World of Warcraft: Current Year

Honestly, seeing how fast I can drag 4 people behind my tank in 5 mans is extremely fun.

I look for Blizzard to do away with five man trinity based dungeons in favor of quicker scenarios in the future. I could also see them doing away with normal/heroic 10/25's in favor of 10-25 man flex raids with ulduar esque triggered hardmodes. The only argument i could see against it was the claim flex was introduced for the family guild crowd. What i proposed seems like a more eloquent solution to multiple difficulty settings and further boating of the ilvl system. I dunno it just seems more streamlined and neat. Also you could have the uber guilds competing to do it with less. I guess we need to see just how dynamic flex raiding could be.

GonzytheMage_sl said:

I look for Blizzard to do away with five man trinity based dungeons in favor of quicker scenarios in the future. I could also see them doing away with normal/heroic 10/25's in favor of 10-25 man flex raids with ulduar esque triggered hardmodes. The only argument i could see against it was the claim flex was introduced for the family guild crowd. What i proposed seems like a more eloquent solution to multiple difficulty settings and further boating of the ilvl system. I dunno it just seems more streamlined and neat. Also you could have the uber guilds competing to do it with less. I guess we need to see just how dynamic flex raiding could be.

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I seem to remember them saying they wanted to put a focus back on 25 man as the traditional progression guild raid size. It's likely that they may do away with 10's completely in favor of flex and keep 25 as the "normal/heroic" raid.

It is significantly easier to find 10 people who can keep their heads out of their arses long enough to kill a boss than it is to find 25.

I would be shocked if Blizzard did away with 10 Man raiding entirely, as the last time I checked, there were many more 10 man guilds doing raiding than there were 25. Would a large portion of those players migrate to 25? Probably. But I know many people who would quit if they had to go back to carrying mouth breathers just to fill out a raiding roster.

If you make a single size, people will do whatever it takes to run it. Just my opinion.

Caeden_sl said:

If you make a single size, people will do whatever it takes to run it. Just my opinion.

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^
People ran with 40, they'll manage to run with 25.

I quit WoW a few months ago when, as I was reading this thread, I realized that I was one of the bads that everyone complains about in LFR and 5-mans.

My post was more of an idea and a personal preference. I hate to say it but I agreed with what Dumar was saying a few pages back about having a disdain for killing bosses on multiple difficulty levels. I can appreciate the skill it takes to clear heroics, and I have completed tiers of raid content on heroic setting. The entire concept of difficulty toggle switches just felt artificial to me or at least it felt like an artificial way of prolonging content tiers. I also agree with Caeden about single raid sizes and I thought if my flex proposition took place it would bring us closer to coming back full circle to one raid size and killing the bosses on an even difficulty setting while still preserving the "hardmode" raid via achievements. All in all I'm probably wrong and they want to cater to as many audiences as possible to maximize subscriber retention. Still I think the data they collect from Flex over the next 6-8 months will be interesting.

Flex is an attempt to correct the misguided decision to make 10M raiding 'hardcore' by adapting the 25M approach of making heroic difficult and normal just difficult enough to destroy the friends/family/drunk/mouthbreathing casual raiding that was popular in WotLK.

GC commentedon this a while back.

If they recapture that niche via Flex, I think they'll eventually consolidate to a single raid size. It's pretty stupid to have EIGHT flavors of the same content, if for no other reason than it's not cost effective for a game that long-ago reached maturity.

Rime_sl said:

It is significantly easier to find 10 people who can keep their heads out of their arses long enough to kill a boss than it is to find 25.

I would be shocked if Blizzard did away with 10 Man raiding entirely, as the last time I checked, there were many more 10 man guilds doing raiding than there were 25. Would a large portion of those players migrate to 25? Probably. But I know many people who would quit if they had to go back to carrying mouth breathers just to fill out a raiding roster.

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The point is that flex will take the place of the 10 man raid as a tier between LFR and 25man. By and large I'd say 70ish+ percent of the 10 man guilds complete Normal modes and maybe a handful of Hard modes per raid tier so realistically it basically is a tier between LFR and Hard Mode as it stands. The hardcore progression 10 mans would reorg a bit, but by and large I'd say the average casual raiding 10 man would be in a better place.

Ideally I'd like to see LFR done away with and all raiding collapsed to flex and 25M. Flex gives family guilds the freedom to keep their 2-3 night a week raid schedule and hardcores a better avenue to getting gear with guildies and friends due to the separate lockout.

I don't know about the removal of LFR, it's basically been the only thing that has kept me in the MMO mentality over the last year. And that seems like such an easy thing to balance, just make it retarded easy and poof you have LFR. With that said I never really played MMO's for the "socialization" aspect, sure I talk with people and listen to their problems but for me at it's core I played for my own enjoyment of executing my character during an encounter. I liked min/maxing and improving my own personal game play, because I always felt I couldn't make someone else in my raid a better player I just had to play better to help the raid if that makes sense to anyone. I still believe this last tier is going to be a large data collecting project by Blizzard to refine a dated product to compete with new releases.

That's cool if you want to dismiss the advice of one of the few people in this thread who have had clinical depression and managed to beat it. Good luck to you and I hope you do find something that works. I know from experience how much depression sucks and its not something I'd wish on anyone.

GonzytheMage_sl said:

I don't know about the removal of LFR, it's basically been the only thing that has kept me in the MMO mentality over the last year. And that seems like such an easy thing to balance, just make it retarded easy and poof you have LFR. With that said I never really played MMO's for the "socialization" aspect, sure I talk with people and listen to their problems but for me at it's core I played for my own enjoyment of executing my character during an encounter. I liked min/maxing and improving my own personal game play, because I always felt I couldn't make someone else in my raid a better player I just had to play better to help the raid if that makes sense to anyone. I still believe this last tier is going to be a large data collecting project by Blizzard to refine a dated product to compete with new releases.

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Well they'll probably wind up throwing a difficulty level to the flex raid - LFR - Normal - Hard or something silly like that. LFR would cause you to queue for players and the other 2 would require pre-made.

Ao-_sl said:

Tier 2 was in during vanilla and "transcended" past BWL...

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well T3 gear didn't come until Naxx and breaking your 6 or 8 piece T2 set for some AQ offspec gear wasn't all too common

Kreugen_sl said:

The valor upgrade system seemed horrible because any points spent on less than the best gear felt wasted, but the valor cap sometimes required dumping upgrades onto an item you'll replace next week.

The whole system is pretty smart from one standpoint - it keeps high end, massively overgeared players running a few dungeons a week to cap their points. Which means undergeared casual terribles can usually get carried through dungeons. Wheras in most games, well geared players abandon dungeons completely a few weeks in. I'm pretty sure that's what the entire system is really about.

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afaik they keep this system because it gradually "nerfs" current content without them having to implement a buff/debuff that nerfs boss hp/damage like they did in the past with ICC/DS/t14 content

JTheRuler_sl said:

I seem to remember them saying they wanted to put a focus back on 25 man as the traditional progression guild raid size. It's likely that they may do away with 10's completely in favor of flex and keep 25 as the "normal/heroic" raid.

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I doubt that they are going to piss off the majority of their raider base who prefers to do 10m over 25m for various reasons and obviously Flex mode won't come for heroic raiding because of raid groups cheesing certain aspects of fights by down-/upscaling the number of people involved to make certain aspects easier

Im not disagreeing with you but I've seen my fair share of raid stacking to cheese content with set raid sizes. We still don't know enough about flex and how it really can change the encounter yet. Also i think i read somewhere they are going to allow achieves in flex mode, still seems like a launching board for something more.

I raid to get gear , so I can get instances I absofuckinglutely do not want too do done faster so I can log off and show up for raiding when the timer resets next week or something like that .
The kicker , MOP ran like complete and utter shit on a friends MAC , same model I have. So I figured I would wait and see , still waiting currently MMO less.
All things considered , found watching add ons to push the right button sequences extremely tedious.
Social ?
Ha not one person ever would say a word if someone got benched if their performance was off by half a percent .
So I was there to get some digital bling and if some catastrophe happened to a guildy in RL , I didn't give a shit , never talked in vent listened to paranormal online radio shows instead .
So all in all being mmo less is not a bad thing , plus there is an extra few hundred in the bank from not buying two new releases and paying for two accounts .

How do they migrate when there are only so many non shit players to raid with ? The 40 too 10/10/team fail then back too 25 ended in a lake of tears last time LOL