The eleventh week of Mythic+ this season is over, and Nightstalker314 is reviewing Raider.IO‘s weekly data. It was the week before the WoW Forever launch and the week after the big Venomstone grind. After such a mid-season surge, the fall-off is natural. The total number of runs dropped by 25.65%. And by 15.63% compared to week 9. It was the final normal week before the Forever impact. So, let’s look at the details.
Weekly Total Run Performance Compared To Other Seasons
The global 25.65% drop-off had once again a varying regional spread. The US came rather close to the average with -24.98%. The EU marked the negative outlier with -30.70%. A clear rebound from having a major surge in week 10 (+18.99%). KR (-24.73%) and TW (-29.61%) landed in between, and CN (-22.60%) saw the smallest drop but also had the lowest gain (+9.13%) in week 9. These patterns of stronger or faster pivots are already showing in the early metrics for week 12 regarding the impact of WoW Forever.
Compared to previous seasons, MN S2 is once again behind and will probably see several weeks of rock-bottom performance from week 12 onward. TWW S3 saw a similar impact with the launch of Legion Remix. Once players can access a different WoW ecosystem, most stick to the new one for a while. TWW S3 saw a drop of 46.31% with the Launch of Legion Remix, despite having a Turbo Boost unlock at the same time. And going back all the way to 2019, M+ activity after Classic launch dropped by 36.00% (BFA S3, week 8). We might see similar numbers this time around.
Total Runs Across All Dungeons
The spread across all dungeons stayed almost the same compared to week 10. Their order saw only one shuffle, with Den of Nalorakk climbing from rank 7 to rank 4. The major decline in success rate can be attributed to a lack of overgeared characters speed-farming trivial keys. The change in affixes between two of the easier ones does not have that much of an impact.
Murder Row (93.97%) remained on top once more. Its popularity and success rate seem to be unshakeable by any major changes throughout the season. Every other dungeon saw a drop similar to the overall average. Ruby Life Pools (92.41%) and Blinding Vale (92.28%) remained ahead of Kings’ Rest (92.14%) and Altar of Fangs (92.12%), which switched positions. Voidscar Arena (91.58%) and Temple (91.56%) followed with some distance. The gap between Murder Row and Den of Nalorakk (91.18%) grew from 2.10 to 2.79 percentage points.
Split Across All Key Levels
90.37% of all keys were completed at key level 10 or higher. +10 (20.65% down from 26.07%) and +12 (23.70% down from 26.36%) have once again lost relevance after the farm efforts of last week. Total run numbers dropped by 41.00% and 33.06%, respectively. Together with the outlier of +24, these two key levels were the only ones losing in relative share. So this marks a clear shift towards +10 and +12 in week 10 and a clear shift away from them. The metrics for +24 only decreased because activity for that key level specifically dropped off a cliff in China. Maybe another round of boosting bans happened over there. +18 and upward could almost match the same metrics or saw a small increase. +18 is forming a new peak with 6.77% globally and a staggering 8.72% share in CN.
The overall success rate dropped from 93.65% by 1.55 percentage points to 92.20%. The change in affixes barely made a dent. A major driving force was the lack of activity from high-end players in the mid-range keys. From +6 to +13, the in-time % dropped between 0.34 and 1.20 points. From +19 upward, we also saw a decrease between 2.37 and 9.38 points. This was mostly driven by the lack of activity in CN.
Conclusion and Week 12 Forecast
Ahead of the WoW Forever launch, it already feels like people are finishing the season for now. The Keystone Myth at 3,600 rating is locked in for many. But we could see a final push after the 12.1.7 Folio upgrade for the final weeks around and after Christmas. Especially when it comes to the top 5% and top 1% titles. The massive nerfs to Mythic VA might help core M+ players to get more ilvl 344 items. But the in-depth 12.2 preview should indicate some major corrections after this whiplash of a season.
As of this writing, 120 hours after the US reset, the hourly numbers for all major regions show a massive impact from the WoW Forever launch. -40,94% for the US, -45.05% for the EU, but just -18.74% for CN. Right before the launch, the trend was somewhat positive due to the dungeon event week. But since then, the US and the EU metrics have shown up to -63% and -70% during local morning to early afternoon time frames. During peak gaming hours, the trend still went toward -57% in both regions. -40% was the largest outlier for CN so far. But this is all restricted to M+. Heroic raid metrics show a decent decline, but not even close to this. We’ll examine this further in next week’s breakdown.
