The twelfth week of Mythic+ in this season is over, and Nightstalker314 is taking a look at the weekly data provided by Raider.IO. Just before patch 12.0.7, activity remained fairly stable, with a lower-than-average drop-off of 10.25%. The biggest changes occurred once again within the high-level keys. So let’s look at the details.
Weekly Total Run Performance Compared To Other Seasons
The drop-off varied by region again. The EU servers saw the largest decline with -11.44%, followed by -10.95% in China. Activity on the US servers dropped by just 7.82%, while KR (-5.99%) and TW (-4.36%) showed more stability. Usually, these two small regions see a much healthier decline over a season. This could be tied to having a smaller player pool to begin with.
Compared to the previous seasons, the four regular regions managed to keep the pace. TWW S2 and S3, at the time, saw a massive boost from the Turbo Boost event. But this model has been altered by now, and even at the time, it felt like engagement padding and delayed grind overkill. With the upcoming vault and crest economy changes in 12.1, the devs are once more trying to smooth out the progression curve. We’ll be observing this once MN S2 is in full swing.
Total Runs Across All Dungeons
The split across all dungeons remained almost unchanged compared to week 11. Spire and Skyreach swapped positions, but their metrics were also quite close together, a difference of 4,423 runs. Maisara Caverns remains noticeably behind the rest of the pack. But this is nowhere near as bad as, for example, City of Threads in TWW S1.
The success rate barely changed with a minor increase of 0.06 percentage points to 92.90%. No major outliers are observable among the dungeon roster. This pattern of next to no changes is a combination of several factors. The depletion rates are so low that differences due to affixes or player behavior register with a much smaller impact. The tuning across the rotating affixes has improved, though Ascendant remains the strongest outlier. And later into the season, gameplay and average player experience are solidified by ever-improving distribution of information across the entire player base.
Split Across All Key Levels
89.36% of all keys were completed at key level 10 and higher. A slight shift towards the lower end of the key levels, compared to week 11. The two favorite key levels, +10 (31.63%) and +12 (23.22%), saw fewer absolute numbers, but a slight increase in relative share. The largest drop-offs occurred from key level 13 to 20, with up to -20.41%. Key level 21 and upward was once again the only high-level area with growth. And while +16 is now a solid outlier among the higher keys, the usual end-of-season pattern of cratering interest below the title range was showing once more. Delayed but also anticipated power boosts, like the new Rotmire raid loot or Omnium Folio, drive this stop-and-go mentality.
Compared to week 11, the in-time percentage only showed major outliers at the highest key levels. Long-term improvements through sheer gameplay routine lead to single-digit points growth regularly. The smaller outliers across the rest of the key levels were more pronounced drop-offs for key levels 3 and 4, as well as 7 and 8, where new players tend to stumble more often, depending on affix combinations for the latter. And there is a weak correlation observable between decreased total runs and success rate from key level 13 to 19. But these changes are smaller than a single percentage point.
Conclusion and Week 13 Forecast
The issues with long-term motivation and progression that are currently coming to light might be addressed already in the next season. An earlier addition of a new raid boss (12.1.5) and even more sources of gear from the instanced world boss (lair). Less reliance on M+ bonus rolls and a larger incentive for heroic raiding should impact the overall metrics. But better access to gear from outside of M+ should benefit the overall gear progression, which is responsible for rising through the Mythic+ ranks.
As of this writing, 120 hours after the US reset, hourly numbers for the major regions have clearly fallen behind last week’s numbers. US servers are behind by 26.80%, EU by 33.79%, and CN by 37.29%. But these values were a lot higher earlier in the ID. They should get closer to 20-30% towards the end of it. Farming the new raid boss for Sporefused loot and gearing alts in the heroic world tier took a higher priority. We’ll examine this in next week’s breakdown.
