your e-peen anymore, and others may not feel like they have to put up with the attitude that some 25 man guilds have.

I’d drink to Blizzard for that decision if I weren’t at work right now :)

Since then, Blizzard have been tuning 10 mans for a much lower level of gear, so they haven’t even been trying to make the difficulty between the two sizes comparable.

And you’re wrong that Blzzard have to use the same map layouts in both 10 and 25. They have in Wrath, because it is one of the ways they make the raids easier in 10 man. But for Cataclysm, they can easily add obstacles or increase the radius of spell effects so that movement and coordination become a problem in 10s as well as 25s.

@Mushu: what is higher level gear, if not a bribe to do 25 mans? If 25 mans are such a painful experience that people won’t do them without that bribe, why should Blizzard continue to spend development time creating them?

The “no slots for hybrid DPS” argument is specious, because it applies just as well to 25-man raids today as it does to 10-man raids in the future. A well played hybrid DPS is going to deal more damage than a mediocre pure DPS. A raid leader that replaces their veteran elemental shaman/boomkin/ret pally/shadow priest/whatever with a rogue/hunter/mage/warlock they don’t know because “pures do more damage than hybrids” will be an idiot in Cataclysm, just as they would be an idiot to do that now.

I don’t see a reason to do 25mans at all. Especially since you can get all of the same exact gear on 10 man raids.

So 25 man will drop the same exact loot 10 man did and it will be the same difficulty in 25man to down the bosses but you get more gold? (that sounds crappy)
and You will have to decide whether to do 10 man or 25 man every week because you cant do both? (sounds even more crappier)

By starting a new tier’s 10 mans with 25 man gear from the previous tier, it’s currently like running the instances with the gear you would have after farming the new instance for several weeks. It only makes sense for 25 man raiders to learn the basics of fights in an environment they outgear, then put that experience into practice on the content with higher gear requirements.

With the shared loot tables in Cataclysm, I suspect some 25 man raiders that have become accustomed to being able to simply steamroll the 10 man versions of the raids are going to be in for a rude shock.

Puggs: how much easier is it to get 10 man instead 25?
Guilds: again it’s easier to have 10 man around who like to play with each other then 25 (or 40….)

After Naxx the actual difficulty of 10mans and 25mans was comparable FROM A MECHANICS side IF YOU HAD APPROPRIATE EQUIP. Meaning Ulduar 10man with Naxx 10man gear was about as difficult as Ulduar 25man in 25man gear. Same for ToC and ICC. 10mans became a joke because more often then not because you run them with 25man pieces (from badges mostly).

Still, the difficulty of coordinating people grows exponentially with the number involved, even when there is a small offset – if one person dies in 10man it’s a bigger loss then in 25man.

So I think even if Blizz manages to balance difficulties, and takes into effect that you have more room to maneuver in 10man (which btw I very much doubt they will), success rates in 10mans will be higher then 25man – so you will kill more bosses, work earlier on hard modes – and that beats any higher number of drops in 25.

I personally have more fun in 10man. I can connect to 10 people on a higher level then to 25man. There is far less arguing and drama about loot.

For the majority therefore I think this change is good – and that’s where the money is. So I wager Blizz will not even care much if 10mans are easier then 25man, as long as it’s “mostly right”. If a highly coordinated 10man group beats content at the same rate their 25man counterpart does everything is fine (aka if Ensidia 10 is as successful as Ensidia25). But for less professional groups coordination is the MAIN problem, and learning it on 10man is far easier.

That’s why I think 25man will become the exception, even if in many areas it’s the rule now even for pugs (I’m sure that’s mostly because of better loot)

Rauxis, chosen of CAT

this day , yeah.

back when vanilla wow was the thing. 40 man raid . now that was harder… i think.

i am glad that they put up the looking for group. now its possible to play alone not in a guild and still see stuff inside thoses nice places. and the new ones too.

And yes, there is still a reason to put up with 25 mans, because the bosses will drop more badges and loot per person. They haven’t said any specifics, but I’m assuming that it means where at 10 man drops two pieces off the loot table (1:5) the 25 man will drop six (~1:4). I’m still wondering if they are planning to have every boss drop more badges, or just maybe the end boss. I’m also interested if they work the ratios out by having bosses drop multiple badges routinely to lessen the difference, like maybe 3/5 instead of 1/2.