theres a graph going around on wow reddit regularly last few weeks showing 40% of retail players havent even done a M0. and only 60% of players completed a heroic dungeon. which means more than half of the playerbase only play wow as a collector game, tmogs, mounts, questing , pet battling… and maybe the occational delve.
to me this is absolutely wild. i simply cannot believe it almost, but the numbers are the numbers.
are there that many “casuals”?
And the source where these numbers where gathered from?
let me guess… “trust me bro” source?
Its mostly raider IO data.
It is really concerning that you don’t mention PvP in there, you know…the peak game experience.
Well character progresion in terms of raw power on retail is completly worthless. There is barely any point trying to play beyond baseline difficulty levels. So its this or maybe people actualy quit becosue of boredom before they would potencialy get into that content.
i started with +2 this season skipping heroic and m0 thanks to delve gear, so that graph doesnt show true information…
Or maybe because the main gearing path now are delves for low geared chars/new alts.
There was barely any reason to run heroic dungeons before, now delves make even lower level m+ close to obsolete.
If you finish +2 you get achievemnts for everything below that level so yes it does.
Probably false data.
Nobody knows how many players there are. That graph probably shows how many toons have done M0. So mains + alts.
For example, I have a MW monk that I haven’t touched yet. That one counts as not having done a single M0. But I clearly play M+ with my main.
Raider IO data that tracks what toons do is more reliable in higher keys and can be sort of extrapolated 1 to 1 to players. Because those are probably “mains”. Lower keys (or none at all) have a high chance of being alts.
But whatever back of the envelope player count calculation one does with API data, its still speculation at best.
Well top 0.1% is 1200 characters in europe alone.
That’s 1.2 million characters engaging with M+ on EU.
900k on NA.
So 2.1 million characters in M+, not even M0.
Obviously some people play multiple characters in M+, but I wouldn’t expect that number to be especially huge.
Thats why I think things like housing are going to be a hit.
There are masses of people that do lots of “casual” stuff.
Ever heard of the term “Never trust a statistic you didn’t falsifize yourself”? 
I know one person who really doesn’t do group content.
In retail I don’t either, I don’t like its pacing and I’m also XP locked. All the while I need Chromie to do them.
The plausible chief reason is that dungeons have become a different animal over the years, with skips and other kinds of rush, even at low levels. I did two Legion dungeons as a healer but I was genuinely lost. So it’s not a lucrative thing to do if you only do them once for the story.
(A community thing. Making them easier didn’t make them easier to approach, people started rushing instead. Groups in classic are way more relaxed, despite everyone knowing them in and out. Except a few racers but they’re done with the game in 4 days.)
People like to think WoW is a massive grinding game but some people may approach otherwise. The endgame is really just a thing from BC onwards and the term itself was explained by some as playing past the end, because you can’t let go.
(Classic did have 60 content but it appears to be more of a challenge mode at first.)
Apart from the numbers being from data gathering, which means that they are probably false, wow is an mmo that has lasted for 20+ years.
Do you understand how many players either play ultra casually (logging in once every 1-2 months, do a quest or two and log out), or even just level their old characters? I would be surprised even if half of the active players had done heroic dungeons.
M plus participation
PvP exist too… dont ignore us
The OPs char name sums up this post really well.
good one lololoool
im curious about the difference to Dragonflight
Well i was worried about your itchybehind