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September 30, 2005
Guild Recruitment Location
Server Sample: RP (High), PvE (Medium), PvE (High), PvP (High), PvP (High)
Sampling Period: 8/07/2005 12:00 am - 8/14/2005 12:00 am
Sampling Resolution: ~12 minutes
Parsing Method: The sample unit is each unique character. Each character was tracked across the server logs. Total playing time, lowest observed level, highest observed level, guild affiliation, and zones seen in were parsed.
Data Filter: None
Sample Size: 148,846 characters
We had competing hypotheses for where guild recruitment most often occurs. On the one hand, the amount of guild spamming in main cities made them a likely location. They are also centralized locations to begin with that would seem to encourage guild recruitment functions. On the other hand, characters spend more time in outdoor zones than in main city zones and grouping might encourage guild recruitment as well
To explore this question, we tabulated the location where characters joined a guild:
Guild Recruitment Location: If a character is not in a guild in snapshot X and is observed to be in a guild in snapshot X+1, then the character location at X+1 is noted down as the guild recruitment location and categorized as either being in 1) an instance, 2) a main city, 3) an outdoor zone, or 4) a PvP area (i.e., WSG or AV)
The resulting data let us look at 2 different things. First of all, it shows the distribution of guild recruitment events. Most guild recruitment occurs before level 10, drops sharply, and then spikes at level 60.
But the data also allows us to address our initial question. Across all levels, guild recruitment is most likely to occur in an outdoor zone followed by the main city zones. Interestingly, guild recruitment is more likely to occur in a main city zone as level increases. For example, city zone invites are almost comparable to outdoor zone invites at level 60, whereas outdoor zone invites are about 6 times higher than city zone invites at level 6.
Posted at September 30, 2005 09:12 AM
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Comments
Some anectdotal comments on the guild invite distribution:
I was an officer who did guild invites in a 200+ account guild for the first seven months of WoW retail. Roughly 75% of my invites were for alts of existing members, typically at less than level 20 (whenever they decided it was a "keeper"). The location of the alt character depended only on where they were when an officer logged on.
First-time members (typically near-60) did their application on our web page. Those who looked promising were discussed in the officer forum, then those approved were put on my friends list for an interview and probable invite. I never contacted a player if they were in a PvP zone or instance -- obviously they'd be busy and wouldn't have time to chat. So 100% of my first-time member invites were in cities and outdoor zones. Preferably cities because I'd be certain they weren't busy.
My pattern and frequency of guild invitations matches the graph fairly closely. Alts at low level wherever they happened to be, which was usually outdoors someplace doing newbie quests; high-level first-time members in cities or outdoors because they wouldn't be too busy to chat first.
Posted by: Ted at October 1, 2005 10:46 AM