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July 17, 2005
Guild Affiliation and Leveling Time
Server Sample: RP (High), PvE (Medium), PvE (High)
Sampling Period: 6/13/2005 9:00 am - 6/20/2005 9:00 am
Sampling Resolution: ~14 minutes
Parsing Method: The sample unit is leveling event. We tabulate the time between a character’s level and when we observe them at a new level. Only a character's online time is included. We exclude the first leveling event from every character because it doesn't constitute the total amount of time to make that level.
Data Filter: None
Sample Size: 81,887 leveling events
Do characters in guilds level faster or slower than characters not in guilds? Again, we won't be able to pinpoint the causality or take into account other variables, but it would be interesting to find out just how much difference there is in leveling times between characters in and not in a guild. Running an ANCOVA with Guilded (yes / no) as the independent variable and Leveling Time as the dependent variable, we found a significant, but small, effect where characters in a guild have a longer leveling time than characters not in a guild.
Between levels 1 and 20, the difference was 15 minutes (105 vs. 115 minutes). Between levels 21 to 40, the difference was 24 minutes (417 vs. 441 minutes). And then between levels 41 to 60, the difference was 72 minutes (802 vs. 874 minutes).
Posted at July 17, 2005 02:20 PM
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Comments
One possible reason for this might be characters in small guilds intentionally slowing down levelling to stay near slower guild members. Several terms I've taken a break from playing my character because I was going faster than the other members of my guild, and wanted to stay near them to do instance quests together, play in the same Battlegrounds, etc.
Posted by: Stephen Sakurai at August 9, 2005 12:46 AM
Yes, I've definitely seen that effect, but rarely. One guildmate made the comment, "Can't outlevel the wife." More frequently, I've seen guildmates of similar levels express competition to level. But if this is a factor, the data shows there are other things slowing the guilded down as well. If I had to guess, I'd say that performing reciprocal services (crafting, giving items to players that need them, helping with quests) and guildchat take time and knit a guild together.
Posted by: eric at August 9, 2005 09:02 AM