True or False: "Blizz killed 10 man guilds to appeal to 0.07%"

This capped thread on the forums caught my eye because I was wondering what they were talking about.

The nuts and bolts of it is that this 10 man raider is upset that 10 man groups are unable to do mythic raiding and that catering for a small amount of the WoW playing population - essentially, 20 man raiding guilds - hurts the population in general.

What I found interesting was the comment that "all those tight knit social bonds have been destroyed after they were built up for years." This is referring to the tight knit bonds of a 10 man.

When we started this expansion, we had come from doing Siege of Orgrimmar with 10 players to suddenly having a lot of people. A number of the players who did some of those 10 mans did not like that and wanted to have the "small" group back. The dynamics were good with that group, they said. Players were better.  You knew who everyone was.

How quickly people forget how miserable it is when you have to sit people out. Obviously we had the goodwill of others sitting out for bosses they don't need but that isn't always the case. Sometimes people felt like they should sit out to make sure there was no drama.

I love how flex was applied to normal (now heroic). It meant that we could take everyone. No more sitting out.  It was brilliant.

But then, came the mythic factor.

We were doing that level of difficulty in MoP on a 10 man level.  Actually, we only did that for Siege of Orgrimmar.  We did do some heroic level stuff in Cataclysm too in 10 man.

But we haven't done any mythic this expansion, and to be honest, I didn't want to. I still don't want to now.  The flexibility is gone, and suddenly raiding will become a chore as we try to balance the numbers and the classes and the ranged/melee and we don't even have the numbers right now. I LIKE doing heroics, because that's fun and it fits in with my life timetable.

The people who are upset are those who WANT to do mythic but don't want to do it in a 20 man environment. Heroic 10 mans used to be the same as Heroic 25 mans. in MoP and prior. It was cool for the 10 man guilds back then but in reality, it's not fair.  Heroic 25 should have better rewards.  It's harder to organise and maintain.  Sure, it may have been easier too with extra slack in the system, but having to tune a 10 man fight to be the same as a 25 man fight for the same rewards is extra work that wastes a lot of effort.  I can understand why Blizzard took the two difficulties away and made it just one raid size. Only one difficulty to have to worry about and tune, instead of trying to balance it out for a 10 man and a 25 man. I'm trying to think of an equivalent real life analogy - say that I am a chef and I have to cook a special 5 course meal for a group of 10 people and also have to cook that same meal for 25 people.  They're both the same food, and it's a special party course so I have to buy the right ingredients to make exactly the right number.  Now, imagine I want to have an extra SPECIAL dinner course, that includes wine, and 20 souffles.  There is exactly enough wine in 1 barrel for 20 people only, and so that special meal should be for 20 people. Sure, we can have less, but the cost of the meal with wine is $2000 ($100 per person).  If you have less people then that's fine but that $2000 will have to be shared around whoever's left, so each person has to pay more.  But with the regular 5 course meal without the special wine or souffle, we can have some dessert that you can keep serving up (maybe fruit platters) and some beer on tap, so you can bring as many friends as you want.  Ok, a bit of a strange analogy there... but what I'm trying to say is that to get something special then you have to DO something special - and that is make sure you have 20 people who want to come to the party or you can't have this special menu.  And if you want to bring less? Well you can, but it will cost you more.  I guess the cost is the DPS/healing output in mythic so if you have less people you have to put out double the effort of what you were doing previously. And also, the chef is good at preparing for 20 people - they've got the ingredients and timing worked out just right.  Throw in a 10 man party into the mix and now they have to spend extra time getting that set right AS WELL as the 20 man party set - it would be easier and work smoother if they just said we're doing it for a party of 20 and that's it. No exceptions.

Those people who would complain that the game is now "too easy" at the heroic level and need a mythic level to get satisfaction - what % do you think they are?  And what % do you think are the number of people who couldn't get into raids before but NOW they can because of the flexible sized normal raiding that happens now? And that also means that raids can continue if people have a life and need to do RL things and miss a raid day or two or come late - yes that might make it "easier" but in reality, that is the way this game is going. All those hard core players are now grown up with jobs and families and don't have the time to commit to the game like they used to.  The game has to change to fit those people too.  The hard core stuff, mythic stuff, is still there, but surely there are WAY more people in the normal/heroic bracket that need catering to as well.

Those people who are upset with the raiding structure - well they would probably be unhappy either way and find some excuse to complain about something else.  If they had their 10 man mythics they would be complaining that the encounter is too hard or something.  And then they'd still be quitting the game, even if Blizzard had tried to accommodate them.

So, do you blame Blizzard for catering to those small amounts of people for mythics? Those guys who are serious about mythics are willing to pay Blizz for their server transfers and faction changing to get into the teams they want.  And those who are complaining and not giving money to Blizz - well why would Blizz want to cater to you when you are not a customer who continues to support the game?

I think I may get a lot of disagreement but I like the way the raids are set out at the moment. It suits me, it suits my guild. I feel sorry for all that it doesn't suit, but there's no pleasing everyone!

Comments

  1. Whether the raiding was better with 10 or 20 people is not the point for me. Mythic killed guilds that ran 10-person content because most mythic guilds needed to expand from 10 to 20 people. At a very basic level you could say that half of the guilds running 10-person content were going to have to fold.

    Of course thats too simplistic - so the reality is what happened to my guild - we were just scrapping by to get a 10-person MoP raid a couple of times a week. People who'd left the guild came back using eh flexi system to 'help us out' and we downed stuff and had fun. Then WoD dropped, our 'friends' had plans to run Mythic content and invited two of our three healers to join them. Our raiding stopped, our guild fell apart, two people are doing content they enjoy, the rest of the guild is bumming around in garrisons trying to find things to do - some have flirted with other guilds too and there has been a pig push to recruit and rebuild the guild. We have lots of new people, but not enough tanks or healers, so myself and our GL are learning to tank/heal, which I am not finding fun - the pressure to learn and be good so that 8 others can do what they want takes the fun out of it - and i can see why too few people play the class. But at least I am trying. The best thing Blizz could do to make raiding better for more people is to remove the hunter class from the game entirely :)

    I think this is the reason why people complain about a lack of single player content in WoD. Mythic split the game into the haves and have nots far more that at any time in the past. And the have nots hav voted with their feet, said f*&k you Blizz and unsubbed. So yes, Blizz looked after its small group of top tier raiders and sacrificed the rest of us.

    The grouping tools are supposed to help those of us left over from this smash and grab by mythic teams, but that is a hotbed of rampant elitism or loot ninjas, and spending a few hours on a Saturday or Sunday night trying to join or build a group is soul destroying - so i can understand why people are leaving. Its not that there is nothing to do, but that the group dynamics Blizz has cultivated is preventing me from doing it.

    Legion is the last chance for the game - i won't pay to play half a game. I love WoW - but if I'm unable to access the best bits, why bother being here at all.

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    1. Excellent point you have there when you said "I think this is the reason why people complain about a lack of single player content in WoD."

      If mythic is my goal and it is just not possible, I need something else, and raiding at a lower level just does not cut it. So we need more single player content to hold us over.

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    2. Thanks for visiting Bonesai and leaving your thoughts. They have made me rethink my stance a little bit. My guild is protected a little from the smash and grab mythic things as we have a strong player base and I don't recruit for raiding, but it has turned our guild a bit more casual than it was before. I am not much of a solo player in WoW - though I do enjoy fishing and archaeology. My longevity in game is due to my friends in it, and I can imagine without them there, I would probably lose interest in the game too. Though that seems hard to imagine after having it play a big part of my life for the last 10 years.

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  2. The actually amount of people raiding mythic compared to the amount of people that would like to raid mythic is huge. 20 man has effectively locked out a bunch of people, the majority of people.

    If I had to guess percentages, as you asked us to guess, I would say that the 0.07% does not really sound all that far off. I think it would be slightly more, but not much more really. The amount of players that "want" to raid mythic might be around 10%, the amount capable of doing it might be half that, and the amount that are actually doing it has to be an extremely small faction of that. 20 man just excluded too much of the player base.

    If they just did 2 things, cross realm mythic, and lockouts like normal and heroic where you are not locked to a single mythic raid lockout, it would go a long way in helping with these problems but it would still not be enough. But blizzard is indeed catering to the smallest of small percentages and it is hurting their game.

    My guild, a casual guild, who slowly moved through things and always looked forward to heroic progression was greatly hurt by 20 man mythic. We are just one example, but I assure you that there are WAY more guilds like mine than there are 20 man mythic guilds that push progression. Just a look at wow progress shows that my guild, thought out its history is usually a bit above the 50% mark, as in if 50% of the guilds have killed said boss, so have we. So we are the average guild.

    If I took my 10 best players we could be doing mythic now, but we can't because we need 20. This means boosting our numbers and bringing more people along. Usually this means doing fewer bosses in heroic and making less progression as we are carrying and teaching looking to boost those numbers or even doing normal when the 10 best players need absolutely nothing from normal and start hating raid night because they should be doing mythic when they are instead stuck raiding normal, not even heroic, normal, all because we are trying to boost our numbers.

    What this meant is we have, as a guild, experienced our worst progression since BC. It has been a dismal raiding experience all because we are trying to get to 20 on a server that can not support that. This means no one is experiencing the success we have become used to (some realm firsts, over all #3-7 on server of the last few years) and that is straining the better players.

    Three of those 10 best are now gone. Not left for another guild but quit outright. They would rather do 10 man mythic is people they like (us) than attempt to do 20 man mythic with people they do not know, and there are only 2 guilds on the server attempting mythic that at the moment, neither with any level of success. Two of those three people that left were probably our best and second best over all players, which in turn hurts us as we now need to find even more people for mythic.

    We try to recruit and we do get some good players here and there. A few players that came along were solid players, mythic potential, but because we did not have a full 20 they left, and some are still guild hopping. They bounce between this group and that group, all with the best intentions of getting 20 capable people and not getting them, so they move to the next possible place they might be able to get into mythic. I often get whispers from them asking if we are close to 20 yet, because that is what they are looking for, but they sit there raiding nothing and guild hoping, which still carries a little weight in creating a bad reputation on some servers.

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    1. Losing 10 man mythic hurt the game WAY more than adding mythic 20 man did. I agree from a design standpoint that the one size for the hardest content is the best idea. However, when you take that content away from the masses, which this has done, it hurts more than it helps.

      So guessing percentages again, as much as, and probably more, than 10% of the player base would immediately benefit from a 10 man mythic, and that would grow in numbers because of the ease of assembling smaller groups. So even if you want to compare the 10% to 0.07% I heard mentioned somewhere else, the game would still have a much wider range of people enjoying 10 man mythic than it does have with 20 man mythic.

      Creating content for the less than 1% is just not good business, even more so when they made no content want so ever for the other 99%. Maybe if they had dungeons worth running, valor gear, daily quests, etc, and people were not all forced into the raid or die world, it would not matter that so few could reach the top level, but when all there is to aim for is raiding, it needs to be accessible to more than the minority like it is now.

      Just my opinion of course.

      Sorry for the babble.

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    2. As always, I enjoy reading your viewpoints as they often make me think of things that I had not considered - or even think more about things that I sorta knew but hadn't really thought to vocalise.

      LIke you, our guild has had dreadful progression this expansion compared to previous. If you look at what we're doing now, we would have just finished normal. In previous end tiers of expansion we were working on heroic, like you.

      However, our raiding has taken a much more casual approach than we used to. Some of our better players have stopped playing probably due to that as well.

      I don't deny that I like the idea of mythic cross realm. I liked it at the end of SoO when it was just in so everyone could kill Garrosh, and I think that if you had that set up maybe 6 weeks after a patch drop with new content so that guilds could progress first and then keep longevity in raiding with cross realm mythic it would be a lot better. Have I missed the progress? A little. I think I miss my friends more. I am not sure what Blizzard will do in regards to raiding next tier and whether they will change it at all, but I think you are right, in the end, it will hurt the game.

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    3. WoD and the removal of 10 man mythic was ultimately the death of my guild as an active raiding guild. We had a nice tight team of exactly 10 with very little turnover of the roster (like maybe 1 or 2 people per year) - we would on average clear normal (I'm referring to the old raid difficulties here) in about 6 - 10 weeks then spend the entire rest of the tier working our way through heroic bosses - getting a new one down every 1 - 2 weeks but rarely getting to the last boss before the next tier dropped.

      When 20 man was announced as the only way to access the highest level of end game we were faced with 2 choices - 1. Recruit up to 20 man or, 2. Become more casual. Choice 1 was unappealing as we were very happy with the size of raid we were doing and the relatively drama free environment of the guild. Choice 2 was also unappealing, we were used to getting together for only 2 nights a week to progress on the hardest bosses in the game. The idea of clearing heroic in a couple of months then having nothing else to do for the rest of the tier except farm the same easy bosses for warforged/gem slotted gear left us cold.

      In the end more than half of us chose a 3rd option. Quit the game. Blizzard had loud and clear told us that the way we had fun in Warcraft was no longer viable.

      I think a good compromise position would be for Blizzard to keep 20 man mythic - but - after the tier is 2 (maybe 3) months old switch the mythic raid to flexible. Make it so the achievement/feat of strength for "Ahead of the curve - Mythic" and the guaranteed mount is only available to 20 man squads during those initial months. This way they can appeal to all the "World First" guilds who clear Mythic in 3 or so weeks but then let everyone else have a go a few months later.

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    4. Oh Sven that's sad that it happened to your guild, and it's a shame. It is true that a lot of guilds went that way, and like you, I agree that mythic cross realm is a viable option for everyone else who isn't one of those world first guilds. YOu said 2-3 months, I said 6 weeks - maybe 2 months is a good compromise.

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I hope these comments work! Not sure why people can't comment lately, it makes me sad :(