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)
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- 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.
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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!