@toth: read Solracht's reply on where I got quoted. As you can see, I don't raid FFXIV hahaha xD -- so I got schooled
Otherwise,
Catalysm started out with 2.5 raids (3rd raid was a mini 2 boss raid) then funneled into a single raid per patch until the expansion ended.Originally Posted by Toth
As Solracht said:
The cool thing about some raids is that it gave a little forking option, allow groups to tackle encounters differently per wing/sector/section. Here's some examplesThe main and most important difference for me is the scale: XIV tiers have 4 bosses (5 if you count the raid patch primal) while WoW tiers have 7-12 bosses, like you mentioned. In WoW this allows for a longer progression period, a much smoother difficulty curve, and way more boss variety and loot, which tends to make the raiding experience feel much, much better.
Blackwing Descent [Wing1] 2 bosses > [Wing 2] 3 bosses then final boss
Firelands [Wing 1] 5 bosses, any order > [Wing 2] 1 boss then final boss
Dragonsoul [Wing 1] 1 boss > [Wing2] 2 bosses > then linear 4 bosses in a row
I believe not all raids had this in Mists expansion; they was a linear raid, but I think it's because of raid finder that could've influenced it
If the raid is linear, so is the difficulty curve, relatively speaking.