Yeah, those chaps in those crazy raid guilds are organized, no question. But if you’re online for hours on hours and not organized, that doesn’t automatically make you a casual player. Heck, you might even a roleplayer *shudder*. Why do I bring this up?
Because one Azeroth Interrupted’s Robin Torres has weighed in on casual vs. hardcore players:
There is a big rivalry between the casual player and the raider. Raiders don’t want casuals in their guilds, raids and often groups because of their lack of experience. And casuals are contemptuous of the time raiders seem to spend in order to get as far as they’ve gone. The two biggest accusations made by casuals toward raiders:
1. You are in the minority
2. You don’t have a life
I don’t know if there is a big rivalry between hardcore and casual players…I don’t read WoW forums (because I value my sanity more than that). But assuming there is, and I wouldn’t be surprised…and what does that have to do with this article? Nothing.
See, Robin kinda misses the point. The players she describes in her article are all hardcore players… The players she describes as casual players, are hardcore lite at best. Why? Because they are raiding. If you’re raiding in WoW, or pretty much any MMO, you are in the minority AND you aren’t a casual player.
Now I have nothing wrong with Mrs. Torres wanting to stick up for the hardcore. Sure, they are a much maligned group and full of roses and sweet things. And they often don’t have the time to defend themselves, what with all of the time they spend playing the game… but this article misdefines casual and hardcore players and that bothers me.
I don’t think she does it on purpose. I think it’s just hard to see what a casual player is like when you’re not one yourself. Anyone who plays a game for 20 hours per week can’t really be described as casual. Sure, you may not be as organized as the big time raid guys and you probably don’t take it as seriously, but still, you’re spending 80 hours a month, 960 hours a year playing a game. That’s not the definition of a casual player.
None of this is a problem in my mind. Play the game how ever you want and so on. Have a great time. But, don’t throw me in as a 20 hour per week player when I define myself as a casual player. I have a whole mess of other things that cut into my gaming time and they leave me MAYBE 5-10 hours a week to play games. Maybe. And even when I did play WoW, was I spending every moment of that playing WoW? No. It’s just a different mindset and a different life with different time constraints.
But you know how many months I subscribed to and played WoW? Over a year at least. I loved being able to sit down with my wife and play the game for say an hour or two, depending upon the timing and life.
And that’s why I take contention with this statement:
The merits of the first argument aside (we outnumber you so we’re right nyah nyah), I would like to address why Blizzard ignores it. If it is true that only 10% of the players see the endgame content — and that is arguable since we probably still have a year before the expansion which is a lot of time for people to get there — then that is 900,000 people. Everquest at its peak had 550,000 active subscribers and that is the game that made everyone else want to make MMOs to get in on the money. To neglect 900,000 paying customers, no matter what the percentage, is just stupid. And what about all of the people who want to get to the endgame content eventually? Neglecting the high end content makes the game less exciting for everyone. This is why they are spending development time on things like Archimonde as well as more easily accessible content.
Lets just assume that 10% number is right, though I have no way to know that since Blizzard tells us nothing. But, assuming that’s right, lets take a look at it from there… so that’s 900k users that are using the end game content. Ok, lets checkout the last expansion… They released whole new lands for casual players, to go from 1 – 20 or so. New races, new classes (oh wait), and some new things like jewelcrafting. Ok, interesting. I bought the expansion, had a good time resubbing for a few months. But what did those players, the 10%, that have leveled characters beyond 59th and did raids and the like? They got 10 new levels, whole lands, a pile of new raids, flying mounts, etc. And the same stuff casual players got. That doesn’t sound like ignoring the hardcore at all. As a matter of fact, it sounds like they got the lions share to me. Well, how about the recently announced expansion? It’s all hardcore all the time. Adds ten more levels (which seems like a huge mistake to me), adds a class you can unlock after doing some 80th level quest, etc. Nice. For those other players…that make up 10% of the total population.
So, to make a long story short (too late!), this article doesn’t talk about casual players at all and defends players that spend way to much time defending themselves already AND that Blizzard already caters to. Interesting.
What Would Matt Do: To be fair to Robin, this article isn’t that big of a deal to me except defining casual the way she does. Fix that and we’re golden.
If you look here: http://www.wowjutsu.com/us/
You’ll see that less than 2% of raiding guilds have cleared Mount Hyjal or the Black Temple. Notice the emphasis above. This data doesn’t even look at the mass numbers of people who aren’t in a raiding guild and in fact, includes less than 900,000 players total! So that 10% number seems about right.. but that’s just for Karazhan. The percentage of overall players that see the higher-level content are significantly small.
Right, so assuming those numbers are near right, off a little bit either way, why the fuck is Blizzard making expansions that ignore most of it’s community? Not even getting into the fact that the second expansion will invalidate all the gear and levels you got in the first expansion. This really doesn’t seem like the greatest move on their part, imo.
Your assertions to the number and validity of the amount of “hardcore” players is obviously way, way off.
Earlier this year, Blizzard press releases (http://www.blizzard.com/press/) indicated that the total number of subscriptions in the US was just over 2 million, while the EU was over 1.5 million. The Wowjutsu site, which draws its’ data directly from Blizzard’s own Armory tool, has parsed and recorded over 1.5 million players in the US and EU that have equipment from raid encounters in the Burning Crusade expansion. That’s 1.5 million players out of a total of ~3.5 million – meaning that around 40% of ALL players are actively raiding, making them by your definition “ultra-hardcore”. Beyond that, all census and armory data taken shows that the overwhelming majority of players are currently at the level cap of 70.
The minority of “ultra-casual” players who have not even reached level cap still have an enormous amount of content still waiting for them. Why make more, when they haven’t finished the existing content?
Dear Mr. Statistics,
If you’re going to call my numbers bunk, the ones I pulled out of my ass, and insult me so greatly (the pain!), please leave links to backup your information.
That being said, taking your numbers at face value, Blizzard is STILL making content for the minority of people. 40% is still a minority in the math I know. The overwhelming majority number you posted is nice, except that’s not an actual number. It’s a figment of your imagination until you provide some proof.
I’m not saying you’re wrong, but for a guy calling himself Mr. Statistics, you sure aren’t backing up your statistics with actual information. I did say my numbers were complete guesses and I stand by that.
And does the Armory only reflect EU and US servers? I didn’t know that…
Honestly, I’d love to find out your numbers are real, just because then I’d have something to go off of when I’m trying to figure out wtf Blizzard is doing.
Looking forward to hearing from you with links,
Matt
Did you miss the link I included to Blizzard’s Press Releases, where they explicitly state the number of players in each region?
Did you miss the link the earlier person posted to Wowjutsu, where their easily-navigated site explains in detail how their system spiders the US and EU Armory sites?
Do you not know about sites like Warcraft Realms, which have been tracking realm populations for over two years now, and currently indicate that there are over 2 million level 70 players in the US realms? (Remember: Blizzard themselves stated that there are just over 2 million players in the US – that’s a level 70 for each and every single US player!)
I’m not sure how much simpler I can make this for you. A full 40% of the player base is not only at level cap, but is actively raiding. This means those players have probably consumed nearly all other Player-vs-Environment content in the game. You and yours, by contrast, have obviously not. You never even made it to the original level cap. There is a massive amount of extremely accessible content in the game you still haven’t seen. Given limited development resources, who are you going to develop new content for?
Sweet and lovable Mr. Statistics,
Call me silly, but I don’t see anything on Wowjutsu that backs up your claims. I could easily be missing the links. Again, I’m not saying you’re wrong, but I’m saying, if you’re right, do LINK TO THE ACTUAL FUCKING PAGES WITH THE NUMBERS. :)
But again, assuming your numbers are right, as I did in my above post, even though now they’ve gone from 40% have raided at some point to 40% are now actively raiding, Blizzard is releasing content for 40% of the user base. Which is great, and maybe the business sense says, release new content for the upper 40%. *shrugs*
But, I’d think, that if 60% of your user base hasn’t reached the end game, you’d maybe want to throw them a bone or three when you add on to the game. The last expansion gave that some minimal effort with new starting lands and allowing restricted classes now used by the other side. The next expansion? Nada.
So, again, if you’re numbers are right, do link some pages that prove that, mkay? And if they are right, they still lead to questions of why you have 60% of users getting nothing new from an expansion…if you’re Blizzard, you do want them to buy that expansion, right?
M
Seriously – how stupid ARE you, Matt?
How on EARTH are you missing the section on the MAIN PAGE OF WOWJUTSU, RIGHT BELOW THE LOGO, where the EXACT NUMBER of players spidered by the site through Blizzard’s own US and EU Armory are displayed? For your reference, that number is currently:
Last Refresh: 08/30 7:42 AM GMT
# Total Players: 1589774
# Total Guilds: 39289 / 15916 Horde / 23292 Alliance
# Ranked Guilds: 28692 / 12593 Horde / 16099 Alliance
That’s over 1.5 MILLION players recorded from Blizzard’s Armory tool in the US and EU that currently have raiding gear. Out of a total of 3.5 million players overall in the US and EU, also directly from Blizzard.
Also, in that Blizzard link, they tell us that there are over 2 MILLION players in the US. According to Warcraft Realms – a very long-standing and respectable survey site – their in-game data spider shows that there are over 2 million level 70 characters on the current US realms. As I pointed out before, that’s a max-level character for EVERY SINGLE player in the US. That means that very nearly every player account has access to the end-game, and 40% of all players are actively using the raid content.
With this information in hand, Blizzard obviously expects that very nearly EVERY player who plays the upcoming expansion will have at least ONE level 70 character; for the 2 million US players, there are already 2 million level 70 characters – and that number of level 70 characters is only going to grow larger in the many months to come until the next expansion is released. Therefore, they ARE creating content for almost 100% of the player base by adding an additional 10 levels to the cap.
Dear Mr. Grumpy, er Statistics,
How stupid am I…that’s a question for the ages. Many scholars have pondered this question and no answer has yet been found.
On to the rest of your oh so lovely post where you play fast and loose with the “facts”.
First, those numbers on the left top are not defined anywhere. Are those the total player scanned? The total players raiding? The total players that have raided? Don’t quote empty fucking number at me and then tell me I’m stupid. Really, if you can’t be more civil and less of an internet jackass, you’ll just have to respond to yourself.
Second, and this my favorite, over and over I’ve argued as if the numbers you’ve quoted me are real. I’ve said, if these numbers are real, lets break it down from there. And did so. I’m sorry you’re unable to comprehend my arguments (40% of the population != majority, number of 70th level characters doesn’t determine how many people have reached 70th level).
Third, you’re taking numbers out of context and applying horrible statistical calculations to them to back up your arguments. That’s not only silly, it makes you seem ignorant. For example, X 70th characters doesn’t tell us how many actual people have reached 70th. I’m betting you yourself have more than one 70th level character. Most of the people I know that play WoW often have more than one.
So, again, even with your suped up numbers from some random site on the internet (an interesting site to be fair), your arguments don’t hold up upon further scrutiny. So, shush it.
Ever yours,
Matt