Quote from: Nethaera (Source)
Dungeon Difficulty and Rewards
The first of the refinements being made is that we’re combining all raid sizes and difficulties into a single lockout. Unlike today, 10- and 25-player modes of a single raid will share the same lockout. You can defeat each raid boss once per week per character. In other words, if you wanted to do both a 10- and 25-person raid in a single week, you’d need to do so on two different characters. Normal versus Heroic mode will be chosen on a per-boss basis in Cataclysm raids, the same way it works in Icecrown Citadel. Obviously the raid lockout change doesn’t apply in pure Icecrown terms though, as this change goes hand-in-hand with a few other changes to raid progression in Cataclysm.
I totally agree with this change. This will limit the amount of raid instances available and people will have to do something else, like going out and enjoy a walk in the park. I have played wow at a end game lvl for so many years (I could count a bit over 3 and a half) that, at least for me, is time to enjoy the game in Cataclism in another way. I do plan to finish this expansion how I start it, but that’s all.
We’re designing and balancing raids so that the difficulty between 10- and 25-player versions of each difficulty will be as close as possible to each other as we can achieve. That closeness in difficulty also means that we’ll have bosses dropping the same items in 10- and 25-player raids of each difficulty. They’ll have the same name and same stats; they are in fact the exact same items. Choosing Heroic mode will drop a scaled-up version of those items. Our hope is that players will be able to associate bosses with their loot tables and even associate specific artwork with specific item names to a far greater extent than today.
While I do think this would be unfair and should be a sort of reword for those running 25 players, the change doesn’t affect my plans for Cataclism so I don’t care. Actually it does affect it but in a positive way since I can raid what I want, play less (because I need to admit that making 10 people to move from fire is easier then doing that with 25) and have the same quality gear.
We of course recognize the logistical realities of organizing larger groups of people, so while the loot quality will not change, 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. The raid designers are designing encounters with these changes in mind, and the class designers are making class changes to help make 10-person groups easier to build. Running 25-player raids will be a bit more lucrative, as should be expected, but if for a week or two you need to do 10s because half the guild is away on vacation, you can do that and not suffer a dramatic loss to your ability to get the items you want.
Even this will show the advantage of running 25’s doesn’t seem that shiny, for me at least, maybe only the extra badges. And, is a bit weird knowing I go in raid and when the boss dies his loot bag will contain 6 items instead of 3, 400g more gold and 3 badges. It’s kind of turning upside down my wow view but… as before, like any change that goes live we can’t really control it so may as well make a use of it.
We recognize that very long raids can be a barrier for some players, but we also want to provide enough encounters for the experience to feel epic. For the first few raid tiers, our plan is to provide multiple smaller raids. Instead of one raid with eleven bosses, you might have a five-boss raid as well as a six-boss raid. All of these bosses would drop the same item level gear, but the dungeons themselves being different environments will provide some variety in location and visual style, as well as separate raid lockouts. Think of how you could raid Serpentshrine Cavern and Tempest Keep separately, but you might still want to hit both every week.
Variety is good and will prevent people from being bored.
We do like how gating bosses over time allows the community to focus on individual encounters instead of just racing to the end boss, so we’re likely to keep that design moving forward. We don’t plan to impose attempt limitations again though, except maybe in cases of rare optional bosses (like Algalon). Heroic mode may not be open from day one, but will become available after defeating normal mode perhaps as little as once or twice.
Gating is good, no limited attempts is good because that “fucked up” a lot guilds that didn’t had the time to invest in alts but still wanted to be close to top ones. Also running same instance 3-4 times per week is getting boring as hell.
Still, knowing that one boss might have limited attempts will feed those with alts and there chance on a server first.
But… wow was never a faire 100% game and some compromises needed to be done.
In terms of tuning, we want groups to be able to jump into the first raids pretty quickly, but we also don’t want them to overshadow the Heroic 5-player dungeons and more powerful quest rewards. We’ll be designing the first few raid zones assuming that players have accumulated some blue gear from dungeons, crafted equipment, or quest rewards. In general, we want you and your guild members to participate in and enjoy the level up experience.
We design our raids to be accessible to a broad spectrum of players, so we want groups to be able to make the decision about whether to attempt the normal or Heroic versions of raids pretty quickly. The goal with all of these changes is to make it as much of a choice or effect of circumstance whether you raid as a group of 10 or as a group of 25 as possible. Whether you’re a big guild or a small guild the choice won’t be dependent on what items drop, but instead on what you enjoy the most.
If they will manage to do this is a win. It will never be possible to satisfy everyone and as much weird it can sound I can’t wait now for Cataclism because it just came to greet my plans.
I still am a end game raider but I do want to step a bit back next expansion and spent more time with my husband, with friends and still enjoy the time spent on line and not feeling that I am behind. A bit of raiding, a bit of pvp here and there plus leveling an alt are things that I missed past years and are parts of this game that attracted so many players. I don’t believe anyone that tells me people get attracted only by progress… because then we would have had 100k players and not millions.
O, and… a quote from eyesolated on mmo-champ.com
*when TBC was announced*
“25 instead of 40-man? you kill raiding blizz FUFUFUFU!!11!”
“2(!) tier set pieces in a 10-man? are you kidding? f#ck this, i’ll quit”
“easy epics from PvP? wtf *nerdrage*”
“all serious raiders will quit and/or play something else”*when WOTLK was announced*
“no more 25-man-exclusive raids, dammit u’re ruining it for us hardcore raiders!!! everyone will quit, noone will play WoW anymore for raids”
“25-man-raids are a joke now, everyone will gear up in 10s and faceroll 25s”
“all serious raiders will quit and/or play something else”*soon after, when heroic modes were introduced*
“Bah, you can’t measure difficulty on heroic modes, the fact that a scrub can see every boss in 10-man normal AND get epics by doing so is insulting my pro-gaming-soul”
“all serious raiders will quit and/or play something else”*when CATACLYSM raid changes were announced*
“what? same gear in 10-man and 25-man? you ruin it for the hardcore raiders, why should anyone do 25s anymore? they suck anyway, but the better loot was worth my time so i could flex my epeen”
“all serious raiders will quit and/or play something else”*sometime in the future*
“what? you serious blizz wtf? this totally ruins raiding!”
and of course
“all serious raiders will quit and/or play something else”
