Ask Gauss

Let me just say that I have never had the same question asked to me this many times in a week. I guess this means I better keep the focus and answer it well. This is of course what has been on the raiding community's mind ever since the announcement was made. So without leaving you all waiting longer bring on my opinion.

What do you think of Blizzard's idea to have 10 and 25 man on the same lockout?

First of all we do not know everything about the decision behind this, so I may change my mind in the future on it. For now though this is my deal. First off, I have always thought it has been rather retarded since Wrath came out that you could kill the same raid boss twice in a week. So in that regard I like it.

Do I think it is fair people will be getting the same rewards for doing the encounters with less people? Blizzard's original stance was that 10 man encounters were easier not because of less people, but because they were were designed to be more forgiving. They have been chosen as the "not so serious raid". You still get to do everything, but it is easier. If this is too be done right let's look at the options. Make 25 mans on a normal scale as easy as a 10 man or make 10 mans as hard as a 25 man encounter. I don't want to see content watered down so I would be a fan of bringing 10 mans up to the difficulty of 25 mans. Of course 10 mans will still be easier for the simple fact that you will have to organize less people. This is something that cannot change, which is why there has to be an incentive to do 25 mans. The just more loot aspect is probably not going to be enough, which is why I am assuming there has to be something they are not telling us.

At Blizcon it was stated that guilds would be a major focus of Cataclysm. This is why I think the guild talents and leveling system is going to be a huge deal for raiding. Obviously I am thinking this is going to be more focused on 25 man raiding benefits. Everything that I have heard about the system was it was going to be based on how many people in your raids. So buffs, gold drops, and all other things is going to be more efficently used for a 25 man raid, obviously 2.5 times more.

Now the only way 25 mans survive is if everyone thinks the incentives are good or worthwhile. If they aren't no matter how much people like or prefer the 25 man experience it will die, along wiht it larfer guilds. This is the sad truth, but I will explain why. The easiest way to give an example of this is Karazhan. When Burning Crusade came out Blizzard had this idea to slowly get people into raiding by giving everyone a 10 man raid. No matter how hard you tried to make the groups even and even changing the names as to not define them group 1 and group 2, it didn't matter. Why am I not in the good group? The drama whenever one group did better than the other. Even the best intentions left you with people being unhappy. This environment leads to guilds forming cliques within it. If you are in a raiding guild and only raiding with certain people, why are you in a guild with the rest? You saw this all the time during leveling phases of expansions also. People always doing their own things and become involved with what they are doing. So in short guilds may at first have the best intentions to keep everyone together, but it would only be a matter of time before splits would happen.

I hope Blizzard does the right thing for the incentives for 25s because I love the feel of 25 man raids they feel much more epic.

Are you really Gauss?

I think so...

So that is it for this week. Only the one real question, because I thought with how many times it was asked it deserved some attention. Next Friday's reader's post is going to be your list of things to see or do before the expansion.

Enjoy what you have left of your weekend.