Is no one interested in World of Warcraft anymore? The numbers paint a grim picture – but it’s complete nonsense, explains MeinMMO demon Cortyn.
The player numbers for World of Warcraft are in free fall. People are no longer interested in WoW. Once again, the game is dying.
Such and similar statements can be increasingly found on various news sites. While this would generally be an exciting topic if we had reliable numbers to support it, it is often misrepresented. The underlying statistics are massively distorted by many factors and must be seen in the context of what both WoW: Dragonflight and the other WoW versions are currently doing.
The statistic referred to is the number of completed “Mythic+” dungeons in the respective week. A trend can be observed here – it continues to decline every week. However, in the current season 4 of Dragonflight, this decline is particularly noticeable, following an already low start.
But first, take a look at the graph yourself:
The orange line for the current season looks really eerie, doesn’t it? It has the lowest entry of all seasons in Dragonflight and has now also reached an absolute low point.
If one were to only look at this statistic, one might think: Oh dear, WoW must be doing really, really badly.
However, several factors are completely overlooked.
The many factors affecting Mythic+ in WoW
First, the probably biggest change that some still haven’t grasped:
World of Warcraft has drastically restructured the system of mythic dungeons with season 4. The difficulty of all “M+” dungeons has been massively increased.
- A mythic dungeon (“M+0”) is now at the level of a previous “Mythic+10”.
- A dungeon of level “Mythic+2” would have corresponded to a “Mythic+11” in the previous season.
This means that essentially all dungeon visits that would have previously fallen into the range of M+2 to M+10 do not appear in this statistic anymore. Because these are now the visits taking place in heroic and M+0 dungeons. This massive number of dungeon visits is missing in the statistics because they are not recorded and no longer belong to “Mythic+” due to a change in the system.
The second factor is WoW Remix: Mists of Pandaria. Many WoW fans are currently only playing in this mode to unlock numerous transmogs and mounts. Many guilds have temporarily canceled their “M+” dates to instead raid together in Mists of Pandaria, thus securing a lot of bronze. This obviously affects the numbers of “M+” visits – but the players are not gone. They are just in Pandaria.
The third point is WoW Classic. “Cataclysm” started there a few weeks ago. While fans of the “old world” are skeptical about this expansion, it has always been praised for exciting raids and tough dungeons. One reason why many veterans are currently playing Cataclysm again and reliving the old times. Since nothing new is coming to Dragonflight until patch 11.0, it’s easy to switch to Cataclysm for a few weeks and leave M+ behind.
The last point is the start of the beta for The War Within. Unlike previous WoW expansions, you can “buy into the beta” by pre-ordering the more expensive Epic Edition of The War Within. Some have done this and are now on the beta realms to check out the new story or the class talents – often with several friends together.
Poor numbers because people are playing a “different” WoW
I do not want to deny that the “the expansion is over” sentiment also contributes to some players taking breaks or quitting. This happens with every expansion. The last season is always a reason to take a break from WoW, devote oneself to other games, or simply do something else before continuing with the new expansion.
But it’s not as dire as some portray it. The circumstances simply do not allow for that.
Yes, the absolute numbers of “M+” visits have dropped sharply in recent weeks. But this has many reasons – especially because World of Warcraft is currently providing numerous incentives to do something other than Mythic+.
Ultimately, it can be said: I do not know the official player numbers. Only Blizzard knows that. But taking the metric of visited “Mythic+” dungeons and deriving supposed player numbers from it, when there are so many factors currently tugging at the numbers of M+ visits within the WoW cosmos – that’s just nonsense and, from my perspective, a deliberate misinterpretation. Xal’atath would surely take great pleasure in such things.
