25 vs 10man

We love 25 player raiding. We also love 10 player raiding. We have people on the team that do both, depending on who they are. We aren't really satisfied with the state of 25 player raiding right now. Our goal when we made the raid changes at the start of Cataclysm that unified the 10 and 25 player lockouts was to let players choose the raid size that they preferred and make it a fair choice. 

At the time, we were responding to feedback from many players who preferred 10 player raiding and felt pressured to do 25s because they offered such better loot. The reality, something we failed to properly account for, is the logistical burdens of maintaining a 25 player roster. Those burdens are borne almost exclusively by the officers, raid leaders, and guild leaders of those groups. Those pressures are such that it tends to cause those groups to splinter into 10s. Before there was the carrot of 25s give you the best loot in the game, which was enough to get guilds to push through those stresses by recruiting more or making it work. 

Now it is easy to say, well, we only have 21 people on at raid time, let's just do 10 mans instead of cancelling the raid. Then you go down the road to transitioning to a 10 player guild. It isn't a reflection of what our players want, but what is simplest for the guild leadership. We are looking at trying to better incentivize 25s, recognizing that for it to be a fair choice, there needs to be something to compensate for that additional logistical burden.

A blue poster posted this a couple of days ago. I picked it up from MMO-Champion from this post, and I immediately saved it as a draft. Knowing that it was something I wanted to speak my mind about when I would have the time.

Overall this statement tells me that there will be a higher loot level again at some point for 25s. Especially with tests going on already with 10s and 25s being separate lockouts again.

If the burden is completely on the raidleader/officers/guildleaders, and those people are done with the catherding, what is the problem of them turning to do 10s instead of 25s?

If the general raider is not willing to step up to do the extra work, why should they be the ones rewarded? Attendance bonus?

"There needs to be something to compensate for logistical burden."
I disagree. Obviously people would prefer not to do this. 

Obviously people prefer to do 10s. Because there is currently nothing holding them from 25s. 

Yet, they don't.

Why do they need to be pushed into doing the 25s anyways? Why is it so important that the 25s are more popular than they are now? It feels like these people need to be bribed into doing something they would prefer not to do.

If I would not get paid for my job, I would not work either. So does this mean that I prefer working over doing something else? No. If given a choice and having everything even I would much prefer to do only the things I want to do, and not go to work. And I like my job, but there are still quite a few things I would like doing better.

So are the 25s supposed to be like work? Are players supposed to be pushed into 25s? But if they are obviously not fun enough without the extra incentive of 'salary' why would Blizzard want to push people in that direction?

To me it seems that currently people can decide to do 25s if they prefer that size. It seems to me that the fact that so many 25s have fallen apart is proof that the leadership prefers 10s over 25s. And to be honest, it's also proof that the players prefer 10s. Because if they would be so hung up on doing 25s, why do they not put in the extra time and energy to get that done?

Frankly, if you're a player who wants this or that, but is not willing to put the energy in to get that going or at the very least help the leadership to get that going. Then you have not much to want. You have to be happy with what the people who are willing to step up get done, and be happy that you can tag along.

If anything at all does happen, the leadership should be appreciated, not the whole raid. If you want the leaders in World of Warcraft to step up and do more, reward them. Not the whole 25 man, just because it is a 25man.

How about just giving the raid 1 item per boss kill? 10s and 25s. An item that the raid can reward to the players they feel have deserved it most. That the raid can give back to their leadership or whomever stepped up.

An item that does not effect the effectiveness of raiding mind you. Or maybe only after a long time of saving up. So having to save up say 20 of this or that item will get you the extra special reward.

Or maybe Blizz should introduce 20mans? 2 times 10 after all. If guilds have to transfer back from 10 to 25 that means 3 groups of 10, with 5 people left by the wayside.

In the end I don't know how Blizzard will get what they want, I know even less why on earth they want it. I do know that in the end the players won't be happy with it anyways.

Current WoW Mood:

When you just don't have the people...

Within my guild we have 2 groups of 10mans. This has been like that for quite a while already, in fact we still name them after the names they had when they were formed while raiding Karazhan. (though we used to have 3 groups back then).

One group raids during the week, and the other raids in the weekend (my group). Like a lot of guilds we ran into heavier weather during Cataclysm and a lot of people left. And not only due to Cataclysm, but sometimes personal situations just change. Then some of the people from my group shifted to the week group because the times fit better in their schedule, and now...yeah now my group is short people.

Now, don't get me wrong. I am NOT trying to get people to apply for my guild through here at all. We have an application process where you need a sponsor, and this sponsor needs to have known you for a while already before they can sponsor you into the guild.

This application process is there for very good reasons, and has worked quite well for a looong time already. My guild has a brilliant atmosphere, and we like to keep it that way.

This does however bring problems with it. Because when you lose people, it is hard to fill up the raid again. And my raid group is not just 1 person short...no we could easily add 3 people to our roster.

I've been breaking my head over trying to find a way to fill the gap, but in the mean time the only way to actually raid is with pugs.

Now, I am the first to admit that there is absolutely nothing wrong with recruiting some pugs for your raid. After all, I did lead a 25man pug raid on sundays for about 2 years, and quite a few people of this pug raid became guildies. But bringing pugs does bring issues.

At the least they are not in tune with the rest of the group. Everybody is new to them, and while they can be good, playing with new people is always harder.

Then there are those people who are pretty good, but halfway through your raid all of a sudden have their own guild calling for them. The raid gets disrupted, at best you can find someone to replace this person fairly quickly, at worst you can call the raid and continue some other time.

And then of course there is the possibility of getting an absolute newb for a player. People who have all the best intentions, and maybe they even have the potential to be good, but they just haven't got a clue what they're doing. Every single detail has to be explained to them, while everybody is sighing in guild chat.

But worst is when you get the 'aso pug'. The pug who thinks that they are better than your group and they are a godsend and by their holy presence allow the world to keep turning. Quite often when you review logs these are the people who feel that they 'deserve' to stand in shit while the healers just have to 'pick up the slack'.

In the end none of it is ideal, but not wanting to recruit bodies, just for the bodies, I don't see other solutions on the short term.

Luckily we might have some sort of solution coming up, but until then I guess I'll just be sighing quietly every time I get up at 5 am to try and find pugs to fill up the raid.