HDL

Discussion with Todd now - he suggested that raids drop the same loot in 10 and 25 man raids, and the gear just scales with the raid. This would eliminate people waltzing into hard 10 man content with 25 man gear and make skill more relevant.

What do you think? I say some people would still do 25 man raids as there are some that like larger raids. On the other hand, there are people that are just loot-focused or want an epeen souvenir.

Design gear with the idea that people have a set of loot they can get from 10s and 25s each week. If it is the same gear, you have less different tiered gear and more things are much cleaner. Encounters are easier to balance. If a player does both 10s and 25s, they will get gear faster than those who just do 10s or just do 25s.

I think larger guilds would still do 25man content, but I think the number would be drastically lower.  Personally, I'd like to see WoW go to a single-tiered raid size, say 15 people.  It's way too much of a pain in the ass juggling 25 egos and keeping them all interested through loot drama, attendance issues, progression stalls, etc.  They would just have to re-tune the hard modes to satisfy the hard-core, world-first striving guilds.

Not that I'm a hard core raider by any stretch of the imagination.  I have trouble raiding the refrigerator these days...   ... but from the usual Rod standpoint, if I could see the same content and gear from both 10 and 25 ???   It's hard enough for me to find 10 people I can get along with much less 25...  so, I'd say most folks like me (and this guild IS full of folks like me) would vote for the 10 man and skip the 25's.
Joe's right, 25 egos and drama to juggle?  Ugh.