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

[Jaransan]

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.

[TheWindWalker]

The issue is the word "serious." You'd have to define it. Do you mean raiders who focus purely on Mythic progression? Then that statistic should pop up shortly when someone googles the right bar graph from this very site (posted every couple of months on the front page, oddly enough) Even then people on this very site will argue that you're not "actually Hardcore" unless you've made it to the last few bosses in Mythic within the first couple of months. A few may even argue that not having Mythic Archimonde down yet means you're casual.

[ComputerNerd]

No official number is going to prevent complaints from someone determined to complain, as shown by sub numbers.
They will be selectively interpreted to suit an argument or stated to be lies.

So numbers wouldn't achieve anything positive.

The last poster makes a good point about arbitrary measures of what is "real raiding".

[Deleted]

The only way to find that information is if blizzard releases it themselves.

Some people pull the 1% bullshit to support their paper arguments. Others try to pull armory stats but those are inaccurate as well since obviously 6 mil subs doesn't equal 6 mil active players. So the percentages become MUCH smaller.

The reality is what you said in your post, since Blizzard put a lot of resources into raiding, it's safe to assume that majority of the active player base is into raiding. Of course there's gonna be a lot of butthurt here that will try to convince you otherwise.

[Jaransan]

When I say serious raiding I don't even mean Mythic or first three weeks progression or whatever that is. I just mean the percentage of players that do at MINIMUM Normal tier raids when theyre current content.

I'm not stupid or rude enough to assume that just because people don't raid mythic that raids don't mean anything TO them. And despite tuning being vastly more significant to High end raiders, it still EFFECTS everyone else whos into it at any level besides LFR.

On the other hand, basically very few people I personally interact with raid. In fact most people I meet out and about my server do basically everything but raid. Hence the question. My experiences are subjective. I'm pretty sure the number I'm looking for is greater than the 1% lots of people flaunt, but not by any means a majority of players anymore. Theres too much to do, and too many complaints every xpac about raiding being the only content for that to be the case.

[guardian_titan]

Only numbers we see are when Chaud does the odd bar graph related to achievements. He did one not that long ago and chances are he'll do one again in a few months. Beyond that, Blizzard doesn't tend to release that information. All we know is that 1% of players saw Kel'thuzad and not many more saw Kil'jaeden when they were current but millions saw Deathwing in comparison. That's about as official as we'll get so if we want numbers, we have to rely on Chaud's graphs. His graphs only tend to cover around 2 million players, but that's a pretty good sample size which is roughly a third of the overall player base (at this point in time). How many surveys can poll even a tenth of its base let alone a third?

[Deleted]

I see serious raiders as those that killed mythic archimonde before the item upgrades came in 2 weeks ago.

Entire mythic pool is around 113960 players, the players that killed it before the upgrades came in is about 5880 players (294 guilds).

That means the most serious core of mythic raiders only represents 5.1% of the entire mythic raiding player pool.

(Would be even less if you compare it with heroic and normal, but I don't think you can really compare those with mythic).

(There's also no point to compare to the entire player base, because not everyone raids, which are invalid statistics).

[Sierra85]

you can be a serious LFR raider.

seriousness is just a players mentality.

[PaladinBash]

I'm serious enough to kill bosses and be good but not serious enough to kill them before anyone else or be the best. I imagine the vast majority of the so-called 'Mythic community' is like me. My guild sure is. Almost every guild I've ever been in is. I know there's loads of people that are even lazier or shittier than me but it can't just be 1%.

I imagine there's loads of people that have a similar mindset to me but don't have the time to raid so don't bother. Maybe they're just bored as fuck or burnt out like I've been before. Maybe they're just shit and nobody wants to raid with them. Who knows? I definitely think the raiding community is pretty big and broad and the absolute top ultra serious people are indeed extremely rare. I was pretty serious back in the day but not for years. There were definitely more of them back then than now. I don't know what happened to all of them but they usually quit or ended up slackers like me.

I just don't know what the fuck people do outside of raiding though. I used to PVP for years and years but it has been a hack-filled disgrace for ages and I refuse to endure it any longer. I know there's lots of people that do things besides raids, I just have no idea just what that is or how often they do it. There's certainly more of them than there are of people like me. Many more. I just doubt that it's 99% of the entire playerbase.

[Alvito]

Define serious however you want. Raiding is one of the things the game was built around, if you remove that then people will stop playing the game and move on to other things. This wouldn't just be "serious" raiders, when you limit options you limit desires to do things.

[purebalance]

The only way to find that information is if blizzard releases it themselves.

Some people pull the 1% bullshit to support their paper arguments. Others try to pull armory stats but those are inaccurate as well since obviously 6 mil subs doesn't equal 6 mil active players. So the percentages become MUCH smaller.

The reality is what you said in your post, since Blizzard put a lot of resources into raiding, it's safe to assume that majority of the active player base is into raiding. Of course there's gonna be a lot of butthurt here that will try to convince you otherwise.

The real issue is players come to the game and it's not for them and they want to play it still for some god awful reason and demand the game be catered to them instead. Making WoW not about raiding would be like me demanding they make Magic the Gathering about being able to play solo or making Resident Evil never have a zombie jump out and scare you.

The problem is Activision and Blizzard wants to keep those players who the game isn't for at all costs because $$$>integrity of the game.

- - - Updated - - -

Only numbers we see are when Chaud does the odd bar graph related to achievements. He did one not that long ago and chances are he'll do one again in a few months. Beyond that, Blizzard doesn't tend to release that information. All we know is that 1% of players saw Kel'thuzad and not many more saw Kil'jaeden when they were current but millions saw Deathwing in comparison. That's about as official as we'll get so if we want numbers, we have to rely on Chaud's graphs. His graphs only tend to cover around 2 million players, but that's a pretty good sample size which is roughly a third of the overall player base (at this point in time). How many surveys can poll even a tenth of its base let alone a third?

Yeah no it was not 1% because that goes back to the whole inactive accounts that Blizzard oh so loves to count. Also, there were people actively raiding other raids when Naxx was out unlike now. If you're not good, you don't deserve to see content. It's been a video game mantra since the beginning of video games. Stop demanding you be in the Super Bowl when you're a Pee Wee player.

[Acelius]

*snip*
'
/10char

[Deleted]

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)

[Tech Priest Bojangles]

Yeah no it was not 1% because that goes back to the whole inactive accounts that Blizzard oh so loves to count. Also, there were people actively raiding other raids when Naxx was out unlike now. If you're not good, you don't deserve to see content. It's been a video game mantra since the beginning of video games. Stop demanding you be in the Super Bowl when you're a Pee Wee player.

If it was 5% or even 10% those are still shitty numbers.

[Deleted]

If it was 5% or even 10% those are still shitty numbers.

If you bothered looking at the link above you, more than 40% did flex in SoO (which is today's normal). And like the poster there says, those numbers are lower than the reality, since you can't get the real picture from the armory.

If you're talking about the hardest difficulty (Heroic/Mythic), 10% is more than fine. That's a healthy amount of people tackling the hardest challenge a game has to offer. For the rest of the people, there are other difficulties.

[Huehuecoyotl]

No idea what the number is, but I would suggest that the core of "serious raiders" could be defined as "anyone that has at least one boss kill in the highest difficulty of a raid tier, while that tier is still current and excluding the last tier of an expansion".

But even that would rule out people who want to raid at that level, and can't find a guild. Or don't currently have the time. And you could argue that some of the people in that group don't actually want to do it, but don't see any alternative as a way of progressing.

Long story short; the reason why you see so many numbers for this group, is that there are dozens of equally valid ways of defining it. As long as people provide actual stats, backed up by data, I wouldn't get too hung up on the percentages being different.

[Spinster]

The only way to find that information is if blizzard releases it themselves.

Some people pull the 1% bullshit to support their paper arguments. Others try to pull armory stats but those are inaccurate as well since obviously 6 mil subs doesn't equal 6 mil active players. So the percentages become MUCH smaller.

The reality is what you said in your post, since Blizzard put a lot of resources into raiding, it's safe to assume that majority of the active player base is into raiding. Of course there's gonna be a lot of butthurt here that will try to convince you otherwise.

Oh come on. The developers have openly admitted that they make the game they feel passionate about. Thus all those resources poured into raiding. They don't allocate resources wisely at Blizzard and they never have.

- - - Updated - - -

Define serious however you want. Raiding is one of the things the game was built around, if you remove that then people will stop playing the game and move on to other things. This wouldn't just be "serious" raiders, when you limit options you limit desires to do things.

I don't think they should remove raiding. I do, however, think the devs should recognize that most players don't raid and respect that segment of their customers instead of gimping everything but raiding to force all to raid.

[Tech Priest Bojangles]

If you bothered looking at the link above you, more than 40% did flex in SoO (which is today's normal). And like the poster there says, those numbers are lower than the reality, since you can't get the real picture from the armory.

If you're talking about the hardest difficulty (Heroic/Mythic), 10% is more than fine. That's a healthy amount of people tackling the hardest challenge a game has to offer. For the rest of the people, there are other difficulties.

Okay but we was referring to original Naxx, that hardly anyone saw. They spent a lot of resources to make that place but nobody got to see it, which was unacceptable from multiple viewpoints.

[Lochton]

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't obtain a hard number on it, unless you line all playing players up and ask them.

[MoanaLisa]

No idea what the number is, but I would suggest that the core of "serious raiders" could be defined as "anyone that has at least one boss kill in the highest difficulty of a raid tier, while that tier is still current and excluding the last tier of an expansion".

That's a good definition. The only thing I'd change would be to include heroic with it. I would exclude Raid Finder and Normal. And then of course there are raid teams that haven't cleared a Mythic boss yet but are working on it. Cynics would say they're not serious but I'm not quite that cynical.

If you do make it just Mythic those percentages are quite low. The link at the end of this post is 3.1 million accounts and outside of Kargath (first boss of Highmaul) the usual percentage of Mythic bosses killed in Highmaul while current hovers between 2%-5%. BRF was still rather new (Mythic launched February 17th) when this analysis was done (March 27th) so those completion rates will not be anywhere near complete. People can decide for themselves whether or not that's OK or dismal. I would like to have had Heroic broken out but Mythic is what we have. 2%-5% for Mythic sounds about right to me.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...-Rift-Wardrobe

EDIT: I'm sure that Chaud will run another analysis for Warlords one of these days.