PlayOn: October 2006 Archives

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October 31, 2006

PvP Ranks (by Class)

And finally, we also looked at the differences in PvP rank by class. Like the differences of PvP rank by race, the differences were quite small. Shamans had on average the highest rank, while Priests had on average the lowest rank.

It was interesting that 3 of the healing classes (Priests, Druids, Paladins) were on the bottom of the list, while the final healing class (Shamans) were on the top of the list. Part of the reason why may be that the Shaman attracts more competitive-minded players.

Server Sample: RP (High), PvE (High), PvE (High), PvP (High), PvP (High)
Sampling Period: One Week in October 2006
Sampling Resolution: ~12 minutes
Parsing Method: The sample unit is each unique character in each hour of the day.
Data Filter: None
Sample Size: 128,477 characters

Posted by nickyee at 01:40 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

October 23, 2006

PvP Ranks (by Hours Played)

In the same way that we could approximate the number of hours played it is necessary to get from one level to the next, we could also approximate how many hours of play per week it takes to advance from one PvP rank to the next. We tabulated the average number of hours played for characters in each PvP rank. Of course, the numbers derived do not correspond directly to the time it takes to reach the next PvP rank, but they are indicative of the time invested as players are at higher and higher PvP ranks. The following is the graph we got from that analysis.

Data from The Daedalus Project suggests that the average MMO player spends about 20 hours a week in the game. This implies that the average player "hit a ceiling" around Rank 5 (Sergeant Major / First Sergeant). They will find it hard to get beyond Rank 5 unless they put more time into the game than they are used to. It takes about 40 hours (or double the average) of play each week to reach Rank 11 (Commander / Lieutenant General) . More tellingly, it takes about 4 times the average play-time (or almost 80 hours) for a player to reach Rank 14 (Grand Marshal / High Warlord). That is more than 10 hours a day of game-play.

Posted by nickyee at 01:35 PM | Comments (10) | TrackBack

PvP Ranks (Basic)

Eric had recently included a PvP rank scraper into the census script. Because PvP rank is not one of the variables that is returned via the /who list, this data was collected using the method used to scrape character gender. We gathered PvP rank data by moving collection characters to the faction capitals (Ogrimmar & Ironforge). As the character census occurs, the collection character tries to target each character seen in the census. If they happen to be nearby, we note down their census rank. As discussed in the character gender thread, this method has several biases. We're more likely to find the PvP ranks of players who: 1) play a lot, and 2) spend a lot of time in the main cities. On the other hand, given the way that PvP is currently structured (via queues originating in the main cities), the sampling bias may dovetail with the practice of PvP.

We began analyzing the data by trying to get a sense of how well or how poorly the scraper managed to get the PvP rank for all characters on the server. We choose a one week time-frame. Because PvP ranks are updated once each week on Tuesday, we choose a Tuesday to Monday period to analyze.

Overall, the scraper got 50% of the PvP ranks of all characters on the 5 servers. But this percentage is actually deceptive because PvP ranking doesn't begin till the upper levels. The following graph shows the average character level by PvP rank of the character. If we only look at characters above level 45, the scraper found 72% of their PvP ranks.

The distribution of PvP ranks looks like this:

While the scraper did not find the PvP ranks of all characters, there is probably enough to explore the data a little and get a sense of underlying differences.

Posted by nickyee at 01:28 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack