Imo scaling difficulty by increasing damage/hitpoints doesn’t solve the difficulty issue at all, rather is just a loose solution and doesn’t address the difference in group dynamic as a group scales. In my book that’s just lazy design philosophy. “More people, more enemies. Problem solved.”

By having an artificial cap, they get to at least tailor the experience to the right crowd, granted there are some sacrifices such as having to bench members of the crowd, but isn’t that the case with say… foot ball or a theme park ride for example? The participants are still capped and anyone else will just have to sit out or fill in at a later point.

Perhaps this is something that future devs can look into, having replacements mid-instants or a benching system that lets more players join, but only a certain amount play and fill in when someone is down or out.

Rather I think a better way to solve the scaling problem is to have a proper paradigm for the various group mechanics. A bigger group shouldn’t be doing the exactly same thing a small group does. There’d be too much redundancy as well as a lack of proper challenge addressed to their increased versatility. Which is why, having set an optimum case, it’ll allow the designers to plan a more efficient raid experience for the player numbers.

As for the last point on being epic, i think that’s just a matter of context vs accessibility. they could very well satisfy the context by only allowing an 80 man raid take on the lich king for example or keeping in line that a 25 man would probably fight say one of arthas’ henches, but again an 80 man raid is hard to achieve, and they probably want more players having the opportunity to raid the lich king.

sure, we’re seeing the days of epic 100 man raids fade, but at least, a majority of the total playerbase gets to experience the content now instead of just that 100 men.

We seem to be moving from a MMO design paradigm of open-ended freedom to heavily scripted encounters that are designed and tuned for a set amount of players. I find that trend troubling.

I think it’s good every once in a while to question sacred cows like group and raid sizes. Why does a WoW group only allow a maximum of 5 players? Why are raid sizes the way they are?

The true strength of MMOs is that they are really about community but having rigid and artificial limits on participation works against that ethos. We need more inclusiveness in our virtual worlds, not less.

Firstly, practicality. Now I wasn’t there at the Everquest 200 player dragon kill event, but I know for sure, in WoW I (and most others) would dc, freeze, of have lag so bad that the most you could hope for is to auto-attack until it’s dead. That’s not my idea of fun.

Secondly, choosing a set number of people for an event has been happening for centuries. Most sports (football, tennis, hockey), games, board games, quizzes.

I’m not trashing the idea and it’s obviously already being tested in other games and in different ways but I think it should be used for events or for a bit of variety rather than an entirely new raiding system.

If you add more people to the party, some more extras might become available, like a special boss, harder mobs, all that. This might be the evolution of the solo-instances of Moria that are mostly daily loot pinatas.

I also cannot resist to add a link to Spinks’s thoughts about progression in MMOs, as she is in an especially analytic phase at the moment: http://spinksville.wordpress.com/2009/10/21/losing-gear-progression-in-wow/

For other static content, I don’t think you need to scale as long as you don’t cap the number of players that can participate. Let good people beat something with 2 or 3, other players beat it with 5 or 6, and call it a success.

I’ve absolutely love to see some proper scaling technology in new MMOs.

1) No matter how you do it, there will be some threshold at which the numbers balance out such that there’s an optimum number of players per instance. Whether it’s “above 10 players we need a 3rd tank, so we can’t take an 11th person unless he’s a tank” or “it’s dumb to take 24 people, because the best loot drops only for groups of 25 and up”, even in the best case, there will be local minima and maxima, because you can’t spawn 3.25 adds or shoot at 1.9 DPSers and you can’t drop 4.1 pieces of loot.

2) It actually makes the raid leader’s job harder. Right now, if you’re person #26 in the guild, it’s a simple “sorry man, you’re on standby because we can only fit 25 in here”. Whereas if it scaled, you’d have everyone with an 80 wanting to raid Coliseum with you, and you’ve got to draw a much tougher line. Sure, #26-#30 might be qualified, but then you’ve got to literally saw to #31, “you can’t come because you’re so bad you’re more of a burden than a help”.