Question about WoW Subscribers.

[Deepsidedj]

Hey, so according to WoWtrack there are about 53k guilds that killed Morchock (I picked Hour of Twilight because it lasted so much). 51k 10m and around 2k 25m so thats about 560k players? Where is everyone else? 9.5 milion players do not raid?

[Agile Emily]

Yes.

The vast majority of players do not raid.

[Darsithis]

Yes.

The vast majority of players do not raid.

Pretty much. Raid is indeed the end-game, but not for every player. I personally know of a few that just level to end-level and then never touch the toon again

[spektor]

im still looking for a guild

[Purenight]

Most if I remember right are not even max level players. Heck we had a girl in our guild that was in her 30's for almost 2 years. She just liked to chat and "pick flowers" ( back then there was no exp for farming ).

[Gehco]

There's not only guild groups, what you wrote is only guilds but not pugs or LFR. (that is still raiding)

And playerbase doesn't only raid, you have so much else to track players through.

[lios]

9.5 milion players do not raid?

Yup. Contrary to what raiders want you to believe with all their whine posts, most people don't raid, ever.

[Serissa]

Multiply these 500k by 10 because there's a lot of unguilded alts who only do lfr (or alts in "social"/"one men" guilds)

[Degrade]

You're also only considering people that only raid in a guild. A lot of players just PuG'ed a lot of Dragon Soul, and I assume a lot still do. I haven't been a part of a raiding guild since 2009, but I still raid enough to keep up.

[Raidbozz]

Raiding is a very small population of WoW and has been for awhile. It's one of the reason that they implemented LFR to interest people into raiding and also to allow people who aren't in a raiding guild to see the content they work on. The rest of the population PvP, Quest, Achievements, RP, etc etc. Lot's more to do in WoW than raiding.

[Beefhamer]

You're also only considering people that only raid in a guild. A lot of players just PuG'ed a lot of Dragon Soul, and I assume a lot still do. I haven't been a part of a raiding guild since 2009, but I still raid enough to keep up.

According to Blizzard roughly halfway through DS before MoP came out 50% of accounts finished DS on LFR. LFR did its job to get more people interested/participating in raiding.

[Kevyne-Shandris]

They were trying to level alts, until CRZ came for one. -_-

But raiding shows how one very vocal sub-set of the player base hogs up so many resources at the expense of other playstyles. What the other playstyles get is the leftovers...including gear (which Blizzard somehow thinks if they get gear it's "welfare"). And the very stale leftovers are comprised of endless long-term reputation grinds because of Masochists who believed vanilla and TBC WoW is the only way to play.

Pretty messed up thinking there, and too many due to addiction to the game, just lap up being beaten down by a community of driveby style people only looking out for #1. All in a genre based on sharing, caring and being social. Yet if you try to get away from that junk and just play solo to enjoy the world, you're the antisocial sociopath ruining the game.

Schizophrenia is what you can call this mess.

[Ciddy]

Makes sense.

Back in vanilla, I didn't raid at all. I got to 60 on my warrior, and 5-man stuff or quests outside of raiding was all I cared about. My guildies and I would run 5-man stuff, PvP, and just dick around out in the world. That made the game fun enough for us. I'd say a lot of players are still like that. It was a lot easier to be that way in vanilla though. I didn't really start raiding actively until BC.

Although I do have to admit there was a lot more fun stuff to do outside of raiding back then.

[Maklor]

Yup. Contrary to what raiders want you to believe with all their whine posts, most people don't raid, ever.

Blizzard unfortunately caters too much the small raiding minority.

[Zeek Daniels]

Hey, so according to WoWtrack there are about 53k guilds that killed Morchock (I picked Hour of Twilight because it lasted so much). 51k 10m and around 2k 25m so thats about 560k players? Where is everyone else? 9.5 milion players do not raid?

Well you have to keep in mind sub numbers include players with multiple accounts. Also im pretty sure WoW progress only tracks EU/US servers in terms of kills and such. So your looking at a EU/US population of 560k raiders.

Judging by MoP first week sales of 2.7 mil theres prolly around 3 mil players in EU/US that have mop and prolly 300-400k of those are raiding. The rest are content with PvP, and questing on multiple toons, others farm mats, others play the AH to get rich, and you have your botters/gold sellers. THats the rest of the population.

[Arewn]

That subset of the player base is amongst the most vocal, and the most recognizable for outsiders. WoW does raiding better then any other game, and raiding is something "big" and "awesome" that's easy to show off.
It's WoW's bread and butter, it's what keeps people around. Because of how raids are structured, raiders are compulsed to re-sub every month to continue their progression. Because raiders are so entrenched in raiding, it creates a solid base of players for Blizzard to work off of. And those players are organized and driven, and have a vested interest in attracting others to the game for the sake of their raid progression (10 is a fair number of people to maintain, others need more raiders to move up to/maintain 25man, need extras to fill no-show slots). And the raids attract players even if they themselves don't end up raiding, its something big and awesome happening in the world (of warcraft), it sets a theme and brings in a lot of content that revolves around the raids, and general excitement in the community.

If not for raids attracting/keeping people as this "amazing end game" (even if the players don't actually DO the raids), people would just go to other games like GW2 that do the non-raiding content a lot better.

[Kevyne-Shandris]

It's WoW's bread and butter

Nope.

The numbers don't support that idea at all.

WoW raiding became what it became because they got EQ raiders in as devs. When the top is full of the mindset of a hardcore EQ raider they'll make sure they'll earmark a lot of the money in what appeals to THEM. It's how terms like "welfare epics" get coined, it's why the game is so tailored around the "I don't give a shit" attitudes. It's why, despite losing so many subscribers, they continue thinking TBC was all the game will ever be.

Raiding is but a part of the game. A sliver actually by how many participate. If even tradeskilling and fishing got the monies raiding got, just imagine how much WoW would've evolved in all these years.

Instead we get wasted environments essentially every expansion. Big blocks of real estate that maybe soloers and a 3/5 man team may return too, but abandoned nevertheless.

Was it really worth the money to see such waste, expansion, by expansion, by expansion?

[Tommo]

Regardless of whether or not 9 million scrubs dont raid is irrelevant, raiding is still the high point of WoW, it tells the story and offers progression / continued playability. Without raids WoW is nothing really.

[Raidbozz]

They were trying to level alts, until CRZ came for one. -_-

But raiding shows how one very vocal sub-set of the player base hogs up so many resources at the expense of other playstyles. What the other playstyles get is the leftovers...including gear (which Blizzard somehow thinks if they get gear it's "welfare"). And the very stale leftovers are comprised of endless long-term reputation grinds because of Masochists who believed vanilla and TBC WoW is the only way to play.

Pretty messed up thinking there, and too many due to addiction to the game, just lap up being beaten down by a community of driveby style people only looking out for #1. All in a genre based on sharing, caring and being social. Yet if you try to get away from that junk and just play solo to enjoy the world, you're the antisocial sociopath ruining the game.

Schizophrenia is what you can call this mess.

In this thread you complain about raiders and thier taking up of Blizzard's resources, but in the RNG is to RNG thread you self proclaimed yourself as a raider going after your elusive shield for weeks upon weeks. So maybe you should blame yourself first and Blizzard second?

[Eskobar]

In this thread you complain about raiders and thier taking up of Blizzard's resources, but in the RNG is to RNG thread you self proclaimed yourself as a raider going after your elusive shield for weeks upon weeks. So maybe you should blame yourself first and Blizzard second?

He's in every single thread complaining about something that blizzard has done, there's no logic to it, just a whole bunch of whining about every single thing possible, the ignore user function is amazing.