PlayOn: Race and Class Archives

February 02, 2006

Centrality, Class and Gender

After the previous analysis, we ran an additional one that included the character gender variable. Here, our results were puzzling. Across all of our metrics, male characters were better connected than female characters. And this was true for all classes, with the only exception of Priests. In other words, male characters of all classes are better connected than female characters of all classes, except for female Priests, who are better connected than male Priests. This gender difference was clear and consistent across our three measures of centrality.*

We then ran several analyses to filter out possible explanations and help clarify what may be happening:

1) Are male characters typically in larger guilds than female characters? We ran a quick t-test. While significant, the difference was between 51 and 55, so it can't really account for the difference we're seeing.
2) Do male characters play more than female characters? Again, the t-test was significant, but the difference was insubstantial (1437 vs. 1481 minutes).
3) Do male characters group more than female characters? The t-test here comparing grouping ratios was not significant.
4) Are male characters higher level than female characters? The t-test was significant. The difference was between 33 and 35 - an insubstantial difference.
5) Are there more level 60 male characters than level 60 female characters? 25% of female characters were level 60. 28% of male characters were level 60. Again, a insubstantial difference.

So we're at a loss as to why we're seeing the pattern we're seeing. In every respect we can measure, male and female characters seem to be largely equivalent. Thus, we have two findings we're not sure how to explain. First of all, why are male characters better connected? And secondly, why are female Priests the exception? Any suggestions?

*Server Sample: RP (High), PvE (Medium), PvE (High), PvP (High), PvP (High)
Sampling Period: Month of November
Sampling Resolution: ~12 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: 179,003 characters

Posted by nickyee at 12:35 PM | Comments (12) | TrackBack

January 13, 2006

Centrality and Class

Centrality is a measure of how well-connected an individual is in a social network. We created three measures of centrality in our exploration of whether a character's centrality in a guild was related to the character's class. In our analysis, we only included characters that were in a guild in the month of November.

Crude Degrees: The number of connections a character has.
Degree Centrality: Crude Degrees divided by the total number of possible connections - i.e., the guild size - 1.

Combined Weights: Connections between characters are actually the total time those two characters have spent together. The above two measures count any connection weight greater than zero as a connection. In this metric, we add up all the weights a character has. This represents the total time this character has spent with other members of their guild.

We then plotted these scores by character class.* The results across all three metrics were almost identical. Priests were always best connected. Paladins, Rogues, and Hunters were always least connected. In terms of pure connections, Priests that are in a guild have on average 12 more connections than Paladins who are in guilds. Priests that are in guilds spend about double the time with guild mates that Paladins do.

While it may be tempting to explain all of this by class demand driven by game mechanics, what we can't tease out from this analysis of course is the personality differences involved in choosing a character class. After all, players who choose to be Priests may simply be more gregarious than those who choose to be Paladins and that in and of itself may be accounting for a great deal of the variance.

So I went back and checked the numbers at The Daedalus Project. Players who prefer Priests and Paladins score high on Socializing, so it doesn't look like the desire to Socialize is driving this difference. The Teamwork score almost looks like a better fit. So there's some evidence that part of what we're seeing here is an expression of player motivations in addition to impacts of class demand.

*Server Sample: RP (High), PvE (Medium), PvE (High), PvP (High), PvP (High)
Sampling Period: Month of November
Sampling Resolution: ~12 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: 179,003 characters

Posted by Nick & Nic

Posted by nickyee at 02:01 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

November 13, 2005

Rate of Advancement by Race

The race differences were a little more interesting in that the top 4 races were the Horde races and the bottom 4 races were the Alliance races. The split was surprisingly clean. The split also perfectly matches data from the Daedalus Project on motivational differences between players who choose Horde vs Alliance. It's always good to see two different data methods supporting each other's results.

Again, there were differences in playing time. Notably, Night Elves play just as much as Undead, which is surprising given the advancement difference.

If we plotted out the average level advancement controlling for playing time, we see this difference more clearly. So the Undead level the most over a month, spend the most time playing, and are actually also the fastest levelers. Night Elves on the other hand, spend almost as much time playing, but are the slowest levelers of all the races.

Server Sample: RP (High), PvE (Medium), PvE (High), PvP (High), PvP (High)
Sampling Period: 8/01/2005 12:00 am - 8/30/2005 12:00 am
Sampling Resolution: ~12 minutes
Parsing Method: See article on Rate of Advancement Overview

Posted by Nick & Eric

Posted by nickyee at 03:19 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

November 04, 2005

Rate of Advancement by Class

Over the month of August, there were significant differences in how much characters of different classes leveled. The y-axis in the graph below are the standardized scores. So, for example, let's take the .12 for the Rogues. We can refer to the table and pick a certain, say level 30. On average, level 30 characters advanced 5.53 levels over the month. Rogues were .12 standard deviation points higher. The standard deviation from the table is 5.11. So level 30 Rogues on average leveled 5.53 + 5.11 * 0.12 = 6.14 levels. On the other hand, level 30 Druids on average leveled 5.53 + 5.11 * -0.14 = 4.81 levels.

But to a certain extent, this conflates level advancement by playing time. For example, rogues actually also spend more time playing than most other classes.

If we controlled for playing time, we get a more precise sense of actual "rate" of leveling. The huge drop for the Rogue means that most Rogues play more than other characters, and that this is what leads to their higher level advancement, but once we take their higher playing time into account, they aren't the fastest levelers overall.

In summary, Rogues level the most over a period of a month but this is largely because they spend more time playing than other characters. The actual fastest levelers are Priests, but because they spend less time playing, their actual level gain is less than Rogues.

Posted by Eric & Nick

Posted by nickyee at 02:54 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

July 25, 2005

Playtime and Class / Race

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

We compared the weekly play-times of the different classes. It was surprising to find that Rogues play about 2 hours more each week than most other classes.

We also ran the analysis split by race. Gnomes and Dwarves spend the least time each week playing - about 1-2 hours less than other races.

To get a better sense of these play-time differences, we include below the average play-times of all race and class combinations with level controlled for.

Levels 1-20 (average play-time in a week):

Levels 41-60 (average play-time in a week):

Overall, we found that the main variation in playing time was driven by class rather than race. For example, rogues play 5.5 hours (28%) more than Hunters.

Count of race/class combinations:

It seems like we're picking up on some farming activity ...

Posted by nickyee at 10:00 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

July 10, 2005

Leveling Time By Class

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 player's online time is counted. 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

Below, we plot the leveling time by class split for 3 level ranges: 1-20, 21-40, and 41-60. In all three plots, the starting level is controlled for. Controlling for group ratio produces similar plots. Druids are consistently the slowest levelers. Priests, mages, and shamans are consistently the fastest levelers. Between levels 1-20, mages level 10% faster than druids. Between levels 21-40, mages level 14% faster than druids. Between levels 41-60, mages level 20% faster than druids. The data shows that between level 41 and 60, mages make each level about 2-3 hours faster than druids. Even when controlled for group ratio, the trend is the same.

In fact, we know that this effect is not being driven by group ratio because Druids group almost just as much as Priests. At first we thought this may be a difference in DPS and downtime (which could make sense for shamans and mages compared with druids), but the priests throw us off. So it may be a combination of efficiency (DPS) and demand in groups that yield high XP.

Levels 1-20:

Levels 21-40:

Levels 41-60:

Posted by nickyee at 04:17 PM | Comments (57) | TrackBack

June 27, 2005

Class Abandonment

By calculating the class distribution at early levels and then again at high levels, we can get an approximation of what classes are most likely to be abandoned. Of course, because we aren't tracking the same characters, part of what the data below shows may be responses to class changes over time rather than class abandonment itself.

Here are the two class distribution graphs - one for level 1-20 and the other for level 41-60. If we assume that class distribution at high levels compared with low levels reflects abandonment, then Warlocks are the most abandoned class. About 27% of who create Warlocks abandon their characters before they reach level 40-60. This is followed by Shamans (24%), Warriors (21%), Mages (17%), Priests (17%), and Druids (5%). Several classes had higher percentages at high levels than low levels and thus are seldom abandoned. These were the Paladin, Hunter and Rogue.

(I'm surprised by the abandonment of Shamans because Shamans seemed like a strong class from what I had read in the forums. Perhaps the Shaman drop is an artifact of it being a Horde-only class in some way?)

Also keep in mind that players choose character classes according to personality and attitudes, and that players who choose Paladins are likely to not be the kind of player who would choose to be Warlocks for example.

Class distribution for level 1-20:

Class distribution for level 41-60:

Addendum:

After reading over the reader comments, I realized it makes a lot more sense to split up Alliance and Horde for the analysis otherwise the lower Horde numbers get skewed by the large Alliance numbers. So here is data again but split for Alliance and Horde.

So there is no shift among Horde chartacters. And the drop in Shaman percentage goes away (thanks Jason). The interesting thing is that the shifts are driven entirely by Alliance characters. Compare the drop among Warriors and the increase among Paladins.

Posted by nickyee at 05:10 PM | Comments (11) | TrackBack

June 24, 2005

Race and Class

Humans are the most popular race (25%) while Orcs are the least popular race (7%). The Alliance outnumbers the Horde 2 to 1.

Class distribution among Alliance members ranges from 9% (Warlocks) to 15% (Warriors).

Class distribution among the Horde has a wider range - 7% (Druids) to 20% (Warriors).

Posted by nickyee at 10:57 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack