Latest news about WoW: Cataclysm -
We're continuing to refine the raid progression paths in Cataclysm, and we'd like to share some of those changes with you today. Please enjoy!
The first of the refinements being made is that we're combining all raid sizes and difficulties into a single lockout. Unlike today, 10- and 25-player modes of a single raid will share the same lockout. You can defeat each raid boss once per week per character. In other words, if you wanted to do both a 10- and 25-person raid in a single week, you’d need to do so on two different characters. Normal versus Heroic mode will be chosen on a per-boss basis in Cataclysm raids, the same way it works in Icecrown Citadel. Obviously the raid lockout change doesn't apply in pure Icecrown terms though, as this change goes hand-in-hand with a few other changes to raid progression in Cataclysm.
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.
Dungeon Difficulty and Rewards
- 10 and 25-player (Normal difficulty) -- Very similar to one another in difficulty; drop the exact same items as each other.
- 10 and 25-player (Heroic difficulty) -- Very similar to one another in difficulty; drop more powerful versions of the normal-difficulty items.
...
We design our raids to be accessible to a broad spectrum of players, so we want groups to be able to make the decision about whether to attempt the normal or Heroic versions of raids pretty quickly. The goal with all of these changes is to make it as much of a choice or effect of circumstance whether you raid as a group of 10 or as a group of 25 as possible. Whether you're a big guild or a small guild the choice won't be dependent on what items drop, but instead on what you enjoy the most.
So in summary, Cataclysm raids for 10 and 25 man will share the same lockout (you cannot do both 10 and 25 in a single week, it's EITHER OR) , they will share the exact same loot (unlike now where 25m loot>> 10m loot) and all this is.. why?
"We design our raids to be accessible to a broad spectrum of players"
Which paraphrases to
"We want more casuals to play the game so that we can earn more money".
Like seriously? The game is already going down with all the casuals hopping on and playing like shit and ruining the game for others, and now they're revamping the system in the hope to attract more casuals to play.
This is on top of the lame changes to the stats system such as removal of key stats like Spellpower/Defense/ArP to simplify the whole thing (to make it easier for casuals, i suppose)
Guess what blizz? You're going to lose a huge portion of your hardcore/serious players because they cbf to play this game anymore. What's the point of raiding in a 25man guild now, everyone will be doing 10mans instead for obvious reasons, such as being easier to coordinate, less logistics issues (people not turning up)
AND, them sharing the same lockout means players have to CHOOSE between 25 OR 10. Who in his right mind will choose 25 when 10man will obviously give you higher chances to get loot, easier raid, etc.
So goodbye 25mans, welcome 10mans.
And goodbye World of Warcraft, welcome World of Casualcraft.
