This is what the statistics looked like 2 weeks ago when someone did the maths.
Black Temple and Mount Hyjal have 19.5m character parses over the past two weeks on Warcraft Logs.
Sepulcher of the First Ones has 5.3m character parses over the past two weeks on Warcraft Logs. This is spread over 4 different difficulties (383k LFR / 3.2m Normal / 1.6m Heroic / 79k Mythic).
Both probably include multiple characters, and those characters probably do multiple difficulties on Retail. It’s hard to determine the actual player sizes from this information, as a lot of players on both versions don’t raid. However, by just looking at this it seems like TBC raiding scene is healthier population-wise.
Also, this data does not include KARA/SSC/TK/Hyjal/ZG, which are still VERY popular in TBC. Like people do these raids all the time, while on retail older raids die out quickly.
wouldn’t surprise me, new raid is hot garbage, even the new zone is almost dead now that everyone has unity since it was the only reason to be here…starting to understand why they time gate everything…’‘is our zone fun? no? ok we’ll make a mandatory grind to make people spend longer there’’
This is the second time this subject has come up. There isn’t really like for like data. Retail has four different raid modes, not all are logged, people don’t all do the same bosses, there are skips, people make use of lockouts etc. TBCC has one lot of data as full raids and that’s it, the same format of data isn’t even available to compare.
It may be that there is more raid activity or it might just be the two don’t have comparable data. I honestly don’t know.
TBCC is still churning out stuff for players to do at regular intervals. Retail is on the last raid for this expansion. TBCC had a load of FCM at the end of 2021, which I presume was due to lack of activity on some realms judging by the requests for more of the same. I would imagine the Sunwell will give players plenty to do. Later this year we’ll get the Wrath Classic expansion to play with.
People are losing interest in Retail and there are dying realms but Blizzard ignores them and introduced a mass character migration service instead. Retail has another end of expansion patch coming which will include a selection of old dungeons made into M+ and all the raids from this expansion with affixes on rotation. What interest this will garner remains to be seen. It will also introduce cross faction play.
Honestly, I don’t think it’s even worth engaging in the details. I do appreciate your call to reason.
However, let’s assume TBCC raiding is objectively seeing more participation in absolute numbers. Let’s just straight up accept the notion and work with it.
Immediate follow-up: so what? Game is not going back to the TBC model for now, and WoW’s player base is diverse enough for the idea of extracting valuable small insight off of raid participation data to be super hard. There are multiple vectors to analyze: weekly caps, RNG, catch-up systems, bad luck protection, visual aesthetics (I hated Black Temple, too dark and depressing, but still loved wiping on Mount Hyjal since it was so nature-y and sunny!), and let’s not forget the elephant in the room: nostalgia.
I feel that people starting these threads are implying that WoW should return back to what it has done in previous expansions. I am not against the idea (f.ex. PvP was to me much more friendly and easy to get into in Cata and MoP) but they should at least try and bring some nuance to the discussion because “retail bad, previous expansions good” doesn’t leave anyone much to work with.
Nah, we have classic… No reason for it. I was just surprised by the numbers. I think classic raids are more accessible and therefor have higher participation numbers. The amount of people that do mythic is super low.
Well, there is a reason why retail is failing. Im not saying completely revert to old expansions, but maybe take a look back and see why some things was popular?
I mean DF now gets a overhaul on talent tree, which to me looks like a mix between old tree and new specializations ( dont get me wrong, i like the new talents so far, the new talent tree is more or less the only promising thing for me wwith the upcoming expansion)
In bfa, there seemed to be a massive outcry regarding borrowed power. As far as i saw, the majority hated it, and then they kept it for SL? Hopefully they go back abit and see that nobody really enjoyed the pruning/borrowed power.
(and hopefully balance their game more frequently, every 6 months is to long in-between, allthough this is a different topic i reckon)
Reasons**. It’s never a single reason. Reality is hard to analyze.
I am with you, I do believe this analysis must be done. I just don’t think over-simplifying things helps either side of the discussion.
Also agree, just not sure Blizzard cares. People always say “wait for Alpha / Beta / PTR” but I can’t help but wonder if it matters at all. Blizzard very often seems to have made up their mind beforehand and then just weasel away with the “based on player feedback” card.
I mean the whole “you think you do, but you dont”, seems to me that they think they know better than their playerbase. And to a certain extent i can agree, but the last 3 expansions have failed i’d say.
Legion was okay-ish, only it was terrible for alts most of the expansion. It was very loved and I know several friends of my wife and her brother who got drawn in WoW during Legion and loved every minute of it.
Same people played semi-regularly in BfA and completely gave up in Shadowlands, and that’s long before 9.1.
So yeah you have a point. My take is that they over-fixate on high-level systems and always fail to account for the “what is a game and what is a chore” point of view. That’s sadly a trend for them, they seem to forever operate under the delusion that people will go through anything and everything just to play WoW. This has been proven wrong many times yet they don’t want to change their ways.
That’s the part that’s hugely disappointing to me.
Downloaded TBC Classic on impulse (played TBC when it was Retail)…haven’t played it. Playing Classic Vanilla had reminded me that the quality of life improvements of Retail, now suit me better…but the nostalgia market is deffo a thing.
It might be way to easy but it’s also a game. I hate the direction it tooks and that anything in this game needs to be a huge challenge.
I look forward to wotlk and skip season 4 all together. As long as they do not realize that the rwf raiders are not the majority of the game it’s senseless to return to retail.
I thought people said that vannila, tbc and wotlk had terrible raid participation and thats why lfr was created. Funny how game with less acessible raiding have way more active raiding community.
