As others have pointed out, your 1.35% is just wrong due to the stats MMO is stating, but whatever, we?re not going to reveal any of our internal numbers to show how wrong you are, or discount the numbers posted on MMO for that matter. I will say they?re likely as accurate as they can be. Meaning, they?re wrong, but at no fault of theirs simply due to the data they have available to them. While we do have data we pull and review very regularly, it?s not always a true measure of success or failure without considering the context.

We try and make content for all of our players. It?s both a blessing and a curse that the WoW player base is as large and diverse as it is. ?Hardcore? players for example tend to dramatically underestimate the skill gap between themselves and the vast majority of other players. A lot of games handle this problem through multiple difficulty settings. That is harder to do in a game as content rich as World of Warcraft, but it is something we?re looking at more and more with new features like Raid Finder essentially adding a more accessible setting.

But even with a system (we believe) as awesome as the Raid Finder, there are no simple solutions.

Players are motivated to raid (and do any content for that matter) for a lot of different reasons. A sizeable number of players are satisfied with seeing most of the game content once. If they kill the dragon or slay the Lich King, they (appropriately) feel like they have won the game. That view is pretty heretical to the traditional raider, who is used to working for weeks to defeat a boss and then spending the next few weeks or months farming that boss so that their group has a leg up for the next tier of content. Other players can be motivated by gear, and once they accrue their rewards they are done with the content. Others are motivated by the challenge, and if things are too easy, they lose interest. These players also tend to assume that everyone shares their mindset and they will be happy to wipe on a fight over and over and over with hopes of improving. In reality, we know from data that a lot of players might be willing to wipe a few times, and then after that, they?re done raiding and potentially even playing. It might be easy to dismiss those players and argue raiding is not for them, but that?s not really our design goal. Raids represent an enormous commitment of developer resources. In the same way that we would never make 20 new Arenas just for Gladiator-level players, we don?t want to develop a raid that only 2% of our raiders can see. We will make sure that there are challenging encounters for players who enjoy that sort of thing (as many of us professional game developers do), but then our goal will be to, over time, broaden the potential audience by bringing the content difficulty down. We think the shock with Firelands for some players was that the nerfs were so severe instead of gradual. For the 4.3 Dragon Soul raid we plan on gradually nerfing it over time, sort of like we did with Icecrown Citadel, except by nerfing the content instead of buffing the players.

There is another portion of players that are just not interested in raiding no matter how accessible it is, and that?s fine too, but we do keep track of how player behavior in the past may match player behavior currently or even in the future as we make these choices. Overall our goals are to ultimately get as many people seeing and downing Deathwing as saw the end of Naxxramas in Wrath of the Lich King. That?s not all going to be day 1 of the patch, or even in the first month, but with the Raid Finder and gradual lowering of content we think we can create that initial super high barrier to test the true worth of the hardest of the hardcore, while also providing some fun and accessible content to a much wider swath of players.

-Peo- posted:

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It is obvious.

Bashiok is lying.

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Bashiok posted:

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While we do have data we pull and review very regularly, it?s not always a true measure of success or failure without considering the context.

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GutterSludge posted:

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Bashiok posted:

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While we do have data we pull and review very regularly, it?s not always a true measure of success or failure without considering the context.

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Data: Number of people completing Firelands.

How can this possibly be taken out of context? They either have or they haven't....

Flag On or Flag Off.

1 or a 0.

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Stormyblade posted:

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Geez, Bashiok, don't give us exact numbers, but at least give a freaking hint on how wrong MMO Champion is...say something like move the decimal point over one, or it's at least double digits...or something...if you won't share the numbers at all, then people won't believe you. People like data.

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DrMarkS posted:

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Being anal and a da-greed engineer.... I do wonder at the number.
I am in a guild with multiple alts. We do run alt runs and are 25 man 7/7 and H6/7. Plus a ton of 10 mans.

The question is, how many people have done FL by account, not toon. I'm not sure how you could data mine that answer without have internal Bliz numbers. With that data set available, how do you seperate the 1 person, from the multiple alts doing FL?

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TruthyID posted:

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Either way this begs the question, why are they spending so much of their development time and resources creating content for such a small portion of the population? The only new content they've added for the other 95% of the population since Cataclysm launched is a boring daily quest grind and two recycled 5 mans.

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WhiteSkull86 posted:

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raid content should be 100% raid-able by EVERYONE who WANTS to do it not by the elite only who pay the same money as everyone else.


And everyone raiding should get the SAME gear again as everyone is paying the same fee.

if they wana make hardcore elite content that only a small% can do then charge them more then everyone else who can see less.

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-Mithan- posted:

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Message to Blizztard:
Go back to what you were doing in Wrath of the Lich King and tell those complaining it was too easy to f**** off and quit or wear DS1 armor and do the instances if they want a challenge.

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-Mithan- posted:

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I don't raid because ... it sucks.

Playing when OTHER people want you to play.
Being locked onto the computer for 2-4 hours.
Wipes after wipes.
Redoing content over and over again.
Dealing with people who are pissed off for the above reasons.
etc, etc.

While I have quit from WoW and plan to return for the next expansion pack, I have zero desire to raid. I can barely do the instances more than 5 times each before I want to scream and for Cata they upped the difficulty.




Message to Blizztard:
Go back to what you were doing in Wrath of the Lich King and tell those complaining it was too easy to f**** off and quit or wear DS1 armor and do the instances if they want a challenge.

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CowboyPhil posted:

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The Fail and Bail has been common for a while now, people die once and get all pissed off. They also get mad when someone is new to the game or new to 85 and just now has the gear to enter a heroic dungeon and kinda suck at it. I mean not everyone want to sit for hours on YouTube and watch over and over how to defeat every encounter in the game. Some of us want to learn by trial and error. You know back in the early days of gaming (NES and SNES) watching a video on how to defeat a level or boss had a name . . . cheating. Everyone wants it all spelled out When X stad at Y and cast Z. While that is great why not learn it for yourselves. So you die, so you die 20 times, IT IS A GAME not a CAREER. In a Career you don't wanna wipe, you might not get another chance.

I swear 90% of the people on here a friggin whiney punks, you get mad when the raiding is too easy and you down a boss after the patch has been out for 2 weeks, then you get mad when it is too hard. I mean really when does the bi+[hing end. Play the game and have fun, stop being so damn serious about it all the time. I love this game and I do it because it is fun, It is my get away and have some fun, the fact that MMO says 1.35% is all that have completed Fireland well that seems really low as I have seen many others at least on my server that have finished it, I am not one of them but it seems every tuesday or wednesday someone is completeing it.

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