When do You Think 5.2 Should Come Out?

On the official forums someone asked when 5.2 was coming out and a blue answered them by asking, when do you think it should come out.  I thought that was a very interesting question and decided to answer it here with my opinion on when it should come out.

Being it is a raid patch and my opinion on when raid patches should come out differs from content patches I will look at it from that perspective only.  I will address when I think a new raid should come out and my reasoning for that opinion.  That would answer the more specific version of the question the blue asked

As always, for arguments sake, I'll look at the other side as well and share my opinion on when I think content patches should come out too.  You know, the ones with daily hubs, new heroics, new scenarios, etc.

I think standard filler content, non raid patches, should be every 3 months.  No particular reason really why I believe that 3 months is good for content like.  It just seems like a decent number.  The way I see it is the people that consume content fastest will be done with new content from a content patch in 2 or 3 weeks at most unless held back artificially by things such as reputation or spawn rates or what have you.  So three months seems like it would be ample enough to allow the people that want to get everything done, even if they play on a more limited play schedule, to get it done.

Now, to the question the blue asked, when do I think 5.2 should be released, the next raid patch.

For making my judgement on when I think 5.2 should be released, as it is a raid patch, I look to raid statistics.  Seems fair enough right?

Off to wow progress we go and take a look at how many guilds have finished the content on at least normal.  23.20% have finished the raid content on normal.  To add some more perspective 0.49% have finished it on heroic.  Looking at those numbers alone I would have to conclude that the game is NOT ready for a new raid patch.

The next little bit is purely opinion as I have absolutely no facts to back it up, but I am going to roll with it because it makes sense to me. 

Wow progress is no in any way accurate following the number of guilds in the game.  I have characters in 7 guilds, that I have noticed, that are not listed on wow progress that have downed at least 1 boss in this raid tier.  So I will consider this next statement fact, wow progress does not follow all raiding guilds.  Now for where my opinion comes in.

It does however list the guilds that look up their progress, which means they care.  So I am going to say the numbers we see is reflective of the number of guilds that care about their progress at least to some degree.  Yes, that is opinion, but like I said it makes sense.  So I am going to take their numbers, even if they do not follow all raiding guilds as a fair representative of what community that raids is like and consider their numbers accurate for the usage of saying who is downing what.  Like I said, opinion, but I am rolling with it.

So with that said, if only 23% of the guilds that actually care about raiding have finished a raid tier even at the normal level the next raid tier should not be released yet.  Imagine if we were to add all guilds that downed bosses in their tier.  Me, as just one player, would add 7 more guilds to that.  There have to be tens of thousands of more guilds out there that raid but are not listed, it could even push that number down to, or even well under, 10% if every single guild that killed at least one boss was counted.

But the people that raid just for the sake of raiding will raid whatever is there.  So we can not use the 10% guesstimate number.  We will use the solid 23% number as the number of people that care.

So when do I think the next raid patch should be released, in my opinion, when a fair majority of people that actually care have, at the absolute least, finished the content on normal.

So when the number of guilds followed by wow progress that have finished all content on normal surpasses 70%, then and only then should we have a new content patch.

At the moment it means that 77% of the guilds that actually care about their progression are not done progressing.  Perhaps nerfs could be added for them.  Perhaps the raid patch should wait until people are actually ready for it.  Either way, to answer that blues question, the way I see it 5.2 should not be coming out any time soon.  The majority of the player base is not ready for it because there is still so much left for them to do in the game.

I say, release a new raid tier when the majority of players that care about raiding are looking for something new.  Not when the 0.49% are bored off their ass.  I love the faster releases and I am very excited for the new raid but I don't think the game or its player base is ready for it.  Not even close.  One look at wow progress will tell you that.  23% are done with normal?  That is just way to low to even consider looking to release a raid patch.

So there you go mr blue, hope you stumble across this and you can have your answer.  When do I think 5.2 should be released?  Not any time soon.  At the very least, let 50% of the raiders that care, the limited ones listed on wow progress, finish it on normal before you start thinking about adding another raid patch.