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March 12, 2007
PvP vs. PvE: Pressure to Level
After looking at the data on general post-BC leveling patterns and speed, we wondered whether the post-60 distribution would differ between PvP and PvE servers. I suggested that it might be harder to level on a PvP server because of the general level of ganking and interference. Eric suggested that the potential for ganking would actually encourage PvP players to level as fast as possible - especially to stay ahead of the level curve. The data showed that Eric was right.
On both PvP and PvE servers, roughly 20% of the population was level 61 and above, but the distribution was significantly different. Players on PvP servers tended to be higher level than players on PvE servers. The graph below shows how clean that break is. The difference is especially clear for level 65 and above, and particularly for level 70.
Now, one alternative explanation is that players who prefer PvP are more competitive and quicker levelers to begin with. Unfortunately, the current data set can't tease apart those two explanations, but it does appear that Eric's argument is better supported by the data than mine.
Server Sample: RP (High), PvE (High), PvE (High), PvP (High), PvP (High)
Sampling Period: January 17th 2007 - January 31st 2007
Sampling Resolution: ~12 minutes
Parsing Method: All characters above level 60.
Sample Size: 24,565 characters
Posted by nickyee at 01:15 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
March 02, 2007
Accumulated Leveling Times
The timing of the expansion gave us a very interesting opportunity to estimate leveling times. In the past, we could estimate each individual leveling event, but it was impossible to know the accumulated leveling time of a character if the character was created before we started capturing snapshots. But even if we only included characters created after the snapshots began, we would have to aggregate across different months to get a sizeable pool of characters, and that introduced potential time event confounds (i.e., a certain class was balanced).
What the expansion did was it encouraged many players to start a new character at the same time - specifically with the Draenei and the Blood Elves. We know that all Draenei and Blood Elves were created after January 17th, and there are many of these characters. This allowed us to use a large sample of actually accumulated leveling times to estimate the overall curve.
We started by calculating the average accumulated playing times of Draenei and Blood Elves for each level. The blips in the graph (especially post-50) are due to low samples and potential breaks in the data collection process. However, the graph did hint at an underlying curve.
A curve estimation algorithm showed that the power curve best fit the raw data. The resulting r-squared was .98. In other words, the estimated curve captured about 98% of the variance in the raw data.
Below, we plot out the smoothed curve that was generated. The data suggests that it will take a player on average 15 full days of accumulated playing time to reach level 70, and that the 10-day mark is crossed at approximately level 56.
Our much earlier estimated that it took about 15 full days to reach level 60. This suggests that characters have leveled quicker over time, possibly due to extensive twinking, familiarity with quests and instances, or a well-stocked economy.
One potential bias in this data is that all the high level Draenei and Blood Elves (particularly those who are level 60 and above) are probably more hard-core than the average WoW player. Thus, the high-end of the data might not reflect the average player. One counterargument is that the curve doesn't seem to break. In other words, the accumulated time of level 70 characters does fall in the correct range as would be predicted even if we looked at levels 1-50 alone. This suggests that those high level Draenei and Blood Elves didn't level "quicker" as much as that they spent much more hours playing in the month that the expansion was out. In either case, we would be able to sample the data again once more Draenei and Blood Elves are past level 60 and see whether the curve changes.
Server Sample: RP (High), PvE (High), PvE (High), PvP (High), PvP (High)
Sampling Period: January 17th 2007 - February 17th 2007
Sampling Resolution: ~12 minutes
Parsing Method: The sample unit is each unique Draenei and Blood Elf
Sample Size: 42,922 Blood Elves and 35,939 Draenei
Posted by nickyee at 04:40 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack