I was the person he originally quoted. Then I pointed out his statistical flaws. Since then he’s mostly been trying to argue that his modeling is fine.
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The only model (predictive analytics) being discussed is the one put together by that redditor. What we’re discussing instead are descriptive in nature. Again, I didn’t take a sample to attempt to describe the population because we had something pretty close to population-level data (edit: correction - except the reddit data, which I largely discarded when the classic census came in), and I’m certainly not using it to predict what the population will do in the future.
So you are getting caught up in semantics to downplay the concerns of nelf posters regarding nelf story issues?
Kyalin is the one arguing about pop numbers.
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There is no reason to expect the populations of WoW Vanilla are similar to WoW Classic. Since this is a case of self-selecting into a population, it’s very likely there is an issue of selection bias. You have offered no evidence to suggest the population of players who opted into WoW Classic is similar to WoW Vanilla. All Warcraft fans would join WoW Vanilla but the type of player that would opt into WoW Classic is probably not the same population as “All Warcraft fans.”
In comparison, WoW retail does not have the same question of selection issues. It is directly correlated to the original game, so the population in-game has actually (to some degree or another) played through the narrative that is “humiliating” to Night Elves. It would appear to be the more appropriate population to compare against.
Unfortunately, the results that you see in Vanilla vs Classic are not nearly as prevalent in Vanilla vs Retail. In fact, it actually basically disappears when you consider the amount of new races that have been implemented. Humans and Night Elves go from 74% of 4 races to 53% of 12 races.
The only claim you can make is that folks signing up for Classic didn’t pick Night Elves as much as the folks playing Vanilla - you’ve done nothing to address issues with selection bias and have done nothing to address the fact that other evidence presented seems to conflict with your hypothesis.
I’m not even arguing that you’re in a golden age of Night Elf history. That was probably 10,000 years ago when Elves ruled the world. I’m not arguing some race has it worse than Night Elves. I’m simply pointing out you are using terribly flawed methodology to undergo this analysis.
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The mere fact that Blood Elves don’t exist in Classic should be understood as the MASSIVE distortion it is when it comes to comparing racial populations in retail vs classic.
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That is surprising to read - how come WoD damaged Draenei community?
I could deffnietly say that WoD Damaged orcsih playerbase, after villainbat in MoP and then WoD shredding their previously established lore to pieces and making almost out of each chieftain a punchingbag again I could see a drop of popularity of orcish players.
I understand you, I can imagine that the druidic theme has been used too much to the point it wore it’s welcome and the other stuff has been neglected for that. This is why I believe that Tauren should’ve received the spotlight with druidic practices for once, as they usually were nothing but a sidekicks without any agency. While nelves could get focus on other important groups.
However, since CC is mostly run by nelves, and Hyjal questing was involving very important matters such as nelf leadership, return of demi-god and restoration of their sacred land - calling it unrelated to nelf lore is imo disingenuous.
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You are misrepresenting the data presented to push the narrative you want, which seems is to undermine the concerns of nelf posters as it relates to the Nelf narrative.
You are shown in the OP doing just that, and now you are here to do it again. You probably have never taken a stats class in your life, which is why this is so hard for you to understand.
Actually, I taught undergraduate statistics for a couple of years. As well as research methods for a semester. Plus, you know, those graduate courses.
I pointed out the flaw in the methodological choices made. I pointed out an alternate hypothesis that directly runs counter to the OP’s hypothesis. I provided evidence. And… that’s it.
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Uh huh, sure you did.
Except ya didn’t. Otherwise, you would actually be able to understand the presentation of data. Instead, you are getting stuck on semantics, and making this entire thread about something it isn’t.
Stop lying on the internet, bud. No one here is important enough for you to impress.
And… I’m out. Y’all have fun.
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There’s no reason to expect that any of these populations are similar to each other and I don’t see the value in asserting that they must be in order to make comparisons between them. Retail and Classic are wholly different games, and the population that is there to engage with Classic is different from the one that is there to engage with Vanilla. No one is disputing that. What we are disputing is why we are looking at this data. The question I am asking is not “what did Vanilla players do?” The question is: if the same game was offered after fifteen years of all of the changes that WoW has gone through, including its lore, what would the population distribution look like? We got the answer.
If you’re asking “what happened to the 2004 population?”, then you would need to go take a sample. But this question does not contemplate that. Population changes are assumed.
As for your claim that trying to compare to retail would have been better - I can come up with at least five confounding factors that would render such an analysis meaningless. Here they are:
- There are more races
- Racials have changed
- Class mechanics have changed
- PVE focus is greater now
- There is an inbuilt racials imbalance from a prior expansion that put a lot of people in the Horde.
In other words, there are way too many factors here to isolate the effects of lore and marketing. The classic comparison takes a lot of these factors away, again, understanding that yes, populations have changed.
Why am I okay with those populations changing? Because the sorts of people that the game now attracts are in part driven by Blizzard’s marketing choices.
And I do reject the idea that this reflects a selection bias. I think the results over who the marketing attracts now versus who it attracted in 2004 are valid ones to incorporate in this study.
Also. @ Akiyass
There’s no reason to doubt Zarrin’s experience, and I’d prefer that we not do so. I think the disconnect here is in what we’re trying to compare.
for all I know kyalin is lying too lol
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Everyone who disagrees with me has an invalid position because they are clearly lying or maybe even mentally unwell. If they were both truthful and wise, they wouldn’t be disagreeing with me.
QED internet.
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I mean, you can go pull the data and reperform what I did if you’d like. That would tell you.
I agree with one thing for sure.
First off: I understand everyone stating they see Cenarion Circle content as Night Elven content. It’s heavily leaning in to it and you really can’t separate Night Elven lore from it.
With that said: I think it was a mistake to make the Cenarion Circle neutral in the first place. It hurt both factions, especially the Night Elves, but also Horde races. It is hurting Tauren druids and it poisoned how the factions will interact over neutral organizations and it was fundamental for a pig problem of mine. All classes being used as the exact same copy past for each race.
Doesn’t matter if it’s a Sunwalker, a Blood Knight, a Gonk Priest, or a Night Elf Druid.
I really think Night Elves did suffer a lot in WoW, even going as far back as with the start of Knaaks books. I can understand why people don’t care any more. Some points you make are over the top.
But can anyone really disagree with how distasteful and tone death a little patience was?
I think events like this one were something Night Elven players had to endure a lot.
Sadly the Devs seem to think those moments are great and they seem to want to make good content for Night Elves. Like Val’shara for example. Yes it had bad elements too, especially with the whole Xavius and “my love” part. But on the other hand that’s what players had to see over years.
It can’t be denied this was Night Elven content.
I think a better way would have been to never ever make the Cenarion Circle neutral in the first place. It did only harm to the Night Elves and both factions at the end.
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Its not a matter of disagreement. The dude couldn’t even get behind what the data was comparing. Which, when looking at a data set, is like, the first thing you need to understand. He couldn’t make it beyond step one, then wants to say he is a damn stats teacher?
That’s like “My girlfriend goes to a different school.”
lol he defs took steps, but I guess you can kyalin dont like to agree with the flaws in your data
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He didn’t say he was a stats teacher, he said that he taught it for a couple of years as well as a research methods class. He was likely a Teacher’s Assistant, which means that he’s probably taken graduate level course work.
He also does have a point in saying that the method isn’t perfect. There are factors that the analysis can’t account for. How many people are playing for reasons of nostalgia? How does that impact the race that they’re picking? What about the existing retail population? Are they just following their friends and rolling what’s familiar to them? I don’t think these factors take away from our ability to look at this and still notice a precipitous drop, and I think those factors are worthwhile to leave in place because they tell us about the results of decisions that were made in retail. But the populations ARE different.
I just think that this is still worthwhile to look at, and indicative of a problem, in concert with the search interest data.
This is due to something else entirely. In vanilla WOW, the basis of the night elves from WC3 was in mind. And in WC3, Night Elves were definitely one of the most popular and coolest races, they again easily overshadowed Horde and Alliance and were about on par with Scourge in popularity.
Then WOW started. So the audience only had the Wc3 picture and fell in love with that and started playing.
Whereas in Classic-WOW Rework you had already experienced all those years and it was just rebooted, but with the bad images in mind.
And yes, I agree with the TE in that night elves had a really hard time in WOW, argumentatively even the worst time of all races as their whole racial fantasy was spat on repeatedly, they had unique themes stolen from them and generally they were rewritten so many times that it’s hard to recognise them anymore.
They have been stripped of many of the aspects that made them so special, and/or nerfed them into the ground.
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