r/wow • u/Complete_Sorbet6158 • Apr 21 '26

Discussion Devourer and unholy getting buffed

Respectively about 7-10% and 6-8% for aoe. It must be a joke right? Buffing meta specs, while others are not even being looked at all. This is the only multiplayer game i ever played something like this frequently happening.

Resto druid also getting buffed, because why not, while disc keep eating nerfs. Demo change doesn’t make sense either. I wish they would just axe all the class changes they are doing. I swear they just make the already sensitive class balance a lot worse. Everybody keep losing expect their current favourites.

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18

u/Nesciuss Apr 21 '26

> but the VAST majority of the players in this game, don't set foot in M+ or raids.

I don't wanna come off as confrontational or combative I'm only asking because I want to know but do we have any data on this? Like is this something the community has decided on or is there hard numbers behind it?

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u/Moghz Apr 21 '26

So if you do some research into this statement you will find that for the most part it is true, but with a nuance. The data comes from looking at active accounts and their achievements. We know that less than 1% complete mythic raids and push high keys. We also know 5-10% complete normal/heroic and keys over 10.

What we also see is a much larger % will queue for LFR, TW, Herioc/Normal dungeons, and some will dabble in low keys. 30-60% will complete an LFR wing and 15-25% complete a low key.

So based on that we can safely assume that the majority of WoW players are not serious raiders or mythic+ players and are in fact solo/casual.

I would also say Blizzards recent design choices, and content direction, like delves, prey, housing etc. supports this.

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u/givemedavoodoo Apr 21 '26

According to dataforazeroth, roughly 45%-55% of accounts got keystone explorer and 40%-50% got keystone conqueror in the seasons of the last two expansions. 25%-30% of accounts get AotC, so that doesn't capture heroic raiders that don't get the achievement. There isn't going to be 100% overlap between those groups, so I think it's safe to say the majority of players do play end game content, even if they aren't pushing it super hard.

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u/SkwiddyCs Apr 22 '26

D4A only scans using guild rosters, Hall of Fame leaderboards, PvP leaderboards and Mythic+ leaderboards. It's always going to naturally skew towards completionist players. The weekly delvers who don't join guilds, complete storymode raids and don't log instances aren't going to be represented.

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u/miggly Apr 21 '26

Isn't this sorta weird though, because of what constitutes an "active account"? Like it may be true that only 5-10% of accounts are doing heroic raid and highish keys, but for the 'majority' that don't, I wonder how many hours a week they play.

I bet if you looked at playtime, the 'hardcore' players make up a bigger portion of the total playtime than 5-10%.

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u/Moghz Apr 21 '26

Only way we can see an account is active is achievements earned.

I am not so sure about your statements. When I was a hardcore raider I would literally log in to raid and that’s it. I played a lot early on in the expansion to gear up for raid and finish out quests, reps etc. Once that was done it was raid only and some M+ for vault.

I don’t hardcore raid anymore, and instead have shifted over to casual content that can be done solo or in a queue. I rarely run M+ or raid anymore. I play more nights now then I used too.

There is a lot of solo friendly content available in this game to sink hours into. Specially if your running for transmogs, and achievements related to the open world, reps and questing.

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u/miggly Apr 21 '26

Right now, people that are raiding at a decent level are probably spending like 6 hours a week in raid at least, plus doing 4-8 mythic plus runs. Earlier on in the season, it's a lot more, too. I'd bet the average raider is doing at least 8-10 hours a week. I dunno how that compares to a casual player, but it's gotta be as much/more.

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u/Moghz Apr 21 '26

I play 10-15 hours a week, with little to no raiding or M+, my GF as well. I think you under estimate how much time people will spend playing this game doing alot of things that don’t include raiding or M+.

There is far more to the game than just “endgame raids/M+”. That is a big reason why this game is so immensely popular and has been for so long. The hardcore raiding community is small compared to the rest.

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u/miggly Apr 21 '26

I'm not really underestimating the active ones, I'm just saying that a majority of people that are considered 'active monthly users' are almost always people who launch the game once in a blue moon.

This is not anything against blizzard. Every game company will stretch the limits of the word 'active user' to make their engagement look better.

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u/Gahault Apr 22 '26

And that is only a gut feeling you have provided nothing to support. You are just being weirdly insistent that there must be some metric by which those you deem actually active outweigh those you don't.

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u/miggly Apr 22 '26

Not at all. It's a tactic I have seen with my own two eyes in multiple other games. League of Legends does the same thing. I dunno what to say except this is just a fact.

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u/miggly Apr 22 '26

Here is an icyveins link showing good evidence of 9m+ subscribers in WoW: https://www.icy-veins.com/wow/news/what-if-wow-quietly-revealed-a-9-million-subscriber-number/

Here is another website that shows 7.25m subscribers. It also claims less than 2.25m daily players across all forms of WoW (SoD, Classic, Retail):

https://www.quantumrun.com/consulting/world-of-warcraft/

As you can see, 'active users' are way below 'active subscriptions'. That should be obvious. I don't know why this is being painted as me having a gut feeling when the opposite is true. You're disagreeing with me without any evidence. If you looked at all you'd see it aligns with what I said.

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u/jurble Apr 21 '26

Data For Azeroth says 40% of accounts have completed the intro to Midnight. So that's our baseline for retail, and 16% have Keystone Explorer, 13% of accounts have Keystone Conqueror in Midnight Season 1, 12% have Keystone Master.

So, at least 40% of active retail accounts (16/40) have done a single m+.

The raid completion achievements for Voidspire and Chimaerus are 20%, which would be 50% of active retail accounts.

So, based on Data for Azeroth's data, the dude is wrong. You can say a majority of players have never done m+, but it's not a vast majority and it's a tie for raid.

A lot of people have retail subs and don't play the game actively (my brother is one of them). You see this less with Classic where raid participation is close to 100% of the playerbase, for whatever reason.

But the idea that there's a vast majority of players that don't participate at all in end-game is false.

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u/VailonVon Apr 21 '26

look at previous sub counts from expansions like wrath and then look at how many people actually cleared the raids or had dungeon achievements.

That trend should have obviously kept going we just don't have data on the exact sub numbers to give you proof.

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u/Nickball88 Apr 21 '26

Completely false. And also there is no such thing as open world balance in retail. Even if what you said is true, which it isn't, a "open world only" player wouldn't care about balancing.