Firelands Changes Impact
Blizzard made major changes to Firelands a few times during Patch 4.2 (July 26th and Sept. 20th) to allow more players to see the Firelands content. We take a look at just how many more players were able to down Heroic Ragnaros and clear Normal Firelands. Data was looked at for over 2.7 million level 85 characters, most of them being in the US.

Class balance for characters with the Heroic Ragnaros achievement was also graphed. The Heroic Firelands Boss Kill Ease graph displays the percentage of characters that have killed each boss, provided they have killed at least one of the Heroic Firelands bosses.

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2011 Halloween Pumpkin Carving Contest
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
The Halloween season has finally arrived, and we’re ready to cut straight to the heart of the holiday. If you’re dying to pick up a knife and hack, gash, slash, and jab at something, then you might be excited to hear that as of October 11, Blizzard’s 2011 Halloween Pumpkin Carving Contest has officially begun! Unleash your magical axes, psi blades, chitinous claws, and other creative cutlery to carve up Blizzard-themed jack-o’-lanterns of epic awesomeness. If you’re unclear as to what epic awesomeness looks like in the flesh, you can check out last year’s winners for some inspiration.

We’ll choose ten of the grandest Cucurbita to earn a delightful prize package consisting of:

  • Marauder StarCraft II Gaming Keyboard
  • Banshee StarCraft II Gaming Headset
  • Spectre StarCraft II Gaming Mouse
  • StarCraft II Zerg Edition Messenger Bag

Don’t delay, start carving right away! The ninth annual pumpkin carving contest ends on October 25, so be sure to check out the contest page for rules and eligibility and get straight to slicing.

Fan Art Update
The World of Warcraft Fan Art Section has been updated with five new pieces of fan artwork set within the Warcraft universe.


This article was originally published in forum thread: Statistics: Firelands Changes Impact, Pumpkin Carving Contest, Fan Art started by Boubouille View original post
Comments 348 Comments
  1. Firebert's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Todgruppe View Post
    Raiding is the only thing to do in this game, nothing else exists. The other 10 million people just sit there and cheer the 135k raiders.
    Unfortunately, Raiding is the main focus of WoW. Most of the game is getting there.

    Thanks for supporting my point, anyway.
  1. ZeroWashu's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Firebert View Post
    Unfortunately, Raiding is the main focus of WoW. Most of the game is getting there.

    Thanks for supporting my point, anyway.
    Raiding is your main focus, obviously it is not the focus of the majority of players in WOW. Statistics are bitch when they don't agree with you. This is where Ghostcrawler and all you water cooler hard cores blew it, you assumed far too much about the importance of raids and forgot the number one reason people play games, to have fun.

    Frankly I am long past having to sit on a single target for more than a few minutes, after than it becomes a game of whack a mole, the mole being the screw up and keeping from popping up. Beating a scripted event holds about as much excitement for me as watching paint dry which is why five mans are more palatable, they are over fast enough to not take the fun out of it.
  1. Firebert's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by ZEROWASHU View Post
    Raiding is your main focus, obviously it is not the focus of the majority of players in WOW. Statistics are bitch when they don't agree with you. This is where Ghostcrawler and all you water cooler hard cores blew it, you assumed far too much about the importance of raids and forgot the number one reason people play games, to have fun.
    Whoa whoa whoa, hold on there. I'm definitely not a "watercooler hardcore" player. And I think raiding is fun. Just inaccessible at the moment.
    And if you'll check chaud's post, more players have killed Ragnaros on normal compared to winning 25 rated battlegrounds. It's either PvP, or PvE. Currently PvE is winning.
    Statistics are a bitch when they don't agree with you.
  1. Todgruppe's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Firebert View Post
    Whoa whoa whoa, hold on there. I'm definitely not a "watercooler hardcore" player. And I think raiding is fun. Just inaccessible at the moment.
    And if you'll check chaud's post, more players have killed Ragnaros on normal compared to winning 25 rated battlegrounds. It's either PvP, or PvE. Currently PvE is winning.
    Statistics are a bitch when they don't agree with you.
    Sweeping generalizations are fun. Raids are the only PvE available, and Rated Battleground are the only PvP. Those are also the only two available options to participate in all of WoW.
  1. mmoc2ed287be52's Avatar
    Can you actually provide fully detailed methodology for this? These statistics are very misleading without it, since for example many level 85 characters could be alts that simply aren't played in raids, while the same person might have killed Heroic Ragnaros on their main.
  1. chaud's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Lolisa View Post
    Can you actually provide fully detailed methodology for this? These statistics are very misleading without it, since for example many level 85 characters could be alts that simply aren't played in raids, while the same person might have killed Heroic Ragnaros on their main.
    They are mostly alts. See the title? Firelands Changes Impact. Not "How Many People Are Raiding, or Raid Difficulty", or anything else people have been suggesting.
  1. Mnevis's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Pancaspe View Post
    You look like a pompous fool by calling it easy, it was not.
    It's relative, man. My group killed 6/7 the first week; we didn't kill them by blowing on them, and we had some t11H gear, but for us, normals weren't hard the first time we saw them.
    Look at it like this. Twohanded dunk. If Shaq says that's easy, are you gonna say 'no it's not, you're a pompous fool'. Objectively, it's pretty damn easy, if you can get to the rim. The difficulty level is not very high, but only if you can get above the rim (prior gear/practice with similar mechanics/practice with your guildies/good dps/healing/tanking habits). I'm not saying it's not insensitive of him to call a simple dunk 'easy' but it's pretty unimaginative of you to call him a fool for saying it was.
  1. Firebert's Avatar
    Sweeping generalizations are fun. Raids are the only PvE available, and Rated Battleground are the only PvP. Those are also the only two available options to participate in all of WoW.
    I'm pretty sure they are the "end game" content that everyone strives to get to.
  1. Todgruppe's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Firebert View Post
    I'm pretty sure they are the "end game" content that everyone strives to get to.
    By everyone you mean yourself? Don't pretend to speak for people.

    I've been playing for the past, what... 6 years? Is that how long it's been since Naxx was first released? I stopped raiding mid-TBC. I still play. Raiding is not all there is.

    There's grouping with friends, chatting with friends, heroics, PvP battlegrounds, PvP arenas, alt leveling, addon coding, auction housing, farming, questing, achievement whoring, faction grinding, trade skilling, events, and so on. Raiding wasn't a big draw for me, and it still isn't a big deal. I watch others raid and I stay up on it so I have something to talk about, but it's just not that interesting to me.
    Was attempting to make a point, there are tons of things to do, because some people are to lazy/not imaginative enough to come up with things to do. Some people seem to think their is only 1 or 2 aspects to this game.
  1. Balo's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by shadey81 View Post
    interesting with all the raid content they add only about 5% of the wow population raids.
    if you learn to read this is ONLY the US population, but thank you for letting me know your to stupid to.
  1. Ecwfrk's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Balo View Post
    if you learn to read this is ONLY the US population, but thank you for letting me know your to stupid to.
    Data was looked at for over 2.7 million level 85 characters, most of them being in the US.
    most != ONLY

    And while we're picking on people:
    your != you're
    to != too

    This data is just a representative sample. But, in most cases, a large representative sample (in this case, about 20% of the worldwide player population) will reflect percentile stats reasonably close to what you would receive if you used a 100% data set.

    And chaud did not interpret the data as he rarely does, he just presents it. He leaves it to us yahoos to try and interpret it.
  1. Greenhorns's Avatar
    your math is a bit off. if 3000 have run it out of 2700000 3000/2700000 = .00111111111111111 = .1% not 5%
    and assuming that the rest of the player base completed the same ratio as the first 2.7 mil already checked. you will end up with the same percentage. this is atrocious. If peeps want things so darn hard go naked into the raid. don't insist that the raid be basically out of the league of 99.9% of the player base.

    FYI if it's not puggable it's tuned way to hard.

    Quote Originally Posted by Firebert View Post
    I'd just like to say that it's not a 98% drop, as the percentage is 0.08%, not 2%.

    For every player that has cleared Heroic Firelands, there's 1,136 players that has cleared normal Firelands. More nerfs to heroic and normal please.

    ---------- Post added 2011-10-13 at 07:59 AM ----------


    Out of 2.7m, that's 5%. Not as bad when compared to 11.1m, but still bad, I know.
  1. Gilian's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Gray_Matter View Post
    I actually think they hit the hard modes a bit heavy with the nerfs but the progress charts above seem to disagree.



    How the f..k do you know how hard I try to get into a pug? Are you on my server? Do you know how many pug leaders I have whispered or how many pugs I have started? Do you know how many f...g times I have run the 2 zand dungeons "preparing" for FL? You can speak from your perspective but you have no right to comment on what you think I have done.



    Why can't they drop their trinkets and continue fighting without them post nerf? Would have the same effect of removing the nerf.
    Those charts are inaccurate which has been proved many times in this thread. Just keep ignoring that and use it as your evidence, makes you look even worse.

    How do I know? Because your first sentence is: "I can't get into pugs because you need 7/7". Sounds like whining about nothing to me. Also the fact that EVERYONE ELSE has to do the same thing and do succeed shows that you are slacking or just a bad player.

    Dropping gear to make fights harder has been done before. It really destroys the whole purpose of progressing. It makes no sense at all. It's the same as saying to me that I should finish the GoW 3 campaign on hardcore but break my thumbs first to make it challenging.
  1. Gray_Matter's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Todgruppe View Post
    Get off it, I can bet people with "not enough time", really mean "I have poor time management, but to save face I will blame it on TIME!" Obviously, there could be other things like not wanting to leave friends, etc. but get off "I haz a real life." Must of us have a real life, I am not claiming to have done HM Rag, only 6/7 at the moment, I will be working towards it cause that is what I slotted in my schedule to do(only put like 10 attempts on Rag dude is rough, not looking forward to P4 :P).
    So we must put WOW ahead of our kids? You are so quick to judge people and instead of confronting the argument you start attacking the people. Bad players, bad time management, etc.

    Not one person who has complained about the fights begin too easy now has responded to my comment about doing them without trinkets. If you really feel the fights are too easy, gimp yourself a bit. Fight without trinkets and see how far you get.
  1. mmocc66b304253's Avatar
    I saw the statistics and even though i dont play wow anymore i felt the need to comment. So much so i just registered on MMOC. I spent a good 5 years playing wow, for the most part i think it was a very brilliant game both technically and playability. The main thing that has always driven me up the wall is the way in which it caters for the5 % and not for the <95% %. It is one sole action that drives everything in wow, Elitism, economy, guilds, social behaviour within the game are all effected.

    The raiding has always been unbalanced in my opinion and they majority of their subscribers have never seen ANY end game content let alone when it was supposed to have been done. This leads to people being called noobs or ignored due to their lack or participation but they make up the larger part of WOW. 2500 people have killed Heroic Ragnaros and that is after the nurf, before this, it was 57 ppl!!!! How does this make any sense, even from a Hardcore point of view? If Hardcore is designed for the top 5%, 500000 people... 57 Had completed the game, EVEN after the nurf it has only risen to just over 2500.

    Even with normal raiding things are just as bad. Before the nurf less than 29000 people had completed normal firelands. Even after the nurf it has only reached 136000, and when i say people it really means characters so its even less people than that. There are over 10 million active accounts on WOW. This game not only does not cater for the majority, its policies actively seek to deny them access to the communities of wow.

    Its is a testament to the game that so many continue to play despite this, but i for one can vouch for being a Virtual hostage of the game, when having played for so long, invested so much time, and built real relationships people feel obliged to play and play, not for the game but for themselves. Its a depressing state to live in that boredom. Unable to progress, unwilling to leave. Money aside it can lead to real apathy and a sense of worthlessness for people who realise that they really are wasting their lives... not because of the game, because by definition entertainment is something people strive for and the game does give that... but because they have nothing to fill the gap.

    Its time Actiblizz stop holding the 95% of their dedicated players hostage with only bread and water and give them something. The hardcore will always comeback for the challenge and even if they lose that 5% they will will be better off than the 2 million subscribers they have nearly lost in the last patch alone.
  1. Gray_Matter's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Gilian View Post
    How do I know? Because your first sentence is: "I can't get into pugs because you need 7/7". Sounds like whining about nothing to me. Also the fact that EVERYONE ELSE has to do the same thing and do succeed shows that you are slacking or just a bad player.
    Again, it goes to a personal attack because you can't argue with the issue. How do you know how well or badly I play? You haven't played with me.

    The point I am making is that everyone has the same problem, not just me. Other people work around it by spending more time playing wow. I don't have that luxury. This goes back to my point, wow favours spending large amount of time to get somewhere, not skill. LFR will fix that a bit. Just for the record, I managed to get a pug last night and progressed to 6/7 (we only did one attempt on rag because it was getting late). Does that make me a better player than I was before? I was second on the DPS charts as a melee, does that make me better? No, because that depends on the make up of the raid and my gear and their gear, their skill, etc.

    Dropping gear to make fights harder has been done before. It really destroys the whole purpose of progressing. It makes no sense at all. It's the same as saying to me that I should finish the GoW 3 campaign on hardcore but break my thumbs first to make it challenging.
    Just saw this part now. You can't have it both ways. If you feel the fights are too easy then it's within your control to make them more difficult. It's not about progression, its about people wanting an excuse to b..ch. You could easily drop gear directly after a nerf and continue with the progression as you did before but people chose to rather kill a few more bosses and then complain about how easy the fights are getting. Why do you think Blizzard didn't go the same route that they did in ICC? Let people remove the "nerf"? Because nobody did it. They just complained about it. If you are talking about progression being the old "my guild got there in 123rd in the world" then thats not progression, thats my p...s is bigger than yours. Progression is about making progress through content and that you can do perfectly well by dropping gear.
  1. Strafer's Avatar
    And as usual the fan art is amazing.
  1. Margeta's Avatar
    Didn't have the courage to read through all the comments, so my point might already have been told, but I just wanted you guys to look a bit closely to those stats :
    135k FL N cleans
    2,4K HMRag kills
    which makes, on the base of 2,7M characters :
    5% of FL N cleans
    0.09% of HRag kills

    Those numbers look quite small, and you could conclude that : the raid might be too difficult But what we miss here, is how many of these characters didn't kill any of the FL bosses. This number would represent the characters that may not be used for raiding : wow player who don't care about raiding or, and more importantly, rerolls of raiding players that aren't taken to raid.
    This second type of characters should be plenty, to really find out conclusions on this survey, we should cross it with another one on "how many rerolls do wow-players have". It could be that those 2,7M characters represent a lot less actual players, making those 5% and 0,09% actually a lot higher if calculated in terms of players and not characters.

    So my conclusion is : these graphs don't really help us because they lack this important information of "how many of those 2,7M char didn't kill any of the FL bosses". M2C
  1. Kenai's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Margeta View Post
    Didn't have the courage to read through all the comments, so my point might already have been told, but I just wanted you guys to look a bit closely to those stats :
    135k FL N cleans
    2,4K HMRag kills
    which makes, on the base of 2,7M characters :
    5% of FL N cleans
    0.09% of HRag kills

    Those numbers look quite small, and you could conclude that : the raid might be too difficult But what we miss here, is how many of these characters didn't kill any of the FL bosses. This number would represent the characters that may not be used for raiding : wow player who don't care about raiding or, and more importantly, rerolls of raiding players that aren't taken to raid.
    This second type of characters should be plenty, to really find out conclusions on this survey, we should cross it with another one on "how many rerolls do wow-players have". It could be that those 2,7M characters represent a lot less actual players, making those 5% and 0,09% actually a lot higher if calculated in terms of players and not characters.

    So my conclusion is : these graphs don't really help us because they lack this important information of "how many of those 2,7M char didn't kill any of the FL bosses". M2C
    Actually, from what I see it's the opposite. Not only has every character listed had to have killed at least one FL raid boss to be counted, but this is characters, not accounts. So the actual number of people is smaller. It looks like my Shaman and Druid have been counted since they both down Rag but my Pally and Priest and Lock who I rarely use and have never taken into FL are excluded from the list.

    I am actually more interested to see the overall statistics without focusing on one region, since I know that EU at least seems to have more competitive guilds in general. Since this sample is U.S. slanted it's not truly random which means the data is not truly representive of the whole game (though it probably could be used for U.S. servers). Then again, a lot of players in China might be casual and outweigh that or make the overall kills even lower...who knows.
  1. mmoc756e7b89ef's Avatar
    You know the funny thing is that these numbers make perfectly sense when you keep in mind all the players that have left already and the introduction of the raid finder. I'm pretty sure that Blizz knows who many players are raiding - so the raid finder actually implies that right now there are not a lot of people raiding because otherwise it wouldn't make sense to implement it now.
    I guess that Blizz figured out that a large amount of the available end game content (raids) is something that a large amount of their player base isn't enjoying.

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