WotLK to MoP: A Trend Analysis of Raiding Difficulty.

[Deleted]

Why are you comparing an un-nerfed ToT to an end of expansion DS and ICC? It's a rediculous comparison.

[voxTree]

Recruiting is bad because the players who can do this content with all it's complexity and manage their characters with their increasing complexity are limited. Ergo reduce the complexity of both and you'll have more potential raiders to recruits. The two go hand in hand.

Yes but you have to look at the whole picture.

The gaming community as a whole is casual now. Gone are the days when you spent 40+ hours playing a Final Fantasy, most games last ~8 hours now if you do a full playthrough. As such the community has come to expect short-term gaming experiences. A look through the WoW Guild Recruitment forum shows that most people are looking for a casual guild that raids weekends or mornings/early afternoons.

The reason boss fights keep getting more and more mechanics is because Blizzard is in a catch-22. We, the raiding community, have "seen it all". If they gave us old Vanilla Ragnaros again as a current end boss, we'd all laugh and talk about how stupidly easy and boring it is. Blizzard is forced to one-up itself to keep raiding guilds interested. Doing a Patchwerk fight in the current tier of content would be super boring. They cannot really backpeddle on boss encounters.

Jin'rokh is one of the simpler bosses we've seen lately and some people still struggle on him on normal difficulty. That isn't Blizzard's fault.

Once the gaming community stops having a short attention span and a "whatever" attitude when it comes to personal performance and accountability, we will see more progression coming from a wide variety of guilds, not just hardcores.

[Spotnick]

ofc normal content numbers are dropping. the only ppl running it are pugs. the vast majority are just doing LFR because there is no incentive to do normal mode at all. gear looks the same, and no commitment needed.

I like it when I read this... there is zero FUN doing LFR, while normal raiding IS fun.. doesn't that count? I'm a heroic mode raider, and i do normal modes on week-ends with friends for fun.. couldn't do that in LFR where there is absolutely no reason to run it.

[Glorious Leader]

Yes but you have to look at the whole picture.

The gaming community as a whole is casual now. Gone are the days when you spent 40+ hours playing a Final Fantasy, most games last ~8 hours now if you do a full playthrough. As such the community has come to expect short-term gaming experiences. A look through the WoW Guild Recruitment forum shows that most people are looking for a casual guild that raids weekends or mornings/early afternoons.

The reason boss fights keep getting more and more mechanics is because Blizzard is in a catch-22. We, the raiding community, have "seen it all". If they gave us old Vanilla Ragnaros again as a current end boss, we'd all laugh and talk about how stupidly easy and boring it is. Blizzard is forced to one-up itself to keep raiding guilds interested. Doing a Patchwerk fight in the current tier of content would be super boring. They cannot really backpeddle on boss encounters.

Jin'rokh is one of the simpler bosses we've seen lately and some people still struggle on him on normal difficulty. That isn't Blizzard's fault.

Once the gaming community stops having a short attention span and a "whatever" attitude when it comes to personal performance and accountability, we will see more progression coming from a wide variety of guilds, not just hardcores.

Right so the game is to hard for the majority of people playing it. I mean theirs a certain degree of arrogance and presumption on your part but even if their wasn't you aren't gonna change the gamer mentality and guess what clearly blizzard isn't. You are a dying minority. It is all Blizzards fault. They know where their bread is buttered and if people like you leave the game will survive. Let's put it this way if content is made easier their will be some one to replace you. If content is made harder their is less likely to be some one to replace you or anyone who leaves for any reason. The increase in difficulty is actually unsustainable regardless of what era of gaming you lived in. The harder it gets the less people will accomplish it (the point of increasing challenge and complexity if I'm not mistaken), the less people accomplishing is the less people you have to recruit from. It cannot simple go up and up and up without some consequence and your seeing the consequences now. So in the end a correction will have to be made and that correction WILL NOT involve further delineation and further stratification (via some new theoretical difficulty mode) because that's not really a solution that will get people into normal raiding. They absolutely can and must backpeddle on boss design. The ONLY solution that has any hope of working is in my signature. Swallow it up. Love it. Live it. Or leave.

Sorry the degree of patronizing bs is never ending with this argument. I hope the developers embrace it though. Game could stand to lose a million or two more subs. People want casual guilds and casual raid styles and it's up to the developer to provide them, not listen to guys on forums with wild expectations that the community will change itself because of their magic forum post. It's the stupid entitlement argument over again even though it's not really true and even if it was it wouldn't be really good development feedback. I mean can you imagine if the developers tmmrw turned around to the players who left and said "HEY did you guys know you were just entitled? What's wrong with you? Shouldn't you resub right now now that you know your an entitled child?". I mean I think they want to say it and GC comes close but they know where their bread is buttered. Even if we embrace your idea about the gaming community as a whole (which I don't for the record, it's more likely just your projection and your trying to add some moral world view to the topic that didn't require it) it wouldn't matter. The developers aren't changing anybodies mind on this issue and neither are you. Players can and do and will just leave theirs guilds and leave their raids and leave the game as a whole.

In summation increased difficulty and complexity is unsustainable. A correction MUST occur if you wish to see raiding survive. If you'd rather it die then by all means carry on fighting.

[Deleted]

I play on 3 servers at the same time and while I do most stuff on a high pop server I spent more time on the other two realms previously even though they were always medium populated. So the thing is for quiet some time I knew nearly every single guild and raidgroup on those 2 servers, with many I even raided here and then as filler since I had many old connections everywhere. So in Ds I had like 10 85 chars who all raided DS/FL at some point on those 2 servers and as sad as it is.. they were great people and had nice communities but they simply were not people reading forums, checking patchnotes, knowing how to config addons, understanding mechanics while executing the tactics and whatever. Those people were once able to clear SW till muru, they got sartharion 3d in time, they got a few ulduar25 hardmodes done, TOC, ICC with only hc endboss lasting.. they broke before the iron will of the stone guards, elegon and galaron. When I started leveling my toons there after progress on my main, I helped a few guys out but it was pointless... The tanks realized they were not suited to tank because they had to do something that required making their UI a bit more comfortable. Healers suddenly felt worthless because people died on the first bosses more than on some hc in a previous raid and even though all the players were serious they could just not execute it, even though they understood the tactics. I felt powerless too, since I only could explain how they could do it or giving tips to improve their UIs and whatnot but the point is most of them felt completely out of place RIGHT THEN. Well I watched 3 groups around the same time fall like that... even though I only helped out those 3 I were told from other guilds that they suffer a similar decline. People who feel out of place don't come online to raids anymore, hard to replace, recruits have high dropout quote and finaly some better people leave for better guilds. Nowadays I stopped completely playing my alts there, since most people and guilds left / transfered out and the PuGs are not really successful. In pre-cata content or even DS PuGs were so easy do organize. You always had 2-3 people who entered first time but you would tell them what they had to do and it was alright - they didn't have to figure out how everything works 100% and why they have to do what they were told, some great people inside that raid could easily get them all through. But not anymore. Tactics have improved much, gear req and errorquota in gameplay execution are far less forgiving than earlier and the most terrible thing: It's often not only 2-3 people it's like3-5 who have no experience at all or just for 1-2 Bosses. It's just a drag and those servers will just die off like that. On a full server you can find enough good people to do your altruns but one thing is certain: It will take longer and longer the higher the current tier gets.

I thought blizzard realized that but then GC hit me with his vision how to play the game "one player = one char = one spec = one guild = one group = steady progress = getting better = fun" rationalism in his recent tweets and I just don'T care anymore. The guys who want to raid but have no experience and no gear will not catch up anymore. LFR guys who cannot grow into the veteran community that is in decline will just drop out as quick as they entered and when LFR is done the content is clear and they leave the game - guilds are only for perks and nothing else binds them to this game anymore. When my progressraid breaks apart and everyone I know there transfers out even I have no place to go anymore. No chilling corner, no nostalgia chats, no vent talk... Well that's it then even for me I guess... So I hope my guild can stand firm. Because down there, there is only darkness.

And the point of this thread seems to be to compare the dropoutrate WITHIN a tier and comparing these % with previous ones. I don't know anyone who throws himself for months against the 2nd or 3rd boss and then finally progressing "normally". Like "the wave will get even with time" is not going to happen here...

[Xjev]

Dude ICC was hard the first few months of its release, why the hell would you compare an instance which was up for more than a year and had that 30% buff, with a brand new instance?

[zaxlor]

Jin'rokh is one of the simpler bosses we've seen lately and some people still struggle on him on normal difficulty. That isn't Blizzard's fault.

How is it not Blizzard's fault? They've made a boss that the "majority" of players find too hard, give up and quit raiding. Blizzard either makes it easier to allow more people to kill it (thus finishing the raid earlier, cancelling a sub and waiting for the next raid), or it keeps the difficulty (making people quit raiding because they can't finish it and cancelling their sub).

It's a loser on either side. Make the raids easier, people finish them faster and they un-sub. Keep the difficulty and they un-sub due to road blocks.

I'd propose one of two ways to fix it, though one really punishes people starting late into the game.

The first would be to only have the final boss of a raid drop items, possibly weapons. All the others give currency. This way Blizzard can meter out how many items you get per week due to the lockout, allowing say a full set of gear to be aquired over the course of a month or two. Instead of releasing with 3 raids, you'd release with just 1 at the very start of the exspansion and then after say 2 months, the next is released and so on. This allows for content to "appear" to be coming quicker, does away with people fighting for gear and hating the stupid "You won gold!" box, as well as garunteeing you get something for your time spent inside a raid (providing the boss dies). The biggest downside to this is, if it takes you 1 month to "complete" each raid and there's 6 raids in turn, you're going to need other catch up mechanics to make sure people that join 6 months into an exspansion still have people to play with as well as being able to raid the newer content.

The other is to go back to how vanilla did things. 10 mans are now super easy, pretty much hack and slash dungon crawls. They don't have a lockout, you can run them as many times as you want but they only drop blues, yet do have set bonuses. 25 mans are the real raids with harder (but not much harder) bosses than you'd find in the 10 mans. Epics only drop here, so it'd help if you ran the 10 mans first but it'd all be balanced around gear you'd obtain from questing in the final level zone.

Continuing to create content that less and less people see, play or even complete is just comercial suicide. I don't want to give Blizzard money to see a raid, finish it in one day and then be bored for the other 29 days of sub. Nor do I want to give them money, strugle to find a guild, strugle against bosses and never see any improovment over that whole month either.

It's such a fine line and if Blizzard dosn't find it, then hopefully another MMO company will.

[Akraen]

Normal modes really need to be roll-over easy, save maybe the final boss. They should only be slightly higher than LFR because that is a reward for just organizing yourself as a guild to begin with. LFR ease is justified by it being a PuG queue system.

If Heroic is to stay as difficult as it is, or even stay at all, then Normal must be re-tuned to be easier or raiding will eventually just die out. 25M teams just trickle out, fuel the 10 mans, but then the 10 mans hit walls and people realize the work:life balance isn't worth it. MMO psychology is very tricky!

Here's a post I had on the topic for reference, @OP: I think you'll enjoy it:

Once, during Tier 6 I had wished there was such a thing as Heroic Mode raiding. My reasonings for this were mostly because I felt that it could be a little more difficult in an optional way. Back then my hopes were that it wouldn't be an increased item level (we were barely even aware of the concept of item levels then) drop, but either simply additional items, chance at trash epics from the boss, or vanity items/mounts. I never wanted it to be a required thing to go above and beyond. Blizzard needs to understand the definition of "required" - they claim many things in the current game, i.e. the 6000 vp requirement, are "optional." Yeah, so is uninstalling my game client and unsubscribing from WoW. That's also optional. Basically, the moment something assists in the progression of the core majority of a raid group, it is then required. Failure to do these things means you will struggle to find a guild and/or keep your raid spot in a guild such as ours or better.

The burden on the player is the perspective I wish to hone in on for my reasoning that my original opinion and wish for the game to change would have been, or in fact still be, successful. The idea of layering content by tier and then by item level does not add any benefit to the game. In fact, it is a net loss of content.

Quick Recap of History before I move on:
WoW Vanilla:
dungeon tier + 4 raid tiers
19 5-mans
3 10-mans
2 20-mans
5 40-mans
6 world bosses

WoW TBC:
dungeon tier + 3.5 raid tiers
17 5-mans
2 10-mans
6 25-mans
2 world bosses

WoW WotLK:
4 raid tiers
16 5-mans
8 raids, 10/25 each
0 world bosses
Activated Hard Modes in T8
Heroics T9, T10, Ruby Sanctum

WoW Cataclysm:
3 raid tiers
12 5-mans
5 raids, 10/25 each
0 world bosses
Heroics All

WoW MoP:
3 raid tiers
6 5-mans
5 raids, 10/25 each
5 world bosses
Heroics All

If there was nothing to do in WoW at max level, or if everything was achievable with little effort, quickly, and painlessly then the game would lose a lot of its subscriber base. The slot-machine style addiction is seeded in anyone based off the constant progression. So the burden factor on the player in Vanilla was toggled on time-investment. Anything was achievable given enough time in Vanilla WoW and progression paths were rather independent of each other. That has shifted now to a state where you are in a perpetual race to start the next race. One never felt completely "rushed" in Vanilla or TBC. This idea came about in WotLK when the era of rapid change began. The game takes new shape every couple months when a new patch hits. The absurd frequency of drastic changes to nearly each class and more makes it feel as though you are at your breaking point for burning out.

Now, considering all of the above there we do need to have ample ambitions within the game that can be achieved. Heroic modes give a next step beyond completing the content. However, they are at the expense of simply having more content tiers or fights within a tier. Blizzard has been unable to deliver the quantity of content in recent expansions because of having to tune fights for 3 different difficulties, each tier. In WotLK they experimented with a variety of types and then settled on the modern format. It does save on development time to require less encounter designers and additional encounters. Adding some extra damage and a mechanic or two to an already existing and themed boss is far easier.

What this method has done though, bizarrely, is to convince players that they are getting to do more content when they really are not. The progression race never truly contains Normal, they are now just a front-loaded roadblock for any raiding guild who is not one of the Top 10. If instances were tuned linearly with difficulty ramping up, or even if scaling simply were adjusted (number crunch plz?), then US Top 200 could be working on the same playing field as the Top 10, and simply just not finish it as quickly.

The need for WoWProgress standing and World of Logs Ranking is a cancer and scourge upon this game. It's created a hateful community full of bad advice, resentful behavior, and negavitiy all around. I've been partaking in this for a while now and it's been incredibly stressful as a guild leader. In Vanilla and TBC it was much easier to run a guild full of raiders because there wasn't this constant outside pressure to progress to maintain rankings. That's exactly what it is - an outside pressure. In the first six tiers of WoW, all force for progression came from within the guild-- people's personal desire to progress moreso than seeing their names on a website.

So why are the rankings and stuff connected and why would removing Heroic help that? Simply put, it will solve it entirely. When on patch day people begin a 13 boss instance without Heroic mode ilvl gear-- they will progress through that instance. The better guilds will kill more bosses than the less skilled or more casual, but it is within the same ilvl and the same lockouts. The mini-gearing phase doesn't need to happen, which means the Top 10 can't mix with alts in 10 raid groups and gear-stack an ilvl 522 team on opening week. This takes that top guild only mini-super-gearing-phase to an end and puts all of us back on the same progression path.

How to tune it? I think, if we use ToT as an example, I say we keep the first 6 bosses how they are. Bosses 7-9 then get tuned up to be roughly 10% harder than they currently are. Then the final 3 bosses are 20% harder. This gates an instance via difficulty and gear requirements rather than the wall of a difficulty unlocking normal-mode gear-padding week.

This could vary and be shuffled up as well. If they ever listen to players about linear progression again they'll find it good to add more difficult Optional side-bosses like Ouru, Bug Trio, and in a completely different "super-duper heroic" way, Algalon, Sinestra, and Ra-den. The reason Ra-den doesn't count in his own right is that he's at the end of the Heroic mode progression itself, which in a dual-layer sense makes him a redundant difficulty other than the fact that he's after Lei-Shen only. Remember, unlike Sinestra and Ra-den, Algalon could be accessed once you had the key, that's all it took.

So basically, I'm coming down on this argument from the view that Heroic Modes are redundant, difficulty can be more variable within a raid, and that heroic content doesn't count as double content-- that's not a fair assertion by Blizzard. Whether it be called Normal or Heroic is not my concern as much as having one raid lockout type, variable levels of difficulty. It is not what I want to have the current type, variable level of lockouts by difficulty.

[Totaltotemic]

Why are you comparing an un-nerfed ToT to an end of expansion DS and ICC? It's a rediculous comparison.

That's only the beginning.

10 and 25 man numbers are lumped together

The only numbers looked at are normal kills, which are irrelevant for large portions of the player base now (compared to heroic or LFR-only players)

Ignores tiers of various length like 1 year ICC/DS compared to 5 month T14

Tries to make linear progression conclusions from non-linear progression paths

End of expansion (x.0 patches give HUGE boosts to completion numbers) boost is ignored

The entire post follows the idea that correlation implies causation

There are so many logical inconsistencies with the OP that the entire thing is just one giant non-sequitur throwing data into graphs and making conclusions out of thin air pointing to graphs as evidence that at best could be a minor hint rather than actual proof. It's just another typical General Discussion post disguised as intelligent discussion.

[Risale]

Even if you remove the numbers from all raids prior to MoP you are still left with scary numbers in my honest opinion.
I myself am not in awe of LFR as it to me is nothing but faceroll and pray its to get quick easy gear and see the artwork thats it but when you look at the numbers that are doing normal boss mode and lack of people doing them knowing they still have 8 million subs then well damn.

Okay I am bringing in ICC now just for an example and the numbers might not be spot on but its an example.
Wrath had at its peak around 12 million subs and 48k guilds killed Arthas in 10 man normal.
Mop has 8 million subs but only 7k guilds killed Lei Shen to date that is.
So WoW lost 25% of its subs by those number you would expect to see 36k guilds killing Lei Shen at least this expac in 10 man normal.
Yes, yes I know in Wrath 25 man guilds did 10 man I know but like I said its an example even if you half the 48k to be more in line you would still expect roughly 18k guilds to kill Lei Shen in 10 man normal.
That means 11k more guilds need to kill him to be on par, I am not seeing that happening to be honest.

Ill say it again, damn those are scary numbers.

[Glorious Leader]

How is it not Blizzard's fault? They've made a boss that the "majority" of players find too hard, give up and quit raiding. Blizzard either makes it easier to allow more people to kill it (thus finishing the raid earlier, cancelling a sub and waiting for the next raid), or it keeps the difficulty (making people quit raiding because they can't finish it and cancelling their sub).

It's a loser on either side. Make the raids easier, people finish them faster and they un-sub. Keep the difficulty and they un-sub due to road blocks.

I'd propose one of two ways to fix it, though one really punishes people starting late into the game.

The first would be to only have the final boss of a raid drop items, possibly weapons. All the others give currency. This way Blizzard can meter out how many items you get per week due to the lockout, allowing say a full set of gear to be aquired over the course of a month or two. Instead of releasing with 3 raids, you'd release with just 1 at the very start of the exspansion and then after say 2 months, the next is released and so on. This allows for content to "appear" to be coming quicker, does away with people fighting for gear and hating the stupid "You won gold!" box, as well as garunteeing you get something for your time spent inside a raid (providing the boss dies). The biggest downside to this is, if it takes you 1 month to "complete" each raid and there's 6 raids in turn, you're going to need other catch up mechanics to make sure people that join 6 months into an exspansion still have people to play with as well as being able to raid the newer content.

The other is to go back to how vanilla did things. 10 mans are now super easy, pretty much hack and slash dungon crawls. They don't have a lockout, you can run them as many times as you want but they only drop blues, yet do have set bonuses. 25 mans are the real raids with harder (but not much harder) bosses than you'd find in the 10 mans. Epics only drop here, so it'd help if you ran the 10 mans first but it'd all be balanced around gear you'd obtain from questing in the final level zone.

Continuing to create content that less and less people see, play or even complete is just comercial suicide. I don't want to give Blizzard money to see a raid, finish it in one day and then be bored for the other 29 days of sub. Nor do I want to give them money, strugle to find a guild, strugle against bosses and never see any improovment over that whole month either.

It's such a fine line and if Blizzard dosn't find it, then hopefully another MMO company will.

While I agree in principle with what your saying I don't think it's equally a loser on either side. I think the number of people who will quit because raids are to easy is dwarfed by the number of players who would potentially quit because raids are to hard. Add to this a very simple distinction. If you leave because the raid is to easy well then someone will replace you. that's not a problem. If you leave for some other reason (or hell because a raid is hard and exhausting you the fuck out) then replacing you becomes a problem. Hard raids don't guarantee people stay but they do make replacing people who leave much harder to do and replacing players who used to cut it becomes much harder to do.

The solution doesn't involve any needless complication. The solution is to simple make raids easier and more appealing and more accessible. Put the cheese in the place it belongs where the mouse can actually get to it without needless frustration and complication. Make valor rewarding again. Make catch up better. Reduce the difficulty of both normal and heroic if that's what it takes. If theirs a minority who unsub because of it well to bad so sad. In other words make raids (and I would argue the game as a whole) beer league again.

[Xjev]

Normal modes really need to be roll-over easy, save maybe the final boss. They should only be slightly higher than LFR because that is a reward for just organizing yourself as a guild to begin with. LFR ease is justified by it being a PuG queue system.

If Heroic is to stay as difficult as it is, or even stay at all, then Normal must be re-tuned to be easier or raiding will eventually just die out. 25M teams just trickle out, fuel the 10 mans, but then the 10 mans hit walls and people realize the work:life balance isn't worth it. MMO psychology is very tricky!

Here's a post I had on the topic for reference, @OP: I think you'll enjoy it:

The problem with that is after a few runs people will get bored of raids..

[Glorious Leader]

The problem with that is after a few runs people will get bored of raids..

Not necessarily. I spent a year in ICC (admittedly on more than one toon mind you) but I wasn't bored until the very end. I'm 11/12 in ToT (should be 12/12 this week or next) and can't stand that fucking place 2 months in. As I keep saying it's better to be bored because you exhausted rewarding content then be bored because you hate what's being offered to you.

Granted LFR didn't exist back then and I probably would have been sick of ICC at some point along the way but not 2 months in I don't think. I can't wait for SoO and to get the fuck out of ToT. Shittiest raid ever. Next Ulduar my ass..

[Mormolyce]

This is not comparing apples to apples, the first tier of MoP has been out longer. And ICC was out for like a year. That has a huge impact on how many more casual players can go in and down things. You can do the old tiers of MoP cross realm as well, ie use Openraid.

As a member of a guild that clears all NMs the first week they open every single patch I can tell you the difficulty of NM is not the issue. I think the real barrier to casual entry into raids is the level of organisation, teamwork and cooperation that's required to make a raiding guild. That's a huge transition from clicking the queue button. It's a really difficult adjustment and the difficulty of the content has no impact on that.

---------- Post added 2013-05-31 at 01:17 AM ----------

That's only the beginning.

10 and 25 man numbers are lumped together

The only numbers looked at are normal kills, which are irrelevant for large portions of the player base now (compared to heroic or LFR-only players)

Ignores tiers of various length like 1 year ICC/DS compared to 5 month T14

Tries to make linear progression conclusions from non-linear progression paths

End of expansion (x.0 patches give HUGE boosts to completion numbers) boost is ignored

The entire post follows the idea that correlation implies causation

There are so many logical inconsistencies with the OP that the entire thing is just one giant non-sequitur throwing data into graphs and making conclusions out of thin air pointing to graphs as evidence that at best could be a minor hint rather than actual proof. It's just another typical General Discussion post disguised as intelligent discussion.

Yeah, all of this ^ as well.

[Glorious Leader]

As a member of a guild that clears all NMs the first week they open every single patch I can tell you the difficulty of NM is not the issue..

This statement alone automatically discounts your opinion on the matter. I'm sorry you might find this funny but your to good to have an opinion on what is to hard or not, certainly not an authoritative one. Like I don't expect that as a human being I should have much relevant perspective (enough to form a decent opinion at any rate) on the trials and tribulations of ants.

Yet people clearing normals in the first week come into the thread and protest that they aren't hard and that they know better and that heres all these other reasons. I'm sure somewhere some ant colony is dying to, I guess they just couldn't get organized?

[Deathpony]

Great Thread!

I just re-posted one of mine from the official wow forums showing the alarming drop in raid guild populace from ICC to ToT. I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who's thought of it! Great to see you breaking it down in more detail. I just went for the overall average per server.

[Keoren]

While I do not disagree with all of the points you have made, there are many serious and glaring issues with your arguments. Most of them have probably already been pointed out. The biggest issue is using the numbers from the last tiers of the expansions that were both extensively nerfed and available multiple times longer than Throne of Thunder has been at this point. The WotLK 10-man numbers are also not helpful in any way because of the completely different design of the content.

You can not draw effective conclusions by using these numbers alone. You would be better off leaving WotLK and Cataclysm out of this and simply posting the Mists of Pandaria data. Alternatively you could also use the data from Ulduar and Firelands. These would still not be perfect, but they would be more comparable. You could even try and adjust the sample periods of time.

which is why I didn't ever seriously consider finding a guild for normal mode raiding in this expansion.

You are always very vocal and against the current design. Do you have any perspective based on experience?

[Osmeric]

You are always very vocal and against the current design. Do you have any perspective based on experience?

I've been drawing conclusions from tracking data, not personal experience. Personal experience doesn't tell me how the overall population is reacting to content, but tracking data does.

My personal experience was that the normal mode raid content, as presented, was so unattractive I didn't seriously consider raiding it(*). That may not be the personal experience you are looking for, but judging by the numbers it may not be a rare reaction.

(*) excluding world bosses aside from the Oondasta, since they are LFR-level easy.

[Willfox]

You know, the attrition of normal raiders might have other factors behind it other than difficulty? Personally I found the setting of BC (killing demons) and WotLK (ALL THE SKELETONS!) much more appealing. Cata's setting was ok, but I personally find MoP's extremely dull and unexciting.

The sense of community on servers is dead. You used to know a bunch of good and bad players (and by good and bad I also mean how much of an ass they could be). You got a lot out of pugs in this respect. LFD and LFR has taken this away, I don't know if it was detrimental to subscribers, but it feels worse to me.

I know you said don't say it in your post, but the numbers you are using really do seem rather skewed. WotLK was all about 25mans, you used to pug bosses in 25 and 10mans. Everyone I knew had multiple alts that cleared a decent portion of ICC and some of the reason bosses like Sindragosa and LK weren't killed is because of the structure and the length of the raid. For example in pug runs, I'd quite frequently run out of time after clearing one or two of the wings. The 3 wings structure of ICC would also lead to people clearing different sections and balancing out the numbers. Valithria was super super easy, on loot ship and marrowgar level easy so you'd get people doing her and or other sections, but then bam, ran out of time in said pug run without even looking at Sindy.
I'm not saying difficulty wouldn't also play a role in this, as sindy was harder then the rest, but as a rather large raid you also have to remember people have life outside of wow and how long it takes to clear a place does have an impact.

Horridon on release was definately too hard for a second boss, but as it stands now, any remotely organised pug should be able to kill it. Last tier required intelligent tanks and there were a few fights where a tank not aware of their mechanics would just wipe a raid.

Also, the game is just getting old, people are gonna get bored with it, and old people that are already extremely bored with it probably aren't gonna come back.

---------- Post added 2013-05-31 at 11:17 AM ----------

That's only the beginning.

10 and 25 man numbers are lumped together

The only numbers looked at are normal kills, which are irrelevant for large portions of the player base now (compared to heroic or LFR-only players)

Ignores tiers of various length like 1 year ICC/DS compared to 5 month T14

Tries to make linear progression conclusions from non-linear progression paths

End of expansion (x.0 patches give HUGE boosts to completion numbers) boost is ignored

The entire post follows the idea that correlation implies causation

There are so many logical inconsistencies with the OP that the entire thing is just one giant non-sequitur throwing data into graphs and making conclusions out of thin air pointing to graphs as evidence that at best could be a minor hint rather than actual proof. It's just another typical General Discussion post disguised as intelligent discussion.

Also, this^ this^ and this^. Any mathematical analysis has to be carefully thought through

[Keoren]

I've been drawing conclusions from tracking data, not personal experience. Personal experience doesn't tell me how the overall population is reacting to content, but tracking data does.

You will have a harder time determining the actual choke points of the content if you haven't seen the whole picture. You can tell that something is happening, but you might not always be capable of explaining why.

That may not be the personal experience you are looking for, but judging by the numbers it may not be a rare reaction.

It is feedback worth taking into account.

since they are LFR-level easy.

I think Oondasta used to be quite comparable to a normal mode encounter.