10 Man Vs. 25 Man... let the debate begin

I live in the horrendously quixotic place where my mind can see both sides of a picture in a lot of cases, but lets talk for a moment about my personal view on 10 man vs. 25 man raiding in WotLK. If I were to hazard a guess I would say that 10 man content will go on the rise in WotLK and 25 man content will begin to wane. I've heard lots of arguments both ways.

One of the leaders in another guild in another guild I respect very much said to me, "people will become bored with 10 man and will want to do 25 man". I can see his point, but honestly I just don't see that. I started Kara last year in May and most days I STILL FIND IT FUN.

Top 5 Reasons I believe 10 man will surpass 25 man in WotLK

1. Ease of getting 10 people together.
2. Top end guild burn out
3. Flexibility of Tanks/Healers/DPS
4. Casual Friendly Environment
5. PUGing FTW!!!

Ease of getting 10 people together

Just look at Wowjutsu.com today. At the beginning very few if any people showed up on the list except for the best of the best. With the growing desire of smaller guilds to do 10 mans, they have slowly filtered into Karazhan. Sure they weren't the front runners, but they got to go. With Attunements being lifted the accessibility of the 10 man content really drew people in. For my group I commonly refer to Karazhan as the "beer and pretzel's run". We all know it inside and out by the point and its just fun.

Every week I have 10 people signed up and 2-6 in reserve. Getting 10 people together is relatively easy for us. Now if we wanted to do 25 man, it would still be easier to run 2 x 10 mans than running a single 25 man instance. Getting 25 people together in a smaller or medium sized guild IS HARD.

Top End Guild Burn Out

I have a friend over in a guild on Shadow Council who used to raid pretty heavily. 3-4 days per week of concentrated raiding was their target. So they made some decent progress. Over time people started to burn out and get frustrated and eventually it just kind of dissolved. They still pull people in for 25 man content, but its become a real struggle.

Look at the news from the past year. Several very prominent high end guilds just completely dissolved. With this trend, and the guarantee that you will have a progression path in 10 man, its less likely that people will continue to "tough it out" in 25 man guilds if they are unhappy.

Flexibility of Tanks/Healers/DPS

Ok lets face it, the jump from 10 man to 25 man sucked for some classes. In 10 man, you needed 2 tanks, 2-3 healers and 5-6 DPS. To fill a 25 man you need 2-3 Tanks, 7-9 healers and the rest DPS. If you were DPS or Tanks you generally got screwed.. it took 3 10 man teams to effectively fill a 25 man raid. Which in essence means that 2/3 of your tanks got screwed and about 1/3 of your DPS has to sit out regularly. With 10 man you have a lot more flexibility to fill roles in the raid. 25 mans of the past seemed to need certain combinations. If you were number three elemental shaman you may see a run once ever 3 weeks. In 10 man you can probably get in every week if you want.

Casual Friendly Environment

I'm all for keeping things nice and laid back. 10 mans lead themselves to being a bit more casual. Its not to say that you can't have intense jaw dropping fights. Far from it, but for 10 man its not such a big deal to fill in a slot if someone has something come up. In a 25 man its more likely that you need a dedicated team of folks who always show up. Getting over the 25 man can be challenging especially if you have dedicated roles such as like the Hydross fight with certain resistance tanks.

10 man in its current iteration lends itself to being extremely friendly to swapping people in and out as needed. I'd imagine that trend will continue as you can't guarantee in a 10 man that you will always have a Shadow priest. So the fights can't be designed to assume anything.

PUGing FTW

Ok I'm not a big fan of PUGing myself, but I've read enough blogs and things from people to know it not only can be done, but IS being done. 10 man makes it extremely easy for people to PUG and get a group together vs tracking down 25 people who meet your needs for a 25 man.

When Volcanoes of Silence Explode: Communication Interrupted

I had kind of a sick feeling all day yesterday... I'd like to say its women's intuition, but as I'm male I think that rules out that idea. I was restless. I couldn't concentrate on work very well and I was just kind of moody. I got home and I really wasn't a very pleasant person to be around. I don't know why, but something was bugging me. I did the family stuff though and that lightened my mood some. Spending time with the wife and kids can do a lot to lighten your mood.

I finally got my youngest daughter in bed and then I headed downstairs to pop on the computer. I figured I'd just log in and do a transmute for a friend before I continued on with tucking in my son and remaining daughter. You very quickly get your mood changed when you log in and see a storm of activity.

The first thing that caught my eye was Officer chat... Officer chat is a rarity in our guild because very few things go on behind the scenes. We tend to have a lot of conversations in the open. Officer chat is usually reserved for personal bitching when you don't want to vent all over the guild. So the first words I saw were, "and then Star .....". For those who haven't been following along, I'm called Star in guild. I scrolled up a bit and realized one of our long term members had just quit the guild. This is hard core altoholic who's logged a lot of time in our guild. It was followed by a rapid fire log in and gquit through the rest of their characters.

As you can imagine guild chat erupted. Everyone wanting to know what the hell had happened and of course... these types of quitting are usually followed by a storm of other people quitting too. In this case it wasn't, but most of us were left just standing there scratching our heads going, "What the hell just happened?" I would really like to say I have any clue of what happened. Unfortunately I don't. I do know this guild member personally so I hopped on over to my cell phone and tried to give them a call. No answer. So I get to sit and wait till I see them to find out what happened. Silence ensues.

Communication

I've been guilty in the past of doing a lot of stupid things. I am male after all... I think it comes with the picture. Yes I'm picking on us men, but its somewhat a function of how we were raised. Men are taught from a young age to suck it up and just bite their tongues which in most cases is probably the worst thing you can do. We have a tendency to internalize our feelings and make situations worse in our heads than they really are.

One of the keys that I've learned recently is the lesson of communication. My wife's only been trying to beat it into me for 10 years, but hey men are slow or at least this one can be at times. My guild officers can probably relate stories of the times I've exploded at people. Ok generally I have a pretty level head, but when I explode it tends to end up all sorts of shades of ugly and specatular displays. I recently had an explosion at another guild that was probably 10 times worse in my head than the reality of what actually occurred. Its a learning lesson in how not to approach the situation. So my goals from here on out are to approach situations as follows:

1. If you're upset enough to want to yell/hit/pummel/flame etc, find a safe outlet, express your feelings as loudly and coarsely as you can. Vent it out and then.....
2. Take a deep breath and organize your thoughts. Make sure the reason your mad and try to figure out what you are feeling and why. Try to verbalize it to yourself.
3. Approach the person who got you so mad, and tell them your feelings in a calm manner. Try to be as specific as you can using examples.
4. Allow the person to think and respond. Don't just lay into them relentlessly. They need a chance to internalize what you said and then respond.

The VENTING

Venting is generally there to ensure that whatever your current emotional state, you won't just run into a person and tear their head off. I've been very guilty in the past of internalizing things that made me mad, but I figured I could rise above them and just ignore them. And these types of things build and build until you are wound so tight that your only choice at some point will be to scream and yell and leave someone laying in the dust.

I've personally ripped people a new orifice more than a few of times who didn't deserve it because they happened to be the one person who ticked me off at the instant I was wound so tight as to explode. This has the effect of leaving the person standing there bewildered going, "What the hell just happened?"

When you have little annoyances or big annoyances, find someone (or many people) who you can just go to and talk openly. They aren't there to necessarily judge you, but more to listen to you talk about it. They are an outlet for your frustration. They are there to hear your pain/frustration/hate so you don't just wail off and hit someone. The earlier you can talk to this person, the better off your emotional state may remain. Remember though this person's job isn't to inflame you or add fuel to the fire. Typically your best people for this tend to be very neutral people.

If you need a vent, then use it. If you catch it early enough, you may never need to leverage it and can always skip to step two.

Composing Your Thoughts

One of the next things you need to do is figure out what is bothering you and why it is. I have occasionally in the past taken verbal aggression out on someone who didn't ever deserve it. I one time vented all over my wife over a small item like picking up towels when in reality I was frustrated and angry about being slighted by my boss. My wife took the brunt of that aggression even though she didn't deserve it. One way or another, you need to sit down, analyze your thoughts and feelings and figure out why or who you're mad/frustrated/sad/etc at.

If it helps, try talking out loud to yourself in a quiet area. Try telling someone what you think they need to hear and then listening to how your voice sounds. Try to get to the point where you can make your point in a calm manner. Don't hold back your emotions on the subject. One technique someone shared with me once is to start sentences as follows:

• When you said X, it made me feel Y.
• When you do X, it makes me feel like Y.
• When so and so X, it frustrates me because of _____

So some campy examples:

• When Joe called me a idiot, it made me feel like he didn't value me. It frustrated me for all of the hard work I've logged trying to down the raid boss.
• When you assigned Mary to heal the main tank, I felt like you didn't feel my healing was up to snuff. I felt angry that I didn't get the opportunity to heal the tank.
• When Jacob makes fun of people with disabilities, it makes me extremely mad because my son/daughter/friend/family member has a learning disability.

Its important that you not only share what action/words etc made you feel upset, but also the reasoning behind it and the emotion it evokes in you.

Sharing your Pain

We did an interesting thing at work. We were all attending a class on project management. It was a class on communication and the instructor asked a simple question. "If you were messing up at work, would you want someone to tell you?" Unanimously the answer was yes.

Some people have been faced in their careers/life etc with having someone just out of the blue tell them for the last 6months/year/many years that they have been doing something wrong that they never ever realized was a problem. If someone had told you from the beginning, would you have been able to correct it and save someone lots of pain? Maybe.

Humans need input. If you don't share your frustrations and emotions, how in the hell are we supposed to guess what's going on? Please women, don't use the phrase... "Oh you know what you did!!":) Just assume men are inherently oblivious and help us out OK??? 95%+ of the people in this world are not Empaths (people able to read your emotions) or Psychic.... so if you never tell them, they may never know.

Sitting down to listen

The last thing you need to remember is to give the other person a chance to sit and respond. So many times people make the mistake of telling someone their frustrations and then failing to listen to the other person's response. The person may have had a good reason for doing what they did and you may never know. If someone just cut you off on the Interstate and you told them off and just left, you may never find out that they had a mechanical failure or saw some debris in the road suddenly. So many times we internalize things as a personal attacks that never are.

Just remember to communicate when you've got problems so that other people are at least aware of the issue. Don't make the mistake of assuming people know what went on and what your issues are. Give them the opportunity to fix a situation before it becomes ugly.

One Step Back to take Two steps forward

Raid alliances are tricky things to navigate. They can be extremely powerful as noted in PTD's post on the recent success in Black Temple. However they come with some inherent pitfalls and traps that need to be navigated. SLACK is an interesting and long history that trails back into the days of MC, Onyxia and BWL. I would love to give you the long and storied history of SLACK, but the reality is that I'm a virtual newcomer to the Alliance. As I've stated in the past, I got to lvl 60 about two or three months before BC came out.

My original guild, The Crimson Knights, joined SLACK back in the MC days. SLACK was having some issues filling 40 man content and CK was a guild of similar size and similar mind set of the existing guilds. Thus CK was added to the mix. As time transformed and we eventually joined with ISCA Alliance (another long and historic guild on Whisperwind), we find ourselves still a strong part of a guild alliance. Many people have decried the alliance over the years. Some have abandoned their guilds because of it, but overall SLACK has remained relatively strong. Most of the guilds have suffered major guild splits, but they have all managed to recover in some way shape or form.

In our recent travails and progression into further content (T6) and interesting thing has occurred. Several distinct camps have formed. Interestingly enough I think this holds true for a lot of guilds on the verge of progression into further content.

The Progressionists
First there are the progressionists. Progressionists are the type of people who are the forerunners. They are the ones that really drive the raiding for the casual people. All of our guilds are relatively casual, but raiding really would just kind of flounder and die if we didn't have the progressionists. These are the raiding addicts. They manage to farm for their materials to raid as well as providing 4-6 days a week of raiding for their guilds and the alliance. For us casuals, they are the ones that boggle us. They are the ones that we stare at and wonder how they do it, but we must admit that they make our raiding possible. Progressionists are typically marked by top tier gear. They've put in the hours to farm stuff to get BOE's made or for top end professions, BOP gear. They have some of the best drops. They know their specs in and out. They've attended almost every raid. There isn't a boss fight or trash pull they don't know.

Their position is one of progression. They've seen it. They've done it. They are in need to move on. They want/crave further content. Beating down new bosses is important.

The Traditionalists
The traditionalist is marked by one who follows the progression the way Blizzard originally designed it. They want to see it in the order it was originally released. Vash and Kael are critical to progression into T6 the way that Gruul and Mags were necessary to progress to T5. These are critical to their success. Jumping to T6 while skipping the end bosses in T5 defeats the purpose in their eyes. There are important lessons haven't been learned. The time spent grinding on Vash and Kael also serve the important to ensure the raid is set up properly and properly geared before progressing to the next content.

These are critical road blocks that ensure the raid is geared to the nines so to speak before it progresses into the T6 content. For these people in many cases these critical bosses serve as key milestones. They are important from a status standpoint as well as from a standpoint of learning.

The Moderates
The moderates of course live in the middle. Stuck between both camps they are constantly pulled both ways. They feel a need to see the content. The order may not matter, but being geared and ready to progress is important too. Balancing between the two is very difficult. These people tend to end as moderators between the two sides. Pitching in and acknowledging both sides while adding their own middle ground flavor to the discussion.

So whats the deal???
Interestingly enough our progress into BT and Mt Hyjal has been fairly decent. The raiders have pulled some very nice progress and gotten to 3/5 in Mt Hyjal and 2/9 in BT. However the back lash has been somewhat interesting to watch. Several of the front runners have been really trying to balance out our sudden push to T6. Our T5 content work got cut dramatically and T4 Gruul/Mags almost eliminated. Some of the people at the forefront have begun to step back and try to really see if they are geared to progress. So a swelling of back pressure is building to reopen some more work on the T5 content. Some people are looking for some key gear upgrades in the T5 content.

At this time we are introducing new raid leaders and changes as well. So as the drama builds it will be interesting to see how it progresses and to what end. Change is inevitable. It happens to everyone, but as with all things, change brings both good and bad. And history is always written by the victor. At least the history you hear about most often.