MMO-C recently posted about the raid completions based on the data they were capable of collecting. It is not entirely accurate, and they admit that, because it does not track everyone in game. They can only fetch so much data, it is to no fault of their own. They can however scan for achievements, and they are using those to track it as best they can. This is a very good way to do so even if the possibility of someone not coming up in the achievement scan is completely possible.
So while their numbers might not be 100% accurate I can believe that that are a reasonably informed guess. Enough so that I am willing to play with those numbers, because they are all we have, and I'll consider them close to accurate, + or - a margin of error of course. That margin of error is most likely small however.
They say that there are characters not in guilds that are not counted, but then again they most likely count characters multiple times as well, even if they say they have taken every effort to count only "players" and not characters. The reason for that is because you can disable being tracked by not sharing achievements.
So if you have 6 characters that have defeated garrosh they can tell, based on achievements, that those 6 characters are indeed the same player, so they count it as one player. This is an excellent move to help us try to get more accurate information.
Unless of course you have someone like me to throw a money wrench into things. By disabling tracking my 6 characters will show as 6 different players as I do not choose to show shared achievements and because of that they can not connect my 6 as being from the same player.
So for each extra player I seem to be because it counts me as 6 players it might even out for the players they admit to have had possibly missed. If anything, it might even over count it. It is quite possible that the number of players they counted is more than have actually done it. But for the purpose of this post I am going to call it even. The ones they might have missed we will consider equal to the ones they did count but did not realize were the same person because they disabled achievement sharing like I did.
With that said, their numbers show that of the 2.9 million players (not characters) they were able to track 11% have defeated garrosh at one level of raiding or another. Be it LFR, flex, normal or heroic. 11% of those 2.9 million players have a confirmed wing four kill.
11% of 2.9 million equals 319,000 players have finished this current tier of raiding even at its lowest level.
The last subscriber count I recall seeing, and I can be wrong here, was 7.7 million subscribers. 319,000 of that 7.7 million players is roughly equal to 4% of the player base.
Is 4% really equal to "more people raiding than ever before"?
I knew the numbers for raiding were low but really, not even I would have believed that they were that low. 4% of the player base, which includes the easiest of formats, have beaten the last boss of the expansion.
There has to be some miscalculation here. Something I missed, something MMO-C missed. Because even if raid participation is low, it can't be that low, can it?
If that number was 4% have finished normal, I could buy that as acceptable. But with flex and LFR shouldn't those numbers be much higher? Perhaps this says sometimes about the difficulty of those formats.
When my guild downed garrsoh 5 people in my core raid team got the achievement. Meaning 5 people had not even done it in LFR, the easiest version you can get the achievement in. Why do you think that is?
I actually laughed and asked them did they even try to do it. They all said the same thing, no. LFR just is not worth the effort, the stress, the wait. LFR is just not an option. They all figured they would wait until we did a guild group for flex or normal to get it done, no rush.
The no rush approach works because we are a casual guild, but we are a casual guild that does down things. In time of course, well behind the "raider" curve, but we get stuff down. If these are people capable of getting stuff down and they are not even doing the LFR doesn't that say something about the content as a whole? To me it does, it says that content is unplayable in its current format. But that is not news coming from me, I've been saying that about the LFR for a long time now.
But now things have changed, now I have some actual numbers to work with, numbers that say 4% of the players in the game, 11% of the ones counted in that one study, a really small amount, have even been capable of completing the content on what most might call easy mode.
That kind of means, to me at least, that LFR is not the easy mode people make it out to be. Maybe that is because of what I just mentioned. Lots of people that are capable of downing things are not doing the LFR. Do you know how many people in that 10 man got their first garrosh kill in LFR? One.
After three months I would except the completion rate, thanks to the addition of LFR and flex, to be in the 30% of all players range, maybe even higher, but looking at MMO-C you will notice that none, as in absolutely none, of the raids have a 30% player completion rate.
MV has the highest at 74% of 2.9 million players, where if we use the same formula, works out to be roughly 29% of the total player base. And that is the oldest, and the easiest now thanks to some people going in there that over gear it for quick valor and making the runs super easy.
Makes you think with those as super easy as they are now thanks to massive over gearing, and still not even 30% of the player base is seeing this content at its easiest you have to think, like I do sometimes, maybe there is something wrong with the LFR.
But not to turn this into an LFR bashing post I will go back to the main topic and go back to wondering what I was wondering, how only 4% of the player base could have finished this tier already.
Even if we do not include the entire wow player base, by extending it as I did, and just take MMO-Cs numbers as the definitive numbers based on wanna be raiders at least, because their names would show, that 11% is extremely low. With the wanna be raider crowd don't you think all of them, or near all of them, would have at least downed garrosh at the LFR level and not just 11%. That 11% could be even lower once you figure people like me count multiple times there. It could very well be 10% or even 9% using their own data if there was a way to filter me out from counting as multiple people.
Like I said, I would have expected 30% of the player base to have killed garrosh in one form or another already. Heck, even 30% of the wanna be raiders that MMO-C counted would have been better, but 4% and 11%, wow, those numbers are amazingly low.
So two questions for you out there.
What form did you get your first garrosh kill or did you kill him yet? For me it was flex.
Do you think the numbers of people actually raiding at any level should be higher or is 4% all you would have expected? As said, I would have expected at least 30%.
Day Twenty-Three - Nice
39 minutes ago
I've killed garrosh in 10n, 25n and flex (14 people maybe?). Flex came first, but only because I lucked out and happened to pug in with a good group. At the time I think I was pulling around 250k and I was at the bottom of the dps charts, one tank vengeance whored his way past me in dps too. So basically I got carried.
ReplyDeleteI have yet to do a single LFR on my hunter. Since he was all 530/536 gear before lfr came out (we only did one heroic boss in ToT, so we ended up doing a lot of farming...) so the thought of going into lfr seemed miserable.
I've healed two LFRs wings with my druid... As soon as she had decent enough gear to do flex, however, I switched to only doing flex. My dk tank has never been in lfr. Mostly because I'm too scared of tanking LFR after reading your experiences...
I think the breakdown looks pretty much how I'd expect. I hate that people can finish LFR before I can finish normal. I'd rather that be because it was released more spread out, instead of because it's too hard for lfr raiders. But if I had to guess, I would have guessed half the players with max level characters would have finished lfr wing 1, and going down from there.
On a completely unrelated note; I'm seeking help. We have a casual (two night a week) 25m that's been moderately successful (for a casual guild), downing garrosh a few weeks ago. And we're attempting to start a second team of alts and a few other guild members who are interested in raiding.
Our RL for 25m is a lot of why we were able to progress, he's our main tank, and is always very prepared and really good at explaining fights and helping people out. In our new (10m) team, he plays his lock, and really doesn't want to have to raid lead, so one of the healers, who's a good leader and also an officer, took the reigns. However, we can't seem to get our tanks to take any sort of leadership role.
I've never been on a raid team that didn't have a tank RL. But it sounds like you raid lead from all sorts of positions. How do you do it? As a hunter, in normal mode, I generally never have to know what's going on. Don't stand in the bad, do stand in the good, pop deterrence and soak things, pew pew skull... That's pretty much every fight, maybe once in a while tranq or flare or master's call, but those aren't things I need to know before the fight, you just do them. Healing is even simpler. If a frame goes down or turns a color, hit appropriate button, if more than one is going down, hit different button... occasionally there's a healer specific mechanic (heroic ambershaper had one... I can't recall in tot...), and there's a few damage reducers to time for tank healing, but in normal mode it's generally pretty cut and dry. What I mean is, for both there's very few normal mode fights that you can't go into without knowing the fight, and not learn it within one or two pulls.
Tanks on the other hand seem to need to know what they're doing. Is there any option for tanks other than studying the fight? And when you're raiding leading as not a tank, do you call things out for your tanks? like swapping or who each tank should have? Maybe I've just been too lucky with hardworking tanks in the past; I kind of just figured if someone wanted to be a tank, they would do all the studying that goes with it.
Any advice?
~Delirium
Congrats on the 25 normal kill. My 25 seems dead, it has not ran in 3 weeks now and unless I can recruit and trim some fat of the people that are there we will not be picking it back up. I am almost tempted to just scratch it entirely. Perhaps I will see if someone else wants to try and lead it and maybe they can rebuilt it. I've reached burn out phase.
DeleteMore ->
As for how to raid lead from different spots, it is as easy as raid leading from the tank spot. Just be a knowledgeable player.
DeleteThere is no difference from me saying, spread out, stack up, 8 yards apart, get full coverage, etc, from the tank position or the healing position or the melee position or the ranged position. If a person know the fight, takes the effort to read up on what every role experiences and has to deal with, and can implement it, what role they play makes little to no difference.
However, with that said, my performance does see a noticeable dip when leading. If we do farm stuff with a 10 where everyone is good and knows everything and I don't need to say anything I can do substantially better but one newer stuff I always am behind a bit. Is in the difference between doing 250K and 300K, yes, that large. It is common for damage dealers to suffer raid leader loss like that.
This is why I believe tanking is usually where the raid leaders end up. Tanking is the easiest role in a raid to be a raid leader when it comes to thinks to watch. Even if my ability goes down as a tank I am not going to lose aggro, I am not going to die, it might effect my DPS but it would not be as noticeable as it is on a damage dealer.
Healing as a raid leader is like ranged. You might lose some numbers, but it can be done. Melee, I would say that is the hardest to raid lead from in most cases as your back is to everything so even watching timers is not enough sometimes to see if someone is doing something wrong even if you play with the camera angle a lot like I do.
In the end, any dedicated player with knowledge of not only their class but all classes and knowledge of the fights can lead if they put their mind to it.
When I raid lead I call "global" things out. I tell tanks when to tank and then leave it up to them to go back and forth. I watch their buffs of course and point out when something is missed.
Usually for me it is a matter of keeping people vocal. I tell my tanks, more so when learning, to say "taking boss" whenever they taunt. It works for the other tank and it works for me knowing that is one less thing for me to worry about. Usually even with fresh tanks, after a few pulls, if they are always vocal with their switching, I can correct any errors, and they actually learned on their own to the point it is something you never need to worry about again.
Being a raid leader is a lot about knowledge of the fights and the classes but also about your players. I think the key is to keep them vocal with the important things. I always give people tasks. Like the first melee I send in the test realm, being for melee it is an easy stand and kill fight, I have him call out the list of who is to go in next. On the dragon fight I have one person assigned to mark shaman and call when they mark it. Basically, by passing out jobs it makes everyone better because they all end up knowing what to do. Mind you, we are not the greatest raid team, but I find this works well for us. Passing out little jobs also makes everyone feel important to the team.
One thing to watch for when you use that approach, is you have to keep a tight leash on people. I had one healer I had to put in line because she started calling out for battle revives during a fight. That is a no no, I did not give that to you as your job, so do not do it. Ever. I decide who gets it, I know what each person is capable of, if a DPS dies at the beginning of a fight and I decide to leave them dead there is a reason for that. Often people will hear others calling out things and think, I'll help. As nice as that sounds, it will destroy a group instantly. Only the people that are supposed to be doing things should do thing, and stay vocal when they do.
Not sure if any of that helped, but hope it does some.
I suppose it mostly just seems like, as a damage dealer, I can not know what I'm doing, and not cause a wipe. knowing my class is almost always enough (for normal mode). Where as tanks, you might know the ins and outs of your class, but if you don't know misery needs to be pulled out of the group on protectors, then it'll cause the whole raid to wipe.
DeleteI completely agree about the calling things out. Especially in 25m; with that many people in vent/mumble, it's crucial to have assigned people calling things out.
The most annoying to me, is sometimes we'll have people who I guess think they're trying to help, but all they announce is just what DBM/Bigwigs is putting on their screen. They are giving absolutely no information that every single person doesn't already have on their screen, but for some reason they think it'll be helpful to fill vent with them reading their dbm warnings... I recall on Lei Shen, someone died because they didn't get out of the way when thunderstruck (i think that's what it was called, the proximity raid wide damage mechanic) went off. And after that they decided that they would call out every time it was about to happen, even DBM already had a count vocal countdown for each time it was happening... It drove me crazy, and it took repeated asking on several pulls to get him to stop...
Anyhow, it sounds like from what you're saying, our problem isn't the raid leading, it's just our tanks not coming prepared (and also most likely not being ready to raid).
We'll try asking them to call out what they're tanking, and when they're switching, that might at least encourage them to be more conscious of it, and give our regular team's tank a chance to hear if they're switching at the right times or not.
~Delirium
Totally off topic but your definition of carried is interesting, on my first Garrosh flex kill our TOP dps was at about 220K... if you think your 250K was being carried you need to adjust your criteria a bit. :)
DeleteSome people respond better to vocals from vent then from DBMs believe it or not. I've actually had people ask for me to call things out even though DBMs does already.
DeleteUsually it is the simple stuff as weird as that sounds. The simple stuff is the first thing people forget about when stuff hits farm status. I guess because it is so easy they forget about it.
It could be a tank issue. I do not leave it upon my tanks to study up on their own, however I know they do. The key is, I learn how to do it as a tank and I tell them. "Watch out for this", "use a cooldown for that", "tank him here", and call out switches on 3 stacks". All they need to do is follow instructions.
@R, depends on the method you use. We used the "skip a phase" method and out lowest was a tank doing 260K. But yes, you can do it with everyone in the 250-200 range. I would not even consider taking anyone doing under 200K however. At least not until most of the raid is in nearly all heroic gear to cover for them.
@R: I'd call it being carried if your presence doesn't matter. The group I pugged with could have easily downed garrosh without me. It was perhaps slightly faster with my dps there. So i didn't feel like I was a burden.
DeleteThat's actually one of the reasons I dislike healing. I always feel like you're just competing with the other healers to get a heal off first. So if one of us isn't there, everyone else's HPS go up and OHs go down.
@thegrump: That's interesting. I think we had been assuming they would know how to conserve their CDs, and when to use them. Is that not generally expected of tanks?
DeleteThis may not be normal, but in our main team we call out non-healer raid wide heals and non-tank raid wide damage reductions (like Boomkin's tranq or rogue's smoke bomb), but trust the healers and tanks to use theirs as needed.
Do you call that out during a fight? like, use icebound fortitude now, or something like that, or do you just warn them of the boss's abilities before hand, and let them manage the actual cds they'll need when?
@ Anon 1
DeleteNot really carried. Someones DPS being there making it easy makes it easier. They are doing their job by making the fight as a whole easier. Just because they can do it without you doesn't mean you being there is not a benefit to all.
Week 1 when SoO came out on the first boss it kind of took a few people by surprise (my healers I would guess) and we ended up 7 manning the first boss. Does that mean we carried 3 people? Does that mean that being from day one we could 7 man it that we are always carrying 3 people? No, it just means it is easier with 10. Carried means when everyone is doing 200K and one person is doing 60K they are carried. But when everyone is doing 200K and someone is doing 150K, they are contributing at a reasonable clip. In my opinion at least. Needed or not, they are not being carried.
@ Anon 2
Generally expected? Yes. Actively done? No. Many tanks might think to know when to taunt and such, but personal survival and how best to use their active mitigation is actually something that requires timing and thinking, a lot more than just saying taunt at 3.
Our tanks are pretty good, I do not normally need to tell them to use their cooldowns past telling them the point of what to look for. Say something like tortos with his snapping bite, all I said was he will keep doing that, it is his big hit, make sure you have something rolling for each one. They handle it from that point on. The only time I would call out of something is if I see healers down and know a big moment is coming because I am not sure if they notice the healers are down.
For me it was FLEX 25 and only last week. I couldn't be bothered to do it on LFR because I no longer have the patience to deal with it. In fact, I don't think I've done any LFR at all for this tier. My guild (25man) is currently on 13/14 and chances are we will down him this week or next week. I was just bored and joined a PUG that needed a healer. My current Ilvl is 561. I do not intend to do LFR for the remainder of my WoW playing days, however many that may be.
ReplyDeleteYou seem to be in line with most raiders I know of. They did not touch the LFR or very little of it.
DeleteI did it on my main to try and get the 4th tier piece being I had three from the normal. But since I got that I have never been back on my main.
I do it on alts still, but I wish I could skip it on them too. I wonder, if all the raiders are not doing it, could that be the reason the completion rate on LFR is so low?
I only raid on my main. My alts are just profession mules. Once they dinged 90 they remained with whatever gear they had at the time or whatever gear they got from my main while it was doing the timeless island. If the garrison turns out to be what I understand it will be, my herbalist and my miner could become obsolete as I wouldn't need them any longer. Two less toons to level to 100.
DeleteI wish I could do that. lol
DeleteI have this obsession with gearing alts. Even if I do not go out of my way to do so. One of my bank alts is even 517 and they have never done anything except maybe a world boss once a month.
I feel I at least need to give them something to wear even if I am not using them.
My only Garrosh kills have been on Flex.
ReplyDeleteI've done LFR 1 a handful of times and LFR 2 maybe twice. I haven't touched LFR 3 or LFR 4 yet and likely won't.
I haven't killed a normal boss yet, still only a handful of progression attempts on Garrosh with a guild group but never got the kill.
The numbers are weird but maybe not surprising. I was originally concerned that the numbers haven't really changed much since the Oct 20 results that they linked to (some have actually gone down a bit %-wise since the player pool has increased) but in hindsight, with LFR being included, that does kind of make some sense. Anyone who actually "raids" probably completed everything up to ToT at least once on their account by Oct 20 at SOME difficulty level.
Ordos going from 10% to 11% in 6 weeks surprises me more than a bit, I know a number of people personally got their cloaks in the past 6 weeks so apparently they're in the heavy minority, either you got it early in 5.4 or you aren't really doing it at all.
The SoO numbers are going in the right direction, from a 2% clear to an 11% clear but that's still a pretty small number. May be accurate, though, I know quite a few players who won't kill things in LFR until they've done it on "normal" (guess that's flex now for many of us) so they may just be lagging a bit. I'd expect by the end of Jan that'll be up in the 20-25% range.
Have to say, though, it feels a bit weird to be in the 11% this far into a patch so just based on that, maybe something's a bit hinky with the numbers.
As for the LFR completion rate, you can't infer anything from these numbers. Could be that only 5%-10% of players are running LFR and are completing it easily every week. (no, not likely, but that would perfectly fit the numbers, too, which is my point, they literally don't give you any indication of how high/low LFR completion rates are)
I would have thought with the advent of LFR that 30%, at least, of level 90 players would have already done it. In my opinion this means that LFR is really way to hard.
DeleteHeck, just look at you, others me, me, my guild, all not doing LFR. If we are the players it is easy mode for, and we do not want to do it, that means there has to be something wrong with it.
I am only considering that LFR is the easiest version. We do not know which version people are doing, but seeing as everyone that posted here already has completed it on flex or normal and not LFR you would have to guess many more are like that. If only 4% total completed it, and a lot of the "raiders" are not doing LFR, what does that mean is the LFR completion rate? It would be a complete guess, but either way, it would be less than 4% and at this point for how long it has been out, that is absolutely horrible, even more so when you think that it is supposed to be the "easy" content for everyone to see.
More people raided in BC percentage wise 3 months after a new raid tier came out.
Can't infer too difficult either, could be that only 20% of active players have even tried LFR. 60%+ may not even have the gear to queue for it. You and me being interested in raiding and generally playing in a raid-friendly way doesn't make us the majority. Hell, I'd expect anyone who gives even the SLIGHTEST amount of thought to gear would have killed a Celestial at least once... the latest MMO-C numbers indicate that only 24% have. 24%. So, I'd say the LFR pool is at MOST 24% of the active player base so comparing that to the 11% completion rate for SoO, that means that almost 50% of anyone who cared enough to kill a Celesial has killed Garrosh. I don't know about you but I think that's a GREAT completion rate, higher than I'd have expected.
DeleteI've said it before and others have said it as well, LFR isn't for us, that we're not running it right now means that things are finally going in the direction they should have been going all along... heroic raiders run heroic, normal raiders run normal, flex raiders run flex and LFR raiders run LFR. There'll be a bit of overlap but if they've managed to get the game to place where we all find our comfy spot, that's only a good thing. LFR doesn't have to be good for normal raiders any more than heroic has to be good for a flex raider.
Without knowing the attempt rate you can't know the completion rate, it's that simple. And it's not supposed to be "easy", we've had that conversation before as well, it's supposed to be progression content for LFR raiders. The average number of attempts to kill on a new boss in the first week of LFR was probably... what, 5? 8? Maybe less, but let's say 8. What was your average number of attempts for a new boss kill (not lowest, average for all) on flex? Normal? Probably higher than that, especially on normal. By that logic, which I think is the way it should be looked at, it IS easier even for the intended audience.
Bah, I'd argue with that as well even though I have no idea what that number is. Raiding isn't COMPLETING, it's just showing up and poking things with sticks with some expectation of success. Even assuming boss kills required to count, using the same chart, 40% have completed SoO 1... almost twice as many as have killed a Celestial. Again, that's a great number... and I guarantee that 40% of active accounts in BC weren't killing current-tier raid bosses, especially with multi-month attunements required. Maybe it was 10%, maybe it was 5%, maybe it was 2%... but it wasn't 40%.
Side note - if I wasn't running flex I probably would be running LFR. That's likely a factor as well, flex being around makes it much easier to get an organized run than in any previous patch. The pool of players for LFR is smaller than it has been since it was released.
You make a valid point. You would figure everyone would at least get one shot in on a world boss, and all the world boss numbers are kind of low when looking at the big picture. Of course the newest being the lowest.
DeleteLFR is supposed to be "sight seeing mode" to steal some words from our departing crab friend. It is not supposed to be progression.
Less than 10 is the standard for any non gimmick fight that is not "hard" with real raiders on normal. There are usually a few one shot bosses each tier, there were 4 this tier that we one shot. However, that is how raiding with real raiders, even if they are lesser skilled, because they are actual people that want to raid. You will have some push overs, some that need attempts, and then you will have horridon.
Flex is destroying LFR. The better players like you are not there to help them any longer. This is why I say they need to lower the difficulty of LFR being they can no longer count on the good knowledgeable players being there.
It's funny, I keep seeing that GC has said all of these things about LFR being "tourist mode" and such but can't find any original source for it. Here's the one actual comment I was able to find by GC about LFR (this one for DS LFR, it pre-dates MoP):
Delete"We have a Raid Finder system that will work a lot like Dungeon Finder to allow more casual raiders to get into the content."
I can recall seeing NOTHING since then in terms of official or unofficial Blizzard communications that LFR is anything less than that, it's meant for casual raiders, not non-raiders. That's why I've claimed all along that it's the right difficulty for the intended audience. If you or anyone else can actually provide a source quote to contradict this I'd like to see it...
You one-shot 4 normal SoO bosses?! How much practice did you already have from Flex or LFR at that point, though? Those cut down hugely on the number of attempts if you cut your teeth there.
I still don't see that but as usual, agree to disagree, I think the LFR difficulty is GENERALLY okay and the fights that they make too hard on LFR are usually too hard on other difficulties, too (stupid Shaman).
I don't recall where the tourist mode comment came from either. I've seen it quoted so many times that I just take it as it has always been there. For all I know it could be an urban legend and he never actually said it.
DeleteBut even taking the comment you posted, it is not for the most casual of casual raiders. Real casual raiders that are casual about raiding, do normal, like my guild. The casual they are talking about are part timers that want to do it whenever they have time. They, for the most part, are not raiders.
One or two runs through flex. They did help a lot. One shot the 1st boss, 2nd boss, 6th boss, the 9th boss and the 13 boss. So 5 were one shots. The 1st, 2nd, and 13th were actually killed before we did it in flex as a guild. So three were without previous practice.
Shaman is one of those bosses where you could end up wiping if you are having "one of those days" even if you had done it 10 times before.
I think SOO completion would have been higher if they had designed/tuned SOO LFR properly.
ReplyDeleteAlas, SOO is full of fights with bad designs that are too hard to learn (in the LFR setting). Instead of a virtuous circle of people trying LFR enjoying LFR and doing more, it has a vicious cycle of people trying LFR disliking LFR and quitting LFR.
I think you are dead on accurate with your assessment. I am sure that does not come as a surprise, I've been saying the LFR is over tuned for the people it is meant for since it started and now that many of the "better" players are staying away thanks to flex the people it was designed for can't do it on their own without the help.
DeleteThe number of people in my guild that have given up raiding, if they were not raiders with us and only LFR people, or given up on the LFR and will accept gearing slower in flex or normal, is amazing. If I said 80% of my guild that did LFR last tier is not doing it this tier, I think I would be close to accurate.
Your numbers are um not right. MMO champs looked at 2.9 million accounts. They found of that only 11% had completed SOO. Or 319,000 accounts. That’s all fine. But then you are taking the 319,000 number and dividing it by all the accounts 7,700,000. But that isn’t right. Since MMO C only sampled only 2.9 million you are missing 4.8 million accounts. Basically 7,700,000 / 319,000 isn’t a number that matters or means anything. What you need is 7,700,000/ (319,000 + X) where X is the # of accounts that completed SOO in the 4.8 million unsurveyed account.
ReplyDeleteMore than likely 2.9 million accounts is enough to extrapolate that 11% is the % on the other 4.8 million probably with % error rate. I’m not great with statistics tho so it may not be enough.
To answer your two questions I haven’t killed Garrosh at any level yet we are right up to him in normal raid I doubt other people made the decision for the reason I did. I got a new officer to lead raids so that I can focus on guild leading. So I decided that I would leave Garrosh to experience with my raid group as a fresh raider since I haven’t got to do that in like 2 years.
Second questions. again I disagree with your 4% but I also thing you’re looking at the wrong # 40% of people are raiding even if it’s just lfr first tier. So the real question is what’s why does it drop off from 40% to 11%.
But what you are not taking into account is that scanning for everyone with the wing 4 achievement.
DeleteThat means the 4.8M not surveyed either 1, did not have the achievement, or 2, were somehow missed which is entirely possible.
With that said, saying that 4.8M probably do not have a wing 4 kill is probably really accurate. The few that "might" have done it and are not counted are easily offset by people like me that show up as 6 different players. So that 4%, while guess work, is most likely very accurate when speaking in reference to MMO-Cs 11% if we were to take that as fact.
It is not like they didn't want to check those 4.8M, they just could not find any data on them having completed wing 4. From that you could, and I did, extrapolate that they do not have the achievement and thus did not do it.
The drop off from 40 to 11 is because wing 4 is too hard for LFR people when actual raiders like yourself are not doing LFR to help them along. The way I see it, there really isn't a question there because the answer is really that simple. If only the people at blizzard would notice it. I doubt they will.
Actually they don’t want to survey the other 4.8 million accounts go read what he wrote again. It’s a sample not a full count. If it was a full count they themselves would have gotten to the 4% but they didn’t.
DeleteI know, that is why I added the ones they did not count. They only counted the ones with the achievement for wing 4 (and people in the guilds with those people). Hence only counting 2.9M people.
DeleteTheir 11% is probably extremely accurate for the "raiders". My expanded 4% basically just includes those that escaped their scan because they are not raiders or not max level.
No, the 4% number is bogus, since the MMO-C number was NA/EU, while the 7.7 million includes Asia. The numbers are from two different populations.
DeleteThat is another valid point to support what I said. I can only guess based on what they presented and they resented tainted data.
DeleteI would actually guess the asian completion rates are much higher than the MA/EU ones.
Been busy so haven't commented on here lately (holidays, work, a certain beta test weekend, etc)...
ReplyDeleteOn topic:
I don't have the Downfall achievement since I only ran wing 4 once and went straight to Garrosh on that LFR run, but I have a Garrosh kill in LFR at least. I'll have to go back just to get the achiev at some point... My iLvL is 553 and I had the cloak on patch day, so I need nothing from LFR...
No flex or normal runs for me since my guild is dead and I haven't really felt a strong desire to raid anyway. Just doing world bosses each week.
I think the numbers are dropping because the active players are dropping off. They are always highest at the beginning of the expansion and then drop off.
I wish MMO-C would explain exactly how they got their data. Only 2.9M accounts draws the whole thing into question. It's not 2.9M randomly selected accounts, it's 2.9M guilded accounts that fall in some category that they didn't explain. So it very hard to draw any real conclusions from it. It's still just speculation in my opinion.
As an aside:
I actually just "dethroned" my guild leader yesterday... He's still playing but just not on Drak'thul US. Sent him a message outside of game, but he hasn't responded. Anyway, still felt weird dethroning him. Just figured it was better me who's been in the guild since inception and is an officer, than some other random person who happened to log in and click the button.
You are someone that skews the records as well as you have killed the last boss but do not have the wing achievement and the wing achievement is all that can check for. But that is really why it is + or -. To handle situations like that.
DeleteThe 2.9M they scan are the accounts that show up on sites like wow-progress or guild ox. Which usually means people that the majority of people that raid. So those numbers might be fairly accurate, more than anything anyone would be able to collect without using them.
Better for anyone active to be in charge. Do you plan on trying to rebuild?
If it's just the accounts on GuildOx/WoW-Progress, then it's horribly skewed towards raiders or people who want/try to raid, so the percentages are definitely inflated.
DeleteSo until the collection methods are explained completely, I won't trust the data and I'll assume that the numbers are worse than those being reported since that's always been my assumption regarding raiding. I remember Blizz even saying that a large group of players don't even have max level characters... Just wish they'd give out actual stats.
Regarding the guild... I don't know. No plans at this point. Going to sit on it for a week or so at least and then maybe do some re-org/cleanup. Beyond that, I don't know.
I am not 100% certain with that, but seeing some of their previous data collections sited they got the data from those sources I would believe this data had to come, at least in part, from there as well.
DeleteThe last I heard GC say, which was some time ago near the end of cata, less than 50% of players even have a max level character.
Good luck if you try. Guild leading and recruiting are hard jobs. I would not want to be in that position, but if you are into that sort of thing, you might be in a good position right now.
Tiggi above is correct.
ReplyDeleteWhether or not the 11% for SoO wing 4 for 2.9 million accounts mean it would be 11% for 7.7 million accounts depends on MMO-C sampling method. I would guess that they are getting their numbers by scanning guilds. The number of guilds isn't so large and so it is possible to get 90% of all active guilds whose members appear in the world from time to time via things like data gathering addons (sites like realmpop.com list guild names, for example, you can check their data, most of the guilds that aren't one-man that I know of are there). It works much worse with character names, because it's much easier to skip a character that way than skip a guild. If my guess is correct and they are getting their numbers by scanning guilds, then their numbers are likely pretty accurate, and 11% for 2.9 million translates into 11% for 7.7 million.
Wrt numbers themselves. I think LFR accounts for something like 75-90% of all activities, maybe more. We had data before that was suggesting that. 40% for wing 1 is overall, impressive, but perhaps that's only 7-10% of "real raids". And that's with flex, on the patch that introduced it (=the hype), and on the last patch of the expansion. And 11% of wing 4 is perhaps only 1-2% of real raids. Again, that's with flex.
Is 40% of people setting foot in raid and downing the first wing - on any difficulty - big? I would say so. They did want to get many people into raids, they got them, 40% is a lot (and that's perhaps 50% because some people might have beaten only part of wing 1).
Is 11% of people competing the raid on any difficulty big? No. Mission not accomplished. LFR is nothing hard, you can complete it *easily* if you care about the mechanics, etc. The drop from 40% for the first wing to 11% for the entire raid shows that people don't care much.
Is 1-2% of people completing the raid on non-LFR difficulty big? LOL. No. That's a disaster. That's the absolute proof that the raiding model is old and boring and no longer good enough to hold players in the game. Nobody cares about raids! LFR is the only reason they can justify developing new raids, really. Without LFR, raids are going to be empty. And I think a huge number of people who do LFR do it not because they like raids, but because they have nothing else to do and because LFR is the only thing that drops gear (bar PVP, but that's a side-game, and the gear is worse than even LFR for PVE). They can easily drop out from the game at any moment (and I believe they do drop out in numbers, both until WoD and permanently).
Blizzard have a problem on their hands.
Read the reply I made to Tiggi above to see why I believe (but could be wrong) that the numbers are actually correct. It goes to the way they collect data, the are collecting it from a place that tracks people that make the kills, so it is a good place to collect it from.
Delete40% of the people have not stepped into the raid, 40% of the people might not even have max level characters for all we know. MMO-C only counts max level characters because only max level characters can get the achievement. So the number of actual "players" is much lower than 40%.
LFR is hard, not sure why people keep saying it is not. It is extremely hard for the people it is aimed at. Send any "raid" team in there, even from a guild that is only 1/14 normal mode, and LFR is piss easy. But for the people it is aimed at it is hard. Do not judge LFR by my standards or your standards, it was not recreated for people that know how to play. It is hard, very hard, annoyingly hard, for the people it is meant for.
Blizzard does have a problem on their hands. Even if we disagree with the numbers and how MMO-C came up with them and what I deduced from the, we do agree there.
The fix is easy really. Make LFR for groups filled with the people it is meant for. Stop making LFR thinking people that know how to raid will be in them to help everyone that doesn't.
If you will notice something from the comments here, not many people that raid are doing the LFR. No one here did. That is why the completion rate is so low. The people that used to carry the group through it have no reason to be there now thanks to flex and the failure of LFR is now being seen as bright as day.
I thought about this some more, and I think you are right, it's hard to say what 11% for 2.9 million will translate into for 7.7 million.
DeleteHere's what I believe MMO-C are doing to collect their data:
They can't just go to the armory and ask for all possible names of players, because the number of possible names is prohibitively large. But they can go to the armory and ask for names of all players in a specific guild on a specific server, and they can collect names of guilds via data gathering addons (wowhead used - and likely still uses now - such an addon as well), so they do that.
That's what others do (bar wowprogress, where people register their guilds themselves), plus that vibes with their caveats that their data might miss players that aren't in (active) guilds.
Now, if MMO-C do that, the characters they are missing are either guildless or in small family-and-friends-type guilds that are inactive enough to fly under the radar of the addons that do their /who's from time to time. It is entirely possible that these characters aren't max-level and just aren't interested in raids. There should be *some* correlation between "relatively inactive" and "doesn't raid" after all. So, yes, participation rates for players who aren't in the MMO-C scan might be lower.
That is the way I figure it. I figured I would extrapolate their data over the entire 7.7 million when in fact the 4.8 million this is not counted is probably substantially lower as they are not raiders and / or not max level.
DeleteWhile I am sure my "guess" is not accurate and their number is not exact either, I do believe that it might be relatively close to the actual numbers because the people that do have kills will most likely have looked their character up in one place or another at some point, or been in a guild that had someone who did at once point, and thus most will have been counted.
I still haven't killed Garrosh. My guild has once, a couple of weeks ago making us #1 alliance on the server (yup my server is that dead) but I wasn't there and we haven't done it again since.
ReplyDeleteI've only done odd bosses on flex if we go flex instead of normal as I already give 3-4 evenings a week to raiding normal. Flex is scheduled on other nights and I just can't do it. So I've barely touched flex despite how looking forward to it I was. I just don't have the time. I tried so hard to persuade my guild leader that we didn't need to raid normal so much, but he wouldn't listen. Now we have what another six months of Mists? We're starting heroic and failing hard so far, it is my sincere belief that we'll burn out, we'll hit a brick wall we can't pass on content we've never done (we're not an hc guild) and so we really, really need to slow down. I might be co-raid leader but guild leader calls the shots on the direction of the guild and he loves raiding, he's obsessed with it and raids 6 nights a week, so yeah he's not going to listen. Anyway that's off topic.
LFR. I haven't set foot in Siege LFR once. I loathe LFR and I decided as I didn't have any reason to go, I didn't need the gear, I had the legendary etc. that I wasn't going to torture myself. Mists has killed alts for me so I don't play them at all now so I don't actually play Warcraft that much but that's also off topic.
So yeah I won't count in those figures as I've not actually done it yet. I think when the guild killed him there was only one or two who hadn't done it elsewhere. I'm certainly the only one showing in the group who doesn't have the Judgement legendary achievement, so I'm pretty sure the rest have now completed it on something, though there's obviously a handful like me that weren't there for the normal kill.
We have another 6 months. To be honest I'm already feeling a bit burned out on Siege. This is from someone who has never run LFR, and barely ever run flex. Just from running normal every week I'm getting a bit sick of the place. Another 6 months of it and well I hope we make 6 months. Basically what I'm saying is I'm in no hurry to get him down.
In my head I'm pretty much done with the tier, I've never cleared heroic while it's current and don't really have any ambition too. If we do manage some hc kills it'll be a nice bonus I guess but I'll come back next expansion and clear it for the achievements, so I'm not bothered if I do it now or then. I like to clear normal when it's current, that's what I like to do and want to do, that's my sort of level as a raider. Normal clear while current and I'm happy. Heroic while current and I'm mega stressed, I like fights to feel doable not impossible, I don't enjoy banging my head against a brick wall. Again off topic.
I'm not worried if people haven't done it yet. Perhaps they are smarter than the rest of us and are taking their time. We have another 6 months after all. What's the rush?
There really is not a rush, but like any other game, people like to beat it. The fact that so few have been able to could be viewed as a success or a failure, depending on how you look at it.
DeleteA success because it could make it last longer or a failure because it is too hard for the players.
I think it is a failure on both parts. Not to rush it, but because people are already burning out on it, even not doing all the versions, so having not done it in such large numbers and being burnt out on it, I can only see that as bad for the game. And the being to hard part, look at the world we are living in. Cheat codes, over powering games, guides for how to do everything, the average player does not want hard. Challenging maybe, but hard, no. That is where blizzard made their miscue with LFR. They tried to make it challenging, but with random groups that challenging just feels like hard, and hard is not fun when you are with a whole bunch of people that you can blame any failures on.
So there is no rush with it, but it is not fitting with the standard time frame of your average game player in todays society.
I've only done LFR for the last year (adding a little flex as guild groups have room.) My true ability level before that was normal-mode, sometimes almost clearing, sometimes doing a few heroics depending on the tier.
ReplyDeleteI got my Garrosh kill 2-3 weeks into it being available in LFR. It took 4-5 queues before I got that successful group, and my groups are guaranteed to have at least one healer awake and at-keyboard :( I really just wanted that quest out of my log, and some experience in case I got into a Flex.
I didn't go back until a few friends came back to the game and started LFR-ing for gear. My last 3 runs have been one-shots of him.
Congrats on the LFR 1 shots. I did it in LFR once, was trying to get that 4th tier piece for the set, had the others from normal. Was lucky that it only took 3 pulls if I remember correctly. Never went back, no need to, there are easier ways to get valor and there is nothing I need there. My alts however... :(
DeleteI guess it is also more fun with friends. My problem is none of my friends want to run it. They would rather wait for a flex run so I find myself trying to get more of them going or going on to open raid to find a run.
No man, they survey 2.9 million accounts of them only 11% had the achievement. it’s like a survey of 1000 people on an election say 500 of them support an issue that because they know that the sample size is big enough they can extrapolate that 50% of voters support that issue. In this case MMOC sampled 2.9 million accounts they found that 11% of them have completed the raid, because the sample is big enough they can extrapolate that 11% of all accounts have completed the raid.
ReplyDeleteHow do you think they got the names of who to look at to see if they had the achievement?
DeleteThey went to sites that track raid progress and/or achievements. For someone to be listed in those they usually need to have searched for themselves, or someone in their guild searched for themselves.
With that said, someone who would actually search for themselves, putting them in the survey to begin with, is much more likely to be the type of person that would have finished it because if they care enough to see how they are doing, they are attempt to do good.
So the survey information will surely be inflated. Asking 100 republicans if they like a bill put up by republicans will get you a much higher rating of approval. Searching 100 raiders to see if they have a raiding achievement will get you a much higher percentage of people having it.
They did not random choose names, the hand picked and targeted the easiest ones to survey, ones that already raid. So the numbers would be inflated naturally.
If you honestly think they picked a balanced selection of the population to check you are sadly mistaken. I would bet my life on that.
I'm not surprised at all. Only a very small percentage of the player base has ever raided. I didn't think LFR was changing that a whole lot and it doesn't look like it has. I have never done much raiding, but I've completed the first two tiers in LFR and i'm sure I'll give the remaining tiers a go before the next expansion when I've got nothing better to do. However, I've never had the time to be a hardcore raider and I don't find LFR to be very compelling gameplay at all. I don't know if other players are like me or have other reasons they don't raid. It surprises me that blizzard puts so much resources into it for such a small number of the player base though. I was really surprised they cut the mid-expansion to dedicate to the resources to raiding. I saw a stat that something like 30% of the player base ran those. Hopefully they've learned their lesson there from the feedback they've gotten, but there's a lot of other things that more people play that they can put resources into to. TI was a good concept, but needed to be 3 or 4 times larger to really get what they were after with the whole exploration thing. It is really quite small, and after the recent server merge our server went through, has way too many players competing for the same mobs, completely killing the fun.
ReplyDeleteI think you kind of sum it up with what you say. If they want to expand the raiding player base they need to expand it on the LFR level.
DeleteBeing they can not make it compelling content as a challenge, because that does not work in a random setting, they can change the LFR to a gearing up tool, as it should be, and stop trying to treat it as a raid, so to speak. Just give people a visual taste of what a raid looks like and let it be super easy like dungeons. That might get more people into raiding, at least at its lowest level.
I think even if TI was 4 times the size it would have lost its luster just as quickly. There is nothing else there to make it exciting and there are many problems with it to begin with that do not even touch on to the lack of content it offers at its base. Don't get me wrong, I like the timeless island, but it is good for one week and then to go kill some rares once in a while for lesser coins. But that is all it is good for.