The Elitist Jerk speaks

[WoRBot]

Interview with the guild leader of Elitist Jerks, Gurgthock.

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[AK47]

Interesting *smile*

[Schusselchen]

i like him .. :> for being a evil lawyer

[Xentropy]

Great interview. I agreed with nearly all of his points. The only one I disagreed with was:

I do feel that 10-man-only players should get to experience the same lore and ultimately see the same content, but I don't think that the easier alternative should be available right away.

I have never understood the mindset that "more people" == "harder". Getting the requisite number of people who aren't morons is easier if you have a smaller group to build, sure, but with the proper tuning the 10-man version of a 25-man instance need not be easily "steamrolled", as he put it, just because it requires less people.

Take 25 people into MC who're T5+ geared but have never seen MC before. Now take a semi-random (accounting for class balance) subset of those 25 people into ZA who've never seen ZA before. Which run will you have a harder time with? It seems like most people would be tempted to answer the 25-man raid no matter what they're raiding... But other than the "herding cats" analogy I'd wager the MC run would be a breeze compared to the ZA one.

Tuning means difficulty != size. They don't have to directly correlate. Period. I hope Blizzard learns this fact and I'd love to see them not use 10-man lockouts like people are asking for and yet see the 25-man version of content get cleared first. Just to see the reactions of people gaping at the fact the 25-man was easier. Hell, I'd love to see them overtune the 10-man stuff, just to make the "size == difficulty" people eat crow.

It'd be hilarious seeing 10-man guilds form alliances to be able to run the 25-man "easy" version to learn strats for the 10-man. LOL.

[Kys]

"It's inevitable. It isn't because of badge epics or a casual-centric game, or anything like that, people's loud whines notwithstanding."


Partly disagreeing there, Failure (Risen) even stated the casualness was the reason they stopped. But oh well, even though I'm kinda surprised about his answers, it was still a nice interview.


Edit:

"Tuning means difficulty != size. They don't have to directly correlate." - Xentropy

It obviously doesn't have to be, but most of the time is. A fight like 4h man is hard with 40 players because of getting everyone at the right place, at the right time. A smaller raid needs less coordinating which makes it partly easier. Of course a hard 10 man fight can be harder than an easy 25 man fight. But most of the time a hard 10 man fight is easier than a hard 25 man fight because of the extra coordinating needed.

The thing I'm worried about is that the memories we will have of naxx will be those of the easy and smaller (smaller raid size that is) naxx. Instead of the big and quite hard old naxx. But oh well, not much we can do against it and probably it will be fun to see some certain fights again!

[gurgthock]

Originally Posted by Xentropy

I have never understood the mindset that "more people" == "harder". Getting the requisite number of people who aren't morons is easier if you have a smaller group to build, sure, but with the proper tuning the 10-man version of a 25-man instance need not be easily "steamrolled", as he put it, just because it requires less people.

Thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed the interview. As for the 10/25 issue, I figured that some would disagree with my perspective, but Blizzard has stated that the 10-man zones will drop loot a notch below what you get from the 25-man zones. It's certainly possible for a 10-man encounter to be harder than a 25-man encounter, but from Blizzard's comments I've gotten the impression that they aren't planning on tuning them this way.

For example, Z'A is a tier 5 10-man. BT drops ilvl 141-146 loot. Imagine a 10-man version of BT that dropped ilvl 133-138 loot, like Z'A does. It'd probably be tuned to be about as hard as Z'A. And, as we all saw, people doing T6 content cleared Z'A in 2 hours the first time they saw it, sometimes without wiping at all. My comments are based on the assumption that the 10-man versions will be tuned to be a bit easier than the 25-mans. If this isn't the case, then it wouldn't matter.

Originally Posted by Kys

Partly disagreeing there, Failure (Risen) even stated the casualness was the reason they stopped.

Failure posted further to clarify his thoughts, and a better summary would be "lack of content he was interested in" but honestly I wouldn't assume that one person, even a guild leader, speaks for everyone.

[Zyrus]

The way ZA was 'easy' for so many people were largely due to being overgeared and not so complex boss mechanics.
Everything about every boss was pretty straight forward, everything had been seen before.

[Amroo]

Originally Posted by Xentropy

I have never understood the mindset that "more people" == "harder".

The point is simple: if you have 10 people in your raid, you have 10 people you have to coordinate correctly and 10 people who can make a fatal mistake due to a temporary lack of concentration. if there are 25 people, just multiply everything by 2.5
The human factor alone makes larger raids more difficult if all other variables stay the same. Of course, you can tune a 10-person encounter extremely tough, but if you demand the same grade of concentration and focus in a 25-person encounter, it is automatically more difficult overall, since there are more people who can mess it up than in a 10-person raid with a select team of your most reliable guildmates.

Another difference is, that more people also allows a greater variety in encounter design. A 10-player raid has usually 2 Tanks, 2-3 Healers and the remaining players dealing damage, so there are most likely going to be encounters, that need 2 tanks and 2-3 healers. Also, encounters must be more variable in terms of class composition. It's hard to design 10-man encounters that definitely need a warrior tank or a paladin tank or a mage tank, since the probability that a 10-player consists of those at any given time is not very high.

[csulok]

Originally Posted by gurgthock

For example, Z'A is a tier 5 10-man. BT drops ilvl 141-146 loot. Imagine a 10-man version of BT that dropped ilvl 133-138 loot, like Z'A does. It'd probably be tuned to be about as hard as Z'A. And, as we all saw, people doing T6 content cleared Z'A in 2 hours the first time they saw it, sometimes without wiping at all. My comments are based on the assumption that the 10-man versions will be tuned to be a bit easier than the 25-mans. If this isn't the case, then it wouldn't matter.

They have to be tuned easier - not only because it was said they would drop half a tier's ilvl lower loot, but because a 10-man setup has to have more "give" than a 25-man setup. By "give" I mean you can take specs for granted in a big raid, but you can only take classes or a versatile subset of specs for granted in a small raid.

[Xentropy]

Actually I find the class composition argument to not necessarily be the case for 10-mans. It's definitely a reason why 5-man instances can't be tuned in the same way, but "requiring" one of each class be present in a 10-man isn't much more of a limitation than "requiring" two of each class be present in a 25-man. If anything, it's a way in which the 10-man can be *harder*, because you can't stack the raid as easily. 4 locks and 1 mage in every one of the first 6 KJ kills. Wouldn't see that kind of nonsense in a 10-man KJ.

It's still perfectly possible to tune a 10-man to be equally difficult. Require 2.5x the concentration from the 10 than the 25-man requires of those 25. Or require the level of concentration be held for 2.5x as long. (Really given mental exhaustion, 2x as long may be a closer balance. Just shows "multiply everything by 2.5" is a gross generalization.) Make every single 10-man encounter a wipe if any one person dies. That's the equivalent, generally speaking, of tuning the 25-man for a wipe if 3 people die. I'd argue the 10-man might even be more difficult, since at least you'd have a little slack in the 25 version, then.

I'm aware that Blizzard has already stated the gear from 10-mans would be a tier below the 25-man gear from the same instance. But that doesn't, to me, answer the question of how they plan to tune the difficulty. They've already shown a bias for giving gear from larger group instances higher lvls regardless of the tuning. For example, at the same gear level, one could easily argue that some AQ20 encounters were more difficult than some MC encounters, but the drops weren't as good (or were at best equal) because it took "only" 20 people paying attention instead of 40 watching TV and glancing over at the screen from time to time.

Mostly it's wishful thinking on my part. I concede that Blizzard seems incapable of tuning smaller-sized instances to be difficult. But I still don't like to consider "easy" and "10-man" synonymous, because I hold out hope that Blizzard will learn in time. They certainly learned a lot going from classic to TBC. The TBC raid encounters are far more interesting and fun as a rule. (Perhaps Naxx, which most people didn't get to experience in its time, notwithstanding.)

[Prometheus]

Really nice interview indeed, I agree with everything.

I too hope that content will be released more often but at the same time it should maintain it's quality.
Sunwell was a really good step in the right direction. Well-tuned bosses and at the same time very challenging. The gate system did work out for the best even for the HC guilds, since they would probably burn out had it not been for the gates.

Releasing a schedule of when the gates would open would have been the best thing for everyone. Of course it was a bit easier for us in Europe since we had almost 1 days notice thanks to the US.

As for Lich King, the 10/25 man raids is imo the most important thing about this expansion. Up till now, a small fraction of the WoW community actually got to experience end-game raiding mostly because many people do not have enough time to invest in this game.
Blizzard managed to open up BT/Hyjal to more people by removing attunements and giving them the right tools (badge gear) to progress in there. Suddenly many more people got to see Illidan and far more will get to see it until Lich King.

The more players we have accessing raid instances, the higher the pressure on Blizzard to release new content and therefore in the end everyone will benefit

[Schusselchen]

you cant compare mc to aq ... mc was basic first raiding ... not even really tuned .. as chars get higherleveled and skillsets allow more complex tactics encounters get more difficult ...

but its easy to see that 25 people raids are allowed to encounter more complex fights due to more people against their 10 people variations ...

so different tiers of loot are a must ... imagine just for example a sunwell 10 people edition ...

bosses on far less health/adds ... because a 10-raid cant keep it up to the 25-version in quantity and quality of dps or even cc/heal/tanking

[nopher]

Spot-on interview, agree with everything said.

[Sethala]

One thing worth mentioning is that nearly all of the 25-man fights in BC can be re-tuned to work with a 10-man group.

Now, let me just clarify that my guild only recently got to Eredar Twins, so I can't comment on that, M'uru, or Kil'jaeden, although I think those three could also be retuned.

Anyway. So far, the only fights I haven't figured out how to retune for 10 people and still keep the fight the same is Illidan and Council. And no, none of my retuned strategies require group stacking (so it's workable with 1-2 tanks, 2-4 healers, and the rest DPS).

[gille]

/flex