I feel optimistic about WoW

[KOUNTERPARTS]

This thread began as a PSA and it's turning into a bad city hall debate. It's unfortunate it wasn't created genuinely.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

It's already been linked. Read the thread.

So is that a no there and there is no data?

[Nootz]

Any chance you could get Uldir? that would be the important raid to see as it would be right after the launch spike that followed Legion/bfa and what would be compared between CN and Sylvanas.

Yikes. Uldir was massive.
https://web.archive.org/web/20181104...wprogress.com/

11k AOTC kills on November 4th 2018. Exactly 2 months after launch.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Yikes. Uldir was massive.
https://web.archive.org/web/20181104...wprogress.com/

11k AOTC kills on November 4th 2018. Exactly 2 months after launch.

So assuming no one else actually has any of the "data" SL and BFA seem rather close to each other in % drop post launch.

[Nootz]

So assuming no one else actually has any of the "data" SL and BFA seem rather close to each other in % drop post launch.

Yes. BFA started much higher probably because of the hype and a very successful Legion expansion. It did drop off quite a bit from Uldir to BOD so I would say it's relatively the same in terms of Heroic raiding participation. Slightly less in SL since the initial "boom" wasn't as high.

Edit:
I say "slightly less" in SL. 11k to 8k was a pretty big drop in terms of initial expansion hype. But after BFA left a sour taste in a lot of peoples' mouths you can't blame them all.

[Relapses]

No, you said this:



You didnt say they are aware that there might / will be a drop in players during the middle of an expansion, you said it was designed with the intention of having one, totally different things. That also suggests that this level of player dropoff is normal, and i dont believe it is.

Bruh, you have some nerve resorting to semantics after deliberating misquoting me to prove a non-argument. I could have phrased that first post better which is why I clarified myself in the subsequent follow up. To wit, what I'm saying is that we don't have any way to know whether SL's drop off is anamalous as the only data we have on this front are circumstantial trends. What I take issue with in particular are people who look at this information without even a smidge of skepticism and use it to construct impossibly flawed arguments. Then rather than simply accepting my position that the information is inherently flawed, people in this thread have repeatedly requested that I need to provide "proof" for my reasoning behind not taking improvable information at face value.

[Echo of Soul]

So assuming no one else actually has any of the "data" SL and BFA seem rather close to each other in % drop post launch.

Percentage is pretty irrelevant. If your game has 1000 players one expansion and loses 100 and in the next expansion it has 100 players and loses 10 then the percentage drop is the same but one expansion is obviously much much worse than the other.

[Doffen]

Yes. BFA started much higher probably because of the hype and a very successful Legion expansion. It did drop off quite a bit from Uldir to BOD so I would say it's relatively the same in terms of Heroic raiding participation. Slightly less in SL since the initial "boom" wasn't as high.

Edit:
I say "slightly less" in SL. 11k to 8k was a pretty big drop in terms of initial expansion hype. But after BFA left a sour taste in a lot of peoples' mouths you can't blame them all.

And thats not weird seeing BfA was it's predecessor.

I see you edited saying the same. BfA after SL would be a disaster if they went that route. BfA can thank Legion and an awesome cinematic trailer for the hype. It was the same thing with Cata in the start, where it increased the subs in the start after WotLK while dropping fast after. Not as much as the two previous, I'll strongly assume.

[bledgor]

If people have numbers from there ass that paint wow as dying they are facts, and if you refute these numbers you are a white knight, got it thank you.

From blizzards investors calls, the only thing that is remotely feasible as facts, is that SL seems to be keeping on par with BFA, which yes while not great is far from dying. I think it hurt that 9.1 came 7 months more than most other factors as quite a bit of the casual crowd are cyclical players. Honestly I think if blizzard can get 9.1.5 out in October they will get the numbers back up a bit as people that get DII will probably check out the patch and with the QOL changes.

I do think 9.2 needs to be a solid 2nd tier and news needs to start coming in late November about 9.2. Early February drop of 9.2 with 9.3/10.0(if they dip out early) at Blizzcononline and it will keep things going strong.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Percentage is pretty irrelevant. If your game has 1000 players one expansion and loses 100 and in the next expansion it has 100 players and loses 10 then the percentage drop is the same but one expansion is obviously much much worse than the other.

100 players of players thinking something is bad and leaving is a lot more of a hit on quality then 10 even more so if the first game is the reason the second has only 100 left.

[Darkeon]

I've felt optimistic about WoW every last patch of the last handful of expansions.

Then that feeling went away everytime they released a new expansion.

But I'm sure next one will be the one that breaks the mold, for sure. Surely. For suresies.

[Echo of Soul]

100 players of players thinking something is bad and leaving is a lot more of a hit on quality then 10 even more so if the first game is the reason the second has only 100 left.

Exactly. Percentage drops doesn't matter, the number of people leaving is.

[Albertillo]

Ah yes I forgot I am not allowed to dislike something without it being me influenced by what a streamer said.

Thank you so much, I am glad that you knew why I thought what I did.

Thank you, 2 post account.

If you're legitimately trying to argue there's no difference between Tier set bonuses, which change every single raid patch, and entire expansions built around a single borrowed power system, then you're either so far out of the conversation that there's no point in continuing, or just so incredibly disingenuous that there's no point in continuing.

I swear, comments like this remind me of people responding to those of us saying BfA and Shadowlands has too much grinding or MAU-based content tipping their fedoras and going, "Well WoW has always had grinding, why are you complaining now??????"

As if the way in which a system is implemented doesn't matter and just that there are two ideas that, when you burn away all their differences and get to the core, they are similar, therefore they are the same.

Seems like registering now after playing since WoTLK and reading MMO champion since that period takes all my authority out to comment. I see. Thank you very much.

I am not telling you in particular that you're influenced by a streamer, but it's true that most of the comments of the people in general are the same "WoW is just not fun anymore", "too much RNG", "I'm going to play FF", "borrowed power sucks", without giving more explanations or feedback, THAT's what I don't understand.

Tier set bonuses change every single raid patch as you say, but still are borrowed power. Again, what's the problem with having skills that lore-wise make sense? I don't see the problem of having the Venthir skill with my Shaman, in fact, it makes it heal better having a much powered chain heal that can save the group in certain situations. It's a fun skill that well, I might lose after this expansion (or maybe they make it a talent from 10.0), but still is a fun new playstyle that they add to the game. Like I don't really understand what is THAT HORRIBLE about having new abilities that will dissappear with time, in fact, I would be more disappointed if I got a really good skill with a Tier set and then I completely lose it after that rather than having a new skill for the whole expansion.

I don't understand the tone of the response either, I just want to know real reasons why people don't like it to try to understand it. English is not my mother tongue so my message might have had another nuance for native speakers though.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

The Bellular video referenced gave links to everywhere he had gotten his data from, though that data was from different time periods and may not be available directly any longer. For example, wowranks.io/stats will show you how many characters with a covenant have logged in in the last 30 days, taken from Blizzard's own API. At the moment it's showing slightly over 3 million characters, which is more than when Bellular made his video, but still far less than the more than 6 million characters that same data showed when taken back at the start of February.

Bellular then took that data and, with math, showed how many subscribers that potentially represented based on a varying number of alts per players, both 1.5 and 3 per player. The only thing this data could not take into account was the number of characters that logged in while not being in a covenant. But, given that those are low level characters you can fairly safely assume that they do not represent a significant number of subscribers, given that they would all be new players still leveling up for the first time.

He also took data from Best Keystone, again which got it's data from Blizzard's own API, that shows how many M+ runs have been completed in the last week. He showed that collected data on a graph over time to show whether runs have been going up or down. They have gone from a peak of nearly 1 million runs in week 5 to 321K in the current week.

Also, data was taken from raider.io that lists the number of boss kills for both the first boss and the last boss in each patch's first month.

Now, some of this data you personally cannot access any longer because the websites only track the data for the last week or the last month, so you have to collect it over time and hold onto it,

Honestly, it would have been easier for you to just watch the video for yourself.

This video ya?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToaLY0DF2gY

Because I did watch it and it doesn’t have any links in the reference other then his promo and his own stuff, even his pinned comment is just his promo.

There are some sites listed in the video it self but no URL or any thing for any one to actual check them selfs and some of them have disclaimers like wowranksio which throw using raw number as if they are facts in a questionable light.

Warning: Due to battle.net API issues, stats are missing a lot of EU characters! The % proportions are ok, but the raw amount is well bellow of what it should be. This issue is persisting for a while and characters are dropping of stat data because of 30d refresh rule.

but unless you believe Bellular was completely faking numbers and no one called him out for inaccuracies, the data is solid and all of it is scraped from Blizzard itself.

And ya I kinda do Believe Belluar would lie he’s done it before with things like the QA layoffs and the lacks of links to said data and atleast one site he’s using saying a a lot of data is missing doesn’t really reassure.

[Niwes]

This video ya?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToaLY0DF2gY

Because I did watch it and it doesn’t have any links in the reference other then his promo and his own stuff, even his pinned comment is just his promo.

There are some sites listed in the video it self but no URL or any thing for any one to actual check them selfs and some of them have disclaimers like wowranksio which throw using raw number as if they are facts in a questionable light.







And ya I kinda do Believe Belluar would lie he’s done it before with things like the QA layoffs and the lacks of links to said data and atleast one site he’s using saying a a lot of data is missing doesn’t really reassure.

to be honest: we did something same, even more in deep, than Bellular. and what he showed is even a way nicer picture than the detailed and therefore calculated/asumed truth.

go and check for yourself. wow armory api, r.io, wowprogress, warcraftlogs… its all there. just anaylze it.

but sit down, before you do. you need to sit, when you realize how accurate (or even not bad enough) Bellular is, with his analytics.

in example, Bellular was too lazy, or no coder, to read the chars from wow armory and sorted/filtered/compared them for a combination of last login, same guild name, exclusive-or logged in, etc. which can easily used to get a direct accurate picture of what alts are and how many. instead he just used some theoretical/assumed numbers (1.5, 3, etc) to just take a quicker look, how it is, IF some has i.e. 3 alts. you can also counter test the ones, that are shown as alts in wowprogress and wclogs, to make around 30% of them real sure. so, if you invest time, you can tell this rather accurate, by comparing and analyzing lots of data from wow armory. just as an example.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

I am not as down on the game as a lot of people are these days but.. truth is.. I won't feel great about it until we don't end up having to play half an expansion with problems a lot of people saw in alpha and beta because of stubbornness, pride, or ego. I got to say a lot of things these days feel like that is the reason for the stumble. Every project will have things that need work after release because of lack of time or testing and that is ok. That is why you patch the game. But these things should be shored up in the first .0.5 patch or at the very least the .1 patch. Then after that it just focuses on content cycles. Right now it feels like getting the game right, because they refused to listen or more importantly couldn't see for themselves it was pretty bad, is being sold as content and I don't like that. Again, I am playing the game and not having a terrible time. Mythic raiding and mythic+ is pretty well rounded and entertaining and that is mostly what I do. But it is obvious the rest of the game is pretty sick and decaying around those things and it is a pretty regular cycle every expansion that happens and it shouldn't be the case. Obviously they eventually pull the blinders off after some line gets crossed and I think it is just about time they pull those blinders off without having to cross that line every expansion anymore. I don't think this is a major ask. If anything it means they don't have to work and rework things and only do it once instead of two, three, or four times.

[Niwes]

And thats not weird seeing BfA was it's predecessor.

I see you edited saying the same. BfA after SL would be a disaster if they went that route. BfA can thank Legion and an awesome cinematic trailer for the hype. It was the same thing with Cata in the start, where it increased the subs in the start after WotLK while dropping fast after. Not as much as the two previous, I'll strongly assume.

dont forget WoD.

it had the greatest marketing campaign in wow history and the highest boost (biggest maximum in shortest timespan) of sold xpacs and 2,5 months of sub. WoD was the only xpac that topped the wotlk maximum mark. iirc with 12.3 millions. i am still not sure today, but a lot of players (at least i know more of them than i have fingers) came back, cause of that „classic reset, back to the roots“ feeling they greatly sold by marketing campaign. that „explore new natural savage planet“ and get that original feeling from vanilla back… that picture as an boost seller was a huge success. also that raid or die setup was for many (old) players a reason to come back.

if you calculate the sold xpacs + the subs of the first few months, you rapidly get a picture why they werent in urgent to bring content and finalize the half finished product (in example there were a lot of tasks in game existing, but the reawrd structure was not there and you just get useless apexxis noone needed). imo they made so much money the first 3-4 months and needed all the ppl in other projects (HotS was hot in production and OW too) that they simply decided to cut it off and fix it later. that „later fix“ you know as Legion.

[ek0zu]

I am glad that OP feels optimistic, i really am.

But for me personally in order to feel optimistic i prefer to see WoW getting stripped off many many things and get back to its roots. Great dungeons & raids, great bgs & open world pvp, sense of achievement & exploration even from the first level, make the game a game and not a rush towards the endgame and from there a nonstop grinding.

[Relapses]

I literally went to the links in the video to get all that info for you. Sorry if he's not spoon-feeding it enough for you.



Yes, Bellular never gave exact number of subscribers or even characters and mentions this very issue. The point is that the under-reporting remains consistent over time (as your quote of their disclaimer points out) which still shows that activity is dropping precipitously over that time. In fact, that disclaimer makes the drop in characters even more severe, given that they specifically say the percentages remain the same so when it was reporting higher numbers there were even higher numbers left out.



So you're calling him a liar, with no evidence, all while claiming he provides no evidence, which he has done. The links are in the video, it's not his fault if you don't want to bother to go to them (which you clearly did anyway, so not sure what your complaint really is) and the "missing" data is thoroughly explained and accounted for, if you take the time to actually listen or think it through.

I've really got no horse in this race, either WoW is doing great or it's fading fast. I'm no longer playing it so it's fate is of no consequence to myself. I've got my opinion on how it's doing, but it doesn't really matter except in the context that the OP asked our opinion. The fact is that the actual available data (gotten from Blizzard) shows that there's problems. You can ignore it and/or handwave it away, as you and a number of people in this thread seem to be doing, and believe that things are going great and getting better whether that's true or not. Or you can honestly examine the data that's available, with no bias, and come to the conclusion that WoW needs to do things to right itself.

"No bias" says the dude who willfully slops up anything that supports a predisposition of negativity.

[MoanaLisa]

I am sorry if data upsets you.

"Trend extrapolations" based on unverifiable third party data (in itself based on unknown assumptions) are not facts. There's a universe of assumptions in there and you should not pretend as if there aren't. Only Blizzard knows for a certainty what its subscribers are and precisely where revenue is coming from as well as player churn. There's also the matter of where you anchor your data poles and what exactly you're looking at. I can easily look at some retail chain during the 4th quarter of the year and compare it to the second or third quarter of the next year and "trend extrapolations" would appear to be catastrophic. Examination of stuff like raid participation to draw general conclusions is very questionable as there is no special consistent baseline. A drop-off in participation in any one part of the game does not automatically lead to the conclusion that the entire game is experiencing the same drop-off. It may be, it may not. It's not data that leads to generalization except in the special case of that one area of the game.

I spent the time to watch Bellular's video and he's not being honest where he draws factual conclusions based on trends and assumptions. There is no such animal as a factual conclusion under those conditions. This is why forecasting about customer behavior generally is often quite wrong even when their base data is public and recognized as such. Christmas is a busy time. Late spring and summer are not.