Like Max said you will get more loot/badges/gold from killing 25 man bosses so there is some incentive to do 25′s over 10′s. I think this could be good because I know I am sick of nobody showing up to our Sunday raids with only Lich King left. This way we can just take 10 people in and finish it up

Nice post, Keep up the good work!
Michael´s last blog ..Gotcha! – Gondria

[...] over at Tree Bark Jacket has the unique experience of having run a 25 man guild, and then having run a 10 man guild only to [...]

I find this situation somewhat similar to the Arena seasons – back in BC, people did arenas (myself included) simply for the loot. It was higher quality loot with much less time investment (assuming you had a decent amount of skill) than say, TK or Sunwell. Now, people still arena, just not as much as before. There will still be a demand for 25s.

Not much has been said about the guild talent trees yet, either. There could still be larger/different bonuses to 10/25 man raids in the trees. I think people are overlooking that quite a bit as well.

I think the 10/25 shared lock will work out perfectly. Recruiting progression guilds will run 25 mans and will be rewarded with more drops, allowing them to be geared faster. 10 man guilds/teams will do what they do now, with the added bonuses that Keeva mentioned in her article (perfect, btw), and the poor slobs that make up the rest of the WoW population and just want to get real gear without making a life commitment will have a chance in hell of pugging through it. After the initial QQ is over, and people get used to it, it’s going to be great.

The benefit for 25s in cata is that they will drop more loot and badges (points) PER CAPITA than 10s. For example, if the 10 man version of a boss drops 2 pieces of loot and 2 badges the 25 man version may drop 7 pieces of loot and 3 badges, more loot and more badges per person in 25 mans.

I personally think that most good raiders will get into a nice 10 man team with other quality players and not mind less loot per person because they progress quickly and have an easy time organizing.

At the same time I expect that many “failplayers” will continue to insist that 25 mans are the only “real” raids and that you are not a “real” or “serious” raider if you run 10 mans. They will loudly proclaim how fail everyone else is for wasting their lockout on a lowly 10 man raid. So they will attempt to organize 25 man raids but will not progress very far due not only to not only their own level of fail but also due to the fact that most quality players will be saved in 10 mans. After failing to progress they will go to the forms and complain about the people in 10 mans are getting their gear in “easy mode” and how its not fair and how the obvious solution is to nerf …something. When you read this on the forums halfway through cata, think of this post.

In fact, you don’t have to wait. The blogosphere has exploded with the elitist cries of “not fair” and “I raid 25s so I am entitled to… something”. I am actually rather disappointed with a few bloggers who I normally respect and enjoy and am concerned about the freshness of their underwear.

On the death of 25 man raiding, I say too bad. If people stop running 25s en masse it means they don’t enjoy running 25s and are only doing so now because they are artificially incentivized to do so and don’t want to “let their 10 man team down” or “fall behind”. What I really take umbrage with is people like Lissanna at Restokin who say they love 25s and do it for the feeling of “epic grandeur” that you get from downing a boss with 24 other people and then turn around and say that if Blizzard doesn’t incentivize 25 mans over 10 mans that they aren’t going to attempt to fulfill their duties as officers to their guilds and make idle threats to “quit playing”. I hate to say it but she went from respected member of the community to troll with a few keystrokes.

You mentioned a few things that I have been talking about myself lately. One main point is how 10 mans appear to be easier than 25 mans. Right now there isn’t a real difference from a mechanical standpoint and that they are tuned appropriately for the amount of players. The reason 10 mans appear to be easier is because most raiders out gear 10 mans (even ICC 10 right now). If you have gear from ICC 25, you out gear ICC 10. If you have gear from ToGC 25, you out gear ICC 10.

Another important point, and one that I think will become more painfully apparent in Cata, is that 10 mans are more unforgiving of individual mistakes than 25 mans. A FailPlayer in 25s gets carried, a FailPalyer in 10s wipes raids. I think 25 man raiders will be in for a rude awakening in Cata when one week they can’t fill their 25 man and decide to run 10 mans instead and see each others individual FailPlay magnified and can’t cover it up by out gearing the instance.

I did enjoy the aspect of the 25′s feeling more ‘epic’ in scope and of course, the big reason why probably anyone runs 25′s, the loot carrot dangling in front of you.

But these days I run in 10′s and man, it’s just so much more… fun Hell, I could care less about the loot difference or achievements or whatever… I’m just enjoying raiding again. I never raided in Vanilla Wow, but having been a 25′s Raid Leader, I can just imagine the utter nightmare of trying to run a 40 man raid guild. Ugh. Just… Ugh.

Is the shared lock-out/same loot the death of 25 mans? I honestly don’t know. But if they do make all the loot/achievements/rewards exactly the same in both 10′s + 25′s, I personally don’t see a reason to ever run a 25 again.

I’m really not sure that 25 mans and 10 mans can ever be even close in terms of difficulty. Take fights where positioning is everything. The area is the same size in both types of raid, yet in one you have to find space for 25 bodies and in the other there are only 10. The smaller the raid, the easier the fight. Then you have mechanics like sheep/mindcontrol etc, you can’t have bosses mind-controlling multiple people in 10 mans, but you can in 25 mans.

My fear with this, is A. fights may become slightly more boring because it’s hard to make things work for both 10 and 25 people and B. the content won’t be anywhere close to equal in difficulty.

I personally prefer 25 man raiding, but as someone who has been an Officer in raiding guilds, I can see the attraction of just running 10 mans come Cataclysm.

I’m also a bit unsure about the shared lockout. I can’t help feeling choice is important. I tended to do primarily 25 mans but I’d always help friends/guildmates out with 10 mans. Luckily I have a stable of alts, but I’m not sure its fair to people who are happy with only one character.
Erinys´s last blog ..In which I disagree with Ghostcrawler

Your point about the reasons why 25s are harder says it all for me:

“On the other side of the street, you have 25man raiders rightly claiming that 25man raids are harder to coordinate – it’s harder to wrangle 25 bums into seats, for a start. Harder to keep recruitment running, harder to deal with attrition, etc. There’s usually more drama in 25mans, more cliques, more pressure on officers to “run” things”

Yeah it’s harder, but these are all social things, not gameplay things. I think Bliz has done just about all they can to streamline the 25s, by homogenizing classes etc. It’s always going to be a pain to wrangle that many bodies.

I guess what I see people saying is “Yes – 25s are harder to organize and more annoying, so why will anyone do them any more?” I think Bliz is saying, “Why should we force you to beat your head against that wall?”

Thank you Soph´s last blog ..The new raiding changes

If 10s would leave their garbage, as you say, I’d look into them. But in the end the reason people don’t come online is content. Wrath content has been breezed through in comparison to TBC content. The decent guild the even barely tries downs the boss and has gear. The challenge has been removed from raiding. Strategies are barely used and people would rather see plentiful and equal shiny purples than challenging content. It seems the proverbial shoe is on the other foot. Hardcore raiders were bashed for their take on loot meaning something in previous expansions and now loot is the driving force behind this change. Blizzard even shows us this by saying loot will be equal. I mean if it wasn’t there would be an outcry of it being unfair.

I think however Blizzard has made balancing the two easier. With gear equal boss health will be easier to control. It’ll be simply up the boss health and his AP/SP. A much easier and simplified version of what we have now.

Yeah, I’m against the equality of gear and the shortening of dungeons. We will never agree on it probably, but in the end have fun! Either way someone will be having fun!
Aleanathem´s last blog ..No, that’s my next post!