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December 26, 2005
Restarts
Since I first began parsing the census data, I've always noticed that some people made negative progress over the sampling period. In other words, their ending level was lower than their starting level. The only way to do this is to have restarted a character using the same name. I never thought much about this, and always assumed that these were separate players who simply used the same names, and thus I always filtered these characters out (always around 0.3%).
Recently, Nic brought this issue up at our weekly meeting and we finally got around to talking about it. And as we talked about what was driving this phenomenon, it became clear that it probably wasn't the case that we were looking at two different players. Nic and Eric had also noticed this when they first started looking at the data (before I arrived this summer) and they suggested that these were players who decided to recreate a character using that name because they liked that name. And then I realized that there is no reason why someone would delete their character given that even when players quit they might want to come back at a later date. So we all started to realize that the majority of these characters with negative progress are probably made by the same player rather than two different players.
Altogether, we found 567 restarts in our sample. That came out to 0.3% of all characters we parsed. Plotting out the frequencies of characters that have been restarted is quite interesting. There were quite a few high level characters that were restarted.
Server Sample: RP (High), PvE (Medium), PvE (High), PvP (High), PvP (High)
Sampling Period: 10/14/2005 12:00 am - 10/30/2005 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: See below
Sample Size: 207,298 characters
Posted at December 26, 2005 08:00 PM
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Comments
Paladins, I'm guessing.
Posted by: L'Emmerdeur at December 26, 2005 09:52 PM
Are the restarted characters of the same race and class?
I started a Troll Shaman once but deleted it at lvl 11 and used the same name to start a Tauren Shaman. I did this just because I liked the Taurens more.
Posted by: Sir9 at December 27, 2005 05:00 AM
Sir9 - I'm eye-balling the data (cause we have to adjust for the differing frequencies which players create race/class combinations), but it doesn't look like the restarts look different from the base rates.
Posted by: Nick Yee at January 4, 2006 06:11 PM
"and they suggested that these were players who decided to recreate a character using that name because they liked that name. And then I realized that there is no reason why someone would delete their character given that even when players quit they might want to come back at a later date."
It's popular for players who are quiting the game to delete their 60's and reroll with the same name to prove to other players that they have in fact deleted their main.
Posted by: Jhonus at March 19, 2006 02:26 PM
I have re-rolled and I think "liking a name" is trivializing it a bit. I would suggest that we have a perception of who a character is and we associate that with the name - not the actual character, as we play we may realize that the class/race (and maybe even gender) isn't quite right - so the image in our head is associated with the name. So we reroll the character trying to get them to align closer with our perception of what the character should be. Then again, if they are a Male Troll Fighter and change to a Female Elf Priest then it's probably just that you "liked the name" or you had a mid-life crisis (can one have a virtual mid-life crisis - maybe mid-levels crisis???)
Posted by: Kevin Mentzer at March 28, 2006 09:46 AM
Good job on noticing the rerolls. I have 2 60s and a new main that's currently lvl 30, all with the same name. I'm not terribly interested in the end game, but I love WoW, and really enjoy the leveling experience. In the case of the second 60, it really took getting to 60 to realise that the server I was on(and playing alliance) didn't really grip me. In the case of the first one, I ended up needing a break and got disconnected from the guild when it made the transition to being a large raiding guild. The community I was a part of broke down and so I moved on. As getting to 60 becomes easier the more I do it, I can imagine this continuing a few more times until myself and my friends find a server and community that we want to be part of for a while. It will be interesting to see what happens when character transfers become available for WoW. I wonder if more people will choose to move their exisiting char rather than start a new one?
Posted by: Mara at June 13, 2006 11:08 AM
The high 60 rerolling is prob due to some one transfering a character off the server, and then some one else taking the name because it is well known and is now available to be claimed.
Posted by: LaggyNewbie at December 21, 2006 06:19 PM
Or taking the name because there are lots of players and only a finite number of sensible or popular names.
Posted by: Alan at July 26, 2008 03:39 PM