Ready Check: Tonight we're gonna raid like it's 2009
When we're talking about Raiding in 2009, the story actually starts in 2008. Okay, sure, you could talk about raids going all the way back to the opening of the game, and how things have changed, and grown out of each other, and it could go on forever and a day and never actually end and it'd be like a run-on story just like this sentence.
But if we're going to keep the conversation manageable, we'll start in 2008. It was a cold and frigid night in November 2008 when Blizzard released the newest expansion to World of Warcraft. With much hullabaloo, the Wrath of the Lich King hit the shelves with a brand new paradigm.
That paradigm was that end-game raiding should be accessible to everyone. Raiding -- and the gear associated with it -- was no longer the sole province of people who had many, many hours to farm potions, reagents, and hone their skills every single night. This new idea of accessibility would change the way raiding in WoW has worked ever since. The changes were pretty thorough, so let's start breaking it down behind the jump.
In this installment, we're going to take a look at the first three raid instances in Wrath of the Lich King, and the design philosophy that fueled their creation.
10 and 25 man formats
One of the first, most startling changes to raiding that happened when Wrath hit the shelves was that all raiding would now take place in both 10-man and 25-man formats. The biggest difference between 10 and 25, of course, is the amount of behind-the-scenes work you have to do in order to herd the cats into a coherent raid group. If you follow the law that you need 15% overage to ensure your raid is always full, then you're already trying to organize 12 and 29 people.
And then you need to convince them all not to stand in fire, to gem and enchant "properly," and all the other headaches that go into raid leading.
Allowing players to choose their own preference of group size helped everyone decide whether they wanted a mega-raid flavor, or a "me and my friends" level of interaction. I would not presume to say that no 25-man raid is a "friends" format, but I'm guessing most casual players who tend to stick to their real-life friends end up in a 10-man format.
There's been a few, mild issues with the two different raid size formats so far. First, as Eliah points out, most of the really good gear is exclusively found in the 25-man raids. Sure, the 10-man stuff is pretty good too, and compatible to the level of raiding you're doing, but 25-man raids get all the higher item level stuff. In other words, the 10-man gear is sweet, but the 25-man gear is super sweet.
The argument in favor of that dynamic is that 25-man raids require more organization and bigger metrics in order to succeed. That's absolutely true, but it does leave 10-man raids feeling a little subpar of the 25-man stuff. And if you're talking about these rewards in terms of personal scope -- ie, how hard did I work to achieve this goal? -- then it's a hard pill to swallow that you're getting a smaller reward for playing with fewer friends.
Raiding concepts like Gearscore and Best-In-Slot further muddy the waters about the quality of reward given to 10-man raiders. We can easily measure what the best gear available is -- and where a character stands in a spectrum against that best gear -- but it leaves 10-man raiders always looking "second best" compared to 25-man raiders. Sure, pros and blues can say that "Their gear is plenty fine for the raids they're doing," but Gearscore doesn't care about the denominator of raid format. It only cares about the numerator of item-level.
Another issue that happens with the disparity between the two levels is a concept of "gear pollution." Basically, since the better gear comes from 25-man raids, enough of the "good stuff" equips raiders to render 10-man content almost trivial. While that's not a big deal to 25-man raiders, who will use 10-man versions of raids to equip alts and bootstrap raid members, that dynamic kind of sucks for 10-man exclusive groups.
These concerns are certainly real and valid, but I think it's inarguable that the 10-man raid content has allowed more players than ever before to see the raiding content. Folks can play with their close-knit, handful of friends without the tribulations of a larger guild. The still get to fight Kel'Thuzad, Yogg-Saron, and Arthas. That's a first in the history of WoW, and I think one of the greatest successes of Wrath of the Lich King.
"Bring the player, not the class"
"Bring the player, not the class" was one of Ghostcrawler's earliest maxims. Contrary to how many forum denizens interpreted the phrase, this design law was not intended to allow raids to bring 4 Warlocks and 5 Paladins yet still blow through Ulduar.
Instead, this was a diversion away from the days of Sunwell, when raids would cram a very specific raid composition into the instance for the night. Each boss fight required exactly the right buffs and debuffs, in precise combinations, in order for the boss to be killed.
In 2009, those days are firmly behind us. Every class is obviously still concerned about their place in raids, and what role-specific abilities they can supply. But there's relatively few abilities which aren't reproduced by some spec or another. You can generally bring most everyone in your guild to your raid. (Okay, if you're in a roleplay-based all-Paladin guild, you might struggle a it.)
The roles have shifted a little to allow for this design law. "Replenishment" is now considered a role. Some buffs -- like Blessings of Kings -- have had "mini" versions implemented via professions. You put all this together to create a dynamic by which most raids are generally able to make room for everyone, assuming they keep some basic amount of diversity in their raid.
Hard Modes and Achievements
When we review two big changes above, there's an obvious question that pops up. It's all well and good that raids are more casual friendly, and that buffs and debuffs are more evenly spread out among specs. But what if you liked that level of hardcore raiding? What is you want that Super X-Treme WoW Raids feeling?
For you, my friend, Blizzard introduced Achievements and Hard Modes. While these are obviously two separate dynamics, they both provided something a little above-and-beyond to the hardcore raiders.
Achievements are the first level of that above-and-beyond. The Heigan Safety Dance is still my personal favorite example of how Achievements can demand something a little more precise from your average raider. To those of us who can do the Safety Dance drunk and blindfolded, getting the Safety Dance achievement probably doesn't seem like a big deal. However, to someone who's used to a more casual, loose playstyle, making sure not a single person out of 25 raiders doesn't die is going to feel like a huge accomplishment. If you were able to complete master certain achievements, such as The Undying, you could get a nifty title or a special mount.
Hard Modes took that dynamic and turned it up another notch. With the release of Ulduar, many bosses would have an even-more-difficult version of the fight. If you mastered that Hard Mode, the boss would drop better gear than would be available to the "normal" version. Flame Leviathan, for example, would provide a variable Hard Mode that granted more or better rewards with each tower you left up.
By providing this range of accessible-to-more-difficult boss fights, Blizzard did its best to provide viable raids for every level of raider. They did a pretty good job of it, in my opinion, even if there's always the kind critical kibitzing you'll get with any public release.
The raids themselves tended to exemplify this new strategy for raid design. We'll start talking a look at the Raids of 2009 on the next page.
