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[Angry Grimace]

These are excellent changes for the most part!

Finally Blizzard recognizes that 10-man is just as difficult as 25-man. Finally they realize that they couldn't balance their encounters in 25-man gear from prior raids because they'll overpower 10mans and their overall item levels will be slightly higher than what's tuned for.

My concern is that I enjoyed pugging in a 25-man here and there when bored. This part will suck but whatever. I have enough alts I guess.

My hopes are that since they have to mess around less with recoloring the same models, they'll actually be able to invest more time in the models of items themselves, which were lack luster in Wrath.

Yeah, but how much of enjoying pugging a 25 was due to better gear and perceiving it as more difficult (which, by the way, I never found 25m to really be, except on certain encounter types, i.e. I can imagine Blood Queen being far more difficult on 25)

 

[Magnus]

Can't believe there's a defense force for not enchanting / gemming gear :lol

Agreed. That's part of the end-game scene. Think of it as a dress code. GTFO if you aren't willing to do that little bit of work.

Still processing the raid design changes for Cat. I think it's going to be an amazing change for me and my friends personally, since after four years, we'd like nothing better than to keep playing without having to continue to manage a 25-man guild. Might work out for the best for long-time players.

 

[winnarps]

25m content will always be more difficult than 10m content. You have more people, therefore more ways to shove retardedness into a raid. There will be 25m guilds pushing 25m content purely because of progression status, but there will be far less people wanting to do so.

10m will become a much, much larger raiding community. The only incentives for 25m content are extra gold, bonuses via Guild Talent/Achv trees, and a slightly higher gear/player ratio. The Guild Talent/Achv trees would have to be pretty impressive to convince a lot of players to run 25m content.

Anyone saying 10m is just as hard as 25m has no clue about the difficulty of finding 25 people that know how to play vs. finding 10 people that know how to play.

For reference, I'm 11/12H ICC25. I think this is a decent business decision for Blizzard, but it'll really fuck up the end game.

 

[notworksafe]

25m content will always be more difficult than 10m content. You have more people, therefore more ways to shove retardedness into a raid

That's not a content change. That's a people change. 10 and 25 are basically the same thing as far as actual difficulty of bosses goes.

 

[Mr. Luchador]

To think we used to have 40m raids once!

 

[J-Rzez]

Yeah, but how much of enjoying pugging a 25 was due to better gear and perceiving it as more difficult (which, by the way, I never found 25m to really be, except on certain encounter types, i.e. I can imagine Blood Queen being far more difficult on 25)

I never did it for the difficulty, as I found there's more "grace" there if a person or two die in an encounter, along with how the encounters were tuned in this regard as well. You have more possibilities of brez's on demand, more people on raid heals to watch over people, etc. I didn't find the difficulty any different, sometimes easier, sometimes maybe a little more tough. Sure, I enjoyed the better gear, but I liked when I was bored I would still be able to enjoy playing my main in another relevant raid so I didn't have to use my alts just to raid when bored. That was my thing about this, but whatever, I'm fine with these changes.

The only "difficulty" between the two that stood out was getting 25 people on at the same time.

This should stop the "omg I'm so good, 10man is easy in 25man gear" stuff though, which was annoying at best. Surely a shock to their system.

 

[Freyjadour]

After having 4 25 guilds break up and many good friends fade into obscurity since BC began, I'm pleased with this change. There were always ~10 people or so I could have done without, so count me in the 10-Man defense force.

If the people were still as enjoyable as Vanilla, I'd be disturbed by this, but they aren't. I'll be happy to be able to play with friends and not have that awkward "we should join a 25-Man guild" tension hanging around so much.

MMO-C's comments are a goddamn mess right now.

 

[arhra]

25m content will always be more difficult than 10m content. You have more people, therefore more ways to shove retardedness into a raid.

On the other hand, one tiny mistake leading to a death takes out 1/10th of your raid in 10s, whereas it only takes out 1/25th of the raid in 25s. It's much easier to recover from that when you have more players to take up the slack (and on the same note, it's much easier to carry one or two subpar players in 25s than it is in 10s).

Anyone saying 10m is just as hard as 25m has no clue about the difficulty of finding 25 people that know how to play vs. finding 10 people that know how to play.

I was an officer in 40/25-man guilds through vanilla/TBC. Sure, there's more logistical bullshit involved in running a larger guild and larger raids. That doesn't affect the difficulty of the actual raid encounters themselves at all (and doesn't affect the vast majority of the guild at all anyway, just the officers). The reward for the logistical overhead is going to be more loot per-player, more badges, and more gold, which is about all it deserves.

 

[yacobod]

w/10m and 25m dropping the same loot whats the incentive of doing 25ms again?

10ms are usually funner imo

 

[Fularu]

Terrible change.

While I agree that 10 and 25 man raids should drop the same ilvl items, they shouldn't share raid lockouts nor should they share the same gear.

I use 10 mans to raid with my casual friends and to do a stress less run since it's so much easier. Now I won't be able to do it at all, nor will I be able to play the raids in two different ways (tanking in 10 and dpsing in 25, same raid, different roles, I enjoyed doing it)

 

[Angry Grimace]

25m content will always be more difficult than 10m content. You have more people, therefore more ways to shove retardedness into a raid. There will be 25m guilds pushing 25m content purely because of progression status, but there will be far less people wanting to do so.

Not really. Along with more players is more margin for error.

 

[Freyjadour]

w/10m and 25m dropping the same loot whats the incentive of doing 25ms again?

10ms are usually funner imo

More badges, more gold, more loot/player ratio. Read the whole thing.

 

[Angry Grimace]

Well, yacobod brings up a valid point; are 25s actually more fun than 10s? How much of the fun of 25s is related to loot?

 

[CassSept]

More badges, more gold, more loot/player ratio. Read the whole thing.

People overflow with badges after 2-3 weeks and gold is piss-easy to get now though, not really something that would pull people to 25-mans >.>

 

[yacobod]

How much of the fun of 25s is related to loot?

about 85%, sitting in vent with a bunch of mouth breaters for 12-16 hours a week aint that fun :lol

i'd reckon that most ppl play the game to collect loot and play dress up with their toons, raiding isnt very much fun once you clear all the bosses, after that its just a grin, the same bosses ad nauseum for 4-5 months to collect loot and gear up for the next set of bosses w/e the next instance is released

more badges i guess is some incentive, but more gold lol, gold is so trivialized in wow now that its hardly a worry, i'd wager most ppl have so much gold now that its a complete non factor

fularu does bring up some good points tho

 

[Retro]

Raiding has always been about Herding Nerds. I've said that before and I stick by it; the difficulty in raiding never has anything to do with an encounter's design.

Raiding isn't a fight with any kind of boss AI, because any intelligence, artificial or not, is going to ignore the turtle yelling 'hit me!' and destroy the people stabbing / burning / blasting him square in the ass or healing the turtle.

Raiding is a fight with mechanics, amounting to nothing more than an elaborate dance; tank steps here, DPS goes here, healers cast twice and pirouette to the left. Obviously the steps are more than simple movements, but every boss fight is basically a list of things you have to do in the right order in the right way at the right time to win.

The reason learning this dance isn't part of the difficulty is because most players know the raid encounter before they encounter them, via the usual sources, unless you're on the bleeding edge of raiding the PTRs (in which case, here's some socks since yours are probably full). You can even watch other guilds down bosses on Youtube, and I'm not aware of any Guilds that go out of their way to 'avoid spoilers' and do a raid without any research... and if there are, I would imagine they have a revolving door of members who get tired to not getting loot faster/easier.

The difficulty has always been having to rely in 39, 24, or 9 other individuals to know what they're doing in terms of gear, class, and dance steps, and then getting them to execute it correctly. The hardest job in raiding is leading, thus; herding nerds.

Elitist flames... begin!

 

[Angry Grimace]

about 85%, sitting in vent with a bunch of mouth breaters for 12-16 hours a week aint that fun :lol

i'd reckon that most ppl play the game to collect loot and play dress up with their toons, raiding isnt very much fun once you clear all the bosses, after that its just a grin, the same bosses ad nauseum for 4-5 months to collect loot and gear up for the next set of bosses w/e the next instance is released

more badges i guess is some incentive, but more gold lol, gold is so trivialized in wow now that its hardly a worry, i'd wager most ppl have so much gold now that its a complete non factor

fularu does bring up some good points tho

I like the idea of more smaller raids. I'd like to see some actual "progression" going, although I'll be way too busy with school to raid in all likelihood.

I see what Fularu's point is, but I think Blizzard also thinks most "hardcore" raid types that would want to do that probably have more than 1 max level character.

I have very little faith that Blizzard will make cloth armor look like cloth and leather like leather. Prepare for another expansion filled with armor that all looks like Plate.

 

[Angry Grimace]

Raiding has always been about Herding Nerds. I've said that before and I stick by it; the difficulty in raiding never has anything to do with an encounter's design.

Raiding isn't a fight with any kind of boss AI, because any intelligence, artificial or not, is going to ignore the turtle yelling 'hit me!' and destroy the people stabbing / burning / blasting him square in the ass or healing the turtle.

Raiding is a fight with mechanics, amounting to nothing more than an elaborate dance; tank steps here, DPS goes here, healers cast twice and pirouette to the left. Obviously the steps are more than simple movements, but every boss fight is basically a list of things you have to do in the right order in the right way at the right time to win.

The reason learning this dance isn't part of the difficulty is because most players know the raid encounter before they encounter them, via the usual sources, unless you're on the bleeding edge of raiding the PTRs (in which case, here's some socks since yours are probably full). You can even watch other guilds down bosses on Youtube, and I'm not aware of any Guilds that go out of their way to 'avoid spoilers' and do a raid without any research... and if there are, I would imagine they have a revolving door of members who get tired to not getting loot faster/easier.

The difficulty has always been having to rely in 39, 24, or 9 other individuals to know what they're doing in terms of gear, class, and dance steps, and then getting them to execute it correctly. The hardest job in raiding is leading, thus; herding nerds.

Elitist flames... begin!

Even the people who are on the bleeding edge of PTRs still have an idea of what to do because the abilities are data-mined in advance. Using BQL as an example, you could probably figure out most of what her abilities do and how the biting mechanic worked and that it's the means to beating the encounter by just reading datamined abilities; although you couldn't figure out how often she used them or in what situation, of course.

I will admit that BQL is too easy on 10m. There's only three rounds of bites, and other than the bite-gimmick, it's not a hard fight.

 

[Alex]

Could have really, really could have used this last year, haha.

I really would rather play with a smaller guild of friends and nicer, smarter folk than the almost impossible task of gathering 25 game players together that doesn't contain at least a small handful of obnoxious, annoying people.

And that's what we were doing! And it was going well but people eventually wanted the bigger challenge or the bigger loot and it broke up. So NOW this happens! Oh well, hopefully it can be done all over again.

Very good change for me.

Raiding has always been about Herding Nerds. I've said that before and I stick by it; the difficulty in raiding never has anything to do with an encounter's design.

Yes I agree to an extent! But in general you play more of a Vanilla philosophy on it.

There's plenty of these fights that are very taxing on an individual level. In the good ones, IMO, it was always a nice mix of raid management, personal management and somewhat oldschool Japanese pattern based boss design.

 

[Flib]

Clarifications:

Zarhym (Source)Here are some clarifications to a few common questions we're seeing.

Regarding how the raid dungeons will share the same lockout. This means that you cannot do separate instances in the same week. If you defeat an encounter in 10 player normal mode then you are locked to the 10 player mode of that dungeon for that week and can flip between 10 player normal and 10 player heroic on a per boss basis (assuming heroic is available). In this scenario you cannot do the 25 player version. Is this correct?

Correct. There should be no circumstances under which you kill a boss more than once per week on the same character. However, in the same way that you can decide on a per-boss basis whether to try normal vs. hard mode, we might allow you to change between 10 and 25 on a per-encounter basis for additional flexibility. If you started a raid in 25-player mode and then found that you couldn’t get everyone together later in the week, you might be able to downsize the next few bosses to 10-player.

Will legendary items be available through 10 player dungeons? How about special mounts like Invincible?

In some of these specific cases, the answer is that we just don’t know yet. We’re going to have to walk a fine line between dropping the same items in both 10- and 25-player modes, versus still offering something extra for the 25s. If we over-reward the 25s, then players who like 10-player raiding will still feel compelled to find more warm bodies. If we don’t provide any extra incentive for 25s, then some players may stop playing with their friends in order to avoid the extra organization required for a large raid.

Overall, our goal is that you make the decision between whether to raid with 10 players or 25 players based on what you find fun and not because of the reward structure.

For perspective, it might help to look back at how we changed lockouts and hard modes on every single raid tier of Wrath of the Lich King to see what felt right and try to fix problems that arose from previous tiers. After seeing the first tier of Cataclysm raiding, we may decide to adjust our design for the next tier.

How many pieces of loot will drop for 10 and 25 player modes respectively?

When we say “25 should drop more loot,” we’re just sharing a philosophy. You shouldn’t assume that this means that 10-player modes will drop 1 item or that 25-player modes will drop 6 items, or whatever. We haven’t finalized how much loot will drop, but our general goal is that 25s should drop more to help make up for some of the logistical cost.

Will achievements be broken down by 10/25 modes? Will realm first achievements/titles be only for 25s? Will meta-achievement mounts be available for both versions still?

There will just be raid achievements, not 10- vs. 25-player versions in most cases. The achievement won’t care if you complete it in 10s or 25s. If we do meta-achievement mounts, it’s possible we’d still have different colors of mounts, or maybe even different mounts; but for some players that might mean that 25s feels mandatory again, which would be a potential problem. This is the kind of thing we’re going to have to consider carefully, and again, we might try a few different implementations before sticking with something we like.

We’re also not sure about realm first achievements or titles. We don’t want to encourage, say, 25-player focused guilds to run a 10-player raid instead because they think that will get them the ream first title faster. One potential solution is you can earn a realm first title in 10 or 25, but not both. These types of achievements also serve as great content for guild achievements.

 

[Angry Grimace]

Blizzard has shown a remarkable aptitude for making money recently. My guess is that this move will print money.

 

[Vigilant Walrus]

"Overall, our goal is that you make the decision between whether to raid with 10 players or 25 players based on what you find fun and not because of the reward structure."


This is a noble goal and should be supported. The question is if they can pull it off.


From my perspective, most people who quit WoW at end game that I have seen are people on burnout from having to do 25 Man, to really get the best... and that drags them down, to quit the game.

 

[Alex]

Reading some of the official forum lol) responses, some of the disgruntled elitist players players will quit WoW and go to play the other MMOs with highly supported end games. Like Nothing II and Legend of Nothing.

 

[notworksafe]

Being able to switch to 10 or 25 man per encounter is a cool idea.

 

[J-Rzez]

I noticed people talking on my realm about this. And, I have them on my "not to party/raid" with list. These people were usually really really bad. It'll be interesting to see how well they do when they're not being carried with 5-6 other bad players to get their gear. That's what I think they're most worried about.

A couple big 25 prog guilds on my server were already saying they welcome these changes, some saying they'll keep the guild together, running two or three 10-man groups, then hand pick the people from each group to make a 25-man prog run. Though it sounds like there won't really be "25-man achievements" anymore, and just shared. We'll see I guess.

 

[Retro]

Even the people who are on the bleeding edge of PTRs still have an idea of what to do because the abilities are data-mined in advance. Using BQL as an example, you could probably figure out most of what her abilities do and how the biting mechanic worked and that it's the means to beating the encounter by just reading datamined abilities; although you couldn't figure out how often she used them or in what situation, of course.

I will admit that BQL is too easy on 10m. There's only three rounds of bites, and other than the bite-gimmick, it's not a hard fight.

Right. There's little to no mystery in MMOs anymore because to play competitively (i.e. not be votekicked), you need to know what to do in advance. I'm not just talking about researching gear, talents, etc., that part has always been annoying but tolerable (it is an RPG after all). But being expected to memorize the strategy of a boss before you even set foot in his lair has always struck me as pretty lame.

It's like playing Legend of Zelda with the strategy guide on your lap, what's the fucking point of even making the journey?

Yes I agree to an extent! But in general you play more of a Vanilla philosophy on it.

There's plenty of these fights that are very taxing on an individual level. In the good ones, IMO, it was always a nice mix of raid management, personal management and somewhat oldschool Japanese pattern based boss design.

Maybe; I burned out on raiding after Ulduar so maybe the fights in ICC are more interesting. In general though, boss fights have very formulaic phases, predictable timers, etc. Of course, as I'm typing that, I realize a large part of that has to do with DBM, which is such an integral part of raiding now that I don't even think of it as an addon anymore.

In my opinion, the best Boss Fight in WoW is the Priestess Delrissa fight in Magister's Terrace. No Aggro table, random selection of enemies... and I say this as a control-freak tank. Such a fun fight, but whenever we pugged it people always bitched because it wasn't a paint-by-numbers affair (which, when you get down to using CC, it kind of was anyways).

 

[Evlar]

Reading some of the official forum lol) responses, some of the disgruntled elitist players players will quit WoW and go to play the other MMOs with highly supported end games. Like Nothing II and Legend of Nothing.

Remember, they're going to take all the High End Guilds with them, leaving Blizzard with the scub players who don't make the cut into the Elite High End. That must be (at most) a paltry 99.95% of their existing playerbase.

 

[Angry Grimace]

Right. There's little to no mystery in MMOs anymore because to play competitively (i.e. not be votekicked), you need to know what to do in advance. I'm not just talking about researching gear, talents, etc., that part has always been annoying but tolerable (it is an RPG after all). But being expected to memorize the strategy of a boss before you even set foot in his lair has always struck me as pretty lame.

It's like playing Legend of Zelda with the strategy guide on your lap, what's the fucking point of even making the journey?



Maybe; I burned out on raiding after Ulduar so maybe the fights in ICC are more interesting. In general though, boss fights have very formulaic phases, predictable timers, etc. Of course, as I'm typing that, I realize a large part of that has to do with DBM, which is such an integral part of raiding now that I don't even think of it as an addon anymore.

In my opinion, the best Boss Fight in WoW is the Priestess Delrissa fight in Magister's Terrace. No Aggro table, random selection of enemies... and I say this as a control-freak tank. Such a fun fight, but whenever we pugged it people always bitched because it wasn't a paint-by-numbers affair (which, when you get down to using CC, it kind of was anyways).

Ulduar is far and away better than ICC. ICC is pretty uninsipired compared to Ulduar; the problem is that everyone burned out on Ulduar because it was the only game in town for so long.

 

[Freyjadour]

People overflow with badges after 2-3 weeks and gold is piss-easy to get now though, not really something that would pull people to 25-mans >.>

Because they are running two instances each week as well as the daily. Something that this should alleviate.

Ulduar is far and away better than ICC. ICC is pretty uninsipired compared to Ulduar; the problem is that everyone burned out on Ulduar because it was the only game in town for so long.

I concur. Ulduar was good stuffs.

Right. There's little to no mystery in MMOs anymore because to play competitively (i.e. not be votekicked), you need to know what to do in advance. I'm not just talking about researching gear, talents, etc., that part has always been annoying but tolerable (it is an RPG after all). But being expected to memorize the strategy of a boss before you even set foot in his lair has always struck me as pretty lame.

It's like playing Legend of Zelda with the strategy guide on your lap, what's the fucking point of even making the journey?

I don't really see it that way, as you aren't the only person contributing to the cause. PTRs and datamining do bug me, but neither do I want people in my raid who haven't done any pre-raid preparation and need everything explained to them, wasting everyone else's time. I think a good goal to shoot for is knowledge, but using this knowledge and applying to your particular raid setup (something that is more interesting in 10s). I really don't think a pure and simple "keep a print out of wowwiki available" method is going to kill difficult bosses.

 

[Retro]

I don't really see it that way, as you aren't the only person contributing to the cause. PTRs and datamining do bug me, but neither do I want people in my raid who haven't done any pre-raid preparation and need everything explained to them, wasting everyone else's time. I think a good goal to shoot for is knowledge, but using this knowledge and applying to your particular raid setup (something that is more interesting in 10s). I really don't think a pure and simple "keep a print out of wowwiki available" method is going to kill difficult bosses.

That's pretty much what I mean by the whole Raids = Dances thing. The problem with current raid design is that it needs elaborate explanations in order to succeed. Rather than players recognizing situations and having the tools and skill to react (as in nearly every other genre of game), the design passes or fails you based on your ability to follow orders and hope everyone else doesn't screw up.

I get that it's an MMORPG, and RPGs generally play up strategy... but sometimes WoW feels like a game of chess where your opponent always plays the same way, and winning entails remember when to move where and when. Except with only half two or three moves.

 

[mclem]

Right. There's little to no mystery in MMOs anymore because to play competitively (i.e. not be votekicked), you need to know what to do in advance. I'm not just talking about researching gear, talents, etc., that part has always been annoying but tolerable (it is an RPG after all). But being expected to memorize the strategy of a boss before you even set foot in his lair has always struck me as pretty lame.

It's like playing Legend of Zelda with the strategy guide on your lap, what's the fucking point of even making the journey?

I really dislike this, but it's become the norm; however, I do rebel against it in one key form; in a new 5-man, I won't look up any boss tactics in advance; and I will run *some* new 5-mans on day one of the expansion.

I was ambitious on Day 1 of Wrath; I ran Utgarde Keep, Azjol Nerub... and Ahn'Kahet (Not Nexus; I also like immersing myself in storylines in a freshe expansion and so I avoided it until I'd done the Coldarra quest chains). I was woefully underpowered for the latter; it helped that I was with a considerate group who were well aware that I was only L71 and could barely hit most mobs in the instance. Nevertheless, we went through it all, and it was new to all of us...

... and going in ignorant to Volazj was an immensely wonderful, memorable experience. That made it all worthwhile.

 

[Sciz]

There's nothing about these changes that I don't like. It'll be interesting to see what the 25-man population looks like once the carrot at the end of the stick isn't so disproportionately big.

 

[evlcookie]

Do love it. Certainly makes me want to come back for cataclysm and start raiding again. Hopefully this means raiding can be cut back to one or two nights per week instead of the 4 nights. That's the dream anyway :lol

 

[Tamanon]

Badges go bye-bye. Replaced with points! I like it.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=24401796793&sid=1

We're continuing to refine the badge/emblem and PvP point systems in Cataclysm and we'd like to share some of those changes with you today. Please enjoy!

Our primary goal when approaching badges in Cataclysm is to address a lot of the confusion that comes with these currency systems. To that end we're changing badges to a more straightforward point system, similar to the ones we've used for a while for Arenas and Battlegrounds. There will be a total of four types of points you can earn in Cataclysm (two for PvE and two for PvP), and these will remain the same even as we introduce new content.

Here's the breakdown:

PvE

* Hero Points -- Low-tier, easier-to-get PVE points. Maximum cap to how many you can own, but no cap to how quickly you can earn them. Earned from most dungeons. (most like the current Emblem of Triumph)
* Valor Points -- High-tier, harder-to-get PvE points. Maximum cap to how many you can own, as well as a cap to how many you can earn per week. Earned from Dungeon Finder daily Heroic and from raids. (most like the current Emblem of Frost)


PvP

* Honor Points -- Low-tier, easier-to-get PVP points. There will be a maximum cap to how many you can own, but no cap to how quickly you can earn them. Earned from most PvP activities.
* Conquest Points -- High-tier, harder-to-get PvP points. There will be a maximum cap to how many you can own, and a cap to how many you can earn per week. Earned from winning Rated Battlegrounds or Arenas. (currently called Arena Points)

When a new tier of raiding gear is released or a new PvP season begins, your higher tier of points will be converted into the lower tier. For instance, if a new tier of raid gear is released, your Valor points will be converted to Hero points, and similarly if a new PvP season begins your Conquest points will be converted to Honor points. Of course that means with these new releases you'll always begin without any of the higher tier of points, and thus be unable to stockpile them.

As noted for Conquest points, the Rated Battlegrounds and Arenas will be sharing this same point type. Because of that, it will in fact be possible to get the best PvP items without setting foot in Arena; however, more powerful armor and weapons will of course require more Conquest points, so players who win their matches more often will still gear up faster. We're removing personal rating requirements on almost all items; they're definitely removed for weapons. We might offer a few items to the absolute best players based on personal rating, largely as cosmetic or 'bragging rights' type items. And you'll have the option of purchasing the previous season's gear with the more readily available Honor points.

We do plan to have a way to convert Honor points (PvP) into Hero points (PvE), and vice versa, at a loss. The conversions will be possible, but it won't be a 1:1 rate, and you'll have fewer points after the conversion process. We won't allow the higher tiers to be exchanged for each other, however.

To explain the reasoning for the weekly cap on points for the higher tiers, this is to provide flexibility in how players choose to earn the points without feeling like they have to do all of the content as often as it is available. If your Valor income from raiding is sufficient, you may not feel the need to run Dungeon Finder every night, or perhaps even at all. Likewise, a PvP player could choose to participate in a lot of Rated Battlegrounds but no Arenas, or focus on both, and still be able to earn the points they want.

We realize that with any changes to progression pathways there are going to be questions. We're eagerly awaiting any that we may have left unanswered. To the comments!

 

[Freyjadour]

Do love it. Certainly makes me want to come back for cataclysm and start raiding again. Hopefully this means raiding can be cut back to one or two nights per week instead of the 4 nights. That's the dream anyway :lol

In terms of not having to clear the same instance 4 times, it would cut down. Otherwise, it seems they are beefing up 10s, so not so much on the 1 night clears. I hope.

 

[Evlar]

Badges go bye-bye. Replaced with points! I like it.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=24401796793&sid=1

Good. I despise badges; so unwieldy. Just today I visited a vendor to turn 25 Triumph into 25 Conquest, which I could lump with 15 other Conquest at a second vendor to buy 40 Valor, which I carried across the room to a third vendor to buy 40 Heroism, which I carried seven feet and eight inches to a fourth vendor who accepted them as payment toward a piece of Heirloom gear.

Yeah. Dumb.

 

[Evlar]

In terms of not having to clear the same instance 4 times, it would cut down. Otherwise, it seems they are beefing up 10s, so not so much on the 1 night clears. I hope.

They are reducing the size of raid dungeons (at least at the beginning of the expansion)- four or five bosses, as an example, rather than 11. It sounds like you might be able to clear one in an hour or two. As an offset, multiple dungeons will be available.

I'll be happily surprised if they keep up the "multiple raids available" strategy throughout the expansion content patches.

 

[Hero]

New point system sounds a lot better. No rating on PVP weapons is a godsend.

 

[Dina]

Only thing I don't like about the 10/25 raid changes is that you have fewer raidnights per lockout. Say you beat the first 10/25m raid in 2, maybe 3 nights at first. But you get better, and you clear it in 1 night 2 months later, without a higher raiding tier being there.

What are you going to do that's not PvP? You should outgear heroics by now.

 

[CassSept]

They are reducing the size of raid dungeons (at least at the beginning of the expansion)- four or five bosses, as an example, rather than 11. It sounds like you might be able to clear one in an hour or two. As an offset, multiple dungeons will be available.

This is a welcomed change. In this department WotLK is a complete failure imo. Comparing it to TBC:
- WotLK - 48 bosses (including 15 rehashed) - 4 raid instances (including one rehashed) - 2 quick raids
- TBC - 52 bosses - 6 raid instances - 2 quick raids
TBC was so much diverse than WotLK. Even more, if my memory serves me correctly, SWP had more original models than ICC has, even though it is half the size.
I hope that if these changes go down at least they will improve quality over WotLK :x

 

[Flib]

Do something else besides WoW or level/pvp?

I think they realize that their a lot of their playerbase is on the verge of burning out. This is a fantastic way to prevent that.

 

[Cipherr]

I will admit that BQL is too easy on 10m. There's only three rounds of bites, and other than the bite-gimmick, it's not a hard fight.

Yeah, I feel the same. In most cases you cant call 10 mans inherently easier.

But in some cases you absolutely can, and Im not talking about outgearing the 10 mans. Sometimes, due to the fight mechanics, the 10 man is just flat out easier. The biting on BQ is a great example. This is also apparent when your doing a boss fight where spacing is very tight due to the room size, yet important because noone can be too far, or to close to someone. The spacing for your ranged on Festergut for example is a joke on 10man. Its not exactly rocket science on 25 either, but I dont think it can be denied that there is simply more room to work with when you have less ranged that needs to be as close to one another as possible without being in puke range of the next person.

Situations and fight mechanics like that are always going to either be lopsided in the favor of 10man or 25man. Spacing and the size of the room isnt something I think they can tune for 10 and 25 man separately unless they start making the room sized change depending on whichever lockout you are in.

Saurfang is another good example for spacing. Fitting all your ranged (depending on if your ranged heavy or not) in the area on 25 vs 10 is a huge difference.

 

[Oni Link 666]

That kind of sucks that they're limiting raiding so much. I guess it would give people more chances to raid with their alts though. That's really what it sounds like people will have to do to raid as much as they do now. I mean with 5-6 boss raids. A 5-6 boss raid is a one night thing once you get it on farm. Just look at TOC. Hell, we used to do VOA, TOC, and Onyxia in 3 hours. Then everyone would get drunk and wipe on Freya trash for the rest of the week. >_>

They say they'll have 2 raids at launch but, do you think they will actually release 2 raids per patch to keep people entertained? I'll believe it when I see it.

I could see a lot of bored raiders leaving the game because of this actually.

 

[J-Rzez]

These changes are sounding better and better, good job on these parts Blizzard.

Like the hardcore 25man guilds, the hardcore Arena players are going to be miffed by these changes. The thing about PVP though is that it should be based more around your skill vs theirs. This doesn't happen now all the time due to superior items available to those who run the cookie cutter comps, or get carried. I understand those that want something to show for their hard work/skill in PVP, and I think the vanity items are the way to go... which brings to another part for where I have my high hopes:

I hope with some of these "scale-backs" that they can put their resources to proper venues. I expect much higher quality art invested into gear and raid environments/encounters. I also expect more rapid patches sporting new content. There has been too much of a lull I always though. Especially the wait between ToC and ICC, which was terrible. ICC now currently is pretty damned beat. People are really getting burnt out on it, I know I am as well.

The changes to PVP should liven up that segment though, possibly getting more people, and perhaps more guilds into PVP as well.

On paper these changes are looking good so far. The only thing I'm really worried about still is the watering down of classes.

 

[CassSept]

Badge system change is a welcomed one. But I still aren't as convinced about these changes. At first I was quite furious but now that I am considering these changes... damn, I'm thorn.
I love how there is no need to run the same instance several times (ToC was the worst offender... running it 6 times a week was overkill for me)... but I have my own fears to what might happen to top raiding community on my server...
Well, I guess we will see how it plays out. Sigh.

If content returns to the quality of TBC I am all for any changes made I guess.

 

[ShallNoiseUpon]

Yeah, I feel the same. In most cases you cant call 10 mans inherently easier.

But in some cases you absolutely can, and Im not talking about outgearing the 10 mans. Sometimes, due to the fight mechanics, the 10 man is just flat out easier. The biting on BQ is a great example. This is also apparent when your doing a boss fight where spacing is very tight due to the room size, yet important because noone can be too far, or to close to someone. The spacing for your ranged on Festergut for example is a joke on 10man. Its not exactly rocket science on 25 either, but I dont think it can be denied that there is simply more room to work with when you have less ranged that needs to be as close to one another as possible without being in puke range of the next person.

Situations and fight mechanics like that are always going to either be lopsided in the favor of 10man or 25man. Spacing and the size of the room isnt something I think they can tune for 10 and 25 man separately unless they start making the room sized change depending on whichever lockout you are in.

Saurfang is another good example for spacing. Fitting all your ranged (depending on if your ranged heavy or not) in the area on 25 vs 10 is a huge difference.

While these are legitmate concerns, they really aren't fair concerns. ICC (and all of Wrath for that matter) weren't designed with the "there will be one raid and 10/25 will be of equal difficulty." As far as I remember, they planned on making 25 the top-tier content and thusly was supposed to be made more difficult (except for poorly executed fights like OS10-3D). Going forward, they have a new design philosophy that 10 and 25 should be of equal difficulty and I think that they have shown, as far as changing raid stuff, that they know what they are doing and more people will be happy come the end of Cataclysm.

 

[ampere]

As someone who loves the game but isn't very hardcore I love the raiding system changes. I never had time to farm 25 and 10 man content for all raids and all it meant was I'd be really far behind other players in terms of gear.
Now I can just do the 10 mans I love and still be fine

 

[Interfectum]

Oh wow, I love the new points system. Sounds great!

 

[mclem]

Good. I despise badges; so unwieldy. Just today I visited a vendor to turn 25 Triumph into 25 Conquest, which I could lump with 15 other Conquest at a second vendor to buy 40 Valor, which I carried across the room to a third vendor to buy 40 Heroism, which I carried seven feet and eight inches to a fourth vendor who accepted them as payment toward a piece of Heirloom gear.

Yeah. Dumb.

There's a vendor by the goblin bank who exchanges all badge types.

 

[Tamanon]

There's a vendor by the goblin bank who exchanges all badge types.

Yeah, but now he's gotta go all the way to another section of Dalaran to exchange, then come back to the badge vendors