Why does Blizz hate 10 man guilds?

Q u o t e:
There are too many examples to list, we know it's true, I just wonder why.

Why not have good gear drop in 10 man raids too, why not the good stuff for us?

Q. Is the mount available in both 10 and 25 Heroic?
A. Invincible will only be available in the 25-person Heroic encounter with the Lich King.

Why not make 10 man content just as hard as 25 man, and give both the same rewards?

Blizzard loves 10-person content guilds just as much as we love 25-person content guilds. The reason for having this mount in the 25-person Lich King encounter has to do with maintaining the proper distribution of such awesomeness. If it were available in the 10-person encounter as well, it may become too prolific and lose some of its initial unique qualities.

Q u o t e:


And the reason why there wouldn't be a 10-player version of Invincible and a 25-player version of Invincible is because it's really supposed to be one horse. One awesome horse of awesome, but one horse.

On a related question, honored Fel Reaver, is there any plan to address the fact that 10-man hard modes are dramatically more difficult than 25-man hard-modes because of the greater dependence on each player's contribution to the raid? Or the assertion that 10-man hard modes cannot be accomplished without gear only available in 25-man content?

For example: How many dedicated 10-man guilds have accomplished Earth, Wind, and Fire (10)? Without the use of gear from 25-man modes?

The 10-person heroic raid dungeons are tuned in such a way that players do not need to rely on gear from the 25-person normal mode equivalents. We made many adjustments along the way to make that possible. While it can be helpful to obtain additional gear from the 25-person normal modes, it's certainly not necessary and we were pleased to see so many players able to attempt and complete the 10-person heroic encounters in ToC who progressed exclusively from 10-person normal ToC. Often times players feel that they need to obtain items from higher content in order to complete Heroic encounters, when improved strategies would equally suffice.

We will continue watching upcoming content in the future to make certain that we are able to adjust these encounters and keep them aligned with our goals.

Q u o t e:
Every guild I've been in recently has been a 10 man raiding guild. They made raiding accessible so people would want to do it. Getting ten people together to raid is definitely easier, and thus there are plenty of ten man raiding guilds. The few guilds I've been in who had 25 man raids going on regularly had really strict rules about getting in, and only had around 28 people who even got to raid with them. Getting into that group would not really be possible.

Crygil, the problem is not so much that people feel inadequately equipped to handle the 10 mans with only 10 man gear, it's that outside of the raids, people look at your gear for more than just how pretty it is. They look at item levels, and stats. People also use the gear to run older content, like heroics, or to PvP. It's perfectly fine confined to the raiding scene. My ten man gear is as good in relation to ten man content as my twentyfive man gear is for twentyfive. The problem stems outside of that, when we both exit our respective instance and suddenly they're wearing gear as good as the stuff I will get for being a top of the line ten man raider, simply for doing the dungeon the same way I did. Now they're stronger in PvP, they do better in heroics, have more health, more dodge, more damage, simply because they had more friends go with them. The problem is that in the end, gear is gear, but it's also a status symbol, and their status symbol is top of the line whilst ours, which is supposedly an equal alternative option, is in fact only a tiny step up from their last tier of gear.

For illustrative purposes...

(link removed) is the Bastion of Resolve. A caster shield from Trial of the Crusader 25.

(link removed) Now here is Lost Pravise of the Blue Flight, a caster shield from Icecrown Citadel 10. Notice how if I were to wear the ICC item over the TotC item, I'd gain about 180 armor, 5 each of intellect and stamina, 3 haste, and 5 spellpower? Yeah.

This means that I could just go run the old raid from months ago, and get an item which is only about 50 hp, 75 mana, and maybe 50 point higher heals which cast 0.01 seconds faster, than the new content shield. Why should anybody even bother with ICC10 when it's more or less equal to TotC25 gear? Heck, If I wanted to go the extra little distance, which wouldn't be all that hard now with the badge gear, and run TotGC25, and gain items even BETTER than the ICC10 ones.

The fact is, that 10 mans are a joke. You guys continue to pump them out, and I understand why. In the end I'd rather do the content with no drops than not get to see it at all, but it'd still be nice if I was able to run 10 mans and actually feel like I'd accomplished something beyond making myself better equipped to do the real raid if I ever find myself in a position to actually get to join one.

It's as simple as logistics. When in a 25-person instance, you are using 25 peoples time. This makes accumulating that number of players more difficult to achieve. This alone does not entitle them to gear that is slightly better than that achieved in 10-person raiding. We also scale the difficulty of the encounters up in the larger group of players. Thus, because of added difficulty, they achieve slightly better rewards. The ease of assembly in the 10-person environment and the reduced difficulty (in non-Heroic) have to be taken into account with the level of reward given out.

That said, the rewards are still outstanding and generally a step up from previous content.

On a side note, why do people throw around the word "Fact" when it's attached to a wholly subjective interpretation? It isn't a fact... it's an opinion. In order to help correct this trend of erroneous fact-citing, I've included the definition of a the word"Fact" below.

Main Entry: fact
Pronunciation: \ˈfakt\
Function: noun
Etymology: Latin factum, from neuter of factus, past participle of facere
Date: 15th century
1 : a thing done: as a obsolete : feat b : crime <accessory after the fact> c archaic : action
2 archaic : performance, doing
3 : the quality of being actual
4 a : something that has actual existence <space exploration is now a fact> b : an actual occurrence <prove the fact of damage>
5 : a piece of information presented as having objective reality

Q u o t e:

And couldn't a modified or alternate version of "Invincible" be made available in the 10-man version that would distinguish it from the 25-man, thus maintaining the "awe" associated with the 25-man version (see, i.e., Black v. Twilight Drake; Plagued v. Black Proto-Drake; Rusted v. Iron Proto-Drake)?

There are other plans in motion on that front and we are not at liberty to discuss them yet.

Q u o t e:
But doesn't that mean that you are concerned that the 10-man heroic version of the fight would be (all things relative, of course) "easy" for a group of 10 raiders who are geared for 25-man content? Isn't there a reasonable way to tune the fight such that the difficulty of the fight is not overcome by simply having better gear

As for whether or not we are concerned about the possibility of 25-person geared players heading in to the 10-person Heroic and potentially trivializing the encounter... Yes, of course we are. Can we make a fight that has absolutely nothing to do with gear? Yes we can, but that would be counter to the growth of the characters involved. Gear influences every style of gameplay(Tank/Damage/Healing) in some way or another. To make it entirely divorced from the Lich King encounter wouldn't be the most epic experience we could deliver. There will be a massive skill portion to this encounter, but we are not going to move gear 100% out of the equation.

There are unfortunate side effects of maintaining two distinct types of raids. The raid with the smaller number of people participating has to be tuned around that style of participation, made for the people who have been a part of that group. Whereas the raid with the greater number of players is likewise geared toward that larger group. The more people you have, the more difficult (numerically) you can make the encounters. This also means that you can factor in certain amounts of leeway in larger groups and tighten those. I.E. There will be more healers, thus there can be more raid damage; there will be more tanks, thus there can be more encounters that benefit from additional tank mechanics and so forth.

Now, all that is just to say, the Lich King encounter versions given to the two groups are tuned to each individual 10 or 25 person type. The tweaking we are able to do, on the larger group version, can be pulled even further toward the very top end of super hard. While the 10 person encounter must continue to rely only on items achievable and composition available to players in the that raid type. This lends itself to players from the 25-person raid seeking out achievements and other bonuses in 10-player content, but we cannot tune around their excursion into this area without also excluding the very crowd that this content was intended for. That does not mean that it will be trivially easy for one group to move in either direction, but that is intended to be the case. We want the Lich King to be difficult, in-both 10 and 25 versions and we hope that you all enjoy this climactic encounter.

Q u o t e:


You kinda missed what he was getting at. We all understand that you have to balance 10 raids around 10 gear which necessarily makes it easier for 25 manners... but why should 25 manners do our content? Simple solution seems to be to share the lockout. When I did 25s high end, I always felt it silly to have to run the same content (basically) multiple times in order to keep up with the joneses of 25 man progression. Fix the itemization holes in 10s, share the lockouts & finally give 10 manners doing 10 man heroics in appropriate gear something to look forward to.

The matter is more complex than that. It's not a good thing to take away content from players, be it 10-person or 25-person. There is a good deal of overlap and often larger guilds will allow their experienced raiding members to run "PuGs", in so far as it doesn't conflict with their guild raid. The point here is not to close off options. It is one thing to have content that you can utilize, but choose not to. However, it is a totally different matter to be suddenly barred from content. This, among other reasons, is why we won't take away either players' set of options. If you choose to do a 25 person raid, but are normally a 10-person raider (like myself), then that option is there for you and vice versa.

Q u o t e:


You are comparing the phrase 'choose not to' to the experience of pugging a 25 man on, say, Duskwood - Alliance.

That's not intellectually honest.

You're ignoring what GearScore, Achievements, and the Dungeon Finder have done to at least some of the realms. You can't simply 'choose to' pick up a functional raid with anything close to a guarantee of participation, let alone success. The selection of good players that are also decent raiders has plummeted to near zero. The number of raid leaders who are willing to put raids together is diminishing daily, and those will typically only want those raiders who have already done the content multiple times. This further limits the possibilities.

The concepts of what you are saying check out, but to make this sort of statement implies you're not actually trying to do what you're advocating people do. Please test it and get back to us with your experiences.

I've PuG'ed my way to Putricide in 25-person content. I did have to talk my way in, as I did not previously have the achievement for the first wing encounters.