Category Archives: 10-man

The missed opportunity of 20-man raiding

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With the release of the Raid Finder and the recent changes to valor points, the debate about 10- vs. 25-man raiding, which is harder to run, and which is harder to balance rages on. I have friends on both sides of the 10/25 debate. I understand both points of view, and I think both are utterly wrong. Completely, absolutely wrong. The issue to me is when we went from 40-man raids down to the current raid sizes, the decision to offer 25-man raids didn't really work. I think we should have gone to 10- and 20-man raiding at the dawn of The Burning Crusade, and I still think we should.

We had 20-man raids back in classic WoW -- two of them, in fact, Zul'Gurub and Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj. Neither exists as a 20-man raid any more, so this may seem odd to players who didn't raid then, but these were considered the small raids. People who had just spent hours raiding in Molten Core, Blackwing Lair or AQ40 would put together these runs on the fly to gear their alts or get a shot at off-spec loot, while other guilds that didn't have the numbers for 40-man raids would spend their time raiding these while trying to build up their numbers.

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The missed opportunity of 20-man raiding originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 01 Dec 2011 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Patch 4.3 PTR: Valor and conquest point changes

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Bashiok has just announced new valor point and conquest point changes coming with patch 4.3 that aim to de-emphasize the collection of valor points as a primary way to gear up for content. Both 10- and 25-man versions of the Dragon Soul raid will give 100 VPs per boss, down from 115 and 135, and Firelands bosses will only give 50 points each. The changes are intended to encourage killing bosses for loot rather than killing bosses for valor points to purchase loot. One can also surmise that the change is being introduced to give players more of a reason to try the new Raid Finder feature, where bosses drop loot with a unique power level.

On the PvP side of the equation, the number of conquest points received for the first daily Battleground is increasing to 100 up from 25, allowing players to work toward their conquest point caps quicker while not feeling like they have to run Rated Battlegrounds or Arenas. Both Rated Battlegrounds and Arenas will still earn players points more quickly, but this change should allow those players who prefer regular Battlegrounds to not be left in the dust.

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Patch 4.3 PTR: Valor and conquest point changes originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 17 Nov 2011 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Zarhym muses about 15-man raids

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Recently, a player on the official forums asked about the potential for 15-man raids in World of Warcraft. Zarhym responded to the post, stating that he believes that 15-man raiding numbers are a "pretty optimal number of raiders" since class representation is easier to deal with. However, there is no plan in the near future for Blizzard to implement three different raid sizes in the near future, which most likely means 10- and 25-man raiding is here to stay. But what if we lived in a world of 15-man raiding?

There are many benefits to 15-man raids that work around the scaling problems of 25-mans and the tuning issues of 10-mans. The big issues with 25-man raids include scaling and filling out the roster. Many guilds cannot field 25 people for their weekly raid and usually have to resort to pugging a few stragglers who aren't in tune with the group. Other guilds who cannot field 25 players choose to do two 10-man raids, but the issue of group composition takes center stage; where two 10-mans require a total of four tanks and five to six healers, the 25-man requires two tanks and six to eight healers. You can get a nasty split if you don't have just the right number of specific classes.

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Zarhym muses about 15-man raids originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 11 Aug 2011 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Race to World First documentary releasing soon

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Looking for Group Productions has been hard at work on its documentary Race to World First for a good long while now, capturing many top-tier World of Warcraft guilds' attempts at claiming coveted world firsts in the raiding game as well as following Blood Legion's race to a top spot. Set to release in a few weeks, Race to World First looks like it's going to be an introspective look at the time and energy that many of these guilds put into the raiding game, as well as an examination of the multicultural nature of the game and the general excitement that goes along with MMO accomplishments.

Each week, Race to World First looks at clips from players in guilds that have been fighting for or actually achieved world firsts. Looking back a bit, this clip with Narilka of Ensidia chronicles her time spent with the guild downing Kil'jaeden at the end of The Burning Crusade when she was still just 16 years old.

We loved having the Race to World First production team at the WoW Insider reader meetup at BlizzCon in 2010 -- they were some of the nicest guys and had a blast talking to real players and real fans. I am excited to see this documentary. Check out the trailer -- you might even see some familiar faces!

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Race to World First documentary releasing soon originally appeared on WoW Insider on Tue, 09 Aug 2011 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Race to World First documentary releasing soon

Posted on by
Looking for Group Productions has been hard at work on its documentary Race to World First for a good long while now, capturing many top-tier World of Warcraft guilds' attempts at claiming coveted world firsts in the raiding game as well as following Blood Legion's race to a top spot. Set to release in a few weeks, Race to World First looks like it's going to be an introspective look at the time and energy that many of these guilds put into the raiding game, as well as an examination of the multicultural nature of the game and the general excitement that goes along with MMO accomplishments.

Each week, Race to World First looks at clips from players in guilds that have been fighting for or actually achieved world firsts. Looking back a bit, this clip with Narilka of Ensidia chronicles her time spent with the guild downing Kil'jaeden at the end of The Burning Crusade when she was still just 16 years old.

We loved having the Race to World First production team at the WoW Insider reader meetup at BlizzCon in 2010 -- they were some of the nicest guys and had a blast talking to real players and real fans. I am excited to see this documentary. Check out the trailer -- you might even see some familiar faces!

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Race to World First documentary releasing soon originally appeared on WoW Insider on Tue, 09 Aug 2011 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Ask the Devs Round 8 answers your Firelands questions

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The Ask the Devs question and answer series continues with Round 8, where Blizzard devs answered user-submitted questions about patch 4.2's raid content, the Firelands. Players are anxiously awaiting the next tier of raid content, and Blizzard has had a lot to answer for due to the changing nature of patches in the months to come.

Blizzard answers some pretty good questions this time around and even addresses the melee DPS problem in many of the tier 11 raid fights. Some answers are a bit cryptic, however. When discussing the planned Abyssal Maw dungeon (we thought it would be a 5-man, but apparently, raid fights would have taken place there as well), Blizzard says that it believes that the Neptulon story is wrapped up fine with Throne of the Tides but doesn't make mention of the Abyssal Maw dungeons making a return. They only mention "for now," so hopefully the complete Neptulon story will be told in the depths of Vashj'ir.

Another interesting point that the devs make is that they don't really understand the complaint that some aspects of the raid game are too easy, when they look at the number of people who have completed the 25-man heroic encounters in relation to the normal content modes. Also, the devs wanted to stress that they were not trying to turn 25-man raiding guilds into 10-man raiding guilds and actively tried to make the 10- and 25-man versions of encounters similar in order to stress that point.

I am very excited for a new Lady Vashj bridge in the Firelands, though. WoW always has the coolest bridges. Read the full Q&A after the jump.

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Ask the Devs Round 8 answers your Firelands questions originally appeared on WoW Insider on Wed, 25 May 2011 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Officers’ Quarters: Be careful what you promise

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Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available now from No Starch Press.

Promises, promises. Politicians make them all the time. In fact, many of them get elected based on those promises. No one seems surprised anymore when a politician fails to deliver on a campaign promise, yet our guild members usually expect us to do what we say we will. Could it be that guild officers are actually held to a higher standard? Let's look at this week's email to find out!
Hello I am an officer (well one of 2) in a medium sized semi raiding guild We also have a large number of "casual" players in our guild.

During LK era, we had 2 different 10 man raiding teams going on. Both groups I took the time to rotate different players out each given week so everyone had a chance to raid.The second group was also made up of some of the first group's alts. This was very stressful on me due to I would take all week to get the groups ready only to have someone say at the last minute would say oh I can't make it 5 minutes before raid started, then I would have to rework the "group composition" in a flurry to be able to start the raid on time. Well during Cata we all agreed we did not want to do rotations and only wanted to do 10 man raids and wanted two solid 10 man groups with the same people every week ( with a stand by if needed), so we could work as a "family" unit and mesh well together.

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Officers' Quarters: Be careful what you promise originally appeared on WoW Insider on Mon, 21 Feb 2011 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Officers’ Quarters: Be careful what you promise

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Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available now from No Starch Press.

Promises, promises. Politicians make them all the time. In fact, many of them get elected based on those promises. No one seems surprised anymore when a politician fails to deliver on a campaign promise, yet our guild members usually expect us to do what we say we will. Could it be that guild officers are actually held to a higher standard? Let's look at this week's email to find out!
Hello I am an officer (well one of 2) in a medium sized semi raiding guild We also have a large number of "casual" players in our guild.

During LK era, we had 2 different 10 man raiding teams going on. Both groups I took the time to rotate different players out each given week so everyone had a chance to raid.The second group was also made up of some of the first group's alts. This was very stressful on me due to I would take all week to get the groups ready only to have someone say at the last minute would say oh I can't make it 5 minutes before raid started, then I would have to rework the "group composition" in a flurry to be able to start the raid on time. Well during Cata we all agreed we did not want to do rotations and only wanted to do 10 man raids and wanted two solid 10 man groups with the same people every week ( with a stand by if needed), so we could work as a "family" unit and mesh well together.

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Officers' Quarters: Be careful what you promise originally appeared on WoW Insider on Mon, 21 Feb 2011 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Breakfast Topic: The changing face of raid group sizes

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This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages.

Sweat was beading on my face, and the pain just kept coming; it would not cease. I stood and could only gaze at my friends as they slowly fell one by one. As they dropped, that is when I snapped into action, for I was the harbinger of more repair bills. I was the out-of-combat rezzer.

This is what I imagine my priest felt as I ran him through the Molten Core. I am glad that spot went the way of the dodo. Indeed, there are a lot of things that I do not miss from raiding, and there are a lot that I do. One of the new changes, 10s and 25s sharing raid lockouts, made me think of the changes that we have seen at each expansion. As the game seems to gear itself towards the more casual raider, I find many things much more to my liking. Yet I do remember that feel of fighting a 40-man raid boss, and that is one of the epic feelings I miss.

The problem I have found with casuals, whether we were running 10/20s or alliance-guild 25s/40s: We almost always came up too crowded or short-handed, depending on the week. Either people had to be cut, or people had to be pugged. This also got me thinking, why not 15s? If we had too many for a 25, we could get two 15s; too few, one 15. Then I thought, why not just have instances scale? The more folks, the more gear, the tougher the fights -- from eight to 40 and anything between. It probably is too complicated for the programmers, but fun to think about nonetheless.

What do you miss and what don't you miss about the older raid group sizes? If you could have one WoW raid group size wish come true, what would it be?

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Breakfast Topic: The changing face of raid group sizes originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 16 Dec 2010 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Officers’ Quarters: The great raid-size debate, part 3

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Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available now from No Starch Press.

Welcome to the third and final column exploring the various pros and cons of raid size in WoW's upcoming Cataclysm expansion. Before we talk about the final category, let's recap.

In part 1, I examined the various gameplay considerations that come along with the different sizes.

Gameplay
  • We can only speculate about relative difficulty.
  • 10-man raids offer fewer options for dealing with specific boss abilities and/or adds.
  • Position-based abilities are easier to deal with in 10s.
  • Player deaths are not as crippling in 25-mans.
  • It's easier to cover for someone else's mistake with 25 players.
In part 2, I talked about the logistics involved in running each size and the rewards you can obtain from them.

Logistics
  • A 25-man raid requires an intense recruiting effort.
  • "Cat herding" is flat-out easier in 10-man raids.
  • More raiders mean more attendance issues and technical issues.
  • Subbing is easier in a larger raid.
  • Scheduling difficulties are easier to manage with more players.
  • Loot is easier to distribute in 10-man.

Continue reading Officers' Quarters: The great raid-size debate, part 3

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Officers' Quarters: The great raid-size debate, part 3 originally appeared on WoW Insider on Mon, 15 Nov 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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