Brian Birmingham: The idea of changing the raid lockout came out of some negative memories of running Trial of the Crusader four times in a week, and we think that’s where the problem is most apparent. It meant that players stopped running Ulduar prematurely, replacing it entirely with various configurations of Trial of the Crusader. That was caused both by having access to all four difficulties each week, and the fact that even the 10-person Normal gear from Trial of the Crusader was better than almost anything from Ulduar.
The dramatic acceleration of gear in Trial of the Crusader also led directly to some of the problems described by developers at the time, such as “Chill of the Throne” in Icecrown. So, we’re considering changes here, but want to tread carefully.
At a minimum we’re likely to have normal and heroic modes share a lockout, but heroic modes don’t exist until Trial of the Crusader. We might try to make them activatable hard-modes like Ulduar was, that would inherently make them share a lock-out as they did in Ulduar.
We’re interested in hearing feedback on the topic. Having multiple difficulties of the same raid was new in Wrath of the Lich King, and as a result we tried lots of things with raid lockouts throughout the course of the expansion and the ones that followed. Whatever we decide, we’d like it to be the same system throughout instead of having it change patch-to-patch like it did in the original release.
The simplest solution, and one that goes further than you would initially think is simply homogenize the loot tables from 10 to 25 man.
If you do what you’re proposing ALONE, then why would anyone ever run 10 mans? even worse, if people wanted to create 10 man ONLY raid groups (which my friends and I are intending to do) we wouldn’t be able to get any legendary items, or great loot from 25 man pugs that we might need.
Simply having 10 and 25 share loot tables, and item level, removes this requirement to want/need/have to run more than the 1 or 2 lockouts per week (2nd being for hardmode/heroic)
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They are going to do the least they can. They won’t add 10 man loot to 25 man, or vice versa. They want progression to be slower so they can milk the expansion for as long as possible.
No, they don’t. Look what they did with TBC. The same will happen to wrath. They always wanted faster expansion cycles.
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Doesn’t take a genius to see that they’re rushing TBC to get to WOTLK before quarterly reports. This is their one and only chance to milk their most popular expansion for as long as they can. Subs will decline drastically once WOTLK is over. From a business perspective it’d be a really bad move to rush WOTLK.
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Sorry you feel that way mate, he specifically mentioned he’d like community feedback and that’s exactly what I’m trying to give. But I appreciate you bumping the post 
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Maybe if you significantly lowered the chance of 25 loot to drop in 10’s it might work. The need to run raids in multiple versions was why I didn’t raid much in LK back then. I’m sympathetic to a solution that works for most people, but you would need to favor 25’s in loot to justify their existence.
Yeah well 25 man drops a higher quantity of loot, I’m just suggesting the quality shouldn’t need to be better.
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Sharing loot wont be received well imo. Ilvl need to go down or up accross both version of raids. I assume 10 man are much easier and 25 much harder. So people will be pissed one way or the other.
This shared lockout will be an epic failure cause dual wielding rings/trinkets that have a normal/heroic version is often bis for many people, and you simply wont be able to do normal version ever since everyone will want to use their lockout on 25.
Ya they need to rework loot if they share lockouts imo. Didn’t 25 N have same il as heroic 10 right? Simplest way I can think is 10 and 25 hero give best and the normals give loot a notch below.
If they share a lockout like he said (normals 10 and 25 share and heroics 10 and 25s share) without any loot adjustment, I’m just curious why anyone would do 10 man normal (gives lower il than 25N) or 10 heroic (same il as 25N) and lock themselves out of the higher stuff in the 25 man ones.
Cata raiding loot was built this way (which some like and some don’t) but it’s the best way to handle it imo if competing raid sizes can lock each other (i.e 10 vs 25).
The other solution ofcourse is don’t change it.
Honestly, I feel that 10 mans are fine as spacer raids. Excellent to pick small upgrades or gear alts.
If they were to standardize the loot table. They would need to return the difficulty for all 10 mans AND make 10/25 share a lockout. Since I am often locked to guild raids for 25 man, 10 man offers lots of flexibility to play with friends from other guilds to patch up small holes in your gear (remember 10 man of Ulduar is better than naxx 25, so for at least the first month or two you WANT to be doing both).
Of course I am bias because I am in a 25 man raiding guild and prefer 25 man. I like just having extra “optional” raids to do that offer smaller upgrades but more flexibility.
To be clear the devs don’t want people to feel ‘forced’ to run both, if you want to run both by choice it’s up to you.
Now, considering that, there is gear that is NOT available in 25 man that you CAN get in 10 man (off the top of my head a caster trinket from 10m Maexxna in Naxx is an example?) This will make people clear both every week in order to get their best loot.
By homogenizing the loot, ilvl or not, it reduces that requirement so you can pick a raid size and go hit it, and not feel like you need to additionally clear the other raid size that week.
True, but this isn’t the case for MOST items. It’s one of those cases where 99% of your gear comes from 25 man and 1% from 10 man.
To me that is a fair trade to make it not feel mandatory. If you want 99% just attend your 25 man each week, if you want to get 100% you put in the extra work and farm 10 man as well.
Creates a reason for doing 10 man without making it feel like a big loss if you don’t do it.
Would love to see organic toggling of Heroic difficulties in TOC and possibly ICC in the same vein as Ulduar Hardmode.
The way Ulduar Hardmodes were done is still the best incarnation of increased raid difficulty IMO.
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We either need both lockouts, or move the 10man gear to the badge vendors and get rid of 10mans
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I’m all for a logical debate but where does this even come from?
It comes from the fact that if you want to reduce lockouts, we don’t need to further inflat the loot tables on 25man, just put the 10man gear on the vendors and retire the 10mans
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Except 10 mans are the best part of the game
So you want to dilute the 25-man loot tables with lesser gear? And in exchange, 10-man gets much better gear for less than half the effort?
No thanks. No change. Wait for Cata classic if you want real 10-man progression.
lmao seen his twitter? I peeked it at the other day.
He only replies to those who agree with him. He completely ignores the rest. He is a joke.
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Haha some people just don’t read eh