That's one of the reasons I no longer run in a 25-man guild. I was one of those players who always got invited to the 10-mans, where we had a fairly regular group and other people would complain that they didn't get to go. Back when Malygos was still top level content, my guild did the split thing to get everyone experience. And we did it again a couple times in Ulduar.

Sure, we'd tell people that 10-mans weren't part of the raid schedule, and if other people wanted to go they could make their own group, but it didn't help. And to be honest, I agree that they probably would've needed one of our tanks since the MT and OT often went to our 10s, but no one who complained tried to organize their own run or borrow a tank.

I'm in a 10-man strict guild now, so thankfully I don't have to deal with two levels of raiders. There's only one size instance to get people in and we all go together.

So I don't disagree with you.

But I hate that 10-man is being used "as training" for 25-man. Maybe its just been my experience, but 10-man content in 10-man-only gear is as hard or harder than 25-man. If we didn't have all this 'automatic overgearing' of 10-man instances by 25-man raiders in a tier higher gear than the instance is designed for, I think what you'd see happening is those folks willing to do the harder modes would migrate to 10-man while those who were not willing to put in the extra time would end up in 25's. But at the moment, the players who take more personal responsibility are basically forced in to doing 25-man if they want the top end gear. 10&25 should really just have the same gear - and possibly share a lockout.

Cutting edge 10-man is very dependent on everyone being personally responsible through all the fights in a way that 25-man just is not. No one can be carried.

My previous guild struggled a lot with this. We had a very diverse group of players, as far as raiding and end game mentality goes. Usually only a dozen or so cared about achievements or hard mode. The rest were content to just clear normal and be done with it. Those of us not in the "hardcore" group hardly tried to get one going for ourselves.

In the few occasions where we did try to put together a 2nd 10 man group, our tanks weren't quite as geared or healers weren't available. It was hard to get people to commit to a 2nd night or raiding later after 25s to finish it. Some other people always get their feelings hurt if they aren't in the "first" or "A" group.

Even going as far back as 20 man ZG in classic WoW, it was hard to get things done and leave some people out without causing drama.

Luckily in my newest guild, people seem to do things more for the guild as a whole, and we rotate people in for specific bosses or achievements they need. There are a lot of pug 10 mans on our realm too. Having everyone on the same page with more or less the same goal is a great thing, and something I haven't experienced until now.

Yeah, I know of a PuG 10 man that runs religiously and does hard modes. Maybe I'll go that direction although I think it may just turn in to me not running 10 mans. I can use the time.

There is a certain benefit of being a 25 man guild, in 25 man gear, doing 10 man. My guild is capable of clearing Icecrown Citadel 10 man within 3-4 hours, even doing most on heroic. Last week, we went straight to do Sindragosa 10 heroic, and spent a few hours wiping on her. Once we finally got her down, we didn't have a lot of time left of the raid - probably an hour. But in that time, probably less, we cleared Plague and Blood wing, and with 5 minutes left of the raid, we decided to just go kill LK (although we did Neck Deep In Vile as well).

So, with a bit of epeen, its possible to clear the whole place - even on heroic once you get comfortable with the encounters - within a normal raid night. In fact, I think our guild will probably be trying to clear it really fast and then practice on LK10 heroic - we should probably be able to get in an hour or more if we really push it.

If there is no benefit in that, then I dont know what is :P

Qieth -

Do you run two 10 mans? That's our problem. We want to run a second 10 man for LK kills (for those that don't have it) and apparently they just can't do it without our help. Although frankly, it seems like they hardly tried. So now its either give half the guild the middle finger and say "Do it like we did it!" or abandon hard modes and help em out. It's a choice I shouldn't have to make. My 10 man put in the work and now we should get to prosper from that work.

While I 100% agree with you that the 10 man who put in the blood, sweat, and tears (not to mention having to listen to nerd rage) to kill the Lich King should be allowed to give the rest of the guild the middle finger, it's just not that simple. Based on the casual nature of the guilds raiding habits most people freely opt to not raid in the 10s. Almost all of the healers opt out of 10s and most of the tanks can only raid the one night.

If the numbers were there to support two groups this would be a totally different story and the guild wouldn't have to try to figure out what to do with the 10 angry people who felt they got the shaft.

I'm very interested to hear your thoughts about the recent announcement concerning 10 and 25 man raids in Cataclysm!

I'll be doing a 10 man to simplify the logistics if I can manage it. This is the way blizzard should have done it in the first place. I hope that the 10 man level steamrolls most people. I imagine that most people are thinking in terms of today's 10 mans. But if you provide gear within the 10 mans to allow players to put out the same numbers, you can easily increase the difficulty of the 10 mans to be comparable to the 25 mans. I do wonder about class compositions though...

I might write a post on this but RL has me swamped right now. We shall see. It'll happen Wed or Thurs if it happens.

Nevermind that they spent days working on the Lich King fight, wiping continuously, sacrificing emblems and possible loot to extend raid lockouts repeatedly, researching, working on group dynamics, and generally putting in a ton of effort while the other members of the guild decided to reset their 10 man instance for more badges or gear.
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While I agree to the sentiment that those who spend time and effort to down LK should reap the rewards of the HMs that it enables and not have to help out those who didn't put in that time, you have missed a very subtle and clever point that makes what you seems to be a major gripe for you a near non-issue. Or roughly a 90% non-issue.

That point is, only one member of your original 10 needs to extend the lockout each week and "miss out" on the badges and gear offered by a fresh ICC10. The reasoning is thus: On Tuesday (or whenever for your server) all the raid lockouts reset. One person in the 10 man group who does not mind losing the emblems/gear a fresh ICC10 would provide (perhaps because they are the most geared, no longer need drops, have all their tier, are decked out from ICC25, whatever. You could even draw straws.) fishes up the ICC10 expired in their /raidinfo and clicks the extend button. They invite everyone else and you all go grind LK for however many hours over however many days. If you do not down LK during that week of tries, then on the last night which you normally raid the 9 other people, still not tied to any ICC10 instance because no boss was downed, can find a 10th (maybe even an alt of the 1 person who is extending the lockout!) and go run a fresh ICC10 as far as they can (which should be pretty friggin' far if you really think you have a shot at LK the first 10/12 bosses are basically a snooze). Emblems and loot hurray.

Basically, if you're clever about it you can continue to make grind progress on LK while keeping a bulk of the benefit that supposedly is being sacrificed by the "hardcore" and enjoyed by the "others". We've been doing this method for weeks now to help get some in our 10 man their 4th tier 10 piece, the nice trinket, etc. All while we get closer to a LK down because we get more face time and we get better gear for 9 of the 10. And yeah laugh all you want that we haven't killed him yet I frankly don't care I enjoy playing the game at my pace.

A slight aside but still related - it's ironic and a little funny too that the people who reset each week are doing it the way you used to -always have to do it-. It used to be the people who ground through all the farm bosses each week for the umpteenth time so they could get a little more face time with the boss they were stuck on were the pros. Now the ones who skip all that with lockout extension are the pros. An interesting observation indeed. And if it's taking so many weeks to get the job done, denying your group the potential gear and emblems provided by a fresh runs doesn't seem too bright... one of the reasons our group doesn't.

Bullet summary:
-Some cleverness can get you a good chunk of what you thought was being missed out on.
-Sometimes going back through the instance to gear up is the smart thing to do.
-Those who do put in the time to down LK should move on to HMs if they so choose, and shouldn't be forced to go back and drag through those who have no clue how the fight operates.

The idea about extension would be a good idea if we were able to field multiple 10 mans. But the interest from the tanks and healers simply isn't there. So we're stuck choosing between HM or LK kills.

I'm all for gearing up, but we're not lacking T10 pieces, we're lacking sanctified T10 pieces. I considered the need for gear out of 10 mans by the majority of our players. I came to the conclusion that most players only needed 1 or so "irreplaceable" items (no alternatives in 25man). The need to farm gear simply wasn't there.

I am looking forward to the changes coming in cataclysm with the raid lockouts. It will make this issue a non-issue and I am pretty sure I will be focusing on the 10 man version.

"I'll be doing a 10 man to simplify the logistics if I can manage it."

I thought you were in a 25 man guild? How do they feel about you breaking off to do your own thing?

You may have missed my point - the extension lockout idea isn't going to help you now when having to decide between HMs and LK kills. It would have helped earlier in the process, back when you were putting in the time to get regular mode LK killed and the "others" were taking the "easy road" to reap the benefits of fresh ICC clears. During that phase the lockout trick would have permitted 9 of 10 of your group to get the bulk of the benefit from fresh ICC runs while still enabling you to grind LK.

For the phase you are in now - ie your 10 man crew has regular LK killed and you want to move on to ICC10 HMs - as I said I definitely agree with the sentiment that you shouldn't be forced to carry others through regular LK and sacrifice the rest of your HMs, especially if they have no clue and are just expecting a free ride.

There might be a workable balance where you can front load the raid week with HM attempts and then knock out the remainder at the end of the raid week (I can't imagine you reasonably expect to get HM LK in the super near future) and then bring 1 or 2 or whatever you are comfortable with of people who haven't downed regular LK in to get them their kills. Mind you, I would only do this with people who had a good idea of how the fight operated, ideally having seen it before, and were geared enough to be a contributor. In this manner both sides make a sacrifice - a couple of your core 10 team is going to miss a LK kill (his drops are pretty nice, for sure) and the people being brought in that haven't killed him yet have to miss out on the bosses you did already in HM and/or the bosses you burned through quickly to get to LK. If the folks being carried up aren't willing to sacrifice some of their potential (regular mode) ICC10 boss kills that week for a LK kill then in my book they don't want it enough. Saying to people who want to move on to HMs they rightfully earned "hey come in to my full cleared ICC10 with just LK left and help me kill him" is completely bogus and a one sided deal - only the people farthest behind are getting benefit while the people up front are sacrificing everything. Both sides should make a sacrifice, that's how a guild moves forward as a whole.

Bullet summary:
-The lockout trick is no good to you anymore, it would have helped before the first regular LK kill.
-Expecting a one sided sacrifice from the people who've already killed reguler LK and want to move up to HMs is lame.
-There might be ways to get those without LK kills their kills while still permitting your group some quality time on HMs; if both sides are willing to sacrifice.

No, I do understand what you are saying, and I was trying to dance around what I am saying but I guess that's not gonna work.

The other group was not capable and/or not willing to put in the time on those extensions. We were about the only 10 that was willing to put in the extra time.

There are not enough mains to do both a progression 10 man and a LK 10 man, so trading out one person now is not an option either.

We also only raid 10 man once a week (with the exception of the 10 people willing to put in enough time to kill LK). Frontloading HMs cuts down on our LK face time.

In my mind most of this falls into a typical American mindset of "equality" where the man on the bottom must be brought up to everyone else's level, even at the expense of those at the front of the group. We see it in our education systems and we see it here. It's the idea of entitlement. That because they pay the same money, they should get the same rewards. The system, however, is not set up that way. Currently, it's the person that is at least willing to put in more time that will pull ahead and the person not willing to do that will fall behind. Then this situation happens.

It could be that case that 1 or 2 of those perceived slackers actually wanted to work in a 10 man, but it was already full. Still, nothing stopped them from going off and joining a preformed 10 man to accomplish the same goal.

But I do appreciate your input and your ideas make sense to me. Unfortunately, sense isn't doing a lot of good for me right now =]

In response to the question about my guild:

I haven't made any final decision about what I'm doing in Cata yet. I am hoping that there will be room in the guild for a dedicated 10 man. I would hate to leave the guild because I really do like the people in it.

The information presented in this post alone suggests that your idea for a 10 man group separate from the rest of the 25 would not be possible.

As you have pointed out your guild really only has enough people interested to fill one 10. With the lock outs being shared now it's highly doubtful that you will be able to get a full 25 and full 10 going in the same week. Unless of course you want to start diluting your raids with alts. Never a good idea. It's been my experience that 90% of alts are played poorly. Which reminds me, I have a main to smack around about poor gem choices.

Back to my point. Sounds to me like you're going to have to decide. Leave the guild for a smaller 10 man only guild or stick with your current 25.

We're also having attendance issues on Thursdays (our second raid day) and while we are recruiting to fill those needs, its seems like we have a stable crew of 20 people. Were 10 mans to reward the same gear as 25s, I would hope a decision would trickle down to split the 25 into two 10 mans with subs.

The reason I think this is possible is because people aren't lacking the motivation to get gear. There are definitely 20 people in the guild that want to raid and get good gear. The problem is that we portray the 10 mans as optional and some people simply don't have that time. If there was only the 10 man, I'm sure we could field two successful groups. Granted, this would require a few players to make their offspecs a main spec. I'd probably be willing to go tank if need be (although I refuse to heal, it makes me very angry). Of course there will always be the "A-Team/B-Team" mentality and people will either get over it or they won't. It will be interesting to see what happens. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only progression minded raider with a limited schedule that finds the idea of a challenging 10 man a perfect fit.

However, all of this is premature. There's no guarantee that Blizzard will go live with this and there's certainly been no indication which way AdP will be going if this were to make it to live. Right now, the only thing I must do is wait for more information.