Flexible Raiding

[SpiritBinder]

Wow.... just wow.

Raids in World of Warcraft have a long history of not just challenging players, but changing and evolving as the years and expansions go by. As with everything in the game, we’re always thinking about what more we can bring to raiding to improve the experience for an even wider range of players. While Normal and Heroic Raids are a great fit for many, we feel there’s another gap worth filling—and to that end, we’re currently working on the development of a new type of Raid for the next major content update: Flexible Raiding.

One Size Does Not Fit All

While it’s impossible to fit every player into a neat, tidy archetype, we recognize that we could be providing a better experience to one broad category of raider: social groups comprised predominantly of friends and family, and smaller guilds that do their best to include as many members in their Raid outings possible.

During the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, the 10-player Normal difficulty served these groups of players pretty well, but the unification of 10-player and 25-player into a single difficulty effectively eliminated that niche. While Raid Finder mode is extremely accessible, it doesn’t provide smaller groups with a tight-knit social experience while progressing through the content. In Patch 5.4, we’re planning to introduce a new mode of raiding that allows us to deliver the sort of experience that we think these players are looking for.

/Flex

To fill this void, we’re in the process of developing a new Flexible Raid system, which includes a new difficulty that sits between Raid Finder and Normal difficulty, while still allowing friends, family, or pick-up groups to play together. This difficulty will be available for premade groups of 10–25 players, including any number in between. That means whether you have 11, 14, or 23 friends available for a Raid, they’ll all be able to participate.

The Flexible Raid system is designed so that the challenge level will scale depending on how many players you have in the Raid. So if you switch between 14 players one week and 22 the next, the difficulty will adjust automatically. Keep in mind that unlike Raid Finder, no matchmaking is available, so you’ll need to make sure you invite people to attend—but if some can’t make it, it’s not the end of the world (or the Raid). You’ll also still be able to invite Real ID or Battle.net friends cross-realm. Who you choose to bring and what Item Level gear they’ll need to join your merry band is up to you, too—there’s no Item Level requirement for this Raid difficulty.

Dressed to Kill

A new Raid difficulty also means a new Item Level. Flexible mode will award loot with an Item Level that falls between Raid Finder and Normal quality, and will use the Raid Finder’s “per person” loot system, specialization choices, and bonus rolls, so you won’t need to worry about bringing the “wrong” person and having them win that piece of gear you’ve long been waiting for.

You Have the Keys

We plan to unlock the Flexible Raid difficulty in wings, similar to Raid Finder, but on an accelerated timetable. This new difficulty also has a separate Raid lockout from Raid Finder and Normal difficulty, allowing you to take part in all three if you so desire. You’ll also be able to complete portions of your “Glory of the Orgrimmar Raider” raid meta- achievement in Flexible mode as well as in Normal or Heroic to earn cosmetic rewards such as an epic mount. This will allow Raid groups the opportunity to switch off nights between raids to complete achievements. Finally, taking part in Flexible, Normal, or Heroic difficulty will provide access to additional rewards that won’t be available in Raid Finder.

Getting Down to Brass Tacks

As with any in-development feature, we’re continuing to refine how the Flexible Raid system will work, and we look forward to hearing your constructive feedback from your experiences on the Public Test Realm when the new system goes live.

This could be very very cool. I'm guessing the difficulty of Flexi Raiding will be a little easier than normal if the I-LVL rewards are going to be less than normal raiding (that’s a LOT of gearing options now, LRF, FR, Normal AND Heroic). I will be very interested in seeing how this all pans out, but could be something I see myself using as a lot of the time we sit at about 14-16 people in guild wanting to raid, but only 10 really eligible, exciting indeed.

[Wain]

This does sound very exciting!

[Derax]

I really like this idea, I just have no clue how they are gonna even balance it. Will it always need 2 tanks? A set number of healers? They said doesn't matter who you bring 12 or 15 or whatever. I like that it doesn't share lockouts with other raids which makes it nice, Others will complain that now you have more to do but no one is forcing you to do it. its all gonna come down to balance.

[Shade]

Sounds wonderful, but still won't allow me to do any raids like I used to considering my guild is a guild of 2, with 2 of those people rarely on.

But perhaps pugs will be easier to get into now and experience some of that raid content. Sounds really interesting and that it will solve a lot of the problems my old guild, back when I did do a lot of raiding, had with the number of people who wanted to go and who actually had to be left out because of the limit to people.

[Castile]

Sounds wonderful, but still won't allow me to do any raids like I used to considering my guild is a guild of 2, with 2 of those people rarely on.

But perhaps pugs will be easier to get into now and experience some of that raid content. Sounds really interesting and that it will solve a lot of the problems my old guild, back when I did do a lot of raiding, had with the number of people who wanted to go and who actually had to be left out because of the limit to people.

^This. My old raiding grp had the same issue (and the same ppl got sat out so they never got gear and fell behind blah blah) so this would be an awesome fix! This could be a very good move for raiding considering I like being casual but wouldnt mind a raid slightly more challenging then LFR with mates in other guilds

[SpiritBinder]

This could be a very good move for raiding considering I like being casual but wouldnt mind a raid slightly more challenging then LFR with mates in other guilds

And if the loot rules are the same as LFR, I can totally come with you and I wont ninja your gear!

[Wain]

This could be a very good move for raiding considering I like being casual but wouldnt mind a raid slightly more challenging then LFR with mates in other guilds

And if the loot rules are the same as LFR, I can totally come with you and I wont ninja your gear!

And me!

[Castile]

This could be a very good move for raiding considering I like being casual but wouldnt mind a raid slightly more challenging then LFR with mates in other guilds

And if the loot rules are the same as LFR, I can totally come with you and I wont ninja your gear!

haha yes! and we can both /comfort when our silly runes give us gold!

[Kalliope]

Wake me when they start tuning raids for groups that have fewer than 10 people.

Seriously though, step in the right direction.

[Bonita]

Wake me when they start tuning raids for groups that have fewer than 10 people.

This.

My guild was talking about this tonight. We always seem to be missing 1 person and because there are so many pugs going on it's hard to fill a spot with a decent person that wont wipe us all night. If we could go in with 9 people that would be lovely.

[Lisaara]

Wake me when they start tuning raids for groups that have fewer than 10 people.

Seriously though, step in the right direction.

Definitely agreed. This looks good. Now we just need to see it in action.

[Azunara]

Yeah, fewer than 10 would be superb. I can't get together 10 people, but I certainly can find one or two to go do raids with me just for the hell of it.

[Makoes]

Sounds like this could be interesting. But it would be nice to be able to raid with less than 10, maybe 6+.
Will have to see how it works out.

[Kalliope]

Yeah, not being able to put together a 10m raid in Cata or MoP basically killed my group. :/ In Cata, we were one short. In MoP, three. Ugh.

[Slickrock]

I think a few of you missed something...

This allows for battle-tag invites. So you can raid cross realm. That should make it a lot easier to get a group, perhaps all-petopia raids.

Scaling a raid down to a 5-man just really isn't feasible.. too hard to balance.


Also, if this goes well, I expect this to be added to normal raids in 6.0.

[Lisaara]

Yeah, not being able to put together a 10m raid in Cata or MoP basically killed my group. :/ In Cata, we were one short. In MoP, three. Ugh.

Yup. In Cata, we started strong. But then we were missing one person.....then three.....then five....

[Kalliope]

No one was talking about a 5m raid, just sub-10.

Battletag raiding is a huge help, of course. The problem for me personally (and undoubtedly for others) is that we have battletag friends of the opposite faction rather than our own. Numbers are still an issue.

[Kaellan]

Anyone know if this is the unannounced feature or is it still unannounced?

[Agravaine]

Well, the way it was revealed was, GC was being hounded about the big new feature he'd mentioned on twitter, so he said something to the effect that there were a bunch of them, take your pick, here's one -- Flexible Raiding.

[Danielfboone]

I think this will be a very popular feature.