10-vs-25
Latest
Would playing on sheer vanity work as raiding incentive?
I have a confession to make. There were a few reason why, back in vanilla, I decided to get into raiding. First, I discovered after hitting 60 on my druid that there was really very, very little to do once you'd hit level 60. Second, I had some friends who told me I would have a spot in their raids if I managed to get a Horde alt to 60. But the third reason was the secret reason, one I kept to myself and didn't tell anyone, even though it was pretty much the most important reason of all, to me. I really, really, really wanted the pretty gear. I didn't really like the look of the Devout set; I thought it was kind of boring. I didn't really care for most of the green gear while leveling. But the first time I saw a priest running around in full Prophecy, I knew that I wanted that because it was pretty. The first time I saw Benediction, I wanted it more than anything else in the world -- not because of the stats, not because of the set bonuses, not because it would make me super-powerful, but because it would make my character look really neat.
Raiding: Weighing the benefits of 25-man raids vs. 10-man raids
According to Wowtrack.com, the number of 25-man raiding guilds is several orders of magnitude smaller than the number of 10-man raiding guilds. Why is Blizzard spending so much effort balancing both the 10- and 25-man raid formats when the 25-man raiding community contains an incredibly low percentage of the raiding population? Blizzard Community Manager Zarhym recently posted this on a forum thread about the subject: Zarhym We'll continue making adjustments as necessary to keep 10- and 25-player raids within a relative alignment, in terms of time investment, difficulty and rewards. It may never be perfect, but we still see interest in both raid sizes for different reasons. And ultimately we'll continue designing 25-player raids as long as there are a decent number of guilds interested in the format. We've seen no evidence as of yet that such interest is waning to any degree that should cause us great concern. We tend to begin raid design around 25 players anyway before tuning for the various sizes and difficulties. That, when combined with our intent to carry on with 25-player Raid Finder group sizes, makes it very much worth our time to continue designing 25-player raids. Regardless of what players' personal preferences or opinions are regarding the varied raid formats in World of Warcraft, we don't see removing options as a smart choice in the foreseeable future. source
