GC Quote Clarification?

#0 - March 28, 2009, 2:31 a.m.

Recently, Ghostcrawler has made a quote which follows:

Q u o t e:

Where we did err was that some of the 10-player content proved more difficult than the 25-player content, which was not the intent. That sets a weird mindset in the community that 25-player runs are pugs, and 10-player runs aren't worth it.

Ulduar will be more challenging, and we think the 10 vs. 25 difficulty will be tighter. With some of the hard modes, I fully expect to be on these forums in a couple of months dealing with lots of "Has Blizz lost their minds?" posts. :)

Consequently, some players still start looking at Arenas again as an alternative or even superior way to improve their gear. That coupled with higher resilience numbers, better understanding and tuning of the new rating system, and better class balance overall should lead to a stronger next season.

Right wrong or indifferent, I would like some clarification on what GC means. I infer the following from this comment and feel free to add, defend or agree:

Q1. 10 Man content is there to allow small guilds and casuals a way to see content. Blizzard realizes that having raid content that is so hard many people cannot see it negates raiding purpose. As such we have created 10 man content, a gimped version of the real 25 man raid.

Q2. Naxx 25 was puggable, this was not the intent. We do not want 25 man to be a bunch of randoms getting together to clear our content. Naxx 25 was that way, Ulduar 25 will not be pug friendly.

Q3. Since Ulduar will create a gap in raiding guilds and it seems Arena is dying, we have created greater rewards for arena as 1. and avenue to get better gear and 2. make people play arena.

Q4. If the 25 man raids are not Pugs and they should be cleared by 25 man guilds, does this mean that the 10 man raid content is just "dumbed down content" for these guilds and should be skipped?

You, GC, have placed a Shiv in this game by classing players in a certain way. Arenas are broken because the gear was so easy to attain in Naxx. Not our fault, you made the content easy and arena items harder to attain. The class balance aside, Arena is just not fun. In TBC I PvPd my butt off. In WOTLK it is not worth it. You are systematically nerf batting content, skills and such then telling us Ulduar 25 is the RAID content and ulduar 10 is the content for "softer guilds/players"
Please...Clarify.

I need to know what to expect and plan for. Do we need valor badges? Ulduar 10 drops valor badges? So do 10 man guilds just pug naxx 25 for badges to get the items? then skip U10 because as you stated it is dumbed down casual content?

Ghostcrawler

#1 - March 28, 2009, 4:46 a.m.

I don't think my comments were that hard to understand and it sounds from your tone like you are just trying to vent here, but I'll give it a shot.

Q u o t e:
Q1. 10 Man content is there to allow small guilds and casuals a way to see content. Blizzard realizes that having raid content that is so hard many people cannot see it negates raiding purpose. As such we have created 10 man content, a gimped version of the real 25 man raid.

Our support of 10-player raiding is a recognition that some guilds just prefer to be small.

Q u o t e:
Q2. Naxx 25 was puggable, this was not the intent. We do not want 25 man to be a bunch of randoms getting together to clear our content. Naxx 25 was that way, Ulduar 25 will not be pug friendly.

Naxx being puggable is fine and really inevitable. The problem was that Naxx 25 was so easy compared to 10, that 10 felt like a pointless exercise. Ulduar 25 will not be as pug friendly as Naxx. I suspect it will be pugged at some point, but it may take longer. Don't forget that many guilds already knew the Naxx encounters very well when LK shipped.

Q u o t e:
Q3. Since Ulduar will create a gap in raiding guilds and it seems Arena is dying, we have created greater rewards for arena as 1. and avenue to get better gear and 2. make people play arena.

I'm not sure exactly what you're asking here. A lot of players are doing Naxx 25 because it is quite easy compared to the challenge of getting Arena gear. Ideally say item level 226 gear should take the same level of skill to earn in PvP or PvE. When the PvE content is more challenging, as it will be in Ulduar, some players will naturally shift back to PvP as their progression path towards gear.

Q u o t e:
Q4. If the 25 man raids are not Pugs and they should be cleared by 25 man guilds, does this mean that the 10 man raid content is just "dumbed down content" for these guilds and should be skipped?

If you are in a guild organized around 25-player raiding, then you may not get as much value out of also doing 10-player Ulduar. But it depends. If you can do 10-player hard modes, that gear is an upgrade to 25-player normal. Doing 10 hard might help you gear up for 25 hard, though you could also do the same thing just by running 25 normal a lot. Ultimately, though, the intent is that you pick 10 or 25 and focus on that. We don't prevent you from doing both if are interested in it.

Ghostcrawler

#8 - March 28, 2009, 5:29 a.m.

Q u o t e:
Do you guys recognize that a lot of people feel some of the 10man hard modes were overtuned?

Many would argue that the 25-player modes were undertuned. Sarth 3D was intended to be something that guilds worked on for weeks. At first it looked like that was going to be the case, but after groups got geared up, most guilds that seriously tried it seemed to be able to manage before too long.

We don't think that will be the case with Ulduar. It should keep you busy. But we'll see. You players are a clever lot. :)

Ghostcrawler

#41 - March 28, 2009, 8:19 p.m.

Q u o t e:
13.6% of guilds have done 3 drakes in 25 player
4.2% of guilds have done 3 drakes in 10 player - AND that includes guilds who are wearing 25 player gear

Why can't you just admit you screwed up on 3D for 10 man and made it THE hardest encounter in the game? Considerably harder than the 25 man version in fact, and the proof is in the numbers.

I am saying we screwed up and made the 10 player harder a lot harder than the 25 player version. I think you are arguing from an absolute POV that 10 was hard and 25 was on target. You could just as easily say that 10 was the target and 25 was too easy.

Q u o t e:
I can see that it is not worth the effort to run 2 10s to gear up before 25s.

Correct. It is not the intent that you run 10 to gear up for 25. If you ran 25 Naxx, you should be ready for 25 Ulduar. The only exception might be that some of the hard modes are hard, so doing 25 Ulduar, then 10 hard Ulduar might give you an edge on 25 hard Ulduar. But it still isn't required.

Q u o t e:
Did the developers legitimately think that? The time it took to learn and complete the 3 drake encounter could be counted in not weeks, not days, not even hours, but minutes... trash included.

Oh, this is just Sarth is srs bzns talk. It was challenging. Most guilds had to look at the videos of how the earlier guilds did it and it took them awhile to gear up for it. It wasn't M'uru and it wasn't supposed to be, but it was supposed to be harder than it ended up being. A lot of the guilds who could do Sarth 25 still have not done Sarth 10 though, and that isn't by choice in every case.

We'll see how long it is before hard mode Mimiron and Yog and Algalon are srs bzns. My guess is a long time.

Q u o t e:
This isn't proof of anything, it's your point of view. The only information I can gleam from it is that.. you want those unhappy with the faulty 10 man progression path, to be more vocal. Got ya.

If your contention is that 10 player raiding is harder than 25 player raiding, then we disagree. The logistics of managing 25 players in our minds outweighs the "marginalizing individual effort" that you mention. I could see a way to have 10 and 25 drop the same loot but also share a lockout. Anything else will just kill 25 player raiding IMO, which is not something we want to do. We do however want to support 10 player raiding, and that means making the difficulty more appropriate for the rewards. If that isn't challenging enough for you, we do have the 10 player hard modes.