Comparison: Number of promotes between two similar N7 Operations

Operation Alloy wasn't the first of it's kind. It preceded with Operation Raptor. Updated with theory and a quote.

How many did you promote?

Data
Let's take a look the numbers here:

• Operation Raptor
• Allied Promotion Goal: 150,000
• Results: 350,000+

• Operation Alloy
• Allied Promotion Goal: 50,000
• Results: 262,749 across PC, Xbox and PS3 platforms.

Given with these numbers, we could still be able to beat 150,000 promotions in our present state. I don't wanna come up with any theories at this time but let's be blessed that Operation Alloy worked out real fine.

Theory
I have feeling that we were able to do a lot of promotions during the early years since it was decent way of getting a high War Asset by making promotions multiple times. It was a great benefit for anyone who can (and bothered to) play Mass Effect 3 multiplayer since it'll also boost their "Final Push" results to the goal thanks to the Galactic Readiness system.

To compare with the results now, I have feeling players aren't promoting that much to keep their favorite classes and builds intact for Gold (and maybe Platinum) runs, even if there are players who promote their characters on a whim (or just to top their friends over the N7 Ranking system and earn a bigger War Asset). BioWare must have seen that dip and decided to go for a lower goal to make it feasible.

But the community might have developed a sense of urgency and heeded the call, thus making it a successful run.

Quote
Achire's post from the BioWare Social Forums:

"Back in April, results from PS3 were not included in the allied goals due to whatever technical difficulties they had. Therefore the comparable numbers here are 350k promotions for PC&360 in April and 234k in August. The best case scenario is that the MP population is only down 33% from April. However consider that in April the game had just come out, and few people had more than 2 let alone 6 characters to promote. It is obvious that the average number of promotions per player is higher in August, when essentially everyone has 6 LVL 20s. Therefore the dip in MP players is larger than 33%. "

I wonder what do they have in store for us this time around?

Got this Atlas!