Do whatever is more fun for you. If enough people find 25s more fun, you’ll have no problem getting a group together. Can’t get a group together? Then probably it wasn’t that fun to begin with.

As others have sad, my only sadness is the shared lock-out. Right now, we have trouble fielding a 25man during the week, due to east coast/west coast schedules. Sundays, we all get together and create mayhem together. I like running with all my guildies – if I have to choose, I will be a sad bear.

And for the complaints about A team vs B team – when we ran Kara, we’d just have all 20 people on at the same time and build raids from that. Aside from couples, it was rarely the same team twice. Everyone got to see the same content at about the same pace. Aside from the time zone differences, that’s how we’re rolling now.

Precisely. Games should be fun to play, not something we’re bribed to play (and pay for).

BBB, did you ever read the article on Hecker’s Nightmare?

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/27646/GDC_Heckers_Nightmare_Scenario__A_Future_Of_Rewarding_Players_For_Dull_Tasks.php
.-= Tesh´s last blog ..GW2 Manifesto =-.

He’d been on ultra secret probation ever since his run of “Never heal Rogues, Rogues suck, I don’t heal Rogues” comments.

For those that take the ‘ultra secret’ part seriously… go watch Animal House.

Assumes you can get into a 25. Which usually means people leaving their band of friends guilds of 12 to 20 people and finding a huge group that also happens to have an opening for them. Or finding another band of 12 to 20 and work the logistics of dual-guilding it. Or any of a number of things that are, for most of us, NOT FUN. (I thoroughly disliked joining a group of 30 and being the low-geared priest only got to see the actual run once a month or so — when the geared regular healers weren’t available.)

Now your point of different content is great, I think. And I think non-substantive awards — achievements, for example — are worthwhile unique rewards. But again, I did 40s and 25s and 10s so I think I’ve a little basis for my opinion. And that opinion is that at some point the return for increasing size becomes more work than fun.

If someone is in a 25 man raid just for the better loot, then they’re the ones that are most likely to be the first to get upset because the group is wiping too much (no loot!), or chuck a tantrum when loot distribution doesn’t go their way. Players that are there because they genuinely prefer the larger group size are far more likely to take failures in stride, and be more philosophical about it if loot they wanted ends up in someone else’s hands.

You’re right that this argument can be pushed to absurdity, but it is actually human social dynamics that makes that unnecessary. There’s been plenty of organisational research that shows humans actually cope pretty well with informal team sizes up to 12 or so people. Getting beyond that size, informal interpersonal links start to become inadequate to maintain team coherency, so you need more formal structures to manage communications (I believe the exact size where things break down varies between 5 and 15 according to the task being studied and the specific people involved, but I find it illuminating to try to think of team sports that have more than 15 players per side involved at any one time – the two games I am aware with the largest team size are rugby union and aussie rules, and they’re both 15 players a side). The fact that 10 is less than 12, while 25 is larger is significant when it comes to the practicalities of running a raid guild.

Up until now, Blizzard have basically said “we want to reward you for your greater logistical abilities in getting 25 people together, rather than 10″. However, they appear to have reconsidered that position, since the extra work largely fell on the shoulders of a few people (raid leaders, guild leaders, class leaders, guild recruitment officers, etc), but the rewards accrued even to the people that logged on 5 minutes before the raid started and logged out immediately after it finished. Going by their announced decision, Blizzard appear to have decided they would like the focus for rewards to be more on what people can do in-game, rather than on the external social structures involved.