Whenever I read people talking about their progress in 10-man raiding, my immediate response is to hope they can get into 25-mans soon for their sakes. I know that’s completely irrational of me; a number of 10-man encounters are more challenging than their 25-man counterparts, and plenty of people are happier in the smaller raid sizes, fo various reasons. I sincerely believe 10-man raids are just as real and valid as 25s.
But! I prefer 25s, and it’s so hard not to project this when I’m thinking about what other people want out of the game.
So please educate me, gentle readers – everything else being equal, what kind of PvE content do you prefer?
[poll=15]
Sometimes 10-mans are driven by what I call the “Curse of 17”. A guild grows or recruits enough people to do Nax10. And you can’t really have just 10 or the inevitable RL interruptions will stop raids. But unless you plan your sprint, by the time you get enough people with the desire/ambition/ability to do 25, they are good/ambitious enough to not be willing to do Nax10 10/17 of the time. And you can’t really enforce rigid DKP iron fist cause everyone knows its “just” 10-man.
Naturally, I am talking about tanks and to a lesser extent DPS. Healers are the epitome of modesty and cooperation.
I just prefer healing 10 mans, as 25 man nax is such a bore to heal with the 6-7 healers we always seem to bring (raid leader always insists on that many even when I say we can do it with 5) so I get bored our of my mind healing cause there is little challenge involved and us pallies just can’t raid heal like the others. 10 mans are much more intimate in healing and so I feel like I am a much more important part of the team. I am hoping however this is addressed in ulduar 25 man but for now i prefer the 10 mans, thouhgh I still try to make it to all the 25s I can ;).
I’m prolly in the minority here, but I’m the MT of a progressive raiding guild. We recently completed 3 drakes on both 10- and 25-man. Yet, my preference for content is actually running heroics… particularly the first generation of BC heroics where tanks could get gibbed from full health in 3 seconds flat, and the the tiniest mistake could quickly snowball into a wipe.
The smaller instances provide… for a lack of a better term, a more intimate experience. The difficulty meant the runs were always very intense, and you had to depend on your teammates. I really miss the trust and bonds that were “forged in fire”, so to speak.
I much prefer soloing and World PvE. Granted, I sometimes run 5-mans, Heroics, even a Raid or two, but my preference is always soloing. You don’t really burden anyone else if you don’t perform – but seriously though, if you don’t perform when you’re solo, you usually end up dead. So the pressure is on you and you alone to get better so you don’t get to know the Spirit Healer too well =D
Being RL in a small social guild that ‘also raids’ we have no choice but to do 10-mans. Many of us have pugged 25’s as well. We’d be doig 25s if we had th numbers mainl because the loot value is skewed to favour 15s.
The biggest single challenge of a 10-man is that one person not putting on their game face or not reading the strats can cause the group to wipe all night long. Of course 25s are challenging organisationally and for this I’m glad I don’t have to go through strats 10 times every time!
Tanks and healers cannot have a bad day, DPS have fractionally more leeway to slack but not much if they’re in a key role.
I play WoW in a very under-represented way in the wow-blog world. I play almost exclusively in a two-man party with my girlfriend; we’re a paladin/priest combo. We do “solo” questing, dailies, and we do instances for which we’re vastly overgeared.
Gear comes from quest rewards, professions, rep rewards, PvP tokens, and world drops via the AH.
I won’t go to a 25 man raid. They aren’t fun for me in the least. Even if one was just missing a healer and promised to give me every drop, I’m not sure that I would agree to go.
I were looking forward ta the 25s, I really were. But so far (so far meaning Naxx/OS/EoE), meh. Is just the same fights, fer the most part. Only reason heroic Naxx takes us longer ta clear is ya gots more people going afk or DCing what ya gotta wait on.
As far as raid content goes, it’s 10-mans for me, all the way. I have done 25-mans, and they felt impersonal and bloated to me. Admittedly, my own guild cannot do 25 mans on our own feet (17 people tops for raids), but even with just guild friends to fill the rest of the slots, I don’t enjoy them so much.
As raid leader, 25-mans are a nightmare to organize, and I end up just feeling stressed and overwhelmed during a raid. I don’t have this in 10-mans, where I know everyone closely and it’s not very hard to organize at all (aside from having to bench people, which sucks).
I would rather run 5-man content than 25-man, given the choice. I know you can pug 25-man content easily now, but I do not have the temptation whatsoever to join those.
I’m with Poco. I like the 5-person heroic dungeons. There’s not as much noise, everyone has to step up, and there’s 1/5th the ego of the 25s.
I do 10-person content with my guild and this weekend we’re trying to get a 25 Naxx going. (Even though we can’t best Sapphiron on 10. Seriously.) I have no interest in Naxx 25. None. I’ll go because I know the others are excited about it and we need the numbers but having healed Vault and Sanctum with 25 I’m pretty meh.
Sadly, for what I like to do in the game, my character is pretty much “done.”
I’m all 25s, all the time. Heroics and 10s are what I do to fill time between working on 25-man content (and which I place on par with leveling an alt, or doing dailies, or even turning off the game and reading for a while.)
I prefer 10 mans. Less people which means less clutter, more visibility. Plus, raid comp creation becomes more challenging, and I enjoy that chess match that is crafting a well-constructed raid.
This is coming on the heels of some OS-10 3D attempts with me as protection. That was a rush. Plus, I don’t have the time to commit to a raid schedule, so I miss out on regularly scheduled 25-man raids.
…the only reason I want to do 25s over 10s is because the loot is shinier.
Otherwise 10s are cozier, more challenging, and easier to deal with.
I like 25-man raids. My guild has finished everything but 10-man Sarth with 3 drakes, and we’ve been having a hard time getting enough interest together to do it because most of the team thinks 10-mans aren’t “real raiding.” While I don’t agree (I want that “of the Nightfall” title), I still prefer the rush of 25-man–getting that many people coordinated and firing on all cylinders. Plus the loot is better. :) I’m really looking forward to Ulduar, since IMO the current vanilla raid instances (and even most of the achievements) are just too easy.
It’s horribly old-fashioned but I actually preferred the old 40 man raids
I run both 10- and 25-man raids as a holy pally, but I prefer 10-man runs as it feels more challenging. In my guild you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a holy pally and a 25-man run with four of us is just plain boring. However, in 10-mans, we prefer to mix up the classes more so that we have one of each if at all possible and it allows each of us to “shine” and do what we do best, so to speak. Lastly, it feels a bit more intimate – the prep for a fight doesn’t take as long, loot doesn’t take as long and it’s easier to get 10 people in the same place at the same time and get going.
While I do both, in all honesty I prefer 10-mans because it’s easier to get together a really skilled group of 10 people than a really skilled group of 25 people. I think my guild has a better chance of beating 10-man Sarth 3D (even though it’s supposed to be harder) than 25-man Sarth 3D just because not everyone that makes up our 25-man team is as strong a player as our best 10. They’re still good folks, but it’s easier to find a 10-man group for achievement runs and doing the really hard stuff than getting 25-people with the same skill level.
Wow! Interesting to see so many people who share my sentiments on this matter. I agree with what most people said about 10s vs 25s, though the main reason our guild doesn’t personally do them is due to the type of server we’re on.
Sisters of Elune is one of the last in progression for all of the servers. While my guild is mostly re-rolls from a PvE server, the rest of the server is painfully casual. It was very hard for us to even fill the last few spots for our 10man team, I would hate to try and find 15 other people who are on the same skill level as us. It would be a nightmare.
I did do some 25s to help a friends guild, but for the most part they had a very laid back approach to it. “Dude its just a game” was their motto, which is fine, accept you had people who thought it was funny to face pull, purposely stand in whirlwinds, fall off the pipe and even one time decided to pull Sarth while we were on the first mini-boss. I could see how this might be comical the first time, maybe even the second, but it was 4 straight hours of things like this. No Thank You.
I don’t mind 25s for the most part, I would fill in if someone I knew needed me, but I wouldn’t want to organize my own by any means. After the jackassery from that week of 25s, it was so nice to go into my 10man group and do WELL.
It is starting to get a bit easier, but when Ulduar comes out that should change things and hopefully we’ll be one of the firsts to get through the content =)
BlogofLight, you have my sympathy. I too am on an RP server (Blackwater Raiders) that’s one of the last in progression. Fortunately we’ve got a handful of good guilds that take progression seriously (more on Horde than Alliance side–I’m Horde) and thank goodness that I was able to get myself into one of these. Surprisingly, though, since WotLK came out some of the other guilds have stepped it up a bit too, though not many have gotten any of the “hard” achievements (I think only three guilds (grr…not mine yet) have gotten Undying, three (including mine) have Sarth3D 25 man, and only one (again not mine) has Sarth3D 10 man).
I would never be able to put up with the kind of asshattery you describe. The second time somebody face-pulled Sarth on purpose, that would be a /gquit for me. Yeah, it’s “just a game,” but in a 25-man you’ve got 24 other real people who have to waste their time dealing with idiots like that. No, thanks, life’s too short.
I’m really enjoying 25s atm. Partially because i’m in a casual guild who always has new people coming to the raid. You can carry a couple of newbies in 25s, but in 10s its a pain.
@blogoflight & rat – Yeah i’d be moving on personally. Joking around is great (and we do plenty), but causing wipes just pisses people off. Especially in a casual environment where people usually have very limited play time/s.
I like to see what I can, but I really prefer solo’ing or small groups of 2-3 questing. I enjoy 5, 10, 25man content, but just don’t really seek it out. But then again, I’m too chatty sometimes, I think. And other times, I just want to relax.. even if it means I don’t “get anything done” for the evening. I hate the idea of someone having to count on me to make a run happen unless I know ‘for sure’ I can commit to signing up.
You don’t have a “Soloing raids, 5mans and heroics” category; I’m disappointed! :P
On a more serious note: I liked the old 40mans too; it was fun to chat with that many people at once. That said, it really depends on my mood… sometimes I prefer to solo and sometimes raid or do heroics. Variety is always good :)
Right now, I’d have to say that for raiding, I prefer 10-mans. For no other reason than the fact that 25’s lag my computer all to heck and back with all of the AOE and craziness going on. Pallies consecrating, Death Knights Death and Decaying, Mages Blizzarding, Warlocks Rain of Fireing (I think that’s the right spell). It’s just too much for my poor computer to handle, especially considering I share my bandwidth with my hubby, who is generally in the same raids. I have to keep my spell detail up so I can see things on the floor, but at 3FPS, I’m probably dead by the time I see them.
I loved 25’s in BC though.
I tend to avoid 5-mans, unless they’re all-guild, and those are few and far between. So it’s 10’s and soloing/duoing with my hubby for me!
Whatever gives me the best gear is always where I’ve wanted to be. I’ve never had much concern for an intimate experience because many of the people I play with have been together since pre-BC, some of since a few months after launch. I just want to have the best everything. And while I can’t say I’ve really been challenged as a healer in 25-mans as much as our 10-man runs or some with some really terrible heroic groups, drilling the fights into 25 people’s skulls carries its own challenge and satisfaction.
For me, the 10 mans just “feel” more heroic. That’s not to belittle the effort that people put into 25 man raids, both from logistical and skill standpoints. However, 25+ raids seem like armies, not groups of heroes. It’s probably just that I come from a tabletop background, but if something takes more than 10 people to accomplish in a game, there’s fewer moments for an individual player to shine, and it seems more and more like the individual fades into the background.