July 28, 2006
Alliance / Horde Ratio Over Time
We were also interested in looking at the Alliance vs. Horde ratio over time. For example, are there incentives to reach parity or do imbalances create increased skews? What we found was surprising in that no significant shifts over time were seen. The ratio of Alliance and Horde appeared incredibly stable over time.
Of note, while there was a severe Alliance imbalance on the PvE and RP servers, there was a matched equilibrium on the PvP server. Again, neither changed over time.
Server Sample: RP (High), PvE (High), PvP (High)
Sampling Period: July 2005 - January 2006
Sampling Resolution: ~12 minutes
Parsing Method: The sample unit is each unique character in each 2 week period.
Data Filter: Characters above level 1 and who spent less than 95% of their time in a main city.
Sample Size: ~100k characters in each 2 week period
Posted by nickyee at 01:31 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 14, 2006
Guild Membership and Stability Over Time
We then looked at how guild size and stability change over time. First, we looked at the percentage of characters who were in guilds. There was a mild positive increase over time.
This increase in percentage of guilded characters could mean one of two things. There may be more guilds that spring up, or characters are joining existing guilds. The following chart of average guild size suggests the latter is the case. Over time, established guilds attract more and more characters and increase in size.
Over time, guilds also stabilize. As the following chart shows, members are less likely to quit a guild as a server matures. Overall, these three charts suggest that over time, characters on a server are more and more likely to be in a guild. The guilds they join tend to be established guilds. And over time, guild turn-over decreases.
Server Sample: RP (High), PvE (High), PvP (High)
Sampling Period: July 2005 - January 2006
Sampling Resolution: ~12 minutes
Parsing Method: The sample unit is each unique character in each 2 week period.
Data Filter: Characters above level 1 and who spent less than 95% of their time in a main city.
Sample Size: ~100k characters in each 2 week period
Posted by nickyee at 05:47 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
July 07, 2006
Levels and Grouping Over Time
Our long-term sampling allowed us to look at trends over a long period of time. In the current analysis, we looked at data over a 6-month span.
In that 6-month period, the percentage of level 60 characters has more than doubled (from around 10% to around 24%). That comes out to about an additional 2% of level 60 characters every month.
But it was interesting that even as the level composition of the game space changed in that time, the average grouping ratio was fairly stable. This implies that level composition has a minimal effect on grouping behavior. The sudden slide and drop at the end of the graph is due to an in-game API change. Blizzard suddenly stopped making the "grouped" variable public in early 2006.
Server Sample: RP (High), PvE (High), PvP (High)
Sampling Period: July 2005 - January 2006
Sampling Resolution: ~12 minutes
Parsing Method: The sample unit is each unique character in each 2 week period.
Data Filter: Characters above level 1 and who spent less than 95% of their time in a main city.
Sample Size: ~100k characters in each 2 week period
Posted by nickyee at 02:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack