Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Rise of the Raid Finder

MMO-Champion has been doing some Armory scraping and produced some statistics on WoW's new raid finder.  Out of a sample of 4.4 million level 85 characters who have been active since patch 4.3 in December, over 30% have completed the Deathwing Raid using the new automated raid finder on easy mode. 

As Chaud notes, it's hard to get to the proportion of players who have completed the raid.  The percentage of players who have cleared the zone can be no higher than the percentage of characters (i.e. if no one had ever cleared the zone on an alt, which is unlikely).  We can almost certainly say that 70+% of players who have a level 85 character that has been active since 4.3 have yet to clear the raid finder. 

Likewise, one imagines that many traditional raiding guilds are taking their people through LFR for gear and practice, which would mean that not all of these folks are new to raiding. A part of the long-term test of this system will be how many players beat the raid finder once to see the grand finale and then never return. 

Even so, the numbers have to be viewed as a success, as they will only increase over the remaining months until the new expansion.  The dungeon finder effect also has a way of amplifying itself - as more people beat the content, groups will gain experience and be better able to triumph even with newbies on board.  For better or worse, this feature is assuredly here to stay. 

5 comments:

  1. Considering that less than 15% of players defeated 1 boss in Firelands, yes, I would say LFR has been a wild success.

    I imagine that Blizzard's quarterly reports for 2011 would have looked a lot better had T11 launched with LFR, or at an otherwise easier difficulty.

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  2. Huh. I'm actually kind of surprised that the percentage isn't larger, considering just how easy and accessible they made LFR. I guess the number of people who just don't care about raiding in any way, shape or form, regardless of difficulty or story, is greater than anyone thought.

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  3. "The percentage of players who have cleared the zone can be no higher than the percentage of characters"

    This is not true. Imagine a player who has one main on which he raids, but 9 other level 85 characters where he only crafts or runs dungeons. If every player were like this, 100% of the players could have done LFR, while only 10% of the characters have.

    It is impossible to draw any conclusions about the percentage of players who have seen LFR based only on this character data.

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  4. I have 3 level 85s right now:

    The first 85 has completed half of the DS LFR - Wyrmrest Temple Siege, but I have yet to try the second half of it.

    The second 85 I only use to farm mats, and I have no interest in doing DS at all with this character.

    The third has completed DS on Normal setting, and is now working on Heroic modes, but has not stepped foot in LFR, nor will do.

    So, none of my characters have completed DS LFR, but I don't think it's aimed at me anyway.

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  5. Kid can't jump over bar. Trampoline introduced. Kid jumps over bar.
    Are we witnessing a functioning trampoline, or dysfunctional bar? Clearly a bit of both, but I personally can't subscribe to the PR spins that 'feature x wild success graphs to prove it'.

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