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August 21, 2006
Hours of the Day (by Zone Type)
After mapping out the overall server population by hour of the day, we split the analysis by zone type. Note that our census bot performs the snapshot independently for Alliance and Horde, so the "average server population" listed in the graphs below is roughly half of the true server population.
We split instances into two groups - high-end raid instances such as MC, ZG, BWL, AQ etc. and then non-raid instances which included all other instances. Both UBRS and LBRS were in the lower tier.
The graph makes intuitive sense. The zones that fluctuate the most in terms of population throughout the day are PvP Battlegrounds and high-end raid instances. In particular, we see that players are in high-end instances mostly between 4pm and 10pm.
A plot of the normalized populations shows that the fluctuation of population in raid zones is the only one that significantly deviates from the normal pattern of fluctuation.
Server Sample: RP (High), PvE (High), PvE (High), PvP (High), PvP (High)
Sampling Period: Month of January
Sampling Resolution: ~12 minutes
Parsing Method: The sample unit is each unique character in each hour of the day.
Data Filter: None
Sample Size: 179,003 characters
Posted at August 21, 2006 12:43 PM
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Comments
Great information as always.
Would the chart look significantly different if you only looked at level 60 characters? I'm curious regarding how much the removal of experience gain changes things.
Similarly if you have data for the same servers in later months does player behaviour change as a server matures?
Posted by: Unity at August 21, 2006 02:39 PM
I would also be curious to see the correlation between character level and player time zone.
Posted by: Lawful Neutral at August 21, 2006 10:34 PM