Raiding in Cataclysm

Was feeling a little burned out and meh about WoW recently. A long weekend away from the game and some silly fun in ICC did a lot to cure that...

And then Blizzard insist on giving me the warm fuzzies. /blush You guys.

So what have we got so far?

1. Ten and twenty-five man raids share a lockout
2. Ten and twenty-five man raids share loot
3. Two tiers of points to replace the current badge system in PvE
4. Two tiers of points to replace the current honour/arena point system in PvP
5. Acquisition of top tier points in both cases are throttled on a weekly basis
6. Lower tier of both can be exchanged at a loss. Buying last season's PvP gear with emblems is old news, but now you can buy the previous raid tier with honour!
7. Twenty-five man raids will drop more loot per capita and may have other nebulous rewards
8. Arena ratings are dead!

So this looks like a barrel of robot pirate monkeys, at least to me. My esteemed colleague doesn't agree, and raises an important point or three. Mainly, what will there be to do after downing the raid boss d'tier each week? Currently, some people very much enjoy being able to raid as much as they like per week - being able to do both ten and twenty-five man runs on the same character doubles the number of raids available to such people.

On the other hand, running both raid sizes doubles your income. More emblems, more loot. The superior drops from the larger raid cheapen the smaller raid (devaluation of drops, and a slightly lower challenge due to better gear), and you halve the time before the emblem vendors have nothing to offer you.

In addition, removing the loot differences has many positive aspects. One of these is that it reduces the development cost of a new raid tier. Whilst I wouldn't bet on item creation being the bottleneck in this process, every man-hour saved can be put to use improving the quantity or quality of other content. This is assuming the loot tables remain roughly the same size as the current model, which seems reasonable if they wish to avoid the VoA lottery experience.

I don't think this is a zero sum situation, but neither do I think it's a clear-cut halving of content. It depends on the amount of stuff we get to play with, and rate of delivery. I do hope there's enough content to satisfy people who really enjoy investing time, but equally I think these are really positive steps overall. And there are always alts.

That said, I'm hugely biased. I don't like big raids, I don't like seeing anomalously nice drops unique to one size (primarily this has taken the form of me lusting after 25-man trinkets, but I'm sure there have been occasions when a larger guild has run smaller raids for the odd well-itemised piece). I don't like the reputation of ten mans being 'easy', and right now I don't care if that has ever been justified (it hasn't, so nyer). Blizzard are making a stand, saying that the only extra challenge in the larger raids will be logistical and we're to be rewarded accordingly.

They're removing the subtle, insistent pressure to do both raid sizes each week. For the drops; for extra emblems; for achievements; because it's the 'real' raid size... all these stupid little niggling voices are rendered null and void.

The PvP changes are nice too. Being able to fully equip a character with PvP gear will be delicious. Bye-bye ratings! Yes, yes, I suck and can't even get to 1800. I don't think I'll be threatening anyone's titles just because I can now get a resi weapon, but it will be a nice little carrot. Two-way exchange between the lower tier PvE and PvP points is a good escape valve, to prevent a repeat of BC (when people abandoned raiding in droves to get 'better' PvP gear in an 'easier' fashion). Being able to minimally gear up for either portion of the game in a manner you enjoy is good.

So, is there anything I don't like in this latest set of announcements?

Of course. I don't like the fact that they're sticking with the Hard Mode = Higher iLevel model. I would greatly prefer that hard modes have unique loot tables, shared between 10 and 25 of course. But this would eat into the time we just saved by having 10 and 25 share the normal loot tables, and could lead to raids doing a boss on normal because his normal loot is more useful, even if they'd rather be working on the hard mode. Maybe an Ulduar-like system where the hard modes drop additional unique loot would fix that, but doesn't help much with the item design task.

I don't like the fact that they only admitted the possibility that raiding enough during the week could free you from the odious duty of the daily random heroic. But then, keeping the player base running heroics has had a few positive effects (starting with there actually being people in the damn things, for a start...). So maybe I'm just bitter. I would be happy to have this go from a daily chore to a few-times-a-week thing, which the throttling may well accomplish for my actively raiding characters.

And... um... yeah, that's it. Overwhelmingly positive about the whole affair. The class previews had me excited, and this makes me think that raiding and PvP will be a whole lot more enjoyable in Cataclysm. More rewarding, less divisive, with extra ponies.

My pony will have tentacles.