Lasker-Tarrasch was 16 games, Lasker-Schlechter, 10.  Personally I think that 16 games should be enough.  I doubt in any case that we'll ever see more than that again, given commercial considerations.

11 games is enough.   

I would prefer AT LEAST 16 games but no more than 24. It would just be too tiring for the players to go on that long.

I think 16 games is about right.  12 seems short -- perhaps it is enough to be statistically significant, but 16 would be better.  I also enjoy the matches for the games, as much as deciding the winner.  The more games that we get, the better.  Still, recent memories make me content to simply have championship matches...

(Also, I would say "The calm before the storm" but certainly the idiom is there.)

16 is imo the absolute minimum. During the (in)famous K-K matches I did not mind a lifeless draw now and then - I knew that it was just the silence before the storm (if this proverb exists in English as well).

I also grown up with those giant K-K battles. I even was a spectator of the unlimited match. I think that 24 games are too much, but may be 16 is a good choice. One problem with long matches is semmercialisation and from the other point of view the expenses are too big.

I am from the generation that grew with the K-K matches and I must say I still find the 24 games system the most adequate to design the world champion.
By the way, I also regret the old candidates system and the 3-years cycles used to choose the challenger.

I have been reading Kasparov's  'How Life Imitates Chess'. He talks about not realising quickly enough that he did not have sufficient time to adjust to the Berlin. He implies that his arrogance, or excessive self-confidence, did not allow him to do so and when he realised he felt as though it was already impossible. This was a 16 game match versus Kramnik. Does anyone else feel that the 12 game matches are two short ? Leko Kramnik and Topalov Kramnik seemed to work okay because the fight was always very close. However, this time when Anand won a second game with black it felt like an anti-climax because it seemed over already. My own feeling is that the 24 game format of previous years allowed enough time for the pendulum to swing back and forth several times but was short enough to encourage decisive play. If that is commercially viable, from the sponsor's view, it would be my ideal. What does everyone else think ?