Monday, April 26, 2010

It's finally happening. 10 and 25 sharing lockout and gear.


I'm in shock right now. I always hoped this would happen, but I never really believed it would.

http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=13200223842&sid=1

Thank you, Blizzard. You just won yourself a purchase and months of subscriptions money that was in doubt until this moment.

Oh, and by the way? I designed this exact system exactly a year ago Saturday.


Update: To add to the debate and discourse, I'd like to call attention back to this post by Rohan:

http://blessingofkings.blogspot.com/2010/04/blueprint-for-endgame-raiding-gear.html

It puts forward a very plausible model for endgame dungeon tiers that creates an incentive to run two tiers at once. This could be a good solution to the "Blizzard's taking away half my raid IDs!" dilemma presented by the changes. To boil it down: If you clear the current raid tier and still want to raid, you can go back to the hard mode of the previous tier and still get useful gear.

4 comments:

LarĂ­sa said...

I normally agree with most of the stuff you say, but I'm not so sure I do it in this case. My gut reaction is "meh". This might kill our 25 man raiding. :(

The incentives for keep arranging 25 man raids aren't enough. But I'll have to ponder upon it a bit more. Maybe I won't rage terribly after I've thought it over.

I don't mind shared lockouts. But I mind shared loottable. I think.
Brb.

Anonymous said...

Agreed, Hatch. I've wanted this but never really thought that it would happen. It's like Blizz read the minds of strict tens everywhere, and gave us all that and a pony too.

I'm so excited for Cataclysm now.

(I never did buy the pony, though, but even so).

Hatch said...

Honestly, I couldn't tell you what keeps the leaders of 25 man guilds ticking, even now. I get burnt out just with the 10-mans, let alone organizing our pug icc 25 on weekends. I've been in 40 and 25 man guilds and they are logistically more challenging.

The problem is, they are only logistically challenging for the leaders. I've never understood why the entire guild gets gear a tier higher because the *leaders* work harder.

My experience has been that in a 25 man group the Bystander Effect comes into play and each individual member tries less hard than they do in a 10 man group. But maybe I've just been in the wrong 25-man groups.

I think the change is overall good for the game, and it's also the change I've most desired personally (maybe I'm biased then). But I do hope it doesn't break apart too many 25 man guilds. I harbor no ill will towards them personally. Hopefully the incentives will be enough, especially to keep good leaders from abandoning the larger format.

Rich said...

I'm kind of sad to see less raid IDs per week, but yes... my guild has dwindled down to a core ten man that does HMs, and 'the rest'.

good to see we won't need to flounder around in PUGs for a chance at 'the good stuff'.