PlayOn: November 2005 Archives

« October 2005 | Main | December 2005 »

November 28, 2005

Who's Farming?

We just wanted to share some farming-related data that goes well with what many on WoW servers have a gut-feeling about. First, here's the overall class distribution of characters. Given some recent articles on the habits of gold farmers, we felt an easy way of identifying them would be to filter characters by their play-time over the period of one month.

Now, we include only those characters in the top 99% percentile of play-time (n = 2413).

The trend is sharper if we only take the top 99.9% percentile of play-time (n = 245). Rogues and hunters together account for 85% of characters in that range.

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

Posted by Nick & Eric

Posted by nickyee at 03:29 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

November 21, 2005

Guild Members: Predictors of Average Character Advancement in Guilds

We were interested in exploring what measurable features of a guild best predict the level advancement of its members. How might factors like guild size or max subgraph size relate to overall advancement of its members?

From the month of August, we calculated the following metrics for the first 10 days of the month and the last 10 days of the month:

Guild Size: The number of unique characters observed to bear the guild tag.

Max Subgraph Size: The size of the largest connected cluster of guild members. See this earlier article for details.

Subgraph (size > 3) Count: The number of subgraphs that had at least 3 members. In other words, all dyads are not counted.

Total Subgraph Count: The total number of subgraphs, including all dyads.

Density: For the matrix of guild members, the density is the number of cells filled out of all possible cells. In other words, how many of the guild's characters have been co-located during the sampling period?

For a measure of advancement, we used the following:

Standardized Character Advancement Score: A character's raw advancement is simply the number of levels the character has advanced. In this case, we subtracted the starting level from the ending level (end of month - beginning of month). The problem is that over a two week period, a 10 level advancement by a level 1 character is much less significant than a 10 level advancement by a level 50 character. In other words, the advancement needs to be qualified by the starting level somehow. The method we used to standardize character advancement was to calculate the average (and standard deviation) of advancement for every starting level. In other words, compared with other characters who also started at level 10, were you above, below, or right on the curve? Mathematically, we did this by calculating the z-score of advancement for every character. Characters who were already level 60 at the beginning of the sampling period were excluded. See this article for more details.

Standardized Guild Advancement Score: As a measure of guild performance and achievement, we averaged the standardized advancement scores of every member in that guild. This guild score was thus how much the guild as a whole advanced during the sampling period. Again, characters who were already level 60 at the beginning of the sampling period were excluded.

A multiple regression showed that the guild metrics from the first 10 days of the month were better predictors than guild metrics from the last 10 days of the month (r-squared = .18 vs. r-squared = .08).

Using only the guild metrics from the first 10 days of the month, we find that the size of the guild is negatively correlated with guild advancement. The bigger a guild is, the slower the members level. Intriguingly, the best positive predictor of guild advancement was not max subgraph size or density but the number of subgraphs with size greater than 3 (referred to in table below as masscount). And the total number of subgraphs was far weaker of a predictor. In other words, dyads don't help and it's really the number of subgraphs with 3 or more members in a guild that helps.

So the numbers are saying that how interconnected a guild is helps but it's got to be interconnected in the right way. The crucial thing seems to be having separate subgraphs that cater to different level bands within your guild that facilitate teaming and leveling throughout your guild. This seems like a reasonable explanation for what the masscount correlation is showing. Our analysis with guild metrics from different times of the month also show how dynamic this influence is. The guild metrics at the beginning of the month were better predictors than those at the end of the month.

The bottom-line seems to be that large guilds do not facilitate character advancement unless they are well-connected and have clusters of guild members for different level ranges.

Posted by Nick & Nic

Posted by nickyee at 10:24 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 13, 2005

Rate of Advancement by Server

The differences by server type were also quite interesting in that they cleanly show that characters on PvP servers level more than characters on PvE servers who in turn level more than characters on RP servers.

Now, characters on PvP servers actually also play more than characters on other server types, by about 2-3 hours each month.

But even if we took this into account and controlled the advancement score by the playing time, it still comes out the same way. Characters on PvP servers level more, spend more time playing, and are fastest at leveling than characters on other servers. Notably, characters on RP servers level the least even though they spend almost as much time playing, but are the slowest levelers.

Posted by Eric & Nick

Posted by nickyee at 03:22 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Rate of Advancement by Race

The race differences were a little more interesting in that the top 4 races were the Horde races and the bottom 4 races were the Alliance races. The split was surprisingly clean. The split also perfectly matches data from the Daedalus Project on motivational differences between players who choose Horde vs Alliance. It's always good to see two different data methods supporting each other's results.

Again, there were differences in playing time. Notably, Night Elves play just as much as Undead, which is surprising given the advancement difference.

If we plotted out the average level advancement controlling for playing time, we see this difference more clearly. So the Undead level the most over a month, spend the most time playing, and are actually also the fastest levelers. Night Elves on the other hand, spend almost as much time playing, but are the slowest levelers of all the races.

Posted by Nick & Eric

Posted by nickyee at 03:19 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

November 04, 2005

10 Things About Conversation in Virtual Worlds...

Here's a synopsis of the talk I gave recently at the Austin Game Conference on avatar-to-avatar communication...

Bob Moore, Nic Ducheneaut & Eric Nickell. "10 Things About Conversation in Virtual Worlds that Remind Me that I'm NOT in the Real World: Improving Interactional Realism in Massively Multiplayer Persistent Worlds." Austin Game Conference, Austin, TX, October 28, 2005.

Although massively multiplayer virtual worlds have made great strides in achieving visual realism (i.e., through detailed 3D models, lighting and physics simulation, motion capture, etc.), they are much less sophisticated in terms of interactional realism, or the simulation of face-to-face interaction. Developers of MMOs are starting to grapple with fundamental questions of how ordinary conversation works as a system and how it should be modeled.

Human bodies doing ordinary activities

Which activity is this player doing? (EQ2)

As a player of MMORPGs and virtual worlds, I routinely experience a state of immersion and connection when interacting with other players. However, there are many occasions on which this immersion is broken when the system seems to do the wrong thing. There is some slippage or awkwardness in the interaction that draws attention to the limitations of the system and reminds me that I'm not in a real-life conversation. The following are 10 features of avatar interaction systems that reduce interactional realism, plus 10 tips for increasing it.

Avatars...
1. Stand and do nothing
2. Don't speak in real time
3. Use telepathy
4. Look the wrong way
5. Stare at each other
6. Hide the player's gaze
7. Lack free gesticulation
8. Gesture for fixed durations
9. Don't tightly coordinate gestures and talk
10. Lack usable facial expressions

Avatars could...
1. Display embodied actions
2. Speak in real time
3. Give IM busy signals
4. Look at the speaker
5. Look away when speaking
6. Reveal player's gaze
7. Gesticulate freely
8. Hold gestures
9. Tightly coordinate gestures and talk
10. Have visible facial expressions

Each of these points are elaborated below.

Avatars...
1. Stand and do nothing: Many ordinary activities--looking through a bag, consulting a map, reading a book, trading items, talking with a friend remotely--are hidden from the public eye. This makes avatars appear lifeless even when the player is quite active. It also makes it difficult for players to manage these private activities with joint activities (e.g., looking through a bag and leaving the scene together with another player).
2. Don't speak in real time: Text-chat systems in virtual worlds, with the exception of There, hide the composition of a turn from the public eye. As a result, players cannot predictably achieve one-speaker-at-a-time, one-topic-at-a-time, or tight coordination (minimal gap and overlap between turns).
3. Use telepathy: Players can chat with anyone in the world at anytime. At times a player can be bombarded with multiple messages at the same time ("tell hell"). There's no way for a remote "caller" to know it a recipient is already engaged in a conversation(s).
4. Look the wrong way: Some interaction systems don't enable avatars to turn their heads semi-independently of their shoulders. Consequently avatars cannot be made to use eye contact in a multiparty conversation in a natural way.
5. Stare at each other: In the better eye gaze systems (e.g., EverQuest II), avatars tend to make eye contact at the right times, but they also tend to stare at each other. (In real life, people stare at each other in order to either threaten or flirt.)
6. Hide the player's gaze: Most avatar systems enable the player to decouple her view from the avatar's. The players can zoom out and pan 360-degrees. While this helps mitigate problems with the lack of peripheral vision, it also means that you never know what another player can see or where she is looking. This can make the coordination of gestures difficult.
7. Lack free gesticulation: All avatar systems I've seen in games implement gesture by giving players a list (short or long) of pre-defined gestures from which to choose. As a result, some forms of gesture are not possible, such as, those that are used to describe objects by simulating their shape, spatial relationships, and motion ("iconics"). Also, long lists of gestures are hard for players to learn.
8. Gesture for fixed durations: All avatar systems I've seen in games limit the duration of the pre-defined gestures to a fixed period. This makes it difficult for players to coordinate gestures with other players. They cannot "hold" a gesture until they can see that the recipient has seen it and has understood.
9. Don't tightly coordinate gestures and talk: In current avatar gesture systems, most gestures and text chat must be done as separate turns. As a result, gestures cannot be precisely timed to coincide with particular keywords in the chat. While this is not a problem for gestures that can perform an action on their own ("emblems" such as waves, nods, and shrugs), it makes gestures that are dependent on talk for their meaning difficult to perform. These include gestures used for referring or pointing ("deitics"), emphasizing ("beats"), and describing ("iconics").
10. Lack usable facial expressions: Some avatar systems implement no facial expression at all. Others offer a wide array of facial animations; however, these are often too difficult to see because players tend to zoom out their view. Yet zooming out itself is critical since it is the only way to really know what your avatar is doing.

Interactional realism in current MMOs could be increased by having avatars...
1. Display embodied actions: player opens bag, avatar looks through a bag; player opens map, avatar studies a map...
2. Speak in real time: post chat on a word-by-word or character-by-character basis (There is the model)
3. Give IM busy signals: when player is in a conversation, private messages from new speakers receive an automatic "busy" message
4. Look at the speaker: player clicks on other avatar to establish eye contact (as in Star Wars Galaxies or EverQuest II)
5. Look away when speaking: when typing, avatar looks at recipient(s) only intermittently
6. Reveal player's gaze: "not looking" indicator appears when player's view is too divergent from avatar's
7. Gesticulate freely: real-time motion capture using a camera enables players to use their own bodies to gesticulate freely
8. Hold gestures: player can 'hold' a pre-defined gesture by holding down the enter-key upon executing the gesture (user-controlled duration)
9. Tightly coordinate gestures and talk: player can tie a gesture to a particular word in the chat
10. Have visible facial expressions: a close-up view of an avatar's face appears when selected

For more on the organization of talk, gesture, eye gaze, and facial expression in real-life face-to-face interaction, see the following scholars: Paul Ekman, Charles Goodwin, Gail Jefferson, Adam Kendon, David McNeill, Harvey Sacks, and Emanuel Schegloff.

Posted by Bob

Posted by at 05:10 PM | Comments (13) | TrackBack

Rate of Advancement by Class

Over the month of August, there were significant differences in how much characters of different classes leveled. The y-axis in the graph below are the standardized scores. So, for example, let's take the .12 for the Rogues. We can refer to the table and pick a certain, say level 30. On average, level 30 characters advanced 5.53 levels over the month. Rogues were .12 standard deviation points higher. The standard deviation from the table is 5.11. So level 30 Rogues on average leveled 5.53 + 5.11 * 0.12 = 6.14 levels. On the other hand, level 30 Druids on average leveled 5.53 + 5.11 * -0.14 = 4.81 levels.

But to a certain extent, this conflates level advancement by playing time. For example, rogues actually also spend more time playing than most other classes.

If we controlled for playing time, we get a more precise sense of actual "rate" of leveling. The huge drop for the Rogue means that most Rogues play more than other characters, and that this is what leads to their higher level advancement, but once we take their higher playing time into account, they aren't the fastest levelers overall.

In summary, Rogues level the most over a period of a month but this is largely because they spend more time playing than other characters. The actual fastest levelers are Priests, but because they spend less time playing, their actual level gain is less than Rogues.

Posted by Eric & Nick

Posted by nickyee at 02:54 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

Rate of Advancement (Overview)

We wanted to explore level advancement at a character level. In other words, a true sense of how much a character levels over a one month period. This also provides an approximation of the player's achievement motivation - how much they want to advance their character as quickly as possible. To do this, we looked at the first 10 days of the month and the last 10 days of the month and included only those characters that were observed in both periods. This was done so that we did not include new characters that started towards the end of the month - who presumably would have had less time to advance than those characters that were already there at the beginning of the month. This sampling method yielded 83,020 characters. We calculated a standardized measure of level advancement as follows.

Standardized Character Advancement Score: A character's raw advancement is simply the number of levels the character has advanced. In this case, we subtracted the starting level from the ending level (end of month - beginning of month). The problem is that over a one month period, a 10 level advancement by a level 1 character is much less significant than a 10 level advancement by a level 50 character. In other words, the advancement needs to be qualified by the starting level somehow. The method we used to standardize character advancement was to calculate the average (and standard deviation) of advancement for every starting level. In other words, compared with other characters who also started at level 10, were you above, below, or right on the curve? Mathematically, we did this by calculating the z-score of advancement for every character.

There were two large groups of characters that were excluded in this analysis. First, we excluded all characters who spent over 90% of their time in a city. We presumed that these were mules of one kind or another and they would simply introduce too much noise. 6,393 (or 7%) of the original sample were excluded this way. Then we excluded all characters who were already level 60 since by definition they couldn't advance anymore. This further excluded 14,408 (or 18.8%) of the remaining sample. Thus, we ended up with a sample of 62,035 characters. The means and standard deviations used to calculate the standardized scores were actually derived from this sample so we were making consistent comparisons.

Here is the plot of average level advancement over August by the starting level. We also have the full table of means and standard deviations below. We're using this article to set the stage for level advancement differences by server, class, and race.

Posted by Nick & Eric

Posted by nickyee at 02:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack