A hard number on what percentage of players are serious raiders?

[Bigbazz]

Being a guild that has cleared 13/13hc and 1/13 Mythic would put you in the top 6000 guilds worldwide.. No hard numbers, but it should put into perspective that there are a lot of guilds raiding seriously, even with the health of the game at an alltime low.

[Amerissis]

Being a guild that has cleared 13/13hc and 1/13 Mythic would put you in the top 6000 guilds worldwide.. No hard numbers, but it should put into perspective that there are a lot of guilds raiding seriously, even with the health of the game at an alltime low.

What? 6000 guilds is not a lot. That's 120k-130k people, out of 6 million, 2%! And real mythic guilds is even less.

[clevin]

I don't think a single number is useful, you need a few different numbers. I'd want these:

1) how many people kill at least 1 boss on any organized difficulty (Normal and above, that is) while the tier is current. That is a good approximation of how many people are at all interested in organized raiding.

2) How many people clear any organized difficulty while that tier is current? That starts to tell us how many people might be at all serious about organized raiding (even if their current raid might not be good enough to go all the way to mythic), vs the people who just wander in with some friends and screw around to have fun.

3) How many people clear heroic when it's current. That's my baseline for people who are really serious. Mythic has other issues (need 20, only 20, etc). To me, this is the answer to people who can reasonably be called serious.

4) How many of the people who cleared heroic killed at least one mythic boss. Tells us the number of heroic raiders who are interested in Mythic enough to field 20 people and to cut those over 20 who aren't needed.

5) People who clear mythic when it's current.

[Deleted]

Even though this is not directly related to the question:

Does the fraction of players who are serious raiders or serious pet-battlers or serious achievment hunters really matter? Wouldn't a good policy aim towards every minority of the player base, without hurting other subsets of players?

On Topic:
Even if not accurate, because a huge fraction of players are not even listed on wowprogress, the statistics of the frontpage of http://www.wowprogress.com/ (scroll down) provide a good proxy on how many players are "serious raiders", given you deliver a definition on your own. The percantages are biased, but the absolut numbers are proper, hence.

[melodramocracy]

I see alot of arguments for and against ALOT of features, items, abilities etc that are based around the concept that raiders only make up X percentage all WoW players, basically just the warcraft equivalent of the 1% conundrum. But my question is, and I ask this just so I can have a real number for future debate. . . what IS that percentage? Is there a way to calculate this at least sort of accurately? because to be honest everytime someone quotes a number for this in an argument It's a different number.

So while I do PERSONALLY believe that the most sane business plan for any company is to pander to its largest demographic - using that as an argument when your obviously bullshitting your numbers seems sort of stupid.

Go look at current rankings for mythic guilds, multiply by 20, then figure out what percentage that is of the last posted sub numbers. Not 'exact', but that will get you in the ballpark.

[Srg56]

Wouldn't a good policy aim towards every minority of the player base, without hurting other subsets of players?

You can't please everybody, and the safest bet is pleasing the majority.

[Deleted]

Progress isn't the only thing. I usually find myself in casual raiding teams that have excessive experience but due to life commitments they can't really take it too seriously to the point of spending more than 3 raid nights plus a couple more hours. I believe the culmination of progress is happening for college students of around 20-24 years old because they have both a developed-enough intelligence and almost unlimited time.

[KyrtF]

I see alot of arguments for and against ALOT of features, items, abilities etc that are based around the concept that raiders only make up X percentage all WoW players, basically just the warcraft equivalent of the 1% conundrum. But my question is, and I ask this just so I can have a real number for future debate. . . what IS that percentage? Is there a way to calculate this at least sort of accurately? because to be honest everytime someone quotes a number for this in an argument It's a different number.

So while I do PERSONALLY believe that the most sane business plan for any company is to pander to its largest demographic - using that as an argument when your obviously bullshitting your numbers seems sort of stupid.

Define "serious". Define "hardcore".

There are lots of people who enjoy raiding. But for those for whom raiding is an important part of the game? Who want to take part in Mythic or heroic level raiding? Who see that as the focus of the game?

You're probably looking at a cap of about 20%, most of whom will be heroic level raiders. And there is a fair chance that is an over estimate. Raiding has always been a minority interest in WOW. Blizzard has done a lot to make it more accessible, and to encourage players to use the assets - which is why LFR came in; its expensive and nonsensical to use so many resources to develop content maybe 5% of your user base will see and fewer will complete while it is current.

But no one outside Blizzard will likely be able to give you a true figure

[Osmeric]

What I find interesting about the HFC numbers from WoW Progress is that N Arch completions are > H HFA completions, even though the former is considerably harder than the latter (at equivalent gear levels).

(To get normal mode completions, bring up the heroic page for the boss, then edit the URL to end in -normal instead of -heroic.)

[Jokerfiend]

I see alot of arguments for and against ALOT of features, items, abilities etc that are based around the concept that raiders only make up X percentage all WoW players, basically just the warcraft equivalent of the 1% conundrum. But my question is, and I ask this just so I can have a real number for future debate. . . what IS that percentage? Is there a way to calculate this at least sort of accurately? because to be honest everytime someone quotes a number for this in an argument It's a different number.

So while I do PERSONALLY believe that the most sane business plan for any company is to pander to its largest demographic - using that as an argument when your obviously bullshitting your numbers seems sort of stupid.

You can get decent numbers. There a various sites that pull from the Armory and give stats based on Achievements. You can get the general player total, from Blizzard, well at 5 million. Now this does take into account Asia, Europe, PI and Aus, and N/SA. So, 5 million players world wide.

So, let's say the numbers for WoW are split evenly for sake of the statement. So quarter 5 million at 1.25 million US players.

Now, only 3% of the total amount of players worldwide raid Mythic. But let's just say 3% of US players are raiding Mythic, that's 38.000 people. Not a lot.

The biggest factor is how much development time and resources are going into making all the stufff for Mythic only. Mounts, Achievements, Encounters, gear skins and recolors, ect. While no one besides the upper echelon of Blizzard can tell you, nor will they. Rightfully so.

How does this affect players?

The middle class in WoW feel left out the most. Lots of us are busy and casual because of it. That makes for a shitty environment for the slightly above average player. Catch up mechanics are useless, and nerfs only make us move on faster.

Middle class is stuck with nothing to do, after raiding. We aren't progression raiding(My definition, progression raiding is wiping more than 50 times on a single boss.), Heroics are useless, and the world map is useless. Dailies(currently) are a joke with no real rewards.

So the question arises, with the state of the game currently, do you think Blizzard allocated it's resources to best treat the player base? My answer would be no, they did not. With the middle game completely broken, crafting, dailies, reputations, and farming it shows that Blizzard did not.

You might say, WAIT A MINUTE JOKER! Each department has a budget!

Yeah, that makes my point for me. How? Well, if each department has a budget, then who allocates the budget and who assigns people to get it done?

So if raiding is the superior team. Then they are going to get the most out of their budget. While that reflects positive on the team, it's reflecting negatively overall to the game. Seeing a spectacular raiding environment and a shitty lower/mid game is an overall a negative. As most people won't be seeing the spectacular content, most find it wasted resources. I happen to agree.

Yeah. It really isn't bullshitting. There are decent numbers to get a general overall feel of allocation by reflecting how WoD has progressed the game. Honestly, most of WoDs improvements were before the expansion even launched. Which is why we are seeing a shitty expansion. Models, the squish, and art set us behind the 8 ball. And that has reflected gameplay. Too many resources went into all of these under the hood features.

While it might be better for the game, it doesn't change people's opinions because they don't directly benefit from the resources. At least not on the surface. Then you have to wonder if Blizzard is competent enough to have vision of these problems, because it sure didn't look like it with WoD.

We will see in Legion.

[brunnor]

I see alot of arguments for and against ALOT of features, items, abilities etc that are based around the concept that raiders only make up X percentage all WoW players, basically just the warcraft equivalent of the 1% conundrum. But my question is, and I ask this just so I can have a real number for future debate. . . what IS that percentage? Is there a way to calculate this at least sort of accurately? because to be honest everytime someone quotes a number for this in an argument It's a different number.

So while I do PERSONALLY believe that the most sane business plan for any company is to pander to its largest demographic - using that as an argument when your obviously bullshitting your numbers seems sort of stupid.

You can make any data spit out any numbers you want with the right criteria. Since there is no defined criteria in this case, there can be no real number. If you want a real number instead of a bunch of people arguing on what they think the criteria is, post your criteria.

[Spotnick]

A few may even argue that not having Mythic Archimonde down yet means you're casual.

I have defeated Archimonde in mythic and I have a casual schedule of 9h/week, so really, it's up to your own personal standards. I believe the "seriousness" is being committed to a schedule. I don't think I'm hardcore in any way.

[Deleted]

http://www.wowprogress.com/

Make up your own little world from this....

Progress doesn't say all. The game is old and has players that don't play that much anymore. I keep finding players that know more about the game than many currently farming full mythic but they just don't play that much anymore.

Are they not "serious"? They may be even more serious. But they play fewer hours.

Some wipe on a boss at 1% on Sunday and leave it for the next week due to time.

[Jokerfiend]

I have defeated Archimonde in mythic and I have a casual schedule of 9h/week, so really, it's up to your own personal standards. I believe the "seriousness" is being committed to a schedule. I don't think I'm hardcore in any way.

9 hours a week is a heft amount of time, when you have 90 hours home a week. 10% of your weekly activity is WoW. That's not casual.

Secondly, no way you are completely lying to prove a point. Not saying you aren't raiding Mythic but the amount of time. I did some calculations based on my average time raiding and wiping.

If you progression raid, at 50 wipes per boss(as I label it myself and that's being mega conservative), the average boss fight is 8 minutes. Let's say you wipe on average in those 50 wipes at 4.5 minutes. That's 3.75 hours a week just FIGHTING the boss. Let say's also, the set up times for those pulls were 3 minutes. 3x50+225 minutes is 6.25 hours PER BOSS. That's being mega conservative. From what I can tell, the bleeding edge are wiping around 350+ times per boss.

That's not including things like farming, questing, dailies, and Garrison management.

You are lying about your progression or the time you play. Pick.

If you only raid 9 hours a week, that's more than casual. I just don't believe you. Numbers don't lie, but you do..

[Jokerfiend]

You might be on to something here. My server is by no means a server competing for world first, but these guys have held server first for years. And look at it: Couple of these fights in mythic actually took them TWO HOURS to BEAT.

http://www.wowprogress.com/guild/eu/earthen-ring/Aeon



No way you do that shit on a 9 hrs a week schedule. I totally agree on this.

Well, I am tired of people throwing this around. I progression raided in Vanilla, personally know the kind of dedication and time it takes to make it as a team. Our Nefs wipes in BWL, shit we had 3 hour wipes a night for 2 weeks before we downed him.

It's intentionally misleading, telling people they scrubs because they can't do it too. Well, numbers certainly don't lie, and the number say he didn't either. So I dunno.

[Osmeric]

You might be on to something here. My server is by no means a server competing for world first, but these guys have held server first for years. And look at it: Couple of these fights in mythic actually took them TWO HOURS to BEAT.

That doesn't mean it took them two hours of tries before they downed it for the first time. It means the shortest time between when they killed the preceding boss and then that one, in some week, was two hours. As the boss goes on farm, that number will go down.

[Tijuana]

We only have the exact numbers of MoP.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/...tweets-dlc-439

I mainly look at the first boss of siege of Orgrimmar to see the participation on raids.
It goes more or less like this:

-70% of the population does LFR
-20% does normal raiding
-10-5% does Heroic (only 1% of the population killed Heroic Garrosh)

Are these figures for lvl 100 characters, or for whole accounts? Is it possible many of these characters are the same person being counted multiple times? I ask because it seems unlikely anyone but Blizz can tie the characters together to the same accounts.

[Jokerfiend]

That doesn't mean it took them two hours of tries before they downed it for the first time. It means the shortest time between when they killed the preceding boss and then that one, in some week, was two hours. As the boss goes on farm, that number will go down.

Of course, but as a team you STILL have to make progression. You can average it, mostly. If you take the median time it takes to down a boss, a decently conservative estimate, plus set up times per boss. It does average about 3-5 hours PER boss.

Obviously, times decrease as people gear. Then that leads to my next question, how does one down M Archi and still raid 9 hours a week? Because once we had Rag on farm the 3rd week into us raiding together, MC was 2 hours.

We did MC, Ony, and ZG in like 5 hours. ZG took longer than MC most of the time, and running to the instances was an hour.

All I am saying, is something doesn't add up.

[ro9ue]

I feel like if you have a single Heroic boss kill in current content that makes you hardcore. I'm casual as fuck and I'll even hop into a Normal pug here and there.

Doing Heroic means you actually raid for a challenge, otherwise there's no real reason to go up from Normal mode.

I'd ballpark it at around 5% of active subs at any given time are "serious raiders".

[Jokerfiend]

Are these figures for lvl 100 characters, or for whole accounts? Is it possible many of these characters are the same person being counted multiple times? I ask because it seems unlikely anyone but Blizz can tie the characters together to the same accounts.

Umm, there was something like this on the front page about 3 weeks ago. With all of the Pet stuff, how many actually did Pet Battles and such. There was an explanation stating they can eliminate the same accounts, by some kind of cross check.

At least that's how I understood it. My guess it's fairly correct.