Yesterday, when reading the progression changes in the Cataclysm raids, the truth is that I was not surprised. I saw it as a natural evolution just like the changes to the emblems. It's the kind of thing you say, and why wasn't it like that before?
As I said in the article itself, I did not want to waste the opportunity to give my opinion about it and, as always, you may or may not agree with me but remember one thing: It is an opinion.
If there is a methodology in life that is widely known and that, personally, I apply, it is to look at the good and bad things of something and from that I forge an opinion that can be bad (if they outnumber the good ones) or good .
The good
1) Goodbye to summer break. Yes, we all know that in summer the desire to play wanes while the desire for Tinto de Verano and the beach grows. Guilds that currently make bands of 25 will be able to maintain a progression with those players who decide to keep at least one band of 10 players.
2) More bands, same team. It is something that I missed from The Burning Crusade where, with each tier, you had several dungeons to visit, even if only to kill a boss (in the case of Grull and Magtheridon), it forced you to travel, new place, new strategies and new bosses. Has no one been claustrophobic in Ulduar? Without a doubt, we will tire less of the dungeons.
3) Goodbye to Gearscore?. I hope so because it will already make little sense. Now you can only have normal or heroic equipment. Well done!
4) Only one level of emblems. This is reinforced by the change to emblems that was later announced. Now, instead of having the confusing emblem system (which was more or less fixed in Icecrown), we will have something much more defined.
5) Replay over. I explain. It is widely known that Advance Guilds make versions of 25 and 10 each week to make the most of all the loot and improvements that can be obtained. This will prevent us from getting bored before the dungeons and will leave us more time for other things.
The bad
1) We can no longer equip ourselves so quickly. With just one save, we can only obtain a number of points per week and it will be more limited than now. This implies that now getting the equipment will take longer. This especially applies to guilds that can play one of 25 and one of 10 a week.
2) Lack of incentive?. It is a question because there is nothing said about this yet and everything is burned but personally I think that just getting more points and gold will not make people go to 25 dungeons.
Conclusions
Personally, I think this is all a good idea but, at the same time, we may see bands of 25 players die. However, it seems totally fair to me because the bands of 10 players are much less permissive to errors than those of 25. It is clear that bosses can be thrown in Icecrown with 5 less people, try the same but with 10 players. On the other hand, I think people see 10 content easier, because they are used to going with the 25-player team, greatly reducing the feeling of difficulty.
One of the ideas that I liked the most and that we may finally see implemented, is to change the size (from 10 to 25 or vice versa) in each boss, according to the needs. This will give the bands much more flexibility in cases where there are a lot of people at the beginning of the week and you don't want to leave anyone out (wink) but at the end of the week people start partying, and we are running out of people.
So far my opinion ... What do you think?