PlayOn: Grouping Archives

July 13, 2005

Grouping and Leveling Time

Server Sample: RP (High), PvE (Medium), PvE (High)
Sampling Period: 6/13/2005 9:00 am - 6/20/2005 9:00 am
Sampling Resolution: ~14 minutes
Parsing Method: The sample unit is leveling event. We tabulate the time between a character's level and when we observe them at a new level. Only a character's online time is included. We exclude the first leveling event from every character because it doesn't constitute the total amount of time to make that level.
Data Filter: None
Sample Size: 81,887 leveling events

How does grouping ratio affect leveling time? Does grouping more help or hurt leveling time? Of course, because we are looking at correlational data, we won't be able to pinpoint causality or directionality (or a third variable that isn't accounted for), but the data might lend support to either the "help" or "hurt" hypothesis and help us further explore the impact of grouping behavior on game-play.

We ran an ANOVA with Group Ratio and Level as the independent variables, and Leveling Time as the dependent variable. The effect of Group Ratio was significant (p < .001). The graph below shows that characters that never group level faster than those that do. Among characters that do group however, there is no difference in leveling time if they group a little or a lot.

To get a better sense of the faster leveling time of characters who never group, we calculated the average leveling time for characters who group more than 1% and compared that average with the leveling time of characters who never group. Below we plot the leveling time advantage of characters who never group over the levels.

Between levels 2-10, characters who never group make each level on average 23 minutes faster. Between levels 11-20, it's 40 mins per level. Between levels 21-30, it's 74 mins per level. Between levels 31-40, it's 130 mins per level. Between levels 41-50, it's 215 mins per level. And between levels 51-60, it's 293 mins per level.

We are probably looking at several variables interacting. Players who group more often probably are motivated to play for more social reasons than players who never group. At the higher levels, a lot of time may be spent helping fellow guild members. Another issue is that players who never group are probably playing more soloable classes. In other words, we're not making a pure comparison of grouping behavior.

Posted by nickyee at 09:32 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

July 01, 2005

Guild Affiliation and Group Ratio

Server Sample: RP (High), PvE (Medium), PvE (High)
Sampling Period: 6/13/2005 9:00 am - 6/20/2005 9:00 am
Sampling Resolution: ~14 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: 76,364 characters

Even though characters in guilds do not play more than characters not in guilds, they do group more often and this effect becomes more pronounced over the levels. We wanted to check this in case being in a guild did not in fact provide a grouping advantage given the ease of finding an ad-hoc group. The following graph plots average percentage of time observed in a group with playing time controlled for.

In an ANCOVA with Guilded (yes / no) as the independent variable, average group ratio as the dependent variable, and Level (lowest observed level) and Playing Time (minutes observed over sampling period) as the covariates, the effect of Guilded was significant (p < .001) overall and for individual analyses within levels 1-20, 21-40, and 41-60.

Between levels 1 and 20, characters not in a guild are observed in a group on average 17% of the times compared with 20% for characters in a guild (note that these and the following group ratios are after playing time and level have been controlled for). Between levels 21 and 40, it is 26% and 31%. And between levels 41 and 60, it is 34% and 46%. In other words, between level 41-60, characters in a guild are in a group about 35% more often than characters not in a guild after playing time has been controlled for.

Posted by nickyee at 03:51 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June 29, 2005

Grouping and Level Progress

Server Sample: RP (High), PvE (Medium), PvE (High)
Sampling Period: 6/13/2005 9:00 am - 6/20/2005 9:00 am
Sampling Resolution: ~14 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: 76,364 characters

Do characters who group more often level faster? We split characters into 4 bands of grouping ratio and then plotted their average progress over the levels. In other words, characters in the 0%-1% band were almoost never observed to be in a group. Average progress was calculated by subtracting the lowest observed level from the highest observed level. Characters who group more often appear to level faster but more so at lower levels than at higher levels.

We plotted the same graph but this time controlling for playing time. For characters between level 1-20, the correlation between group ratio and level progress is .13. For characters between level 21-40, the correlation is .04. For characters between level 41-60, the correlation is .03. In other words, characters who group more often do level faster at lower levels, but this is not the case for higher level characters. The graph below seems to show this break-even point occurs at around level 40.

Of course, grouping for instances increases post-40 and the decrease in levels may be offset by rare item acquisition from instances.

Posted by nickyee at 10:31 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

June 17, 2005

Grouping and Soloing

Server Sample: RP (High), PvE (Medium), PvE (High)
Sampling Period: 6/2/2005 6:00 pm - 6/7/2005 3:00 am
Sampling Resolution: ~16 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: Characters who were observed for at least 5 hours during sampling period.
Sample Size: 30,278 characters

After getting the grouping ratios, we were also interested to find out the distribution of grouping ratios at different levels. To give a sense of the proportion of players who were never observed in a group, here's a histogram of grouping ratio for players who were observed to play at least 5 hours in the sampling period (N = 30,278).

Here is the same histogram but only for players under level 30 (N = 13,009). 16% of characters were never observed to be in a group.

And here is the same histogram but only for players above level 55 (N = 8,873). 3% of characters were never observed to be in a group.

Posted by nickyee at 03:04 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

June 16, 2005

Grouping Ratio by Class and Level

Grouping ratio was calculated for each character by counting the number of the times the character was observed to be grouped divided by the total number of times the character was observed.

The chart below confirms our intuitions about the soloability of the classes in WoW. Of course, players who choose to be warlocks are probably different from players who choose to be priests so the chart below conflates play style with character class.

The graph below plots grouping ratio against character level. We again see the spike right before level 40. There is also a strong increase in grouping starting after level 56. Starting at level 59, half of play time is spent in a group.

Addendum:

Here is the group ratio plots over level for the Warlock and Priest class (as per David's comment).

Posted by nickyee at 09:00 AM | Comments (11) | TrackBack