Thursday 15 May 2008

10-man raids in WotLK

I am outraged! How can people be this petty?

In the news that have been coming out about what WotLK will have in store for us, there was the fabulous piece of news that all raid instances will have both a 10-man version and a 25-man version. To the guild I'm in this is the most amazing news ever.

We are a small, social guild with an even smaller group of people that are interested in raiding. We few, we happy few, learnt the principles of raiding together. We farmed for mats and ground for gold to gear up to Karazhan. We ran instances over and over for drops and attunements until finally the day dawned when we took our very first step into Kara.

Nothing can beat the feeling of that evening. We one-shot Attumen, spent 4 frustrating attempts on Moroes until we found a strategy that worked for us and ended the evening triumphantly having achieved the goal we had set ourselves. This with a guild that had never even done normal instances regularly before.

For most of us the joy of raiding comes from doing it together with these the friends that we have met in game (and many of them IRL now). We would love to be able to progress beyond Kara (once we've finished it), but realistically we are highly unlikely to ever field a 25-man team. Some weeks we can barely get a Kara run going that's how few people we have in our raiding group. Yes, I know that there are options. We could move to another guild, recruit or look for an alliance. But why should we have to? Just because we are small, we don't deserve to be able to raid?

The 10 and 25-mans will be separate progressions, so no more going through a 10-man to get to the 25-mans. The 25-mans will have much better loot. The fights in 25-mans will (one has to assume) be much more complex, challenging and ultimately more satisfying to conquer. So how can anyone possibly claim that giving small guilds the possibility of raiding takes anything away from the big 25-man raiding guilds? The big guilds get the big rewards both in the sense of loot and being able to experience the absolute top level content.

Saying that the availability of 10-mans will mean that noone will be interested in doing the 25-mans is utterly ridiculous. I cannot for one second imagine that raiding guilds would be interested in anything but the top level content. Their whole reason for raiding is to systematically defeat all the raid bosses in the game. I really cannot see them romping through the 10-man versions and declare themselves done when harder versions are still there to be conquered.


I think it is high time that some people out there stopped being so selfish about raiding. Having small raids and big raids takes away nothing of the achievement for those that conquer the big ones, but merely allows a larger amount of people to grasp why that achievement is so awesome by having experienced the smaller version. ;-)

6 comments:

Sara said...

"Saying that the availability of 10-mans will mean that noone will be interested in doing the 25-mans is utterly ridiculous."

I too have a hard time with this comment. It sounds to me like if you are saying this, you're really saying "I find 10 mans inherently more enjoyable than 25 mans, however, I'd rather not have this more enjoyable option."

I like 25 mans. As a healer, I find it more exciting and challenging than 10 mans. I'm happy to see 10 man options too, that opens content up for guilds that prefer to stay smaller or are just starting up.

In short "HERE HERE"

Tufva said...

Wow - my first comment ever and from one of my fav bloggers - thank you! :-)

Anonymous said...

I know I'm a bit behind the times since you posted this a while back, but I'd still like to comment.

I'm split on the matter concerning the new 10-man raids we'll be seeing in the newest expansion. I've experienced both ends of the spectrum, having raided as little as two hours a week to well over forty hours while in a progression guild. As someone who is trying to desperately cut back the hours I am currently raiding, 10-man raids definitely seem very appealing. However, they do have their caveats.

If you consider the transition from 40-man raids to 25-, you'll see that a lot of guilds had a lot of problems doing so. A 40-man raid doesn't easily break up to 25, and even if you were to attempt splitting up the raid into two groups, you find that you'll be unable to do so well due to the limited number of healers and tanks. As a result, many raids found themselves losing valuable members or even falling apart because they couldn't appease every member.

Secondly, I have to consider what impact it'll have on current 25-man raids. Even though the two are on separate progression tracks (so to say), many people will want to experience both. Furthermore, raids that expand beyond a single 10-man raid to two and then hopefully 25-man raids will find that they'll run into the similar-yet-opposite problems as the original 40-man rads did: the limited number of healer and tank slots will mean that specific members will be unable to raid in the 25-man raid in their preferred/original spec. As a result, they'll need to either find a new raid or respec in order to retain their slot -- which is not appealing for many people.

And, the final consideration is how current 25-man raids will deal with the loss of current raiders who will seek the path of more casual progression. Already, my perky priestess's raid is finding that they've got members who will be pursuing 10-man raids as opposed to sticking with our current 25-man raid. While you expect some level of attrition over the lifespan of a raid, the loss could actually be more significant than expected when Wrath of the Lich King comes out.

So, really, I don't see it as being selfish at all; current raids will experience problems with the transition to separate 10-man progression. To play Devil's advocate, isn't it equally selfish to demand 10-mans and deplore large raiding guilds when the option favors smaller guilds like your own but may lead to further problems for larger guilds? There's a reason why many raiding guilds still claim that introduction of 25-man raids killed raiding; many many guilds faltered or fell apart as they shuffled the ranks to continue raiding.

Just a couple of thoughts. As I pointed out, I haven't quite come down from the fence yet!

Tufva said...

Thanks for the comment, Cynra. It is very interesting to read the point of view about the 25-man vs 10-man from someone who has put some thought into it, rather than the dismissive, elitist rubbish that incensed me enough to write this post.

I fully agree that I have a vested interest and am competely biased in favour of 10-mans. On the point of the problem to gear up from 10-man to 25-man, that is no different than it is today with Kara being the entry-level raid. Instead it means that unless you crave the experience and loot that only 25-mans can give, you can continue in 10-man mode all the way through. So to my mind it actually allievates the current problem where you HAVE to gear up to 25-man to continue progression.

With regards to the problem with 25-mans losing people to 10-mans, I could see that it would present a problem to raiding guilds if it does happen on a large enough scale. My suspicion would be though, that the people wanting to move in that direction would have left the raid anyway. I assume that if you are driven enough to be in a raiding guild at the moment, you quite enjoying raiding. So surely, the only reason you would consider down-grading your experience is if you are feeling that a 25-man raid schedule is too heavy for you and you need to scale down your commitment?

I can see your point, but I still think the option of 2 progression tracks overall will benefit more people than it will hurt. Let's hope for the best!

Sara said...

Cynra, I have also been putting a lot of thought into how my guild will be handling 10 man vs 25 man content in the patch. I think right now the data is too "soft" to draw too many conclusions. But I learned a lot from sitting back and watching the 40 man to 25 man conversion. I think with proper education and planning, 25 man guilds will be able to capitalize on the new opportunity rather than suffer from it.

I would like to send a note to whatever god of Blizzard that I can invoke: 40 is NOT divisible by 25. Nor is 25 divisible by 10. However, if you'd have stuck with 20 mans, my world and several other guild leader's worlds would have been just SLIGHTLY less complex.

Gold Guide for World of Warcraft said...

good post :)