Watcher confirms that raiders are a "minority"

[Thelxi]

I strongly disagree. There should always be a carrot on a stick that only a very small minority actually experience. It's important to have that, even if realistically for whatever reason you will never actually commit to it.

[ringpriest]

I strongly disagree. There should always be a carrot on a stick that only a very small minority actually experience. It's important to have that, even if realistically for whatever reason you will never actually commit to it.

Agreed. Watching folks running around in raid gear, just knowing that places like MC and BWL existed was inspiring and added an extra dimension back in vanilla - having them accessible to everyone, but with hard modes getting better-statted, differently colored gear wrecks that.

[Novakhoro]

In other news: The sky is blue, Water is wet, and the recent discoveries suggest the sun may be hot. Raiders have never touted they are the majority and those of us that clear mythic content (even regardless of time frame) realize that we are an even smaller minority.

[Rudol Von Stroheim]

I think a lot of people misunderstand what Ion said.

He said that there is a lot of development on several sides of the game - but no side in particular should ever be the main focus, because activities themselves are pretty niche in the game. Beside leveling dungeon and quests, a lot of people will focus on one or two sphere of the game, but rarely all of them.

That's why he said that, and he's absolutely right. Legion tries to play with that better than WoD. If it works remain to be seen.

That's what I got out of it. There is so many facets to WoW now that the majority probably rarely coalesce. Everything is a niche.

That said, this is also my problem with WoW and the pitfall of Blizzard trying to cater towards so many different groups. Jack of all trades, master of none... etc, etc. Whether or not they can manage in Legion and really bring all these parts together into one cohesive package is questionable. To me, this expansion, more than any other, will determine if their ongoing philosophy is a good one and one they can actually operate from.

I, personally, think you can only do so much before you get pulled apart. You're often better focusing towards a certain portion of the population and building a long-term community. Less moments of huge bursts of income but alternatively you can achieve a consistent and reliable player base to work with.

[enchiridion]

I wish this forum had a Like function.

If I wasn't raiding in WoW, I would quit. I'm not some super skilled zomg mythic player, but raiding and wpvp occupy most of my time. And my wpvp is quite casual at best. I don't do pets, I don't do achievements, I don't really do alts, and I don't do arena pvp. You take away raiding from me, and I will have difficulties justifying paying a monthly sub.

If you guys don't like raiding, there are plenty of f2p Korean shitfest MMOs with no end game content.

This is the problem with threads like this and a part of what Watcher tried to say, I, I, I. I dont do x so it shouldnt be in the game. If y didnt exist I wouldnt be playing. Chances are all of your friends in game feel the same way bc if YOU dont like organized pvp why would you play with people who only do organized pvp? i (as a decently progressed mythic raider who is shit at pvp) know several people (from being in huge guilds) that only pvp and have offered helpful feedback and truely enjoy most parts of WoW pvp, i also know people who dont prefer raiding over pvp or vice versa. Too many times do we as players have such a narrow scope of a game because we personally dont enjoy one aspect that may have made someone fall in love with WoW essentially we artificially pit the player base against itself and then we are part of the problem of why WoW sucks.

[La]

This is the problem with threads like this and a part of what Watcher tried to say, I, I, I. I dont do x so it shouldnt be in the game. If y didnt exist I wouldnt be playing. Chances are all of your friends in game feel the same way bc if YOU dont like organized pvp why would you play with people who only do organized pvp? i (as a decently progressed mythic raider who is shit at pvp) know several people (from being in huge guilds) that only pvp and have offered helpful feedback and truely enjoy most parts of WoW pvp, i also know people who dont prefer raiding over pvp or vice versa. Too many times do we as players have such a narrow scope of a game because we personally dont enjoy one aspect that may have made someone fall in love with WoW essentially we artificially pit the player base against itself and then we are part of the problem of why WoW sucks.

Generally when something like that happens you go back to the roots of the game and when it was most successful. You ask why did people love the game then? If you try to do too many things with your game to appeal to everyone because you're too afraid of losing players if you don't, you're sacrificing making what made it successful in the first place. The two most basic things being PvP and raiding, or at least a very basic form of gear progression to constantly be improving.

There's too much of everything these days. With the age of the game and fewer and fewer people playing, I would imagine Blizzard is more scared than ever to change anything and go back to what made the game great.

[Sencha]

Then let's remove everything as everything is played by a minority.

[enchiridion]

Generally when something like that happens you go back to the roots of the game and when it was most successful. You ask why did people love the game then? If you try to do too many things with your game to appeal to everyone because you're too afraid of losing players if you don't, you're sacrificing making what made it successful in the first place. The two most basic things being PvP and raiding, or at least a very basic form of gear progression to constantly be improving.

There's too much of everything these days. With the age of the game and fewer and fewer people playing, I would imagine Blizzard is more scared than ever to change anything and go back to what made the game great.

Sorry, i think you misunderstand what i was targeting, I agree there shouldnt be too many resources committed to things like pet battles and gold farming, etc. because not only are those a minority but they (i imagine) are a very VERY small minority and blizz does have to manage resources properly. But the message wi quoted finished with "If you guys don't like raiding, there are plenty of f2p Korean shitfest MMOs with no end game content." This means they think pvp shouldnt be considered viable end game content. Like you said you have to look at what was successful and cutting it to just raiding is not that.

[Deleted]

This isn't anything new. Blizzard stated that quite clearly when they started to make raids more inclusive. Also LFR exists because of that knowledge: so everyone can see the full story.

There is no story in raids. Entire story is told outside raids and into raids you just goin to kill those bosses nothing els. There are some NPC interactions. But they are nothing then random piss lines and few conversations what doesnt really tell any story at all.

[Lilija]

There is no story in raids. Entire story is told outside raids and into raids you just goin to kill those bosses nothing els. There are some NPC interactions. But they are nothing then random piss lines and few conversations what doesnt really tell any story at all.

Not everything is explained outside of raids. So there is totally story in raids. Outside content leads you into a raid so you can see how it all ends.

[Echocho]

I think that given the option most PVE players would prefer to do dungeons with their friends. Given that Legion seems to fill that void as viable endgame I think that raiding participation numbers will shrink significally.

[Thelxi]

Agreed. Watching folks running around in raid gear, just knowing that places like MC and BWL existed was inspiring and added an extra dimension back in vanilla - having them accessible to everyone, but with hard modes getting better-statted, differently colored gear wrecks that.

Exactly my thoughts too.

[enchiridion]

I think that given the option most PVE players would prefer to do dungeons with their friends. Given that Legion seems to fill that void as viable endgame I think that raiding participation numbers will shrink significally.

I would challenge the MOST part of that i think that raid has the appeal of 1. grand scale huge environments and 2. fighting the major bosses like gul'dan. This is evidenced by TBC and Wrath when raiding was at least touched by most pve players in some way (less so with attunements in TBC) but with great dungeon content as well.

[Kithelle]

"Minority" means 49% or lower. That's a heck of a lot of people.

And you're missing his point, that they need to cater to every player. Casual raiding, friends & family raiding, hardcore progression raiding, casual small-group play, hardcore small-group play, battlegrounds, arenas, pet battles, soloing old bosses... these are all valid playstyles.

Problem is they don't...and while they're doing a little more they just aren't doing much...2 expansions now where we haven't seen a single new BG, but there are always multiple raid tiers...add on top of that that multiple BG's have the exact same goals but just different maps.

I'd like to know how many people really do mythic raiding...that they can put effort into something so few people do but literally say screw everything else.

[Tijuana]

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...5664?page=4#75

Ion "Watcher" Hazzikostas confirms in the above post that only "A minority of players raid" and "A tiny minority touch Mythic raiding". We have at last got confirmation that raiding isn't an activity done by the majority of the players, but only by the minority, just like PvP, pet battles, alt leveling, etc.

Now that we've established a benchmark for the size of the total raiding participation, how can anyone really justify the disproportionate amount of development resources devoted to this minority activity? "But so many people raid through LFR" is no longer a valid argument as Watcher has confirmed just how few players actually do raid. Why is a disproportionate amount of development resources going into this minority activity and not more fairly distributed to other minority activities (like PvP balance, more pets, etc.) or activities completed by the majority (e.g. quests and dungeons)? It is very clear, especially after WoD, that these areas were very starved of development resources, and even just a slight increase in development resources would have improved these areas substantially. Yet so much was devoted to raiding.

In my opinion, it makes no sense to continue raiding development on the scale that it currently is at for such a minority group, especially after what happened with an expansion that was mostly about raiding. Please redistribute development resources to other areas more equally.

You say the time spent is disproportionate but you have no figures available to you on time spent developing which content.

Also, this is not news. MMO-C has been posting raid participation for several expansions now.

In addition, I'm not sure I follow the general logic that because an expansion is lacking in content, yet has raids, that somehow that means all the development time was used up on the raids. Perhaps they spent the same amount of time on raids as always, and simply didn't spend any time at all on the other content. There could be a general lack of time spent at play here but you guys are assuming its the same amount of time spent, but mismanaged and used up all on raids.

[Daffan]

I strongly disagree. There should always be a carrot on a stick that only a very small minority actually experience. It's important to have that, even if realistically for whatever reason you will never actually commit to it.

I agree.

Without it, people get all they need and then quit. If there is nothing to work towards, why keep playing?

Just like now, 700-710 pvp gear and 705 baleful means 90% of WoD is complete trash, no reason to keep going.

[Deleted]

He confirmed that everyone is a minority, including the non-raiders.

I would like to correct that to the idea he just declared every content minority content to actually be able to justify his own ongoing focus on minority gameplay.

At the end there surely is majority gameplay. As like questing, dungeons and raids (if you include all difficulties).

[Friskyrum]

Talk about a huge clickbait post. You're reading so far deep into what he's saying that you're missing the entire point of the whole post you quoted that small tidbit from was originally made..

[DarkAmbient]

Hopefully this means they'll put more effort into non-raid content.

[Lodreh]

...More, say, pet battles? No. Nothing against pet battles but they and other things like archaeology, etc are not core activities...

I've leveled a few characters with just pet battles, archeology and gathering professions... not that it's for everyone and it is a very niche way to level... but it can be done.