150% less fun

So, I really don't like 25-man raids at all.

I really like 10-man raids a lot.

And no, it's not only because I have to maintain 300 interpersonal connections when I am actually only capable of handling 0.03.

At the most superficial level, 25's tend to be rough on my computer. It's an aging Macbook Pro that was hot stuff three years ago, but can't be asked to cope with that much on-screen insanity. The GPU tends to give up the ghost in any given bossfight, with my framerate approaching and often dropping below one-per-second. The strobing, jerky experience is difficult to play through.

Twenty five people is also just too many people in one space for enjoyable or effective communication. There is too much being said in raid chat, there is too much vent chatter, too many people stepping on each other's questions, to the point that only but shutting out some of that flow makes following any of it possible, which usually means that I basically can't follow chat, so I miss little things here and there.

But most of all, I just feel like I am not really a factor in a 25-man raid. When we're running a 10-man raid, any person who dies, or any person who goes off and gets it all wrong is a tangible loss, while it often seems to be the case that the raid can go on without you in the larger runs, especially when you're just a mid-table dps'er - just staying out of the fire and watching cooldowns as the screen stutters by around you.

I feel more involved and valuable in a 10-man raid, and I feel like an anonymous cog in 25's. I find that the interpersonal interaction in the smaller format is more complete and compelling (especially with the light and familiar atmosphere we maintain in our guild). I also never found the encounters in 10's to be any less difficult or interesting - if anything, some seem harder.

All of which makes me often regret that my guild has a definite and bullheaded prejudice for 25's. I know that there are always going to be downsides to 10-man runs, a lot more people who miss a run now and then, and that we are stuck in a weird numeric purgatory where we have too many people for 10's and not enough for 25's and a shift one way or the other will in effect cure the problem, but that will do little to change my underlying preference - I like 10's, I have more fun in 10's, but if everyone around me had their way, we wouldn't do them at all.