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Tuesday, March 14, 2006
Raid content useage
This comment from Chrismue merrits a separate blog entry: The Playon site published their statistical analysis of raid content use in World of Warcraft. In short:
In one month, with nearly a quarter of a million players observed, only 30% of all level 60 players have participated in any raid content, including the small raids to Stratholme or Scholomance (which soon will be disabled).
Only 5% of all players have visited ZG, MC, or BWL in that month. Of these 28% were just looking around, spending less than 1 hour per month in these places. Thus only 3.6% of all players really did any serious raiding to ZG, MC, or BWL.
You can easily see that less than 1% of players of level 60 will ever see the next dungeon under development, Naxxramas, because it is harder than BWL, and basically needs 40 people in full epic gear to go there.
Nobody says that Blizzard shouldn't add high-level content to the game. But spending 99% of development effort on 1% of the population isn't justified. Even if casual players will one day hit level 70 and do a casual raid to Naxxramas (which will yield them barely useful loot at level 70), this added content does in not way justify the considerable development time spent on it. If only 30% of all level 60 are raiding, then 70% of all level 60 players haven't had any new dungeons for them added since Dire Maul over a year ago. And no, repainting Scholo and Stratholme as 5-man dungeons doesn't count, because that will only raise the number of people who don't raid to over 90% of level 60 players.
I want more content that is accessible to the majority of level 60 players!!!
- posted by Tobold @ 6:04 PM Permanent Link
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I now have 3 lvl 60 toons.
I have gone to zero of these dungeons.
Heck, I still have never gone into the SUnken Temple with a group yet because i find it hard to commit to 2-3 hours uninteruppted time.
Guess that defintly puts me in the "casual", "solo" player.
I have gone to zero of these dungeons.
Heck, I still have never gone into the SUnken Temple with a group yet because i find it hard to commit to 2-3 hours uninteruppted time.
Guess that defintly puts me in the "casual", "solo" player.
# posted by 
: 14/3/06 21:45
: 14/3/06 21:45
I'd like to see numbers on PvP participation. And numbers for players who do PvP instead of raids/groups. I doubt there's much supplanting but who knows?
And I agree. I'd like to see more 'friendly' non-big-raid (<40) dungeons. DM was a great addition. Wish they'd add more on that scale.
And I agree. I'd like to see more 'friendly' non-big-raid (<40) dungeons. DM was a great addition. Wish they'd add more on that scale.
# posted by : 14/3/06 22:43
: 14/3/06 22:43
I now have 3 lvl 60 toons.
I have gone to zero of these dungeons.
Heck, I still have never gone into the SUnken Temple with a group yet because i find it hard to commit to 2-3 hours uninteruppted time.
This is one of the major "faults" of WoWs basic design, a fault that lured 6 million though. It enables everyone to hit the border solo. So it raises the expectation to do more solo stuff beyond the level limit. It is not the fault of those 5 million new MMO-players, that thay swallowed the bait. Right now Blizzard has a hard time to pull the lure back out of the players throat and yes it hurts (see Scholo/Strat/BRS new player cap).
So the question is, whats better? Scaring the non-hardcore/non-mmo vets right at the beginning (hi EQ1) or hook them with extreme accessibility, only to scare them later, with the fact, that new content does not drop off the sky every hour.
I have gone to zero of these dungeons.
Heck, I still have never gone into the SUnken Temple with a group yet because i find it hard to commit to 2-3 hours uninteruppted time.
This is one of the major "faults" of WoWs basic design, a fault that lured 6 million though. It enables everyone to hit the border solo. So it raises the expectation to do more solo stuff beyond the level limit. It is not the fault of those 5 million new MMO-players, that thay swallowed the bait. Right now Blizzard has a hard time to pull the lure back out of the players throat and yes it hurts (see Scholo/Strat/BRS new player cap).
So the question is, whats better? Scaring the non-hardcore/non-mmo vets right at the beginning (hi EQ1) or hook them with extreme accessibility, only to scare them later, with the fact, that new content does not drop off the sky every hour.
# posted by : 15/3/06 10:11
: 15/3/06 10:11
So the question is, whats better? Scaring the non-hardcore/non-mmo vets right at the beginning (hi EQ1) or hook them with extreme accessibility, only to scare them later, with the fact, that new content does not drop off the sky every hour.
So WHY doesn't new content drop off the sky every week?
Seriously. For example I like the TV series CSI, and watch it every week. And I bloody well expect new content to "fall of the sky" every week. One day, when the new content stops there will only be reruns available for watching, I'll just stop watching.
If you can produce a new episode of CSI every week, why not produce new World of Warcraft content every week, or month, or year? A MMORPG doesn't have a natural end at some point, all caps like the level cap are artificial. There is absolutely no reason why Blizzard couldn't bring out an expansion set every year, with each expansion raising the level cap by another 10 levels, and having enough content to keep the average player occupied for a year. Add some additional content during monthly patches, accessible to the average gamer too. Why would fun content have to end at 60 and be replaced by either grinding or raiding? Just continue doing the same stuff that made WoW such a success from 1 to 59!
They might need to hire some more programmers etc., but given WoW's profitability, and the money they'd make from selling the expansion sets, that shouldn't be a problem. I've read in an interview that after every content patch, there is a wave of resubscriptions to WoW, so obviously the more content you add, the more money you can earn.
So WHY doesn't new content drop off the sky every week?
Seriously. For example I like the TV series CSI, and watch it every week. And I bloody well expect new content to "fall of the sky" every week. One day, when the new content stops there will only be reruns available for watching, I'll just stop watching.
If you can produce a new episode of CSI every week, why not produce new World of Warcraft content every week, or month, or year? A MMORPG doesn't have a natural end at some point, all caps like the level cap are artificial. There is absolutely no reason why Blizzard couldn't bring out an expansion set every year, with each expansion raising the level cap by another 10 levels, and having enough content to keep the average player occupied for a year. Add some additional content during monthly patches, accessible to the average gamer too. Why would fun content have to end at 60 and be replaced by either grinding or raiding? Just continue doing the same stuff that made WoW such a success from 1 to 59!
They might need to hire some more programmers etc., but given WoW's profitability, and the money they'd make from selling the expansion sets, that shouldn't be a problem. I've read in an interview that after every content patch, there is a wave of resubscriptions to WoW, so obviously the more content you add, the more money you can earn.
Or, they could keep the current caps on Strath/Scholo/etc., and make them more difficult, as well as increasing quantity and quality of drops.
This way, it becomes tougher for the casual player, but not intimidating.
This way, it becomes tougher for the casual player, but not intimidating.
As for CSI and Law&Order, I just removed all of those from my Tivo. I had barely watched any of them all season, and there were around 60 episodes waiting to be viewed. That's when I realized I had seen one too many procedural crime drama episodes, and I had had my fill.
My sister, who lives in Greece, gets very little of this programming, so she still loves it (even though she has been watchign such shows for far longer than I have). But she watches maybe one or two episodes of the various CSI/Law&Order type shows every week.
I wonder if that will happen to us all with WoW some day.
My sister, who lives in Greece, gets very little of this programming, so she still loves it (even though she has been watchign such shows for far longer than I have). But she watches maybe one or two episodes of the various CSI/Law&Order type shows every week.
I wonder if that will happen to us all with WoW some day.
Tobold, you did some very bad data analysis in this piece.
only 30% of all level 60 playersM have participated in any raid content, including the small raids to Stratholme or Scholomance
No, it was 30% of the level 60 characters not players. Given that a number of people have more than one level 60 and those that raid generally only use one of those 60s for actual raiding this increases the number of players that raid. This data was only collected for BWL, MC, and ZG. In was exclusive of Stralhome, Scholomance, and other small raids.
only 3.6% of all players really did any serious raiding to ZG, MC, or BWL
This is an even worse use of the word players. I have 5 or 6 low level alts I log in at some time during a month. I would be pretty surprised if most people with a level 60 don’t have an alt or two. Basically because the data collectors can only track characters and not players it is very hard to determine the true percentage of players that raid. Given that 20+ people raiding is basically designed only for level 60 characters I think it best to only look that the level 60 data but as I said above even that is not accurate look at players with 60s.
Now I would tend to believe that those needing another raid experience beyond BWL and the new AQ40 to be very small we have no real data on that at all from that article.
only 30% of all level 60 playersM have participated in any raid content, including the small raids to Stratholme or Scholomance
No, it was 30% of the level 60 characters not players. Given that a number of people have more than one level 60 and those that raid generally only use one of those 60s for actual raiding this increases the number of players that raid. This data was only collected for BWL, MC, and ZG. In was exclusive of Stralhome, Scholomance, and other small raids.
only 3.6% of all players really did any serious raiding to ZG, MC, or BWL
This is an even worse use of the word players. I have 5 or 6 low level alts I log in at some time during a month. I would be pretty surprised if most people with a level 60 don’t have an alt or two. Basically because the data collectors can only track characters and not players it is very hard to determine the true percentage of players that raid. Given that 20+ people raiding is basically designed only for level 60 characters I think it best to only look that the level 60 data but as I said above even that is not accurate look at players with 60s.
Now I would tend to believe that those needing another raid experience beyond BWL and the new AQ40 to be very small we have no real data on that at all from that article.
# posted by : 15/3/06 19:00
: 15/3/06 19:00
I like seeing info like this since raiders seem to think they're in the majority and tell the rest of us to stuff it and stop complaining. Clearly Blizzard is pandering to the vocal minority instead of building compelling content for everyone.
The sad thing is, that if this data was presented to Blizzard they would inevitably reach the conclusion that they need more raid content. "Only 3.6% of the playerbase participates in end-game raids? Clearly we need more raid content so that more people will participate!"
As to the comments about the data being too low due to alts, this goes both ways. Players also have multiple alts that all raid. So while one player might be playing an alt that doesn't raid while having a 60 main that does (and shows up as a non-raider in the data), another player might have two 60s that both raid (and shows up as two "raiders" in the data). While the data is vulnerable to a large margin of error, the general trend remains compelling -- the number of players who raid is comparatively tiny compared to the quantity of resources Blizzard devotes to entertaining them.
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The sad thing is, that if this data was presented to Blizzard they would inevitably reach the conclusion that they need more raid content. "Only 3.6% of the playerbase participates in end-game raids? Clearly we need more raid content so that more people will participate!"
As to the comments about the data being too low due to alts, this goes both ways. Players also have multiple alts that all raid. So while one player might be playing an alt that doesn't raid while having a 60 main that does (and shows up as a non-raider in the data), another player might have two 60s that both raid (and shows up as two "raiders" in the data). While the data is vulnerable to a large margin of error, the general trend remains compelling -- the number of players who raid is comparatively tiny compared to the quantity of resources Blizzard devotes to entertaining them.
# posted by : 15/3/06 23:34
: 15/3/06 23:34<< Home
