Yours is the most indirect method. The damage meter is worse, but at least with dbm we can compare it to the various ways to measure raiding population.
Now I do believe the hardcore raiding community has stayed with wow. The biggest names in the mmo space all went for pvp / casual pve. FF is super casual pve. There is no real competition for WoW there. At least half a mill still raiding? Very possible. Its also very possible that former raiders and even hardcore players who do M+ would download dbm as well.
On the other hand, how do you explain away the scans of the armory? That is the most direct and inclusive of all method presented and most likely is the closest to the true number.
ive definitely noticed it. Most players just raid log now. Which is how it was in tbc anyways. It sucks though for new characters trying to get quests done. Dungeons will always be run though because of rep/badges till the end of tbc. I think phases should be 2-3 months. Phase 2 will keep players engaged but not as long as phase 1 did because of leveling time (a lot of people took at least 2-3 weeks to hit 70) Phase 2 doesn’t have that much content unfortunately. 2 raids 2 rep grinds and a new arena season that’s basically it. There is no system in place to keep you playing every day and I think that’s a good thing. It’s unhealthy.
Personally I think D2R is going to be a huge wake up call for blizzard. I think a lot of current players, especially the pvp disenfranchised, are going to stop paying for this garbage once they have that option.
Don’t have to worry about faction balance. Don’t have to worry about server health. Don’t have to worry about terrible pvp changes no one wanted. You actually get rewarded for grinding, unlike the suicide-inducing honor grind.
This is absolutely nothing like original TBC, and this time it has nothing to do with the players min/maxing/world buffs etc. Blizzard created/allowed all of these problems.
Blizzard is just letting TBC die. I wonder how many people are actually even working on TBC classic right now. Are the lights on? We havent seen a blue post in 36 days. T5 needs to be here soon before another massive wave quits. Once people leave the game its hard to pull them back in. More and more “small” servers will be forced to transfer to survive because blizzard wont release content that should already be out.
We’re 3 months into phase 1, in tbc, where gearing toons out is insanely fast. It’s possible lots of people are just not raiding anymore. Ironforge.pro Gathers its data from players that are logging raids. If your entire guild is geared and ready for phase 2, there’s little to no incentive to keep raiding atm.
