For those of you that might be unaware of it, patch 3.2 (who will be out either this week, or the next) brings some (un)expected changes as far as raiding is concerned.

First of all, if we were to classify loot by item level, we would notice that the drops from normal mode 25-man are the same item level as the ones from 10 man hard mode. In a guild like mine, we have a group that’s cleared all the 10 man hard modes for example, and are currently working on Algalon. However, we have problems with the 25 man hard modes, due to group setup, attention and/or skill issues.

Second of all, due to obvious logistical reasons (managing 9 other people + backups is easier than managing 24 other people + backups) and to the fact that the 10 man hard modes have a more relaxed tuning, it is arguably easier to progress through 10 man hard modes than through 25 hard modes. Also, finding 24 other very good people is not as easy as finding 9 others.

Because of that, my suspicion(which remains to be confirmed) is that Blizzard, in their push to make WoW as casual-friendly as possible, are trying to once again lower the raiding group, from 40 to 25 and now to 10.

Also, I predict a large number of mini-guilds appearing after the patch. Since, after all, if your guild is struggling to do 25-man hard modes due to bad players, why not remove the problem altogether by making a 10 man with your friends?