Removing the cap... a long reply

This is in response to Tobold's post on removing limit on the amount of people in raids.

If you raid for better gear then bringing fewer people ensures a higher chance of getting an upgrade as you have less competition for items.

If you raid for just the “challenge” of it bringing fewer people allows for a challenge.

If you raid for bragging rights then achievements for beating raids in a specific amount of time with a specific amount of people should allow you to show off your leetness. (could add titles for them too so you don’t have to link achievements) This sets you apart from the zerging n00bs.

In my opinion the only reason someone would vehemently oppose this is because they value their epics based on the fact that others don’t have them. The reason people refer to envy and the green eyed monster as a bad thing is the manner in which you try to level the playing field. Being envious of someone else or their possessions can motivate you to work harder and acquire them, this is a good thing and something we should encourage. However when your envy turns and makes you want to take those possessions from someone else in order to make you equal that is where the green eyed monster comes into play. That is where envy is bad.

We had unlimited raid spots in EverQuest. That was over 10 years ago and we were still able to develop an elite/noob cultural structure with in the game. You brought just enough people to beat any given encounter. If I’m going to be perfectly honest I believe the WoW raiding system, and everyone since its launch, is much more unfair than what EverQuest had.

In EQ no one was ever asked to sit. If you were in a raid guild and there was a raid going on you could come, in most cases you were required to come. We never had to say; “Oh sorry we already have two warriors maybe next week”. No one had to sit and so it permitted for a much deeper and happier “second string”. Right now in WoW if you aren’t on the A Team you are often asked to sit out of raids. If there were no limit you could bring those extra subs that would normally only fill spots a few days a month when someone was absent.

We still had a limited number of “elite” guilds. Sure this was in part due to the fact that all raid encounters were open world (only one version) but by the time Shadow of Luclin launched the sheer amount of possible raid targets meant most up and coming guilds could try and take down something. The gear was often times still good even if it was from 2 expansions in the past. Most guilds simply didn’t try because they didn’t want to.

There were however a few guilds that “zerged”. Guess what, they got the reputation as zerging guilds too. In a lot of ways they were ostracized from the server community but the funniest part is that they weren’t as successful as the small organized raiding guilds. Imagine some encounters in WoW were you are required to space out, avoid aoe’s on the ground, or other encounters of that nature. Now go ahead and triple the amount of people in there. How much HARDER would those specific encounters actually be.