Monday, April 26, 2010

10 or 25's That is the Question

We're designing and balancing raids so that the difficulty between 10- and 25-player versions of each difficulty will be as close as possible to each other as we can achieve. That closeness in difficulty also means that we'll have bosses dropping the same items in 10- and 25-player raids of each difficulty. They'll have the same name and same stats; they are in fact the exact same items. Choosing Heroic mode will drop a scaled-up version of those items. Our hope is that players will be able to associate bosses with their loot tables and even associate specific artwork with specific item names to a far greater extent than today.
We of course recognize the logistical realities of organizing larger groups of people, so while the loot quality will not change, 25-player versions will drop a higher quantity of loot per player (items, but also badges, and even gold), making it a more efficient route if you're able to gather the people.


It's finally been decided, some people begged for it and others prayed they wouldn't go there. I for one am very excited for this change, depending on a few points.
1.If they really can balance the raids to be a similar difficulty between 10 and 25.
2.How much of a difference there will be in number of badges dropped, and with that how reliant we will be on those badges.

I personally much prefer the 10man environment, its easier to put together, you get to know your whole team a lot closer and depending on the mechanics and how the encounter is tuned it can be harder than 25 sometimes.

There is going to be a lot of complaining on this one and much of it has already started but much like the rest of the changes in Cataclysm if pulled off right will make the game a much better place. The interesting thing will be seeing how many guilds switch to 10mans once they are no longer obsolete.

The other thing I'm interested to hear on is if they share the same loot will 10man now drop Legendary's and rare mounts in hard modes?

I ask to anyone reading which will you want to be running in Cataclysm and why?

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