>The death of raiding…?

>So, a couple days ago I posted about the upcoming raid changes in the newest WoW expansion, Cataclysm. There have been a couple announcements made since that point that really get more in depth on the subject (found here) but I haven’t posted on the updates yet.. Why? I’m still not entirely sure how I feel about the changes. A lot of people on the mmo-champion forums apparently are crying out that these changes are the absolute death of 25 man raiding, but I think the opposite is true. If anything gets killed by these changes, it’s going to be the 10 man raids.

“Why?”, you ask? Well, I was hoping you would.

In condensed form, the changes are this:

10 man raids are sharing a lockout period with 25 man raids.

The bosses will be roughly the same difficulty (both offering heroic modes, of course)

10 man and 25 man raids will be dropping the same item levels of loot. (IMO, this is why the major fuss over the death of 25 mans, but my next point swings the pendelum the other way)

25 man raids will drop more loot, more hero points (the new version of the badge system in place currently), and possibly even more gold.

Now then… If 25 mans are going to drop more loot for the same boss kill, but will share a lockout with 10 man raids, wouldn’t you think people would try to spend that extra 20 minutes or so finding 15 more people? Perhaps, perhaps not. Here’s the rub though. Blizzard has set this up in an attempt to equalize the progression field between guilds who raid 10 man content (almost) exclusively, and guilds who raid 25 man content (almost) exclusively. Some guilds are only large enough to have a solid 10 man group, and they shouldn’t be held back from progression simply because they’re a smaller guild.

That is a point I whole heartedly agree with. Not every progression guild has to have 300 members on at any given point in time to be able to.. well.. progress. The backdraft of this, however, falls in the fact that 25 mans, while dropping the same -level- of gear will still drop more gear. “Why exactly is this a problem,” you ask? “Surely it would make sense to have 25 mans drop more gear, as there’s more players and likely a broader set of classes within the raid.”.. Well of course, that’s absolutely true, on both points. But again, if they’re trying to equalize how quickly a guild groups up, then there’s more likelihood that a 25 man group will gear up faster simply because.. well.. more loot drops, and more valor points. More points per kill means you can buy your tiered items faster, letting you get to the next progression path quicker… Right?

So, while I am still reserving final judgement, I am waiting to see what it is that Blizzard does to equalize this problem a bit more. Already, they have stated that there will be a cap on the number of points you can earn from raiding/heroics/whatever in a week. If the cap isn’t obscenely high, then this problem might not be as bad as I was expecting… However, if it’s too low then people will complain (you KNOW they will) that they can’t get their gear fast enough, and can’t progress fast enough.

But then… I suppose, for some people, nothing will ever stop the … Thanks for reading.

>Raiding changes…

>
So, the big news today is the changes that Blizzard announced for Cataclysm. Here is the full story as officially posted. Initially, I had several pros and cons to list, but I got sidetracked by one thing or another, and Blizz has since added a list of clarifications after the initial posting. This seems to be a recurring theme with major upcoming changes, and it’s really a smart idea for the powers that be to quash some of the loudest complaints as soon as possible. Thumbs up for their clarifications.

My kneejerk response is to say that their decision makes sense to some extent. 10 and 25 man raids dropping the same loot? Sounds great to me! WotLK has far too many different sets of gear. “Current” tiers are basically ToC 10, ToC 10 heroic, ToC 25, ToC 25 heroic, ToC 10 Tribute, ToC 25 Tribute, ICC 10, ICC 25, ICC 10 heroic, ICC 25 heroic (and I think that’s all of them). Now, here the tricky part. ToC 10 heroic is better than ToC 25, and ToC 25 tribute i better than ICC 10. I’m not entirely sure how this makes much sense, but maybe that’s just me.

Blizzard’s attempt with Cataclysm, as far as I can tell, is to cut down on the different “sets” of gear you have to pick up from raiding. Does having 10 and 25 mans drop the same loot accomplish this? Of course. Does this also allow smaller guilds to progress in the same way that larger guild can? Absolutely. Will this work out exactly the way Blizzard thinks it will? I don’t think so, and here’s why. ” 25-player versions will drop a higher quantity of loot per player (items, but also badges, and even gold), making it a more efficient route if you’re able to gather the people.”… If 25 mans are going to drop more badges than 10 mans, then people are going to feel it’s necessary to put together 25 man groups for that reason. Especially as each new set of content comes out.

To apply this to a current situation.. Imagine if Toc 10 and 25 each dropped the same gear (say Ilvl 245), but you got 3 badges per boss in 25 man but only 2 badge per boss in 10 man. That’s 10 badges for a full clear in 10 man, but 15 badges for a full clear in 25 man. Now, granted, 5 badges may not seem to be a whole lot in the grand scheme of things, but why settle for 10 badges when you could get 15 with basically the same effort? I realize this is not finalized by any means, but the way things are now, Blizz still needs to tweak some things with Cataclysm’s raiding structure.

I would also like to thank Anea for writing a great Advice to new bloggers post which gave me some great ideas for my blog. Expect to see more tweaks and changes coming up to the blog over the next few days. I hope to make this blog look a lot cooler and inviting to new readers, as well as something continually enticing for any readers I might already have. Don’t be shy! Feel free to drop a comment if you have any opinions on the matter.