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October 18, 2005
Guild Members: Time Spent Together
Server Sample: RP (High), PvE (Medium), PvE (High), PvP (High), PvP (High)
Sampling Period: 8/01/2005 12:00 am - 8/30/2005 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: 241,378 characters
From the social network analyses, we had connection frequencies between any two members in all observed guilds. This data allowed us to explore the average amount of time any two members from the same guild are observed together (co-location metric) over a period of a month. In other words, how much time do guild members actually spend working with each other?
We looked at the data in two ways. In our first pass, we looked at the data for every member of the same guild. In other words, the question we were asking was - over a period of a month, what's the average amount of time any two members of the same guild spend together? We also analyzed this data for guilds of different sizes. Interestingly, the result was largely constant across guilds with more than 5 members - with a median between 6 and 9 minutes over a period of a month. The amount of time members in a guild spend together doesn't appear to change as a function of guild size (r = -.02).
We then redid the analysis but only included those dyads in each guild that did spend time together. In other words, the question we were asking was - over a period of a month, for those members of the same guild that spend time together, what is the average amount of time they spend together? Again, we see the same pattern, the result was largely consistent across different guild sizes - the median hovering around 80-87. The correlation between guild size and time spent together was again very weak (r = .04).
While the results seem low, remember that this is the average for all possible dyads within a guild. It's the average amount of time any 2 members of the same guild will spend together in a month. In a guild with 5 people, member A is thus expected to spend about 15 minutes each month with each of the other 4 members.
Posted at October 18, 2005 02:22 PM
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Comments
Is the fifteen minutes number meaningful, or just the mean of a distribution with two or more modes? When I "interact" with characters played by other members of my guild, generally one of two things has happened - A) we run into each other, trade /bow and /wave emotes and buffs, and then go on our merry way after a few seconds or B) we're running a quest or instance and the duration of our meeting is likely to be an hour or more. If I correctly understand the way your co-location metric works, it has no way to distinguish these two possibilities (or indeed, the possibility that I'm on one end of Stranglethorn, my guildmate is on another, and we don't even know we're in the same zone until one of us asks the guild chat where to find something). It wouldn't surprize me at all if those contacts collectively average out to 15 minutes contact per member per month, but I'm not sure what that number tells you.
Also, in a multi-friendly game like WoW, the reason you had to exclude dyads may have something to do with the fact that many dyads on any given guild roster CANNOT meet because they're played by the same person. My guild's roster has more than twice as many characters as players in it, and would have even more if we didn't purge inactive alts and mules to keep the roster from hitting the cap.
Posted by: Green Armadillo at October 20, 2005 01:02 PM
GA,
I'll let Nick adddress the question of whether the 15 minutes are meaningful. But as to how the base data is derived: for (A) where the interaction is brief, you'll be seen as co-located for that short period, and then may or may not be in the next snapshot, so it is possible to appear very different than running an instance together (B). However, we cannot from our data distinguish between working together in Stranglethorn, and happening to be together at opposite ends. STV, in fact, is a bit of a problem child since it is a zone that occupies many a player's time in their 30s.
Posted by: Eric Nickell at October 25, 2005 09:13 AM
Hi GA - the distribution is not bi-modal. The distribution is positively skewed. So the median is also worth considering in this case.
And like Eric noted, the co-location metric is based on time and not simply yes/no.
And while we can't differentiate the "B" situation, the fact that they occur and the average is still 15 min (something we feel is low) says something, no?
Posted by: Nick Yee at October 26, 2005 01:01 PM
"the fact that they occur and the average is still 15 min (something we feel is low) says something, no?"
Well, it begs the question of what exactly people are doing "together" for such a short period of time before winding up in separate zones. So here's a theory - Is the data for Alliance in the Wetlands unusually low? You've excluded cities, but not, if I read the methodology correctly, travel hubs. If I'm sitting on the pier in Menethil at the time of the survey, I'm co-located with everyone actually questing in the Wetlands, everyone waiting for either my or the other boat, and possibly (if I correctly remember the /who output for people in the air) people flying between IF and SS/Arathi/Hinterlands. None of those "meetings" are going to still be up at the next survey time. One might postulate that chance meetings in transit are, for more casual guilds (if I recall, you showed that 75% of guilds have 16 or fewer toons), going to be far more common than organized groups, which would drive down the average.
Posted by: GreenArmadillo at October 27, 2005 02:13 PM
Very good reading. Peace until next time.
WaltDe
Posted by: WaltDe at August 31, 2006 07:56 AM