Did Blizzard’s Overreliance on Mythic+ Kill WoW’s Identity and Retention?

Community General Discussion
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I want to open a discussion about one of the biggest design shifts in WoW’s recent history: the transition from a raid-focused endgame to one dominated by Mythic+ dungeons, and how this shift has contributed to the game’s decline in player retention and loss of class identity. When we look at player activity data from multiple sources, a clear pattern emerges. Starting in Legion, Mythic+ was introduced as a fresh, repeatable alternative to raids, and initially, it saw explosive growth. By that expansion’s end, Mythic+ participation had stabilized at a strong level and was generally seen as a positive addition to the game’s endgame options.

However, starting with BFA and becoming even more pronounced in Shadowlands and now The War Within, Mythic+ was increasingly positioned as the primary path for gearing and progression. This coincided with a major decline in raid engagement. For example, data shows that in The War Within Season 1, Mythic+ participation dropped dramatically—by more than 75% within the first 14 weeks of the season, with active M+ characters dropping by over 45 million compared to Dragonflight’s Season 4, which itself saw a decline from previous expansions. Meanwhile, raiding showed relatively better retention. Heroic raid boss kill counts for tier 1 and tier 2 raids in The War Within remain higher than Dragonflight’s, with only about a 20% drop-off mid-tier, far better than the 30-50% drops seen during BFA and Shadowlands expansions.

These numbers suggest that while Mythic+ was once heralded as the accessible, fun alternative to raids, the reality is many players are burning out on Mythic+ much faster. The design of Mythic+ as a high-pressure, time-limited dungeon grind encourages an elitist meta focused on speedrunning and score chasing, which can be exhausting, especially for tanks and healers. The community culture around Mythic+ often excludes casual or off-meta players and discourages the kind of social bonds that raiding fosters. Raids require coordination and guild teamwork, building friendships and group identity, while Mythic+ too often results in transactional pug groups with little lasting community.

At the heart of this shift is also a major change in class design. To accommodate Mythic+’s demands for balanced and self-sufficient 5-player groups, Blizzard flattened class roles and redistributed abilities. Classic examples include Bloodlust, once exclusive to shamans, now available to hunters, mages, evokers, and even pets. Group-wide cooldowns, crowd control, interrupts, and defensive tools are widely shared across multiple classes. The result is a loss of class flavor and racial uniqueness, making class choice feel more cosmetic than impactful. Many players feel like they are running near-identical toolkits tailored for dungeon speed rather than expressing the unique fantasy and utility of their class.

When you combine the steep decline in Mythic+ participation with the flattening of class identity and the social fragmentation Mythic+ encourages, it’s clear this design philosophy has cost WoW a lot of long-term player engagement. Raiding remains the most socially cohesive and narrative-rich content, yet Blizzard’s design decisions have relegated it to a secondary role. The game risks becoming a treadmill where players burn out quickly on repeatable dungeon runs with little variation or community.

I’m not arguing that Mythic+ should be removed—there is value and fun to be had. But prioritizing Mythic+ as the central endgame path at the cost of class uniqueness, meaningful raids, and community cohesion is, in my opinion, a major factor in WoW’s declining player base. The numbers back this up, and the player sentiment on forums reflects frustration with the current state. It might be time for Blizzard to reconsider this approach and bring raids back to the forefront of progression, while restoring some of the class identity lost along the way.

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I agree with almost everything here except this bit

And maybe it’s not even that I disagree with it so much as I think it ignores an obvious point.

Blizzard doesn’t care about long term engagement if it can dependably rely on cyclical engagement.

If they can farm more sub money in the first half of a season than they would have over an entire season designed around their older design philosophies, then they aren’t going to care as much about retention as long as those players who drop of return for the next season.

Personally, their shift has negatively impacted my enjoyment of the game.

But I think they are just following the money.

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I agree with a lot of what you say. The focus on the timer mandates a “go go go” mentality that is very unforgiving. It directly conflicts with legacy game mechanics such as healers needing combat to drop before being able to drink for mana - which means you can’t drink if the group is chain pulling constantly. God forbid someone needs to use the bathroom or gets a knock at their door during the middle of a dungeon run… It’s just bad design.

But raiding isn’t perfect either, especially Mythic raiding. Fixed 20 man raid sizes breed toxicity where people constantly feel like they are competing against their own teammates to not be benched. Mechanics are needlessly unforgiving, with addons used as a scapegoat. Then you have loot drama, etc.

The nice thing about M+ is that it allows you to raid in a fun casual Heroic raiding guild, avoid the toxicity of Mythic raiding, yet still have a method to get Mythic raid level gear on your own time between Heroic raids. I do believe that raiding is more fun, but forcing everyone into Mythic raids as the only way to get the best gear is NOT the answer.

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Blizzard balances around raid before m+

You haven’t been playing very long if you think Mages got time warp for m+

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Of course it did. That’s why delves exist now etc. Blizzard is still trying to make an MMORPG into an e-sport when the average MMO player doesn’t want it to be that. If not Mythic+ then they would completely get rid of flying, make traveling the outer World terrible and just really have nothing to do but high end raiding. If they had their way that’s the game they would make, but they are forced to be a bit different if they want to keep it afloat.

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You can literally flip this to talk about raiding instead of M+ and its the exact same thing.

Raiding does not require nor encourage this. In DF I would run heroic raids regularly, not know a single person there, and never interact with them again. It was equally a transactional pug group.

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They’re probably talking about mythic raiding.

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I thought delves was suppose to be the casual content without timers?

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Blaming m+ for “killing WoW’s identity” when LFR and queued content was added before it is very funny.

If anything it restored WoWs identity with a focus on community, relationships and making groups manually.

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If it wasn’t for M+

  • Lots of people who still play would have quit because raiding was built for a different generation of players who had infinite time to spend playing games and grinding
  • Many guilds who have a mix of casual (AOTC) and serious players would’ve split up without the outlet for serious players to do harder content
  • Many guilds would never have achieved AOTC for most of the last 7 years because their raider pool would not have been carried to success by the M+ players in their guild

M+ caters to the idea of respecting players time, raiding does not. Far fewer players are interested or able to commit to 4-8 hour fixed weekly schedules to do raid prog, or have the same overlapping availability as their guildies/friends.

You are making the correlation is causation fallacy by pointing to M+ as the death of raiding.

Raiding died because it has less place in modern gaming schedules. The same reason why solo dungeons catering to solo casuals were so successful in other MMOs and brought to WOW as delves. More people play alone or with smaller groups now than ever before.

You are also presenting falsehoods about M+ participation declining without factoring in the key level squish and revamp of heroic dungeons that was brought end of DF / beginning of TWW.

M+ averages 5x the total players participating in the mode compared to players stepping in to heroic raid (post squish, was even higher pre-squish).

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I do not raid (I used to) because that requires a huge chunk of time commitment that I just cannot and will not give anymore. I also do not have the visual tolerance for all the lights & movement of raids. Nor do I wish to learn all the mechanics. There is just too much.

On the other hand, as a healer main I can attest that I do need combat to drop for all players in a dungeon if I am gonna drink for mana replenishment. I cannot run & replenish my mana, I have to physically sit to drink. If combat does not drop, I cannot sit to drink. Not even a sip. If anyone has aggro, we are in combat.

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When has raiding been about speed running?

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Almost every boss has had a timer since Vanilla naxx.

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Wait you think speed running means boss kill timers?

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Both are timed content. I wouldn’t say either is a speedrun but if the logic of a time limit existing makes dungeons a speedrun, it does the same for every modern raid boss.

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isnt m+ the only thing providing retention? (along with 2 raid nights a week).

game would be empty as hell without it.

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It does not. What an intellectually dishonest take. “Everyone who plays the game has a limited life span thus every aspect of the game is a speed run.”

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Blizzard has problems with hyper focusing on certain things and going too far with them. That’s why we wind up with certain features like garrisons, M+, legendaries, and borrowed power systems taking over the game.

If you go back further to the earlier expansions the game was more balanced, and it felt like a more organic world, where later on it got very obvious that the design philosophy had switched from making an immersive world to finding something that would hook players, then pumping that one or two things for every last drop of engagement while paying no more than lip service to the rest of the game.

Where the designers of early WoW had a wholistic approach that created a phenomenon, the current designers look at spreadsheets and try desperately to hold onto as much of what the early designers built with their vision as possible. They just lack that vision that the early designers had.

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Without m+, not sure there is enough to do to hold most subs. It’s the most repeatable, spammable, challenging, and time accessible content available.

Raider io shows that there were 167 million runs in season 2. While there is obviously overlap because the same players run over and over, there were a billion (non-unique) players that completed keys last season. That doesn’t count the ones that didn’t complete and the ones that didn’t count because they didn’t hit the radar. Don’t know what the stats are, but let’s assume 1-1. Two billion players started m+ keys in just the past few months.

Yes, it’s a viable question to ask whether it killed the original identity. But a couple billion players running something begs the question - why is that wrong? It’s clearly what the players want to do and are willing to pay for.

I’ve played WoW since Alpha testing. And without m+, the rest of it would have lost my interest and I would have dropped it years ago without it. I race through the content, raid once in awhile, do the occasional obligatory delve because there’s a piece of gear that will help optimize my build. All so I can be better in… m+.

I am not the minority of who still is willing to play this game.

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curious how m+ was positioned as the primary gearing method? Raids are the only way to actually get mythic as a drop, I’ve gone entire seasons without seeing the items I want from vault, isn’t raiding still the best way to end game gearing? They also added the raid reward track, afaik m+ doesn’t have anything like that, I’m definitely jealous o those robo-trex mounts I’ve seen around.

I guess I agree with some of the thoughts in this post, but to me that’s more for the people who enjoy that path, it’s not like raids are gone, you just have choice nowadays.

The identity of WoW changed drastically with flying and server transfers, I’ll die on that hill. The retail crowd needs the convenience now, it’s too late to turn back. Sometimes I feel nostalgic for the good old days, but if that’s how things were today, I just wouldn’t be able to play.

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