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  1. #1
    Immortal Pua's Avatar
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    Question Is raiding dying? A statistical analysis.

    I have HEAVILY reconstructed the presentation of the data in order to fix some endemic problems; problems so significant, that they were presenting entirely the wrong conclusions. My bad. If there are any other suggested alterations, let me know.

    So, yeah. As you all know, I like messing about with raiding statistics in order to find out exactly how it's getting along. I'm one of those strange people that believes raiding is not part of the reason for World of Warcraft's success, but I do like to prove these things if possible. I've presented a set of data here to establish just how organised raiding has moved on since Wrath of the Lich King and, prior to the data, I'm going to give you some of my conclusions. First, though, a quick warning:

    The data is not perfect.

    If you come into the discussion and start whining about data imperfections, you've proven only that you can't read. I'll talk about some of the problems AFTER the presentation of the data itself, but save yourself trouble. I know it's not right. It is, however, the best mix I thought it could be.

    So, some conclusions.

    1) Raiding is declining overall, and has been throughout the period of data presented. There are some peaks and troughs, but the overall trend is going down.

    2) The removal of Wrath’s 10-man setting, designed to provide easier raiding for more casual groups, had a “cataclysmic” impact on participation. Subscriptions from Icecrown to Firelands only dropped by 11.3%, but barely a quarter of players killing Arthas went on to kill Ragnaros; those killing both on their toughest setting was just over 7%. There is, however, a caveat to be borne in mind here – namely, that the extremely challenging tuning of Ragnaros, particularly pre-nerfs, probably accounted for a lot of this. That doesn’t change the fact that Wrath raiders left Cataclysm en masse, especially considering that more players defeated Arthas than defeated Shannox.

    3) Mists of Pandaria recovered from the losses of Cataclysm, particularly at higher difficulty levels, but still saw a decline in normal participation. It was, however, at a slower rate thanks to raiding losses being less than subscriber losses. Blizzard did seem to learn from the mistakes of a brutally punishing end boss however, as more players killed Lei Shen and Ra-den than did the Firelord (in the case of Ra-den, over four times as many). Mists of Pandaria retained raiders better than Cataclysm did, which meant players leaving during this time likely left for other reasons.

    4) Warlords of Draenor continues the drop, but there’s a marked difference between Mythic participation and heroic. Players participating in the normal tier by killing a single boss has actually increased, and this is likely due to the introduction of flexible raid sizes for normal and heroic, as well as the improved group finder increasing encounter knowledge. While a third of all players walked off at this point, Blackhand saw nigh-93% of those killing Lei Shen turning up to kill him. The problem is, of course, Mythic; around three quarters of those entering the hardest setting at all stuck around, with just under a fifth completing the Mythic tier from previous. The introduction of flexible raid sizes was a clear success, but the imposition of a hard 20-man limit on Mythic severely tempered this success.

    5) Normalized to include Far East accounts, the average participation rate in heroic/Mythic raiding is approximately 4.1% of players – roughly a percentage or so away from those completing a tier on the difficulty below (around 5%). These numbers remain small, but overall raid participation (players killing at least a single boss) is around 10% of all players. Essentially, this means that while many might agree with Jeffrey Kaplan about the game feeling bigger if there’s unbeaten content out there, even the absence of Mythic would mean that 95% of players still have unbeaten content to see.

    6) The number of players capable of defeating the hardest boss has never hit the 1% mark. Arthas is the standout, undoubtedly due to the length of his tier and stacking nerfs, and the average is around 0.6%. It's notable that the percentage is dragged down by the extremely difficult Ragnaros, but dragged up by Arthas.

    The highlights, then:

    Raid participation is down across the board; participation, completion, and players taking up the biggest challenges;
    Flexible raid sizes appear to have been a huge success, slowing the decline beyond general subscription loss;
    The imposition of the 20-man Mythic setting has had a significant impact on its participation rates;
    The introduction of LFR is no surprise given the incredible collapse of Firelands participation;
    Roughly 5% of all players complete a tier on normal/heroic, which typically leads to that guild killing at least one heroic/Mythic boss;


    And:

    Despite all of this, organised raid participation and completion is still small and, in the case of heroic/Mythic, pitifully so.

    Anyway, here's the data.

    Wrath of the Lich King: 11.5 million subscribers.

    Arthas 10: 38,261 - 382,610
    Arthas 25: 10,846 - 271,150 = 653,760 players
    Arthas 10 (H): 2,854 - 28,540
    Arthas 25 (H): 627 - 15,675 = 44,215 players

    Cut off - 12th October, 2010 (patch 4.0)

    Cataclysm: 10.2 million subscribers - 11.3% down from Icecrown

    Shannox 10: 36,336 - 363,360
    Shannox 25: 4,486 - 112,150 = 475,510 players
    Shannox 10 (H): 11,910 - 119,100
    Shannox 25 (H): 2,405 - 60,125 = 179,225 players

    Ragnaros 10: 10,897 - 108,970
    Ragnaros 25: 2,170 - 54,250 = 163,220 players (75.1% down from Arthas)
    Ragnaros 10 (H): 125 - 1250
    Ragnaros 25 (H): 79 - 1975 = 3225 players (92.7% down from Arthas%)

    Cut off - 19th September, 2011 (patch 4.3)

    Mists of Pandaria: 7.7 million subscribers - 24.5% down from Firelands

    Jinrokh 10: 32,847 - 328,470
    Jinrokh 25: 3,374 - 84,350 = 412,820 players (13.4% down from Shannox)
    Jinrokh 10 (H): 12,890 - 128,900
    Jinrokh 25 (H): 1,394 - 34,850 = 163,750 players (8.6% down from Shannox)

    Lei Shen 10: 17,323 - 173,230
    Lei Shen 25: 1,455 - 36,375 = 209,605 players (28.4% up from Ragnaros)
    Ra-den 10 (H): 1,075 - 10,750
    Ra-den 25 (H): 254 - 6,350 = 17,100 players (430.2% up from Ragnaros)

    Cut off - 10th September, 2013 (patch 5.4)

    Warlords of Draenor: 5.2 million subscribers - 32.5% down from ToT

    Gruul (H) x15: 28,285 - 424,275 players (2.8% up from Jinrokh)
    Beastlord Darmac (M): 5,995 - 119,900 players (26.8% down from Jinrokh)

    Blackhand (H) x15: 13,010 - 195,150 players (6.9% down from Lei Shen)
    Blackhand (M): 660 - 13,200 players (22.8% down from Ra-den)

    Cut off - 22nd June, 2015 (patch 6.2)

    ----------------------------------------------

    - The first comparison problem is that Icecrown Citadel is hard to quantify. The exact impact of the progressive nerfs, as well as the inclusion of Ruby Sanctum, may well be buffing the numbers beyond those presented - in fact, it's almost guaranteed that they are.

    - I've used mid-expansion raid tiers as Hellfire Citadel isn't finished, while launch and conclusion tiers all have different things influencing them. LFR and Dragon Soul, Flex and Siege of Orgrimmar, different stagger timings, that type of thing. The comparisons are imperfect as a result of this.

    - The Firelands is by far the smallest of the instances, but houses the hardest boss in Ragnaros. The cut off date is also based on the September 19th nerfs that went in, effectively gutting the difficulty of most bosses. This will have an impact on the numbers.

    - The Throne of Thunder lasted a lot longer than the other tiers presented here in its complete state, but also had a different end-boss when compared to its normal version. This shouldn't have impacted on numbers too much, however, given that it was clear that Ra-den was the last boss and not Lei Shen.

    - Blackrock Foundry is a nuisance, given that it was a very short tier for a raid of its size and that it was led into by Highmaul. It was also the first proper tier where flexible numbers are counted, and I've averaged them out at 15. The average could be higher or lower than that, which would skew the numbers somewhat.

    ------------------------------------------------

    Summary

    So, what should Blizzard do about all this? I suppose that's the question.

    First up, they should look at these numbers and conclude that, despite all of the effort, nothing is going to substantially increase raid participation. Despite constant changes and tweaks, and the fact that raiders remain more likely to retain their subscription than non-raiders, Blizzard have taken a good half-decade attempt at stopping the decline to no avail.

    Further possible evidence of this is that the closest percentage of players moving on to the highest difficulty setting was in Firelands, which was the smallest raid sampled (more players killed heroic Shannox, than Ragnaros... Who was required to unlock him!). When raids are bigger, players are finishing the tier and seem less likely to start again on another setting. This is particularly true when a needless 20-man setting is introduced, arbitrarily locking out the majority of raiders who prefer smaller groups. The impact this has on guilds or groups starting up in the first place is difficult to quantify.

    And lastly.

    Focusing all of your development time on 10% of your players doesn't appear to be a successful plan when almost half of your playerbase walks off. The community also rejects extremely challenging content, almost universally, proven by barely 4% ever getting involved in it. It's also worth remembering that the biggest bridge does appear to be where there's a hard-cap of 20 players, but more data is needed to prove this is an issue; Hellfire Citadel is still arguably in its infancy.

    And that's it for now. I'm sure other people will have plenty to say so... Have at it!

  2. #2
    Deleted
    Raiding. This is a game wide problem. Why do you specialize it to raiding?

  3. #3
    Immortal Pua's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by tobindax View Post
    Raiding. This is a game wide problem. Why do you specialize it to raiding?
    The question was:

    "Is raiding dying?"

    Not:

    "Is World of Warcraft dying?"

    Any kind of analysis such as this needs to be specific. The overall dumping of subscriptions since the launch of Warlords is too obtuse to attribute to one or two causes - there are guaranteed to be several.

  4. #4
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    Raiding is not the problem, on the contrary raiding is fine and lfg one of the best things blizzard has done.
    Whats not fine is OUTDOOR content that needs to get fixed.

  5. #5
    What this data tells me is that the casual non raiding players are leaving wow. The only thing WoD has to offer in terms of decent content are the raids. It makes sense that a larger % of the game's current population is raiding this xpac than others since there is shit else to do and people are either raiding or just quitting the game.

  6. #6
    I don't think its raiding that's dying out, but the entirety of the game (and maybe the genre overall).

  7. #7
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    Isn't the main problem with raiding that the playerbase is getting older and has less time to spend on organized raids?

    I've experienced this as a growing problem the last years.

  8. #8
    The Patient
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    Personally wouldn't take data from the first bosses in tiers. Would pick bosses from the middle (like Atremedes from t11, Alyszrazor from t12 etc etc.), considering many guilds might, for fun, kill one boss or two, then later on just stop for whatever reason.

    Picking a middle means we're getting somewhat reliable data from players that actually like to progress.

    But that's just me.
    Last edited by Manthis; 2015-10-01 at 08:12 AM. Reason: Dem typos!
    Thread: Ranged vs Melee which is easier in PvE?
    'Originally Posted by Thelxi'
    Dragon farts stink so ranged

  9. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by m i s t View Post
    I don't think its raiding that's dying out, but the entirety of the game (and maybe the genre overall).
    Raiding can't die out given that it has never really been alive.

  10. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by Fummockelchen View Post
    Raiding is not the problem, on the contrary raiding is fine and lfg one of the best things blizzard has done.
    Whats not fine is OUTDOOR content that needs to get fixed.
    Read the topic title again
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0H3-N9zoI5c Amazing video of 60+ devilsaurs raiding Undercity!


    My God, what a horrible creation. People seeing what they want? Thank God they tried to shy away from that. I know it pisses me off when I'm in an heroic raid, yet in the back of my head all I can think is 'some casual player is playing a heroic dungeon and not wiping.' -Vodkarn

  11. #11
    Immortal Pua's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by TheSerialSniper View Post
    What this data tells me is that the casual non raiding players are leaving wow. The only thing WoD has to offer in terms of decent content are the raids. It makes sense that a larger % of the game's current population is raiding this xpac than others since there is shit else to do and people are either raiding or just quitting the game.
    Well, that's not strictly true.

    Remember, that Warlords of Draenor has managed to shelve almost half of its launch subscribers; and the increase in raid participation is nowhere near that level of swing. I personally believe that the increased numbers doing heroic raids now is directly attributable to flexible raid sizes (with a preference for bigger groups), rather than a sudden upturn in interest, but that can't be proven.

    In short, raiders are every bit as likely to leave as non-raiders. What the data tells me is that everyone needs better access to content outside of instances, and not just raiders. Remember; most raiders, according to Blizzard themselves, aren't in the hardcore group that does nothing else. These numbers also back that up.

    So ditching everything, in order to shove raids, is an almost wholly pointless exercise if the impact is going to be half of your playerbase walking off.

    Quote Originally Posted by Manthis View Post
    Personally wouldn't take data from the first bosses in tiers. Would pick bosses from the middle (like Atremedes from t11, Alyszrazor from t12 etc etc.), considering many guilds might, for fun, kill one boss or two, then later on just stop for whatever reason.

    Picking a middle means we're getting somewhat reliable data from players that actually like to progress.

    But that's just me.
    It's a fair point, but I'm trying to show the number of people raiding at all. In other words, at its absolute best, raid participation sits on an average of 6.1%.

  12. #12
    I assume that you are using completion figures from wowprogress? If so, it is worth noting that their figures contain only western players which would mean, at least in western regions, participation as a percentage is roughly double what you have.

  13. #13
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    The game is getting old in whole. Veteran players are getting old in whole, the competitors are catching up and the world is evolving. Most of what is going on is people seeing a bystander sitting next to a crime scene and blaming the bystander instead of the criminal that they can't see.

    e.g. "It's LFR that did it". A common case of blaming a bystander.

    LFR if anything would destroy the game if it was removed.

  14. #14
    Immortal Pua's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by tobindax View Post
    The game is getting old in whole. Veteran players are getting old in whole, the competitors are catching up and the world is evolving. Most of what is going on is people seeing a bystander sitting next to a crime scene and blaming the bystander instead of the criminal that they can't see.

    e.g. "It's LFR that did it". A common case of blaming a bystander.

    LFR if anything would destroy the game if it was removed.
    Was this meant to be posted in another topic?

    Nobody's talking about LFR. I've no idea why you are.

    This post is entirely about organised raiding, and the evolution of it through the last several years.

  15. #15
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    OP, the increases in percentage of participation is nothing weird. It's just that most players playing right now are Veterans and they become more veterans by the minute. Almost no one started playing in WoD, very few in MoP and most have started either in WotLK or the end of TBC.

    It's simply a game full of veterans, old players and people that gradually know the game more and more.

    The big irony is that people complain it's getting "easy" when it's really them that found it hard before.

  16. #16
    Pandaren Monk Tart's Avatar
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    I really hope so, they might focus on other things now.

  17. #17
    Quote Originally Posted by Amulree View Post
    Remember, that Warlords of Draenor has managed to shelve almost half of its launch subscribers; and the increase in raid participation is nowhere near that level of swing. I personally believe that the increased numbers doing heroic raids now is directly attributable to flexible raid sizes (with a preference for bigger groups), rather than a sudden upturn in interest, but that can't be proven.
    Exactly. Flex tech is awesome. In previous expansions you had a tight roster, locking out a lot of potential raiders from participation. Nowadays all these people can join, thus the increase in numbers. Also, WoD's raid "balance" favors big group tremendously, so there is absolutely zero point in not taking extra player into your raid, even if that player is a Donald-level keyboard turner.
    No more time wasted in WoW.. still reading this awesome forum, though

  18. #18
    its not dying - its fluctuating but only thing which this data is proving is that it always has been a niche activity which attracted 5 % of playerbase - participation was always horrible and it still is - the only reason why raiidng is still in game in current shape is because they put in lfr to justify developement costs.

  19. #19
    I don't understand why people don't read the data they're presented with and just continue to ramble what they already had in their minds.

    >=hc raider percentages staying relatively same seems quite interesting to me.

  20. #20
    Herald of the Titans Darksoldierr's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Amulree View Post
    The question was:

    "Is raiding dying?"

    Not:

    "Is World of Warcraft dying?"

    Any kind of analysis such as this needs to be specific. The overall dumping of subscriptions since the launch of Warlords is too obtuse to attribute to one or two causes - there are guaranteed to be several.
    I think the second impact the first greatly. You cannot analyze the first without factoring in the second
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