Surprised that so few people are raiding

[MasterHamster]

It truly boggles my mind how people can think this is indicative of anything.

But don't worry, thanks to Blizzard no longer throwing hard work out the window (Naxx40, Sunwell) since barely anyone ever saw it, you can rest assured that more people than ever before will experience the new raids.

[Deleted]

Well it can be like in our guild, we will most likely do our first raid tonight.
We havn't been stressing since there's alot of things to do in Mists and people have been taking their time gearing and getting ready.
I think during the coming weeks a rise in number will occur.

[Deleted]

I think there is a lot of factors to consider.

1. People are still levelling, some choose to stick to their main characters, others chose to rer-roll because of account-wide achievements or other started a new character entirely from level 1 (thanks to Monk class introduction).

2. The road to getting raid ready is indeed a lot longer then ones such as Cataclysm.
- Firstly, professions and raiding materials need to be obtained whilst gearing up and preparing.
- Secondly, dungeons where all the loot needed to be at least 460 ilvl is dependant on RNG as in it actually dropping.
- Thirdly, gear was originally restricted to factions based on rep so items from Shado-Pan per say were unavailable until weeks after you reached the bar so for some people the gear option was small. Fortunately that has been changed but not as long as from the release date to now.
I know that VP is available and widely thanks to dailies but is down to motivation!

3. Progression itself in the raid, can cause strain and whatnot to the raiding teams. I'm sure you can think of many examples!

Someone said earlier, why are raids given time and a few more comments. Well, raids won't really cease, despite people raid versus non-raiders is a ratio favours non-raiders from polls there is a lot of competition, sponsor-ships and events that all encircle this area. For Blizzard, it's a money pull that they won't drop and though they haven't found a happy-medium they will do and LFR was an addition to this area to strife for a satisfactory gameplay experience for all the types of WoW players.

But consider this, the scope of MMO Champions polls are not really relative to actual figures. Some figures are for "level 85s in the Armory" per say, this ignores the fact that some of those 85s belong to the same person whom does raid, compared to the character openly stated it hasn't.
Who these days do not have alts? Very few or newer subscribers, many have professions mules anf bank alts are the levels in the analyse scope ^^.

[Adam Jensen]

A lot of people are either still leveling or not yet geared for raids. My guild for one hasn't started raiding, we didn't have enough geared 90s until this week and even that'll be a trial run to see where we're at.

[Zoneseek]

I haven't raided since vanilla. I dealt with it back then but my life doesn't support any kind of scheduling around a video game anymore. My play time is too sporadic for set raiding. Also when I am playing, I don't want to be tied down to my chair for long periods at a time, or pull wife agro because my game doesn't have a pause button. I totally understand why lots of people don't want to raid, its not convenient in my opinion.

[Chirri]

We expect to raid, and a few of our members have hopped into LFR, but about half of our raiding team is still leveling and gearing up, some members still haven't had time off from work enough to even step into Pandaria (out of town for work), and some of us are just taking our time about it. I'm not sure why anyone should feel particularly rushed at this point in the expansion. The harder you push at the beginning, the more painful that final 6-12 months is on the final tier. Even if you start out slow, so long as you progress at a decent clip (managing to clear each tier before nerfs) you'll STILL find the final tier to be too long. Rushing only exacerbates the problem, because you're impatient between content patches.

Anyway. Lots of people anticipate raiding, we're just also doing other things. Exploring, crafting, pet battling, working or other IRL stuff, or just plain taking our time. There's more to the game than raiding... or so I've heard.

[Justignoreme]

Mediocre players feel as though they should be geared in all epics to even attempt the first raid boss in t14 normal content. So they QQ on forums about being forced to do rep grinds through dailies to obtain said epics.

[Kiry]

We just got our last raid spot filled recently, and our last guildie hit 90 last night. People are still needing those pieces of gear. Heck we had a couple of raiders that couldn't do LFR last night because of ilvls.

Those of us that did do it got our first glimpse of the raid dungeon, and are looking forward to our first raid this weekend. I would say the pace is about the same as last couple of xpacs. I'm pretty relaxed about it.

[afkranker]

Some people have real lives? I missed a couple of says of school just to hit 90 and gear up to 467.

[kennyisnotdead]

The threat of a real challenge. Not many people will take to raiding without being showered in epics first. And using the gated LFR doesnt help them.

You analysis takes in everyone with the game so it is very high level to really have an understanding of what the population is doing. If you could segment based off that progressed in heroic raids last xp and looked to see what they are doing now you can have a better idea of the trend. The LFR does inflate the raiding numbers significantly and we all know it is a gated system so unless everyone is geared to meet quality standards your not going in to a random.

The LFR is like a long cinematic of raiding and guild raiding is the raiding community.

[Pull My Finger]

How is that surprising? I would've had playing like a madman since MoP release to be raiding already.

[Orange Joe]

but if you're not raiding then what else can you been doing at end game?

What are you doing in guild wars 2 for end game?

[Tharkkun]

http://www.wowprogress.com/post/120_...aiding_results

Out of the 2.7 million that purchased MoP, only 900,000 have leveled to 90 (33%).

Of that 900k, only 136,000 have killed a boss (5% of those that purchased, 15% of those that leveled, 1% of 10 million playerbase)

It's a new expansion. Why is there such a rush to finish it the 2nd week it's out?

[Scummer]

I blame Brewfest!

[Metacrias]

We're not even a month into the expansion... not everyone spends every waking hour for weeks on end following an expansion rushing to complete months worth of gaming content in less than a month. Not trying to be insulting, hell, my bf is already raiding because he can play more frequently than me, just trying to point out that it would be a bad sign if a greater proportion of players were already geared up enough to raid seriously... it would imply that Blizzards attempt to provide much more content and make the time and effort necessary to really maximize your gear more extensive failed - fortunately it hasn't.

beyond that, keep in mind that not everyone raids. Raids as a form of game content that is widely available to the 'average WoW player' is relatively new, remember - only becoming a reality with the rise of the Raid Finder (and even then, raid finder raids are only 25 man, they are nerfed and the gear they give is less desirable). If you want to raid, seriously, you have to also be a member of a good, organized guild with a strong PvE component. Many people don't ever really get that far. Some people choose to ignore PvE altogether, instead focusing on PvP. Others do both but take longer to reach top levels in either because of it. Others just do heroics, crafting, quests, dailies, rep grinding, etc...

---------- Post added 2012-10-11 at 01:15 PM ----------

We expect to raid, and a few of our members have hopped into LFR, but about half of our raiding team is still leveling and gearing up, some members still haven't had time off from work enough to even step into Pandaria (out of town for work), and some of us are just taking our time about it. I'm not sure why anyone should feel particularly rushed at this point in the expansion. The harder you push at the beginning, the more painful that final 6-12 months is on the final tier. Even if you start out slow, so long as you progress at a decent clip (managing to clear each tier before nerfs) you'll STILL find the final tier to be too long. Rushing only exacerbates the problem, because you're impatient between content patches.

Anyway. Lots of people anticipate raiding, we're just also doing other things. Exploring, crafting, pet battling, working or other IRL stuff, or just plain taking our time. There's more to the game than raiding... or so I've heard.

We expect to raid, and a few of our members have hopped into LFR, but about half of our raiding team is still leveling and gearing up, some members still haven't had time off from work enough to even step into Pandaria (out of town for work), and some of us are just taking our time about it. I'm not sure why anyone should feel particularly rushed at this point in the expansion. The harder you push at the beginning, the more painful that final 6-12 months is on the final tier. Even if you start out slow, so long as you progress at a decent clip (managing to clear each tier before nerfs) you'll STILL find the final tier to be too long. Rushing only exacerbates the problem, because you're impatient between content patches.

Anyway. Lots of people anticipate raiding, we're just also doing other things. Exploring, crafting, pet battling, working or other IRL stuff, or just plain taking our time. There's more to the game than raiding... or so I've heard.

Thank you! I made essentially the same point in my (later) post, but you summarized my feelings perfectly. There is more end-game content than ever now and much of it is, in part, designed to disincentive a massive rush towards "end-end-game content" such as heroic raids. I do not begrudge or demean those who are already raiding and who are excited about it (as I mentioned in another post, as I sit here writing this my bf is raiding next to me), but I do wish more of the hardcore raiders were aware of this perspective. I do, honestly, dislike the push made by many (but by no means all!) of the hardcore raiders to make maximizing gear and defeating the most difficult raids as quickly as possible the raison d'etre for playing WoW. It makes it less enjoyable for those of us who are not raiding yet either because we're taking our time and exploring all the other types of enjoyable content this expac has to offer (exploring, dailies/reputation, pet battling, crafting, farming, minigames, pvp, role playing, etc.) or because we've got things in our lives that prohibit us from putting the amount of time into playing WoW necessary to be raiding so soon after the expac's release.

In truth, the vast majority of WoW players are more casual, though I hesitate to use that term. 'Casual' has taken on a derogatory connotation, likely attributable to the arrogant attitudes some of the top raiders have about how one should play the game (as if there is a 'correct' way to play beyond playing to enjoy yourself) which can easily lend itself to promoting a belief that those who aren't raiding already aren't as good or serious as they are. But casual does not mean not-serious and it is also a matter of kind. I'm a casual player in this sense as I have a hard time setting aside one or two nights a week, every week, to play WoW - my personal and professional life takes priority over my favorite form of entertainment (well, besides porn, lol) and the fact that I'm both a PhD candidate and working as an adjunct professor means that I often find myself having to stay up late grading, writing lectures, reading or attending talks and I rarely know what nights will be affected. Many hardcore raiding groups don't want me as a result, despite the fact that I actually do tend to do very well on the damage meters for my class/spec and actually do play a lot.

Point is, most WoW players can't spend 5 hours a day playing and a majority of us can't schedule particular nights of the week off from our personal responsibilities to guarantee a spot in a raid. The fact that raiding tends to be dominated by those players and guilds that are exceptions to this because they begin raiding before everyone else effectively makes it so that the majority of us have a harder time getting involved in raids when we do have the opportunity. It's interesting in the sense that we're talking about a rather small minority of players here - the hardcore raiders are only a small subset of WoW players. However, they are a very vocal and elite minority so they tend to dominate the framing of the expectations a 'serious' (read: non-casual) player must meet. Because a minority of players that are really into raiding also happen to have more free time than the average player (or are willing to spend more of their free time playing), they get through the content much faster than most of us and they then get to define a new debate about whether there is enough end-game content... and those of us who play casually in the sense that we don't play on a strict schedule feel rushed to get to raiding so as to avoid feeling like we're somehow 'behind' even though the expac is only a month old and the content that these elite players are pushing us to rush towards is making us either miss all the other fun content out there or just get to the frustrated point they themselves are at too soon.

This expac is meant to last 2 years or so (albeit with regular content patches). There is no reason I, or anyone else, should feel rushed to skip over a ton of end-game content that was designed and meant to be experienced over the course of many, many months in only one or two of them.

Finally, to summarize my rant (I've not entirely... sober and I've been up for two days... cause it's my birthday!), I really just hate that some top PvE players who have a lot of time to invest in playing WoW right now come to these forums and to guild, trade, general chat and put down players who aren't 90 or aren't ilvl 465 already. They throw around terms like 'noob' and 'casual' to make it sound like the very heterogenous population that makes up WoW's player base isn't serious about the game. Reality is, not everyone has the time to play the game to the level required of the top raiding guilds (or, as in my case, we have the time but can't plan when we'll be free to play in advance) and/or not everyone wants to rush to raids because they are enjoying other aspects of the expac. However, since the top raiding guilds and raiders tend to be the people who do reach max level ridiculous fast they can largely keep the rest of us, many of whom do play often and well, from participating in this content...

---------- Post added 2012-10-11 at 01:37 PM ----------

I haven't raided since vanilla. I dealt with it back then but my life doesn't support any kind of scheduling around a video game anymore. My play time is too sporadic for set raiding. Also when I am playing, I don't want to be tied down to my chair for long periods at a time, or pull wife agro because my game doesn't have a pause button. I totally understand why lots of people don't want to raid, its not convenient in my opinion.

I haven't raided since vanilla. I dealt with it back then but my life doesn't support any kind of scheduling around a video game anymore. My play time is too sporadic for set raiding. Also when I am playing, I don't want to be tied down to my chair for long periods at a time, or pull wife agro because my game doesn't have a pause button. I totally understand why lots of people don't want to raid, its not convenient in my opinion.

Being repetitious here, lol, but can't help but respond. Blizzard really needs to find a way to fix this: raiding, one of the most epic, fun and rewarding aspects of WoW has effectively been turned into an elite activity that is only really available to a small portion of players. Raid Finder was supposed to address this; while a step in the right direction, the problem remains a substantial one. To do regular raids, let alone heroics, you have to participate as a group meaning either you literally work your life schedule around a videogame by setting aside a couple nights a week to play during specified times and in conjunction with a guild that has at least 9 OTHER people who can set aside those same nights to play (which essentially means that most older players can't do this) or by sitting in general chat forever trying to put together a team that probably will disband before ever getting to the raid. I understand that raiding is most enjoyable and challenging when working with a guild of people you know at a time you have all planned on, but the reality is most of us can't realistically do this. They really need to find a way to make ALL raid content available to players with the right ilvl. I should be able to run a heroic raid and get the appropriate gear from it if I come home on a Thursday night and find that I have a few hours to play regardless of whether or not I had previously agreed to commit to spending every Thursday night with a guild. Not sure how this should be done, but the problem is clear. WoW is becoming, to some extent, an MMO where the player population is fragmented based on how often and how consistently in terms of schedule they play. Those who play often and largely at the same times every week can see all the content. Those of us who may play JUST as often but just don't do so consistently schedule-wise because our lives aren't structured in a way that allows for that are cut off from that same content even though we are skilled enough to do it and have put in the time to have earned it. Effectively, this makes those of us with rough work schedules, families, school, etc. unable to participate as much as we like - and this translates into WoW becoming a game where overwhelmingly, older players are frustrated because they can't do everything they want to in the game because they don't have the flexibility in their schedules that younger players have. There are, of course, exceptions but I'd wager this is the general picture.

So, Blizzard.. recognize many of your subscribers are currently cut off from, or at least face substantial obstacles to, raiding and some other aspects of WoW despite wanting to experience that content, despite having all the necessary ilvl, stat, enchantment, gem, etc. requirements, despite being good players and despite being serious and regular players simply because they can't schedule the other facets of their lives around raiding in a game (which, again, does NOT mean they necessarily play less often and definitely does not mean that they are necessarily less talented players) and, moreover, the subscribers in question are likely to largely be those customers who are older, who work strange hours and who have families of their own. If your work schedule changes from week to week (whether because you work as a vacation relief operator in a factory or as a lawyer in a firm where case volume varies) then you are going to find it almost impossible to raid with any regularity. If you have a wife, a husband, a girlfriend, a boyfriend or, even worse, kids, same thing: unless your significant other (or kids!) play too, they aren't likely to take kindly to you telling them that you can't go to their upcoming event because you have a raid that night.

[Galaddriel]

14,365 guilds downed 1 boss up from 10k guilds last week.
Based on last week's numbers that extrapolates out to 195,000 players.

That's a far cry from 2.7 million boxes sold.

Only 7% of people that bought MoP are raiding.
Only 2% of the total playerbase.

Most realms only have a tenth of the guilds raiding that they did last season.

People are still leveling I suppose?

[Shoridayo]

I have noticed that not as many people are raiding as soon or as much as in Cata. But I think that's more because of the bad taste DS left in everyone's mouths.

We personally start raiding tomorrow, as it's just been an uphill battle with people leaving etc. One of our healers left, and our tank(who thinks he's hot shit because he got Savior at 20% /rolls eyes) took her and went horde on our server. So we've been stuck looking. We'll probably actually have to PuG a spot or two tomorrow, which we're not looking forward to, but eh, what are you gonna do?

Another thing is that I think a lot of people are still leveling. Leveling seemed to be VERY boring this time around. Not to mention all the people who rerolled monk and now have to deal with 1-85 again.
Then factor in all the people who need on gear for their OS.

Put it all together and you get under geared 90s, or monks at level 60.

[Veyne]

Also, Entry-level raid content seems to be considerably more difficult this going around than past expansions.

[Deleted]

pretty much this. give it a few weeks when more ppl got gear.
so far i only unlocked 1 valor point item from the klaxxi. but no points to buy it :P been slacking running dungeons.
also i am not in a real hurry anyway

If you hvae a high end team, I dont think you really need that , the heroic dungeon gear will do.
Then you go raiding and get your gear from that.

[Kaiarra]

I'd love to be raiding, but the huge gap with nothing to do at the end of Cata made a lot of my guildies go into stasis; the whole 'panda' thing hasn't done a lot incentive wise to bring them back. Kinda hard to recruit 4 people for a 10-man guild, so we're just sorta milling around hoping some of them decide to come back if we pester them enough.

Can't imagine we're the only ones with the same issue considering how terribad and lacking the end of Cata was.