The third post-season week of TWW S3 is over, and Nightstalker314 is taking a look at the weekly data provided by Raider.IO. Run numbers remained on a stable level despite the expansion release coming closer and closer. Player activity since 12.0 is a lot higher. The daily addition of new characters to the seasonal leaderboard is at a level it has not been on for months. Last week, the focus was once again shifting upward within the key levels. So let’s look at the details.
Weekly Total Run Performance Compared To Other Seasons
The drop-off in completed runs was only slightly higher than in the previous week. The global value of -2.73% was once dragged down by Chinese metrics, which fell by 5.30%. Meanwhile, activity in the other regions dropped by just 1.48%. Towards the end of the ID, even WoW players, at least on the US servers, traded playtime for Super Bowl watchtime. In general, this post-season shows more sustained numbers than the end of Dragonflight.
Activity on the Chinese servers continued its slow downward trend. The regional share dropped further to 31.96%. For several weeks, the EU has been the dominant region. It remains to be seen if the metrics for Chinese servers rebound to the regular 45% in Season 1 of Midnight.
Total Runs Across All S3 Dungeons
The overall dungeon split was almost unchanged. Their order saw only one trade of places. Ara-Kara, which is now less stressful, has overtaken Streets of Wonder. And Dawnbreaker is seeing less and less participation each week due to Skyriding bugs. It might drop below 10% before the launch of Midnight.
The overall success rate dipped slightly by 0.41 percentage points, down to 93.91%. Affix changes don’t seem like the main reason, since the trend also showed itself on higher key levels. Players just seem to push their limits a bit further while adjusting to the class changes. Eco-Dome (97.30%) remained unchallenged ahead of Gambit (95.81%) and Streets (95.46%), with Halls (94.81%) close by. The lower half was led by Priory (93.15%) followed by Dawnbreaker (92.72%) and Floodgate (92.39%). Ara-Kara (89.59%) was once again dead last.
Split Across All S3 Key Levels
71.07% of all keys were completed at key level 10 and higher. Key level 12 remained the most popular choice with 22.18%, increasing its dominance week-by-week. Total run numbers as well as relative share decreased for all key levels from 2 to 10. From 11 to 16, we saw stability or even increases for both metrics. From 17 to 19, numbers relapsed. Above, activity increased once again and more than doubled for the last 3 key levels.
The success rates were slightly negative for all key levels up to 17. This could be a consequence of players pushing their newfound main characters for Midnight towards the limit. But the difference from the previous week never exceeded a percentage point. Meanwhile, the highest key levels saw major improvements. Those players still want to polish their rating, regardless of it not counting towards the official season 3 finish.
Returning Players and Remix Characters Flood the Leaderboards
When looking at the character leaderboard for TWW S3, including the post-season, we can see a clear trend. Over the last few weeks, the daily addition of new characters surpassed the numbers of the pre-12.0 period by a factor of 2 to 3. These are metrics we haven’t seen since the start of Legion Remix. And the influx of new characters might as well come from this pool. When looking at trade chat and other platforms discussing WoW, we can see a lot of questions from returning players. Midnight could be shaping up to have a great launch.
Conclusion and Post-Season Week 2 Forecast
While a pre-patch and post-season are usually times when activity fizzles out before the official expansion launch, M+ numbers have remained quite stable. New and returning players aren’t just testing out class changes, but also working on their UI. Doing so while running rather easily tuned content leaves a good first impression. It remains to be seen if that lasts with the launch of Midnight S1. Dungeon tuning at the start of an expansion is usually a bit harder.
As of this writing, 120 hours after the US reset, hourly numbers for the main regions have dropped a bit more than in the previous weeks. -12.1% for the US, -8.83% for the EU, and -19.45% for CN. The expansion launch is coming closer, but the Battle.net ecosystem also saw the (re)launch of Overwatch and the shadow drop of the new Diablo 2 Resurrected Warlock class. We’ll see how much this trend continues in next week’s breakdown.
