[Aelryn]

I'm reposting a comment I got at the blog, because I think it's important to the discussion:

From Heartless: "Sorry to be a party pooper, but your numbers are way off. WoWJutsu only tracks the NA/EU Armory, so comparing the number of players on Jutsu to the 9.3 worldwide total is wrong.

Last I’ve heard, the NA/EU market was about 4 million strong, but at the same time, concurrency numbers have recently dipped below pre-TBC levels for the first time since TBC’s launch.

Also, Jutsu counts every single person in the guild as a “raid participant”, whether they have a piece of raid loot or not. So, the number of raiders can actually be decreased even further from your 600k figure.

For example, according to Jutsu my guild has tackled Kara and Gruul, but I have nothing to do with that success. I haven’t touched either, but I still count towards the “guild member” count, or that is my understanding of the website.

I think the better approach here is to compare the results of Jutsu with PARCs numbers from a while ago that estimated only 2% or so of the NA playerbaes were ever actually IN a raiding zone.

Just using some basic numbers, 600k out of 4mil is almost 7% of the user base enjoying upper tier raid content. A much improved figure. However, the big improvement comes in the form of the lower tier raiding environment where 50% of the playerbase seems to be participating.

What that tells me is that Blizzard has done something to bring “raid” content to more players, since it is very evident that many more players are enjoying the TBC raid content.

The debate over end game raids will always go on, but to me the war is won when Blizzard provides step-up content to get core players there. If players are given a path that is achievable, and then CHOOSE NOT TO participate, we can draw some conclusions about the validity of the end game raids.

NOTE: I hate raids and do not participate in them. I did at one point in my DAoC years, but only once have I hit a raid zone in WoW and it was a pick up raid to AQ 20."

And here's my response to that:

Cameron: "I was actually waiting for someone to call me on those numbers, Heartless. You’re right. Cody Bye told me the same thing on AIM yesterday.

However, I don’t believe it weakens any of my main points considerably. Even if we’re dealing with a population of 4 million instead of 9.3, the numbers still indicate a largely casual playerbase and all of my main points still hold. There are still six whole zones designed for only 7% of players to access.

Also, as you mentioned, that 600k figure is probably inflated (for two reasons, actually). One, WowJutsu counts players who are in a raiding guild whether they’ve actually raided or not, and two, (as Cody mentioned) it probably counts alts in those guilds as well. We actually have no idea how many players that 600k figure might account for. The high-end raiding population could very easily be half that, or even less.

You mention that about 50% of the player base participates in the lowest tier of raiding as an argument in favor of raids in WoW, but instead I think it’s telling how sharply those numbers drop off. With Kara at 99% and Gruul at 71%, the next highest percentage after those is Serpentshrine with about 34% of guilds having beaten it.

You mention that this is a way for Blizzard to “bring players into raid content,” but I’m asking why they should be trying that at all given their clearly casual community. Sure, people raid Gruul and Kara– because there’s nothing else to do. But the vast majority of them get a taste of raiding there and don’t move on to harder raids.

Your claim would make more sense if there was a smoother progression through the raid instances, but there isn’t. There’s a sharp drop-off where most players say, “Nah, I don’t think I want to get into that.” And six cool instances are wasted on 90% of players (even with the modified numbers).

My article has two main complaints about raiding in WoW: It’s a lot of time spent on development for a significant minority of the population, and it causes the need for MUDflation which invalidates established content when expansions come out. I think that even with the modified numbers, both of those points still hold, and that raiding does more harm in WoW than it helps the game, on the whole."