However I do agree on what you say concerning pvp. I always see complaints about how one class is overpowered. The way I see it, pvp players can get really arrogant and cocky and think they are Superman and when they lose, they use every excuse in the book and refuse to admit that the other player simply played better at the time or his game was off. Things like this cause game companies like Blizzard to “nerf” things to satisfy the whiny pvp idiots. Warcraft has and always was mostly a competitive game type so its not surprising Blizzard caters mostly to pvp. I honestly believe that stuff like that is the reason why stupid things like limiting potions effects and cooldowns were implemented. I hate that. In Neverwinter Nights, I loved being able to consume potions to raise my character’s strength, dexterity, constitution, intelligence, wisdom and charisma (1 potion for each) and it was not all at the same time. One after the other. In World of Warcraft, your limited to one “Battle” elixir and one “Guardian” elixir..and to me, I think that’s a joke. But that’s just my thought. I’m still playing the game though..it’s fun lol. =)

Titan’s grip better stay.

An analogy: imagine if heroic dungeons required 15 people instead of 5. Same bosses, same dungeons, different loot, and a lot more people. And imagine if these 15 man heroics was the extent of end game raiding. If you were an end game raider, wouldn’t that bother you? Wouldn’t you feel cheated out of content? Especially if the preceding expansion had unique raid content that ONLY raids saw.

Think about this from the perspective of someone interested in 25 man raiding, not someone interested in 10.

I am not saying Wrath’s raiding setup is worse. It’s not a question of better or worse. The way it is now is irrelevant. All I am interested in is the way, in my opinion, it SHOULD be.

I still disagree with the sentiment that 25-man raiding is cheapened by adding 10-man versions. As it stands now, 25-man raiders can easily break up into smaller groups and experience the 10-man content. What can the 10-man raiders do to experience the 25-man content? Not a damn thing, short of finding a couple other 10-man groups to join up with, and even then 5 people will be left out. I fail to see why allowing a 10-man group experience that same content cheapens anything. Why make them go to the trouble of finding 15 other people they likely don’t know or trust if they can just tackle it themselves?

I totally understand your argument. I just don’t understand how anyone can see it that way. You say Blizzard is “robbing all end game raiders of unique content.” How is that worse than what they do now, robbing the smaller-group raiders of the larger-group content? Where do you draw the line?

Why does it cheapen the experience? Like O&H argued, making the content the SAME for both versions cheapens the experience. People running 25 man raids will no longer be running unique content. The only difference will be that they are using 15 more people than others. Sure, the loot will be better, but that isn’t enough. Blizzard is copping out. Instead of building a complete end game for both 10 man raiders and 25 man raiders, they are meshing the two together.

Like I said, I love 10 man raids. I would be in full support of them eliminating 25 man raids altogether. But that is not what Blizzard is doing.

The issue is that Blizzard is robbing ALL end game raiders of unique content. 10 man raiders will not be breaking new ground anymore (like with Zul’Aman), and 25 man raiders will not be experiencing unique content (like all 25 man raids now). The problem is NOT, I repeat, NOT that Blizzard is opening more content for 10 man raiders. The problem is they are making all the content the same.

I get the feeling you think I don’t want 10 man raids at all, or that completely opening up end game raiding to smaller guilds is making WoW easier or making the game cheap. That’s not it at all. Please reread this reply and my arguments if you still feel that way. I feel I made my complaint very clear.

The larger raiding guilds will still exist, and to an extent, it will be easier to please more guild members by opening up the options for running 2 or 3 dungeons per raid night, instead of sticking everyone in the same bucket, fighting for the same drops. The 25-man raids, as I see it, will still be useful to raiding guilds for stuff like initiating new members and getting them familiar with the dungeons. You surely wouldn’t want to do that in a 10-man version, I’m betting, since every person will likely need to have an intimate knowledge of the dungeon mechanics and will have to give 100% at every moment to get through. It’d be like someone’s first experience in Ramps being in the heroic version…sorta.

Then there are people like me. I doubt I’ll ever have the time to devote to a full-time raiding guild. I’d be lucky to find one that’d just let me come when I had the chance. Ten-man instances give people like me the opportunity to get together with a handful of friends on our own schedule and tackle end-game content previously unavailable. Plus, I’m sure it’d be a whole lot more fun doing raids with friends than it would be with a bunch of people I don’t care to know.

My ‘Q’ key will get a workout every time I hear someone complain about this subject. The whole situation reeks of the same vibe that was felt in FFXI when Summoners could do solo avatar battles at lv 20. All the high-level Summoners pissed and moaned about how they had to do it the hard way and that the avatars were now cheapened because of it. Nevermind the fact that the solo fights were 20 times harder than the cakewalk high-level avatar fights. There are other examples, but this one rings the loudest, imo. “Real Life” comics had a wonderful comic about it around the time of that patch.

I really don’t have anything to say about Arena, since I haven’t tried it and I don’t know how it works. The gear situation, however, does bother me. I totally agree with how annoying it is that PvP gear and PvE gear cannot coincide. *shakes fist angrily* However, I am of the belief that the majority of end-game players prefer raiding to PvP, or vice versa. They’re just two different worlds that attract two different kinds of players. One likes to be a team player and come together for a common goal; the other likes to pwn the hell out of all the n00bs. Even if one could do both raiding and PvP on a regular basis in their WoW life, I doubt many would.

Your argument against Blizzard’s class balancing being skewed towards PvP is a valid one. I tend to agree that Blizz cannot favor one over the other, lest they risk losing both. I think they could put “Arena nerfs” in play to better balance classes for PvP, but leave the classes diverse as they are for PvE. It’s not unheard of, really, and it wouldn’t alienate the PvE’ers.

That’s about all I have for now. Chew on that a while.